Embracing Abundance

When I want to embrace abundance, all I have to do is put out my arms to take in my family. Not only are they all wonderful people, but there are a great many of them.

I started as the oldest of five siblings. Then I married and bore seven children. My sibs were having children too, and the numbers began to multiply. During a particular period in the middle 1980s, my sister and brothers all had sons within 14 months, including a set of twins. All this begins to explain why I live in California, but have been in Utah for every odd-numbered month of this year.

January was a visit to see my parents, now in their later 80s, who left California for Utah when all my married siblings did. March brought the wedding of nephew Stephen. In May I traveled for a writers' conference. The trip in July was for the wedding of nephew Sean and September brought the wedding of Doug, one of the twins.

I plan to return in November, this time to the St. George area, for a family reunion. That makes six trips this year.

Don is still unmarried and Stephen has a younger brother -- not even counting the two teenaged nieces, so who knows how many trips the next year may bring?

All this travel has its up side. There is joy in seeing our family grow and my nephews have all married darling girls who bring talents, skills and beauty with them. The down side has to do with the mileage on the car, not to mention the wear-and-tear on my body, which just keeps getting older.

There’s also the fact that when I’m traveling every other month to Utah, it’s difficult to go much of anywhere else, a detail my family has noticed. Though I do have one son in Utah, I also have kids and grandkids in California, Oregon, Washington, Oklahoma and Georgia, and they are beginning to agitate for more of my travel time.

For now I’m putting the unmarried nephews and teenaged nieces on notice that Aunt Susan loves you all, but is getting tired of the scenery across northern Nevada.

Still there are babies coming and graduations pending and a new generation getting old enough to think about marriage. Who knows where I may be going within the coming years? It’s all about embracing the abundance I call my family.