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Along Life’s Way
Six Degrees of
Separation
By Lois E. Wilson
We are a mobile society. We usually move and relocate several times
during a lifetime. Members of our family have lived in four other
countries when in the military or during college student exchange
programs.
Currently our four generations are all residing within the United
States. They live in seven and soon to be eight different states.
My husband and I once jokingly observed, “The children either despise
us for the way we reared them and wanted to get far away from us, or we
reared them to become independent and secure in their choices.” We
prefer to think it was the latter.
We were only children, so that figured to some extent in our choice to
settle near our families which lived in or close to Dayton, Ohio.
We were able to secure jobs that fulfilled our goals and were
rewarding. My mother worked outside the home. Jim’s mother was always
willing to assist with watching our sons. With her help, I finished
college, and we were able to attend events associated with Jim’s
employment at the Production Credit Association in the seven counties
it covered.
Including the time Jim was in the army, we have lived in Kentucky,
Virginia, and in three Ohio cities: Dayton, Eaton, and Greenville. Each
locale had much to add to our lives. There were neighbors and new
acquaintances who became friends. There were new churches, schools, and
activities for us all to enjoy and explore.
Six degrees of separation is the idea that we are six or fewer steps
away from each other. That is, a chain of “a friend of a friend” can be
made to connect each of us to another person in at most six steps. This
“small world” theory is being tested by different means including using
the social media. This concept recently became a reality in our family.
My granddaughter is a doctor at a Denver hospital. We discovered quite
by accident that her coworker‘s father and her cousin’s father are
foster brothers and were reared together in Ohio.
Our five grandchildren and their spouses will add two great
grandchildren to the family this year—making a total of fifteen. It is
hard to imagine how long the list of home states or countries will grow
as they enter adulthood, marry and pursue their lives. We’ll cede the
pleasure of watching the process to our sons’ generation. One thing is
certain. They will need a larger address book.
As the song lyrics go: “There’s so much that we share, that it’s time
we’re aware. It’s a small world after all…Though the mountains divide
and the oceans are wide, it’s a small world after all.”
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