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Facebook has a use!
Nov. 30th, 2008 01:39 pmI had a vague idea, looking around Facebook, to look up some of my relatives. This turned out to be a huge waste of time until I got to my youngest cousin, Patrick, who is actually on Facebook. And that led me to my next youngest cousin, Ben (who's like 24 and married now), and that led me to my youngest (and favorite) aunt's husband, Andy and my closest-in-age cousin, Brad. It's kind of cool, and kind of odd. I learned more about my cousin Ben from his Facebook profile than I'd ever known of him in all the family gatherings... I guess maybe he always felt his likes and stuff were a bit on the non-conventional side for our family, and although I'm rather recognized, I think, as being of similar status, I'm also something like 13 years older than he is. Not like it inspires a great deal of sharing once a year, you know? It's a shame, too... Ben seems really awesome, and I wish I knew him better. I think we have more in common than he knew (and more than possibly a lot of the rest of our family as well).
Once upon a time, when I was little, our family got together for extended reunions at least once every other year, if not yearly. My grandfather and his three brothers were the core of the family, and all the branches of the tree got together on a regular basis to keep in touch. After they all died, however, the rest of it just faded away. Now it's my dad and his brothers, and anything else is just too hard to arrange. Even that doesn't happen more than once a year, and then not for more than a couple of hours, and the kids in my generation rarely go at that (except for my brother, who I suspect in many ways will be the rock of the larger family).
That said... there's a definite generational divide about who uses tools like Facebook and who doesn't, and it's sort of exciting to think that there might be a way to reconnect with far-flung members of my family in this day and age. It's an exciting prospect given how I've seen my family drift apart, to realize that there might be a way for us to hold on to those tenuous lines of connection even now.
My family is good people. I'm happy to have found a way to reach some of them again.
Once upon a time, when I was little, our family got together for extended reunions at least once every other year, if not yearly. My grandfather and his three brothers were the core of the family, and all the branches of the tree got together on a regular basis to keep in touch. After they all died, however, the rest of it just faded away. Now it's my dad and his brothers, and anything else is just too hard to arrange. Even that doesn't happen more than once a year, and then not for more than a couple of hours, and the kids in my generation rarely go at that (except for my brother, who I suspect in many ways will be the rock of the larger family).
That said... there's a definite generational divide about who uses tools like Facebook and who doesn't, and it's sort of exciting to think that there might be a way to reconnect with far-flung members of my family in this day and age. It's an exciting prospect given how I've seen my family drift apart, to realize that there might be a way for us to hold on to those tenuous lines of connection even now.
My family is good people. I'm happy to have found a way to reach some of them again.
