Michael Poore (poorem@ten-nash.ten.k12.tn.us) from e0.filt1.shelby.tn.ena.net at 10/26/01 10:29AM
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    Is the Southern family different from families elsewhere? I've read enough to know the answer is "yes." However, the only real experience that I have had is when I went to India in 1994. The differences of Indian families and Southern families are a resounding "yes." We Southerners honor guests and want to make sure their physical needs are met: specifically food and rest. However, the "real Indians," as they call themselves, see their guests as god incarnate and actually have a worship ceremony in which the guest's face is circle seven times with incense and rice and water are sprinkled on the guest's head. These are symbolic of pleasing the guest (the incense) and making sure the guest's food and water needs will be met. Imagine how that felt to a Southern Baptist arriving in India after forty-eight hours without sleep. As for Southern families doing things differently, again my frame of reference is limited. My in-law family meets every Sunday after church for lunch at my mother-in-law and father-in-law's home. All thirteen of us (the two of them, their three children, their three children's spouses, and their five grandsons) eat and talk and laugh. (By the way, my mother-in-law does all the cooking.) It keeps us close. Yes, the pace of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries has changed the Southern family. Whether that's from activities, priorities, or responsibilities changing, I'm not sure. I just know the pace has gotten to us. We just deal with it and go on. As the mayor from Carter Country, a 1970's television program, said in his best, Southern drawling, squeaking voice, "Handle it; handle it!"