The quirks and conundrums of living with a large family

Living Large

Hi, my name is Lauren and I am a screen addict.

I am also the wife of a very handsome husband (forthwith referred to as Handsome Hubby), I have seven beautiful daughters (who shall be called for the purposes of this column: Eldest, Jay, Suzuki, Gymnovert, Rocky, Wheaty and Mimi).

I am also a journalist, nerd and Catholic — not necessarily in that order.

Why am I telling you this, you wonder? Well, I’ve always liked to write and when social media became a thing, I would put bits of my written musings about my family on social media. The response was nuts.

For a screen addict like me, the dopamine hit from all the likes and comments were too much to resist so I kept doing it and, my faithful followers — largely made of my even larger extended family (seriously — I have 20 first cousins, just on my father’s side — nevermind the second and third cousins or the cousins once-, twice- and three-times-a-lady-removed) and acquaintances I’ve met (I can count the number of people I actually call friends on one hand — well, one and a bit — but I’m certainly not up to my toes yet) seemed to really like it.

Soon “you should write a book” started trending on my posts — in that at least one person would say it, once every few months or so — and if I’m not mistaken the same person may have also repeated it later — but at least two people said it.

Buoyed by this mass demand, I tried. I started compiling my posts and musing into a book and soon realised that:

a) put together in a longer format it quickly lost its appeal; and

b) so many people (with far more interesting families — seriously, one of them has a pet pig — I can’t compete with that — not with my allergies) had already gone the “life in a quirky large family” book route and I was coming up the rear. That's a rather large butt to follow and I don't like big butts, I cannot lie, especially my own.

So, I kept my musings to myself until, one day, I thought. Why not pitch this to my editor as a possible column? And here we are.

What’s so special about living in a large family you ask? Well, for one, quirky comes standard (but we’ll get to why another time).

In fact, it’s so quirky, that sometimes it sounds a little unreal, as I discovered to my chagrin. I don’t post as much about our quirkiness on social media anymore — mostly because I need to manage my screen addiction — but I do find myself talking about our adventures an awful lot. So much so that I am a bit of an annoying talker and one of my colleagues thought I was a compulsive liar.

I discovered her mistaken — and mortifying — opinion by accident. I had told her a story about something completely unrelated to my family and later when, another colleague spotted the evidence of my story online, colleague number one replied: “You mean, that was true?” — because obviously, everything online is always, absolutely true!

“What do you mean ‘you mean that was true?’ I told you that story.” I asked, a tiny bit hysterically.

She looked at me sheepishly.

“Well, I thought that maybe you stretch the truth sometimes,” she said diplomatically.

Never one for diplomacy, I replied: “You think I make stuff up?” (My memory makes this moment a little shrill but I hope that’s just the colouring of my imagination).

I don’t remember her reply but I do remember mentally recounting all the stories I had told her — and it was a lot — and even I had to admit that they sounded a little far-fetched.

For example:

• our family of seven daughters, a dad, a mom and a dog, does indeed know lots of other large families from all over the world.
• Our family of nine are truly, by comparison to these others, rather small.
• Our seven daughters’ birthdays are, honestly, so weirdly clustered around significant days of the year that it looks like we planned it that way but we didn’t. We couldn’t have, even if we had tried.
• Verily, we do know lots of people — sometimes whole large families of them — that have left their lives, homes and extended families behind in their home countries to come with nothing to South Africa as missionaries.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

So, maybe, if my truth sounds stranger than fiction, it would be interesting to read. I’ll let you be the judge. mailto:lauren.oconnor-may@acm.co.za I’d love to hear from you.

Next month:

Let’s talk about sex, baby: explaining the birds and the bees to children who really are too young to be asking about it.

* This launch edition of Living Large is sponsored by Mother of Plain Foods.