~~~~~Big Families~~~~~ posted 10/29/2008 11:09:03 AM | 3 kudos what's this?     report abuse tagged: family, life, siblings, fun

kywonder

I wonder how many of us in blog land come from a big family? I am not talking about 3, 4, or even 5 siblings. I am talking about a big, big, big, family. You know it has its advantages as well as disadvantages. Believe me I know.

I know, I came from such a family. Mom had 11 live births and it was crowded in our house at times, but we never ever lacked for entertainment. Mom never had to pay a babysitter. There was always an older brother or sister to watch us younger kids. And house work, man it never took long to get the house cleaned up. There were plenty of hands to pitch in and get it done. For instance, one brother always mopped the kitchen floor. Heck as a child, I never understood why he had to mop the kitchen floor everyday. But once I got married and had a child and she started eating on her own, I knew. And when it came time to wax the floors, it was the joy of our day.

Mom would use the paste wax, (maybe they had not invented liquid wax), and once it was dry, we had a ball. She would give us some old socks to put on our feet and off across the floor we would go. By the time we were done, you could see your face shining in the floor. Gosh, as I think about it now, I want to go get some Johnson paste wax and let the grandbabies learn how to skate across the floor.

Oh, the joys of learning to cook. With a big family such as mine, we were always cooking up something. You learned how to compromise and make different foods with so many different taste buds sitting around the table. Heck, I bet I could cook in a restaurant, for I learned how to cook in larger amounts really fast. There was always lots of dishes, but hey, with so many of us, we would all wash a few and then someone else would take over. The only job I hated was the laundry. It was a never ending job and never seemed to get done.

And oh the sports! I must not forget the sports. With 10 brothers and sisters, we had our own teams. Baseball, basketball, football, tag, jump rope, we had all the sports. Neighbors would flock to our house to play because that was where all the kids were. But if they didn't we still had enough to make teams for just about any sport. This must be where I get my love for sports. Back then we would stay up until all hours of the night, playing underneath the street lights. We were always home, because it never got boring around our house.

Now don't think it was all fun and games, it was not. We had our trials just like everyone else. Dad was an alcoholic for years and too many times he would come home drunk and raise hell. He was a very mean drunk and was abusive when he would get drunk. I guess he was running from his own demons with the bottle. What he came to finally understand was that the bottle was not his friend, but was his enemy. So the last ten years or so of his life, we lived without the fear of alcohol in our lives.

Yes, growing up in such a large family was not always happy. We kids fought like cats and dogs a lot of of the time. With that many kids, you were bound to have difference of opinions. But heaven help the person who picked on one of us, because you would have all of us to whip, not just one. And we had the advantage because we had the bigger family.

Today it is fun to get together and remember the fun things we used to do and the many corrections we had from our parents. But if one of us is hurting or in need, it is so nice to have a family member to go to for consolation. But did I have a big family? No, my daughter was raised an only child. As for the rest of my siblings, none of us had the size of families that our parents or grandparents did.

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