Cathy's Clan

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.
~Jane Howard

There is something about NPR announcers' voices, their relaxed and mellow tones often sink me into a meditative trance. It reminds me of the end of yoga class when the instructor "puts you down" for Corpse Pose and you can finally clear your mind after strenuous exercise. Ah, bliss.

But these voices aren't real, right? I mean, how could any normal human being (barring mothers at bedtime, yoga instructors during shavasana and Buddhist gurus) sound so relaxing?

Cathy Resmer, writer and blogger at Seven Days, got to be one of these satin-smooth voices (blog link)!! Cathy spoke to Jules Fishelman on a StoryCorps segment which aired last week on National Public Radio's Morning Edition.

Not only did Cathy and Jules sport the dulcet NPR voices that many of us have grown to love, but their story was touching to the Nth degree. In this day and age of upside down families and deteriorating communities, it is SO GOOD to hear about a family success story. Especially one that does not fit the traditional mold.

To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons. - Marilyn French

Like many others no doubt, this was a family whose origins can be traced back to a dish washing conversation after a potluck. Cathy simply asked Jules, "Would you like to be our sperm donor?"

Cathy and Ann-Elise conceived a baby with Jules and then helped Jules find his wife, Rachel, who then had a baby with Jules. Graham and Ira are two babies born from these happy unions of friends and spouses. I doubt Rockwell could have come up with a better family portrait.

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation. ~Margaret Mead

One of the many touching moments in the interview is when Cathy says that she never wanted kids until she met Ann-Elise. Awww. And why did Cathy and Ann-Elise go to Jules instead of a sperm donor? Like many 30-somethings, a healthy waryness of the Darth Vader Father Complex.

"If you've ever seen Star Wars, for example, you know that the whole trilogy is about Luke and his search for his father," she says.

"You wanted to make sure his father was not Darth Vader," Fishelman says.

"I did."

Darth Vader: No! I am your father!

Luke Skywalker: No... That's not true...! That's impossible!

Darth Vader: Search your feelings! You know it to be true!

Luke Skywalker: Nooo! Nooo!

Darth Vader: Luke, you can destroy the Emperor. He has forseen this. It is your destiny. Join me, and together, we can rule the galaxy as father and son. Come with me. It is the only way.

I have a lot of friends having babies right now (complete with baby blogs) and many of them are raising their families against the traditional grain.

Molly and Kate are having a baby in Boston (they chose a sperm donor despite the Darth Vadar possibility), Adam and Eve (baby Donovan's blog) live in Seattle but Adam commutes to work in Berkeley, Molly and John (baby Ivo's blog) split their time btw LA and a house in the middle of the desert while traveling around the world for their film careers, Jenny brings home the bacon while Derek stays home to take care of the kids (dad's blog), my Swiss family relatives are having children out of wedlock (pretty shocking), my friend Sarah in SF has become a second mother to her sister's twins and then there are the picture perfect Heather and Braydon (family blog) who adopted twins from Haiti.

The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.
~Erma Bombeck

I wasn't raised in a traditional family so none of these new fangled family units seem all that outlandish to me. I would be hard pressed to describe what a "normal family" consists of. Our bohemian musician parents moved back to the land before I was born and raised us on a desolate hill in the middle of nowhere in Upstate NY.

Years later they split up and we moved back to Manhattan. There we spent much time with my father's new wife, while living in a NYC commune with hundreds of other unique family units.

The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.
~Dodie Smith

For as far back as I can remember, I knew that our small family of 3 (mother, sister and me) weren't like other families. When I hit the awkward teenage years, these differences disturbed me slightly but now I am at peace with them. Our differences make us who we are and I am happy to be a member of our oddball, artistic family of 3 deadbeats. Hell, we are even a club these days!

We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.
~Shirley Abbott

It warms the heart to hear stories like Cathy's told in this modern day world turned upside down. With things as crazy as they are, we are so lucky for any little bit of connection and sense of family that we can manage. And for the final parting warm fuzzy:

As Resmer told Fishelman recently,
"You're the kind of person that we want our child to grow into."