For Families, a Precious Time to Regroup

Family stories are not all jolly. Sorrow and pain weave through the tapestry of every life. The children whose faces are smeared with chocolate frosting will have their share. We who are grandparents and great-aunts and great-uncles take the long view. How often we have come together at different phases of our lives to hold and heal as well as to laugh and play.

The purpose of holding together the extended family is to provide a safe harbor -- safe emotional space -- for the many different individuals connected by blood and choice. Sometimes we return from our regular life journeys in triumph; other times, we come back wounded, confused, bored or betrayed. But as long as the lights are on in the harbor, we have a refuge beyond ourselves and our immediate households.

Otherwise, we are alone and fragile in an era when the workplace batters young and old, marriages run into trouble and the diagnosis of major illness hangs out on the horizon. How much we expect from the extended-family vacation as a way to preserve the safe harbor for current and future generations.

It's not easy. The burden often falls on the tribal elders who urge the dispersed to come together, who take the grandchildren without their parents on trips to the Grand Canyon or rent a house on the Eastern Shore that's big enough for everyone, who comfort the distressed in the midst of a divorce, who change the sheets on the beds, who meet the planes and counsel warring siblings to make peace, who adjudicate squabbles over who gets a turn on the swing, who cook the dinners for 18 and extract the puzzle pieces from the sofa, who read aloud "Alice in Wonderland" and "Goodnight Moon," who pray for good weather because another rainy day will destroy all remnants of sanity as well as the furniture.

Longevity has produced a vast generation of healthy grandparents and great-aunts and great-uncles. Demographically speaking, we are the hot new family asset, by force of our numbers and the generally improved health status of older Americans. This bonus of vitality and time has expanded our role as stewards of the clan. We are guardians of the past and the future. We pass on the myths and morals of the family narrative. As survivors of many summers, we keep the harbor open and safe.

In short, we give back.

When I was a toddler at the height of World War II, I lived for a while with my wonderful aunt. My father was in the infantry in Europe; my mother was recovering from giving birth to a "blue baby" who died. Every morning before my aunt would take me to the nursery school where she was a teacher, she would sit me down and brush my fine, tangled hair. She would brush and brush, and with each stroke, her love poured down like a waterfall into my brain and my heart. In the summer we all went to the old house with the blue-green walls to stay with my grandmother.

One day, my aunt gave me a job: A plastic bag of white margarine with a yellow-orange dot in the middle, and I was to knead the package to spread the color and make the white glop seem like butter, which was rationed in the war years. I can still feel the urgency of squishing the bag, perfecting the butter color -- doing it right for my aunt.

To be loved. To be needed. To be valued. What a gift she bestowed. What a standard to follow in nurturing future generations.

One morning my 5-year-old granddaughter hurries down to breakfast. She is about to go to puppet camp, and she isn't quite ready.

"Oh, Granny," she asks, "can you brush my hair?"

Comments:mytime@washpost.com.