Families--Yours, Mine, & Ours

I was told the other day--by a professional, in case you were wondering--that I have a centrifugal family --as in centrifuge. 

Think about it a bit. It does make sense. 

It's like that game we used to play --we'd link hands and spin in circles--letting go suddenly to make each other fly off in different directions. My two sisters and I landed in Hawaii and then Japan (me, for years), Australia (Chris), and Alaska (Becky). Our brother is dead. 

A definition: Latin for "center fleeing" ... the word is often used to describe why mud gets spun off a spinning tire, or water gets pushed out of the clothes during the spin cycle.

For more:

Centrifugal

Centrifugal force

 

@ jeanne marie sather 2012. 

Comments

[Maggie]

I like this descriptor.

My own family is certainly centrifugal, at least as far back as a paternal grandfather who jumped ship in Australia and later made his way to the US. Maternal grandfather lived his whole life in a single city (except for a surprising amount of business travel for the times), but his grandfather arrived in Cleveland from parts unknown.

Both my parents left their home cities in early adulthood, met and married people from other places (twice for each of them), and settled in places where they knew no one.

My sibs and I have done the same thing, and additionally all three of us have moved our children at least twice while they were growing up.

Of the seven children in that generation, two are living in the towns of their birth; the others have been world travelers.

I think there's also an opposite kind of family, one I would love to have a good descriptor for.

My mother's good friends, for example, met in childhood, married at 18, and lived their entire lives without setting foot outside the county of their births. My own good friends are still, in their 70s, living within 10 miles of the hospitals where they were born, and still singing with the same folks from their high school choir.

What do we call families like that?

[Jeanne]

Maggie--thanks for the family story.

My family has been like this for several generations, at least. Older Son has spun himself off, as you know, and when I was a child I had an uncle (Mick) who had been out of touch for years--more than a decade, I'm pretty sure.

I think there is a name for families who suck in or pull in their own families, plus others. Can't think of the word, though.

If anyone knows it .... ?

[Steph]

Answer to Maggie.
How about ROOTED, or some version with that word. Others might say "stable."

Me - I have both sorts, but the spun off ones seem to come back together at some point.

[Liz]

The sucking in families are called centripetal. These are the ones where the grown kids can never manage to leave home and start lives of their own. I was a centrifugal spin-off from my family of origin too, couldn't get far enough away soon enough, and have never looked back.

[Jeanne]

Thanks, Liz. That was the word I was looking for.

On the "never looked back" part ... let's talk. I admit to some regrets that I did not have a different family, but I also knew that I couldn't fix it or change it. Sigh.

That's why we make our own families, I guess.

[kathie]

I left at 19 - I dreamed of leaving from an early age. Not because of serious issues but more because I wanted a different life in a different place. I taught my kids to test their wings and made sure that they knew that it was ok to fly away - it is their life to do with as they wish. We all have great get togethers and cherish them but we are not close in distance.