“Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” That was the passage in John 1:46 that went across my mind as I stepped out of the bar/brothel on 5th Ave. in the Hill District ghetto. Being careful not to step on used hypodermic needles, left behind by drug users, I maneuvered down the steps and walked back out to the vehicle where I left my wife and kids. I suddenly stopped to behold the intense contrast my new, shiny van being dwarfed by the backdrop of gray, daunting, dilapidated buildings of the ghetto. What was more startling to me was looking at my shaken wife and kids huddled in the van, looking apprehensive out at the scene around them. You would have thought they were swallowed by a whale. That’s when it occurred to me that my wife and kids have never experienced the ghetto. It also made me see why I left Pittsburgh in the first place, and a stark reminder of why I landed in the glorious bosom of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
To answer the tacit question of why I visited a bar/brothel, it wasn’t because I was giving patronage to it, but I came there to visit my uncle, who owned the establishment (I didn’t get to see him, though. He wasn’t there). He was one of the round-of-relatives on my list to see while visiting the places where I grew up. I came back to Pittsburgh with my family to show them my past and my side of the family. We covered a wide berth, finding as many of my siblings, nieces, and extended relatives we could who still lived in Pittsburgh. Kim, my wife, was taken by feeling like she was “one of the family”. It was so alien to her for extended family to be so close. In her town, where we live, all of her relatives live close by, but they barely speak to each other (well, except at funerals).
The downside of visiting my family is for socio-economic reasons. Since I have a car, I’m expected to be a jitney (sort of like an urban taxi – without the fare). They also think of me as a piggy bank. Hands are always out asking to spare this or that amount. I wouldn’t mind as much if I had the spare change and I knew it wasn’t going to cigarettes or drugs. I guess this is why I love my family at a distance. I made the mistake of bringing my brothers down to Tennessee to get them away from the ghetto (a promise I made with them when we were young that if I got out of the ghetto, I’d help get them out). Yet, they ended up bringing the ghetto down to Tennessee. (much to my dismay and embarrassment).
Even though our extended family is vastly different from each other, the one thing that my wife and my in-laws have in common is the tendency to vie for their loyalty. They both use the cliché, “Blood is thicker than water”, as if to say the extended family’s ways trumps our own family, even when doing questionable things (Kim’s family aren’t so innocent, either). They are foreign to the concept that President Spencer W. Kimball has counselled, “Couples do well to immediately find their own home, separate and apart from that of the in-laws on either side. The home may be very modest and unpretentious, but still it is an independent domicile. Your married life should become independent of her folks and his folks. You love them more than ever; you cherish their counsel; you appreciate their association; but you live your own lives, being governed by your decisions, by your own prayerful considerations after you have received the counsel from those who should give it. To cleave does not mean merely to occupy the same home; it means to adhere closely, to stick together.” (Harper 2005)
I am so grateful for Kim, who was willing to stick together with me, even to enter a ghetto with me, and put up with my family. We have withstood the pressures of “in-law drama” and held fast to what we believe in and each other. As a result, our in-laws respect us and our ways. That, of course leaves us to be lonely at times, if it weren’t for my church brothers and sisters, who have their own kind of drama. Oh well! We can’t have everything.
References
Harper, J. M. & Olsen, S. F. (2005). “Creating Healthy Ties With In-Laws and Extended Families.” In C. H. Hart, L.D. Newell, E. Walton, & D.C. Dollahite (Eds.), Helping and healing our families: Principles and practices inspired by “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” (p. 328). Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book Company.
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