Green the tree of life.(THE STRAGGLER)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

IN the beginning there was a mid-20th-century nuclear family living in a small English town: Father, Mother, Sister, and Brother. Brother was the younger of the kids by two years. There was also a much older half-brother, issue of Father but not of Mother--a "bye-blow" in the frank dialect of the ancestral district; the result of a youthful mistake, said Father in later years. Half-Brother joined the army when Brother was three, and was seen only at long intervals thereafter.

In one of the earliest of those intervals Half-Brother married. He soon had two sons, the older named after Father. Brother was much amused to find himself an uncle, or half-uncle, at age nine. He picked up the word "avuncular" from one of Richmal Crompton's books, and studied to acquire the avuncular manner, with no perceptible success. Half-Brother disappeared back into overseas postings in an empire over which the sun had begun to set.

Years passed. Sister married and brought forth a daughter, whom she named after Mother. She then divorced, remarried, and gave birth to a son.

In time Brother himself married and established his own family, though in a distant country. His half-nephews had by this point acquired wives and children themselves: three girls, two boys. Now Sister's daughter wed, and added a girl and three more boys to the roster. Her own half-brother, Sister's son, had a son of his own out of wedlock. Following the example of his grandfather (and of at least one president of the United States), he took proper responsibility, helping to raise and support the child.

Father and Mother are no longer with us, but that original nucleus of four and a half has now expanded to encompass nearly 30 persons, if you include spouses and--how to avoid the wretched word?--"partners." There has been some geographical scattering, and some estrangement, but a solid half of us are included in the party here at a hotel in the English midlands to see Sister's boy, my sister's boy, wed at last. The bride is not his child's mother, although relations there are cordial. A correct delicacy kept her from attending this ceremony, but the little lad himself is among us, a serious-looking four-year-old in a smart suit and tie.

The local registrar marries the couple in a large, softly lit room, hung all about with drapes, rows of chairs set out facing her desk and a small lectern. Some gently hortatory speeches are made. Vows are exchanged. Rings are given and placed. Everything is secular, there being little religion in this family, as there is very little in England anymore, outside the gaudy mosques that disfigure old industrial cities. I nurse a fondness for the traditional style of English hypocrisy, according to which religious indifference was no bar to one's having a church wedding, unless the vicar was of the annoyingly pious type; and so I nurse a corresponding slight resentment at not having the opportunity to sing one of the dear old hymns. The world today has a different logic, though, perhaps a better one, and I am only a straggler. Let the youngsters do things ...