Space Invasion Family Togetherness Can Go Way Too Far At Some Gatherings

Another summer has passed. We eagerly anticipated vacations, then we loaded a cargo of family into vehicles and argued our way across the United States. Let’s face it. We don’t choose our relatives. The raw hand of fate pulls us together like lemmings in search of saltwater. We plan the dreaded gatherings, then assemble into a pack and take the fatal plunge.

We know we shouldn’t reveal the gruesome workings of our eccentric families, but we can’t help ourselves. We also relish the excruciating tales of others. It parallels a train derailment: No one wants to be on board, but everyone comes to view the wreckage.

While talking to my sister Stefanie, I was educated in the dynamics of family survival. Large households have protocol and power structures that only the bottom feeders in the family trough can appreciate. As the youngest of eight children, my brother-in-law Pat had become accustomed to surrendering space. Then along came my sister to muck up the floor of the family pond.

Pat’s family rents a cabin at Priest Lake every year. Because of the group’s size, sleeping arrangements are a logistical nightmare. One year, Stef and Pat hit the jackpot. Although they hadn’t achieved the status of having their own room, they were proud inhabitants of two cots.

An older sister and her spouse were stuck sleeping on air mattresses. The disgruntled sibling continually bugged them for their space. Rather than give up their cots, Stef and Pat valiantly tried to undo years of being a rung lower on the family ladder. “You can have our space,” they said, as they defiantly picked up their cots and exited the cabin.

“We ended up on the sun porch. It was probably 30 degrees out. It’s freezing cold. It’s raining on this sun porch that is leaking, and we’re both fighting over a heating pad. That was the nightmare night for us. But they were not going to have our cots,” Stefanie triumphantly boasted.

Another of her relatives packed along a 700-watt microwave, complete with meals, for convenience. But it was discovered that the only outlet capable of supporting it was inside the bathroom. “The ongoing joke with anyone going in to shower was, ‘Hey, while you’re in there, will you heat up my lunch?’ ” Stef said.

A member of another big family remembers a power struggle over control of loft space and the evolution of royalty on their family tree. “Rob was king-of-the-mountain. It’s a great thing to have cousins come together and understand the structure of society. He was a god. He could water-ski and boss everyone around. And he won at Risk,” Gail said.

Gail herself experienced a battle for control of micro-space in a Volkswagen during the 1960s. Her husband Bob had asked his younger sister Mary and her husband Ron, who were in Europe, to pick up their new V.W. After a lengthy flight, the couple were greeted by the sight of their shiny Bug sporting a “Welcome to Lapland” sticker.

The sister and her husband had guided themselves on a back-roads excursion, racking up nearly 10,000 miles before surrendering the car. “We were certainly sharing space in that Volkswagen,” Gail recalled.

Children don’t do well in cars. The desire to touch and bother takes control and bizarre impulses lead to huge battles in the back seat.

We became victims of such an episode, not 30 miles from the origin point of our trip. Suddenly my husband veered off Highway 2.

“All right, I’ve had it!” he screamed, “You either knock it off or you’re getting out right here. I mean it.” I looked at our 5- and 8-year-olds. Their mouths were open and they were, for once, speechless. Right then I committed the ultimate act of treason: I started to laugh. My husband suddenly had become the past voice of my father.

My husband turned in disbelief. Then he too started snickering.

“What’s wrong with Mom?” my oldest son asked. Not wanting to shatter our fragile sense of control, my husband lied.

“She’s crying. Your behavior has been so bad that she’s crying.” Another moment of silence passed.

“I think she’s laughing,” my son concluded.

“Well maybe,” my husband hedged, “but she’s crying on the inside.”

Whatever we did as children can’t compare to what our parents are capable of doing to us. Helen and Ed rented a beach house with her parents.

Ed was making macho-man jokes that were misconstrued by Helen’s mom, a longtime women’s libber. After a couple of cocktails, the normally stoic woman went berserk, uttering strange guttural musings about the ‘60s and “all that bra-burning crap for nothing!”

“We all just kind of sat there, stunned,” Helen said. “When we got back to Halifax, where my parents live, a severe hurricane warning said, ‘Don’t go out on the road if you can help it,”’ Her mom wanted them to stay. They tripped over each other in their rush to depart.

“I thought, ‘I’ll take my chances with the hurricane.’ Death looked good at that point,” Helen said.

Although he didn’t risk death, another friend recalled traveling to Oak Harbor, Wash., with his fiancee to meet her older brother and his wife. After arriving late, the meeting became uncomfortable when it was announced that because of their premarital status, the groom-to-be would sleep on a hide-a-bed with his fiancee’s reluctant brother.

After the lights were turned out, the man lay there motionless, trying not to move or snore. Insomnia got the best of him.

At 3 a.m. he jumped into his car and went to explore nearby Anacortes. In his rush to escape, he forgot to leave a note. The brother awoke to find that his sister’s intended had vanished. He and his wife were agonizing over how to break the bad news to her when he reappeared.

Many years later, the sister’s husband confessed to his in-laws the reason for their late arrival in the first place: They had enjoyed a roadside tryst on the drive over, thus making the ugly hide-a-bed incident unnecessary.

By disappearing, the groom-to-be managed to avoid the inherent strangeness of awakening to a house full of people. I find it disorienting to gaze through bloodshot eyes at surreal relatives with unrecognizable hair and bristly faces.

What must they think of my own half-combed hair and day-old makeup? And why am I awake at this hour?

Oh yes, I’m awake because my mother-in-law is an early riser and insists on fixing a wonderful sunrise breakfast buffet. She chirps away happily in the kitchen, which is a stone’s throw away from where we sleep, inside the cabin.

As the siblings silently gather, I stare at my eggs, wondering if I’ll ever be able to trust these impostors again.

Molly and Tom’s family cooks mess-hall-style for nearly 40 relatives during their annual reunion. Two years ago they hired a health-conscious cook to provide meals.

“The college set was in complete disagreement,” Molly said. “She prepared massive quantities of food that was very low-cal. At night they would sneak off and go into Newport and buy several burgers each.”

Newport was once home to a most renowned burger and eating establishment, the Grizzly Drive-In. Its menu was an eclectic masterpiece, offering anything from burritos to spaghetti. Many arteries hardened in remembrance last year as we mourned the Grizzly’s passing.

Another group of reunion kids is known for hoarding junk food in their cabin.

“Huge bags of Safeway food goes in there. Nothing ever comes out,” Molly’s Uncle Bob observed.

Molly’s reunion is held at their family cabin, down the road from the Boy Scouts’ Camp Cowles at Diamond Lake. They also rent three cabins and several rooms. Molly shared the method used to assign these “rustic” quarters:

“We first tried to group families together. That totally didn’t work because the kids immediately ditched the parents, as part of a mutual agreement.

“So we just rotate them. If they get the nicest cabin in our entourage one year, they get the crummiest the next,” said Molly, adding that the previous year her parents ended up on a fold-out couch and air mattress.

Molly fondly recalls her younger sister’s screams as carpenter ants dropped onto her head from the ceiling of one of their more spartan accommodations.

In honor of this year’s finale of adventures in relative space, here are some guidelines for future gatherings:

Whining makes things worse. You never get what you want anyway.

Don’t cave in to traditional familial structure: Fight the Power.

Never release the grip of parental control. Like a pack of hyenas, children sense and capitalize upon weakness.

Bring a stash of pepperoni sticks and Pop Tarts to combat saturated fat withdrawal.

Pack snore strips. If necessary, install them while the snorers sleep.

Bring a music selection with headphones, or you may end up listening to Milli Vanilli or the Carpenters.

Remember: Your family is no more irritating than anyone else’s. Thinking it is will just make you dread future gatherings more.

MEMO: Melodie Little is a free-lance writer who lives in Spokane.