Easter Baskets

I am 25 years old and still looking for Easter baskets (and poorly at that as I had to ask 3 people for help with my “clues”). I walked into my aunt’s house for Easter on Sunday-rommie in tow-only to be presented with clues to my Easter basket.

Every year since I was a wee little one, my Aunt Sissy has us look for Easter baskets. Sean, Ryan, Gavin and I used to be the only ones looking but now that the brood has expanded (damn Irish Catholics and their lack of birth control) there are just about 20 of us searching around her house for our effin’ baskets and I do not see the end in sight for this 25 year old. I think that until I have kids of my own (and that is looking like this side of never at this point) I will be searching for my basket every Easter from now until the end of eternity. Brett and I finally found the basket and were rewarded with silly little trinkets and two chocolate bunnies. It was the hunt more then the reward (much like my dating life) but we were excited that we found ours!

Lately, as I attend family functions and holidays, I wonder what will happen when the “elders” have passed and things are left to the younger generation. My brothers and I can barely keep the three of us in communication. My sister, Jen, and I have a hard enough time chatting while she has a baby…imagine if we both had kids (and multiples!). I believe that we are all destined to be strewn about the globe with our respective families. Inevitably it becomes harder to share your lives with those you love when you live 2000 miles away. Then there is the extended family…the cousins that we have grown up with as our brothers and sisters and the aunts and uncles that were our second sets of parents. What happens to them and how do they play into our lives? I grew up in a 5 mile radius of pretty much my entire family (and we are talking about 30 people who are VERY involved in my life) Every holiday, birthday and momentous occasion has been spent with these people. Can we continue to do that as time goes by and the younger generation becomes the one in charge? I’m not so sure.

I think American and the world is seeing this trend in its family structure. As the generation with the traditions-the nucleus-begins to diminish, the younger generations find themselves in the midst of an identity crisis. Someone must take over in order to continue the familial institution and there is a struggle to decide who will have that huge responsibility. How will families blend and grow after the older generations have ceased to direct that change? Will America, will my family, become tiny families spread across the country and the world…only to come together for weddings and funerals? Will my children know their aunts and uncles like I have? Will they be able to call Aunt Jen or Uncle Sean with their problems when asking the parents seems a bit too much? I certainly hope so. I am not quite ready to accept that change and I am happy now to be a bystander in the family traditions…to not have to organize and direct as much as develop and learn in preparation for the day that it becomes my job to hide the Easter baskets.