One of my favorite uncles called this week. I could hardly believe my good fortune when his name popped up on my phone. Really? Calling ordinary old me? I put my raffle ticket in the box at Trader Joe's every single week hoping for $50 of free groceries, but this was better. A call from Uncle Frank. 

He talked about the Native American concept of seven generations, and how it can expand our consciousness past this annoying traffic light. Or the inflated dental bill. Or a disappointment at work. The span of seven generations can seem too broad to wrap your arms around. Just the twigs reaching back on a family tree. But Uncle Frank personally knows six. His own grandfather, his father who is also my grandfather, himself, his son, his granddaughter, and his great granddaughter. Who is adorable I might add. Those are people who all fit nicely inside his heart without splitting the seams. 

My connection to Uncle Frank goes back to my childhood. He told stories about a little purple man who went on large adventures. Every summer he led a ribbon of campers through the stately hemlocks to a grove by the stream. Convinced those same campers to wait on the side of a mountain to watch the moon slide below the horizon. He was my father's best friend, and not merely because they share a birthday. They took on brave actions together in their passion for bringing fresh life into hurting homes. He once told me that if your uniform isn't dirty you aren't in the game.

His was definitely muddy.

His wife and my mother shared a lot of laughter, and as it happened have the same birthday too. Which is this week. She brought sisterhood to the women who married ministers and tried to free us of tangled expectations about how we should behave. One time she spoke of living in England with five young children and a thin pocketbook. 

"I remember going to the butcher and buying eleven cents worth of liver. I chose liver because that was the most I could get with what I had." Over the years I thought of her when I felt poor. I was never that poor. 

Plus Uncle Frank married us. He didn't flinch when we explained that we wanted to have the wedding outside in a field, with an altar of twelve stones. That we would like to be offered bread and wine privately before the ceremony, and that we would have no shoes on. 

"Anything else?"

The else turned out to be pivotal. They taught us that marriage is a verb. Something you invest time in, read books about. Go to workshops in search of better ways of communicating. They were transparent enough to have tough discussions in front of us, like the one where Aunt Louise was eager to retire and he wanted to keep working. The thing about being a witness to people as they wrangle with this mustang called marriage is the particulars do not need to be identical for us to learn. We can swap in our own circumstances and benefit from having seen another couple care enough to struggle. Listen. Compromise. 

Their legacy will most certainly stretch for seven generations.