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Here are the stories of two of the most interesting households in my dad's lineage:
1. Toot and Spud and Snooks and Joan.
Toot and Spud and Snooks and Joan (wr, sometimes, Toot and Snooks and Spud and Joan) were two married heterosexual couples (that is, the couples were heterosexual; I make no claim about the status of the individuals therein). I think I may have met Uncle Snooky when I was under 18 months old, but I have no memory of him or his household aside from the annual Christmas card exchange. I was well into my twenties before I finally memorised who was married to who and what gender they were.
Sometimes, because Snooks was the family success story of my grandfather's generation, sums of money might find their way to my childhood bank account, or to Dad toward house renovations, or to Dad's sisters for various things, and be explained as From Uncle Snooky.
I genuinely do not know Snooky's name. I know he was too young to go to war, and consequently actually completed some high school, and thus worked in a white collar (real estate) job. Thus the family success story, while he idolised his older brothers who Went To War. Toot was his older sister, known as Toot because baby Snooks couldn't pronounce Beatrice. Spud, it turns out, was Toot's husband, and Joan Snooks's wife. I think one couple may have had children, but I don't know which, or anything about them - by the time I was old enough to read the incoming Christmas cards, the four adults were living together in one big house, signing things Toot and Spud and Snooks and Joan or Toot and Snooks and Spud and Joan.
That is all I know about Toot and Spud and Snooks and Joan. I think only two of them are still living, but I don't which two (my grandfather has refused to leave his local suburb for decades, so does not attend funerals, so there's no gossip that filters back). They lived together in one big house and no one in the family thinks it's even slightly weird.
2. In which my great-grand-parents give up
This story I learned from the eulogy my Dad gave at my grandmother's funeral. Once upon a time, after the war, a young Isabella went on holiday - working holiday, mind - to stay with her aunt who owned a pub near Bundaberg. While there she encountered a young sunburned lad, just discharged from the army: one Mervyn Victor Brown. One thing lead to another, and after what I understand was a fairly short courtship, Mervy high tailed it to Sydney to marry Bella. And they moved in with her family.
Now, her parents owned a house in Rockdale, having moved from Newcastle when Bella was about seventeen. (The house in Newcastle is probably still there, but I at least am not sure which one it is. It's on Brown's road, or one of the streets running off it, at the back of the station; when I go home my parents pick me up from the street outside, and we joke about the Brown family - us - meeting on Brown's road. This joke would have more serendipity if Brown had been Bella's family name, but it wasn't) So here they are, in Rockdale. (I have a feeling this might be the period when Pop - Mervy - drove a milk cart. I know there was a big hill involved, and there are more hills in Rockdale than in Merrylands)
House in Rockdale. Inhabitants: Great-grandmother and great-grandfather Cowan. GGM's brother-in-law, who had moved in after his wife died. Bella. Mervy. Bella's sister, and her husband. And, in very short order, Bella's brother Jack and his wife.
This house: I do not know if it is still there. I do not know the floor plan. It can't have been very big. It had a sleep-out patio, a living room, and either two or three bedrooms. Maybe a dining room, maybe not. All of these were occupied by the late 1940s. The young couples procreated with enthusiasm. People sleeping on every surface.
Eventually, GGM, GGF, and GG-inlaw accepted their collective fates, pooled their money, and bought a second house, and moved out into it to get some peace and quiet. Mervy and Bella were the next go go, eventually scraping money together for a deposit and moving to Merrylands. Years later (but before my Dad's memory kicks in, I think), two of the cousins would live for a while with Bella and Mervy and their family, because their mother (Bella's sister? Jack's wife? I do not know) was having chronic mental breakdown issues - I only learned this latter fact a few years ago. Aside from the fact that some things you just do because you have to, I imagine it made it easier that said cousins and dad's sisters had spent their babyhood together.
This has been 'the nuclear family is a lie' with 'family members who probably voted against marriage equality but i'm not game to ask'.
1. Toot and Spud and Snooks and Joan.
Toot and Spud and Snooks and Joan (wr, sometimes, Toot and Snooks and Spud and Joan) were two married heterosexual couples (that is, the couples were heterosexual; I make no claim about the status of the individuals therein). I think I may have met Uncle Snooky when I was under 18 months old, but I have no memory of him or his household aside from the annual Christmas card exchange. I was well into my twenties before I finally memorised who was married to who and what gender they were.
Sometimes, because Snooks was the family success story of my grandfather's generation, sums of money might find their way to my childhood bank account, or to Dad toward house renovations, or to Dad's sisters for various things, and be explained as From Uncle Snooky.
I genuinely do not know Snooky's name. I know he was too young to go to war, and consequently actually completed some high school, and thus worked in a white collar (real estate) job. Thus the family success story, while he idolised his older brothers who Went To War. Toot was his older sister, known as Toot because baby Snooks couldn't pronounce Beatrice. Spud, it turns out, was Toot's husband, and Joan Snooks's wife. I think one couple may have had children, but I don't know which, or anything about them - by the time I was old enough to read the incoming Christmas cards, the four adults were living together in one big house, signing things Toot and Spud and Snooks and Joan or Toot and Snooks and Spud and Joan.
That is all I know about Toot and Spud and Snooks and Joan. I think only two of them are still living, but I don't which two (my grandfather has refused to leave his local suburb for decades, so does not attend funerals, so there's no gossip that filters back). They lived together in one big house and no one in the family thinks it's even slightly weird.
2. In which my great-grand-parents give up
This story I learned from the eulogy my Dad gave at my grandmother's funeral. Once upon a time, after the war, a young Isabella went on holiday - working holiday, mind - to stay with her aunt who owned a pub near Bundaberg. While there she encountered a young sunburned lad, just discharged from the army: one Mervyn Victor Brown. One thing lead to another, and after what I understand was a fairly short courtship, Mervy high tailed it to Sydney to marry Bella. And they moved in with her family.
Now, her parents owned a house in Rockdale, having moved from Newcastle when Bella was about seventeen. (The house in Newcastle is probably still there, but I at least am not sure which one it is. It's on Brown's road, or one of the streets running off it, at the back of the station; when I go home my parents pick me up from the street outside, and we joke about the Brown family - us - meeting on Brown's road. This joke would have more serendipity if Brown had been Bella's family name, but it wasn't) So here they are, in Rockdale. (I have a feeling this might be the period when Pop - Mervy - drove a milk cart. I know there was a big hill involved, and there are more hills in Rockdale than in Merrylands)
House in Rockdale. Inhabitants: Great-grandmother and great-grandfather Cowan. GGM's brother-in-law, who had moved in after his wife died. Bella. Mervy. Bella's sister, and her husband. And, in very short order, Bella's brother Jack and his wife.
This house: I do not know if it is still there. I do not know the floor plan. It can't have been very big. It had a sleep-out patio, a living room, and either two or three bedrooms. Maybe a dining room, maybe not. All of these were occupied by the late 1940s. The young couples procreated with enthusiasm. People sleeping on every surface.
Eventually, GGM, GGF, and GG-inlaw accepted their collective fates, pooled their money, and bought a second house, and moved out into it to get some peace and quiet. Mervy and Bella were the next go go, eventually scraping money together for a deposit and moving to Merrylands. Years later (but before my Dad's memory kicks in, I think), two of the cousins would live for a while with Bella and Mervy and their family, because their mother (Bella's sister? Jack's wife? I do not know) was having chronic mental breakdown issues - I only learned this latter fact a few years ago. Aside from the fact that some things you just do because you have to, I imagine it made it easier that said cousins and dad's sisters had spent their babyhood together.
This has been 'the nuclear family is a lie' with 'family members who probably voted against marriage equality but i'm not game to ask'.