It came about this way: after a long reasonably calm marriage, Lamar and I agreed to part, primarily because of "irreconcilable differences" over--you guessed it--family. But we vowed never to divulge the nature of those differences, and we never have. We also decided that our offspring should have a say in how we managed this divorce, so we had a meeting at Lamar's place, where our children decided that they wanted to continue our tradition of family get-togethers for birthdays and holidays. And so we promised, as a term of our peaceful divorce, to continue this practice ad infinitum, even if we remarried.

At the time, we had no idea that Lamar would choose as his second wife a woman so richly endowed with relatives. But Jane agreed to the terms just as Bill had, and amazingly, the siblings melded into one group. Some have even become very close friends.

On the surface at least, all went smoothly for a couple of years, until one of the clan married someone whose actions, demeanor, and even appearance were hard for certain others to take. After a family brunch at a popular high-profile Houston restaurant, at which the offending newcomer "misbehaved," I received an irate call from number one son Jeff, calling for a family council, already arranged by his father. Our "nuclear family" met at Lamar's in closed ranks: no spouses, no extended family siblings--and I was apparently in the hot seat.

The purpose of the meeting soon became obvious: Jeff and Lamar wanted to discontinue the family get-togethers. Reason number one was this: we have worked too hard to develop an image; we are known, we are respected. We can't afford to have our reputation tainted by the actions of so-called family members.

Besides, Jeff added--lamely, it seemed, as if it weren't the actual point of the meeting--everyone was uncomfortable with this arrangement of being with both parents plus their new spouses at the same time. As I questioned the others around the table, I soon learned that the "everyone" was not only Jeff, but also Lamar, who admitted to being "a little uncomfortable."

My heart pounded against my chest. Somehow I knew I was in the fight of my life, and how was I going to explain the importance of extended family to young people who didn't yet have any children--and to a mall who, reared an only child, had been allowed no contact with his own extended family on his father's side, and only limited contact with a relative or two on his mother's side. How, with Lamar pulling against me, could I possibly give to them this great sense of groundedness that I had experienced, cocooned by the many aunts, uncles, cousins, great-grandparents, great-aunts, great-uncles, second and even third cousins, in both my mother's and my father's families? Hadn't I tried all these years to recreate this, on a small scale, for them? Had I failed so miserably?

You have to get something straight, I told them. Get the idea of a "perfect" family as the "only" family out of your mind. There are very few perfect anythings. A marriage may end, but a family doesn't--it can't. Despite your best intentions, your friends may come and go as you move from place to place, but your family is forever. You may not like them all; you may think some of them are not educated enough or cultured enough or even white enough for you, but they are your clan, like it or not.

Besides, do you think your forebears had perfect families? Take a second look at your family trees: women frequently died in childbirth; a man often took three or more wives over the course of a lifetime, and look at the baggage they brought along. How dismayed our ancestors would be, often having endured privation to build a better future for the generations to come, playing whatever hand they were dealt with a good grace, to see us sitting here whining. To see many of this generation trooping off to "group" to confide to perfect strangers about "victimization" by their "dysfunctional" families. Thank you, John Bradshaw, for turning our every little mess into a pathology.

And why do we in this country so often confide in perfect strangers, sometimes on national television? Because we have let our family ties go slack and we try to reconstruct a substitute clan, that most necessary of social institutions. But in doing so, we discard our own history and our reason for being, We need to wake up to the fact that the biblical injunction about honoring our father and mother was made, not for our parents' sake, but for our own, and our children's, and their children's. By turning our backs on family lore, we cut ourselves off from our own mythology. In primitive cultures, this would mean inevitable death. I'm not so sure it doesn't still.

And so the family get-togethers continue. They are not always successful. Jane once told me how much she hated our last Christmas. Well duh. We who are on the high side of twenty-one might have more "fun" if we're trying to bring enjoyment to those for whom Christmas is a new, fresh wonder, instead of sitting back waiting to be entertained ourselves. I couldn't actually express those sentiments at the time, but maybe she realized them later; she is, after all, a caring person who had to be a good sport to agree to our unorthodox arrangement.

Now there is a healthy next generation: seven on our side of the family alone. At least four times a year they get to romp and squeal with their cousins--some of them, believe me, they'd never get to meet otherwise, They are coddled and corrected by all manner of grown-ups, whom they are learning to respect and obey.

Until recently this group consisted also of Mattie, in her nineties, who at certain times during my marriage to Lamar made his life--and mine--miserable. But that is ancient history, and isn't everyone entitled to a few mistakes? At one point Jane announced that they wouldn't be bringing Mattie to anymore Christmases--getting her loaded up in her wheelchair and having to puree her food was just too much work for the questionable amount of pleasure it brought her. But again I protested, and not just for Mattie's sake. The youngest children deserved the opportunity to get to know their great-grandparent. And children need to learn that you don't just hide a person away when she gets doddery and infirm. You show her respect, and deference.

When Mattie died, we all met at the funeral home: Jane's offspring as well as my own. Even a few of the tiniest played hide and seek around the casket. Jeff looked at the face of his grandmother and turned to sob in my arms: something of a miracle, I felt, given his often stoic nature. Lamar, who is made of the same stoic stuff, hadn't cried until then, but he admitted that tears came when he saw our grief.

Nothing feeds our souls more than these immersions in family life. Over the years we share in the births, deaths, marriages, divorces, graduations, christenings--the minutiae and the grand, with a group of people whom, for the most part, we didn't choose. We hone ourselves on relationships, a few of them admittedly grating. Through family, as through no other vehicle, we learn who we are. We become, at length, whole.