Reply to What’s the key to having a big family? How does it work? What’s needed?

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[quote=Anonymous]I think it depends on what you mean by a big family — I have three sisters, we have quite a lot of aunts and cousins and such and keep in loose touch with maybe out to second cousins.  Not super big (I have two kids, one sister has one kid, other two are child free) and not terribly wealthy (transoceanic trips are possible but rarely more than once a decade). But we’re a close family emotionally — if I expect to be passing within a several hour drive of a relation, I would consider it natural to email them to let them know and ask if they wanted to meet up.  I have shown up on my aunt’s doorstep unannounced and been welcomed when I got marooned in her city due to a cancelled flight.  I have hosted my sister’s godmother and her wife in my tiny apartment when they couldn’t afford a hotel for the women’s march.  For us, I think what makes it work is a combination of everyone wanting it to (we invite and accept invitations to visit one another happily) and a total lack of offense about sporadic visits.  I haven’t seen my sisters in 2-5 years, for example, because none of us have had the time, money, and health to travel to each other.  But I don’t blame them and they don’t blame me and we’ll manage it again someday.  In the meantime we chat over text/phone/facetime according to preference.  Possibly it’s also generational habit of a kind; all my grandparents were wanderers so it’s not surprising that my siblings and cousins have over time settled in 5 countries and even more time zones.  I think it might be harder on distant ones if there’s critical mass in a single city, for example.[/quote]

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