"Family"
50,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, a hundred years ago, something always has been true.
We always lived in the same cave, the same hut, the same home, the same town with our tribes. Our families.
If we moved, we all packed up and moved together. That’s how it worked.
It’s been a powerful, rich, inspiring fabric of every generation back to the beginning.
In my family tree, there are more Irish Dunne relatives in the suburbs of Chicago than there are maple trees.
I love ‘em all.
Cut to 1970.
With trains, planes and automobiles, anywhere became your oyster.
Young people in our generation, pretty much for the first time ever, were being pulled away – hearing a muse from a distant land.
Some for a career, some for the weather, some for love.
It was happening everywhere. With kids going out-of-state to colleges, the floodgates opened.
They moved away with a handful of bucks in their pockets and a phone number to call home – leaving everything and everyone in the rearview mirror.
For me, after college days, I packed up my part-car, part-tin-can bright yellow Mazda GLC with a one-way tank of gas, with all my stuff and all my dreams -- and set the compass to California.
Fast-forward a generation. Adding cell phones and the internet to the mix, more and more kids today are moving everywhere.
The planet is their canvas to work and to play.
Compare this to my four grandparents. None ever got on a plane in their lives. I’d guess they probably never traveled more than 200 miles away.
I’m one of seven brothers and sisters -- with 21 collective kids. Of those 21, one lives in our hometown today. The rest are scattered through Pennsylvania, Maine, Michigan, Tennessee, California, Ohio, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, and London.
.
A couple of weeks ago, five of our seven siblings were going to Glacier National Park for a few days.
I wasn’t going to be able to make it. I was swamped with work. Not good timing. I’d see them another time.
It was days away, and I called the brother in Chicago who also wasn’t making the trip.
We decided we needed to change our plans -- and make it happen. We needed to get the seven of us together. It would be the first time we’d all be together since both our parents passed away.
I can’t tell you how glad I am that I went.
We belly-laughed a million times, we cried at the drop of a hat, and we remembered where we came from.
.
We remembered the gift of our parents. Of how they selflessly gave up so much – just for us.
How they somehow made each one of us feel so special to them – and to the world.
And suddenly, those trivial spats with something a sister or brother said or did – drifted a million miles away. Who cares.
.
At our dinner on the last night of the trip, my brother asked us if we’d share our favorite moment from the trip.
Some spoke about the hikes and bike rides together. And the majesty and the smell of the trees, and the wonder of the lakes and mountains in this breathtaking place.
.
The moment I shared was when my sister, Julie, was trying to slide out of her canoe on her rump onto the lake’s pier – without flopping right in the drink.
We all were howling so hard as this poor young guy, working on the dock, was giving it everything he possibly had to yank her up onto that pier.
You just can’t beat it.
Nothing in the world mattered in that beautiful moment – looking at my family.
Thinking about my parents and how much they would have given anything to be right there, belly-laughing with the rest of us.
On the flight home from that trip, I looked out the window down at the earth far, far away.
.
I thought about those two powerful forces.
A gravitational one pulling to keep all the planets circling the sun, and another causing everything in the universe to distance itself from whatever it’s near.
Being together. Hugs. Pats on the back from family truly rooting for you. Being in the moment. Looking in each other’s eyes to find reflections of who you are and where you came from.
Don’t be like me. Always just say yes.
Yes, to that most precious, fragile, one-of-a-kind treasure in the world…
Family.
.
Yours,
Jimmy Dunne
.
Jimmy Dunne is modern-day Renaissance Man; a hit songwriter of 28 million hit records, writer and producer of hit television series’, award-winning book author, an entrepreneur—and his town’s “Citizen of the Year.” Reach out to him at j@jimmydunne.com.
.