Like a mama with 39 kids doesn’t have a big enough family, this pictures illustrates the convolutions. My youngest daughter is on the left. The son of my oldest daughter is on the right, with his cousin in the middle. She’s the granddaughter of my first ex-husband, the daughter of his second daughter by his second wife. My birth daughter was his first daughter by his first wife.

“Is she my cousin too?” Tabby, my youngest daughter, demanded to know.

My first ex-husband and I tried to figure it out.

“I suppose so,” I finally answered, getting a headache from the attempt to untangle our family tree that branches so challengingly.

This young daughter of mine is an aunt to 15 nieces and nephews; her oldest niece is in seventh grade with three more of my kids. She, my oldest granddaughter, went to soccer games last night with us, dragging her brother and sister, forcing us to explain several times why she called me ‘Abuelita’ when some folks down there thought she was my daughter as she was hanging around with my other two daughters her age.

This former husband of mine and I are expecting our daughter, my oldest child, to give birth any minute now, but today he had to fly home, thus missing this impending birth. He’ll be back in January with his other son who is the age of my older kids. “How’s he kin to us?” I’ve often been asked, while thinking how grateful I am that my second ex-husband and I had no kids together.

“Sarah has a daddy?” I get asked from my adopted kids who are so used to having a strong mama rule the roost all by herself. “How’d that happen?”

“You were married, Mom?” I’ll be asked every now and then.

And now that quite a few of my older kids are married to local folks in the county we’ve added in-laws to our repertoire of relatives, too cumbersome in numbers and actual relations to describe to outsiders. When our own immediate family has uncle/brothers or was fathered by their uncle – long story that happened years ago in Texas – the confusion mounts.

Sometimes in our world it just boils down to, “Are you kin to the Bodies?” and an affirmative response is enough information, figuring out the complex hows and intricate whys is tiresome and absolutely an exercise in futility.