JULY 30, SUNDAY

MAHY ZOOM TOGETHERNESS

Every Sunday the Mahy family meets at 10 a.m. for a family getogether. Usually brother Todd is with Susie in Madison County, sister Sara is at home in Washington, DC, sister Lise and husband Jim are in Bellingham, Washington, and sister Mary and her husband, Craig, are in Gex, France just outside of Geneva. They meet on Zoom.

They started doing this during the Pandemic when everyone was learning to Zoom, but now when the Pandemic seems long over they still meet every Sunday because it is so pleasant to do. This Sunday Mary and Craig were in Sag Harbor, New York with Craig’s mother, and Lise was visiting them, Todd and Susie were at my house so I got to join in, Jim was at home in Bellingham, Washington, and Sara was in Washington, DC.

This time last year on my trip around the country on Amtrak I had dinner with Sara and her husband Doug in Washington, D.C. and then spent the 4th of July weekend with Lisa and Jim in Bellingham, Washington and then after Christmas visited with Mary and Craig in Gex, France outside of Geneva.

It is good to visit people in their home because you get to know them better but it is a lot of work. In the old days in order for the Mahy siblings to stay connected over the years they rented a huge house at the beach, invited relatives and had a long Christmas week together. This Christmas they are renting a house at Virginia Beach. Kathe and I joined them for the last ten years and it was great fun.

American families get so spread out that is is hard to remain close as a family. This is the way the Mahy family does it.

But as I was sitting on my couch with Todd and Susie with the Mahy family sitting casually in four Zoom squares I was struck by how relaxed the conversation was and how they found plenty to talk about, yet nothing that they talked about seemed very pressing. It was just four siblings sharing with each other what had happened during the week. After all, they had just talked with each other for two hours the Sunday before and the Sunday before that.

But what struck me so strongly this time was how connected the four siblings were, completely connected week after week, as they talked about ordinary events. It made me realize that the long trip around the country or the world to visit them at home wasn’t necessary as it was in the days when travel was the only way to connect. And the every other Christmas together wasn’t as vitally necessary now as it was in the days of letter writing and talking on the telephone. We really are connected in new ways. The Mahy family spread around the world gets together for an extended conversation more often than the Mosher family does, and we are all right here in Asheville.

The world really has changed. I think of how dearly Kathe would have liked to gather with her extended family in England, Germany and here in the United States every Sunday on ZOOM. When her family couldn’t afford to come to Kathe’s wedding to me in Ithaca, New York her father sent a reel to real tape that the whole family made sitting in their home in Winsen, Germany. Even a trip to America wasn’t possible until in the 1960’s plane travel became affordable. I think of my parents living in India as missionaries only able to return for family visits every seven years with phone calls too expensive and too complicated to make.

I realize that in Montevideo by myself next month I can join the Mahy ZOOM calls if I wish and they will all come and sit in the living room with me and I can listen in on their conversations.

I realize that most families don’t meet weekly like this and I’m guessing that isn’t because they couldn’t, but because it is a habit that is so new to most people that they don’t think of it. But as time goes on and we become a accustomed to living in a 3D world much of the time that we will start doing so.

I know I sound like a very old person when I make this observation, but the world in my lifetime, the way we connect with each other has changed so radically that it almost impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t lived through it. The huge changes began with the printing press that caused violent revolutions in Europe. But these recent changes are much greater than that and we had somehow slid into them so easily that we are hardly aware of them and young people have little sense of their parents’ and grandparents’ worlds.

The printing press led to the Protestant reformation and hundreds of years of wars. The current transformation in communication is likely a major cause of our current polarization, a reason that our various tribes irritate and threaten each other so much.

And yet the opposite is also true and it felt so good and warm and caring to sit with the Many siblings as they connected for two hours on Sunday.