Family Ties

Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend will flex the muscle of her maiden name tonight at a fund-raiser in Washington. Host of the event is her uncle, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, one of the most prominent members of Congress. The price of admission is $1,000 per person, with an expected take of about $100,000. The news media are not invited. It is among the first overt displays of Townsend's family ties in the three weeks since the eldest daughter of Robert F. Kennedy formally announced her bid for governor of Maryland.

It would feel like an act of disloyalty to teach anywhere else. Angie Gillespie was part of Baltimore's Lombard Middle School long before she started getting paychecks in 1993. She tagged along to proms at the east-side school when it was still a junior high and light-blue suits were in style. She attended end-of-year fairs in the field across the street, where she'd eat cotton candy and suck on lemons with peppermint sticks. She trotted through what seemed then like unbearably long corridors, calling a couple of the teachers "Aunt" So-and-So, even though they were no relation.

HACKENSACK, N.J. - The framed artwork has come down, the posters are rolled up. The Cuban flag that sat on the mantel is stored away. Rolando Brito is leaving New Jersey for a warmer climate, extended family, and job opportunities in South Florida. When he drives down I-95 in his new black Nissan Altima, Brito will become another of the thousands of Cuban-Americans who have left New Jersey in the last decade. The reasons for the exodus range from relatives and job opportunities in other states to retirement in Florida - the closest that graying Cubans believe they'll ever come to their native island.

STANFORD, Calif. - Did anyone ever call Franklin D. Roosevelt a "Dutch American" or Dwight Eisenhower a "German American"? It would have been resented, not only by them and their supporters, but by Americans in general. These men were Americans - not hyphenated Americans or half Americans. Most black families in the United States today have been here longer than most white families. No one except the American Indians can claim to have been on American soil longer. Why then call blacks in the United States "African-Americans" when not even their great-great-great-grandparents ever laid eyes on Africa?

Everywhere the quiet quarterback goes, the comma follows. It doesn't dog him or frustrate him. It's just there. A part of the landscape, hanging on him the same way his uniform does. In high school, he has never been simply: River Hill quarterback Matt Hostetler. He's always been this: River Hill quarterback Matt Hostetler, nephew of Super Bowl-winning quarterback Jeff Hostetler. Yet there are no complaints about the comma, or what follows. He doesn't feel burdened by great expectations, doesn't cry out for his own identity.

When the last NFL coaching door closed yesterday, Marvin Lewis retreated to his family in Finksburg and his record-setting defense with the Ravens. They remain the two loves in his life. Once the Buffalo Bills picked Tennessee's Gregg Williams as their new coach, it sent Lewis back to his job as defensive coordinator with the world champion Ravens, albeit in a new tax bracket. It also closed a search process that his agent termed peculiar, and one with which Lewis was clearly uncomfortable.

In a Washington hotel room, Terry McMillan, cozy in a Philadelphia Flyers jersey and flared black stretch pants, keeps her distance from the compassionate conservatives mustering below for the presidential inauguration. In the lobby, they flash their cell phones and greet one another with manly bear hugs while a pianist ripples through "God Bless America" and other patriotic anthems. McMillan rolls her eyes. "Puh-leeze," she will protest later to her Smithsonian audience, when asked if she'll be attending the inaugural festivities.

We had a homework crisis in the making, the other night. Despite our best efforts at organization and time management, a shortened school week had brought both boys to the computer on the heels of each other with written assignments that, of course, were due the next day. Detente was proving elusive, until I remembered the Alpha Smart. "Go get your keyboard," I told my older son. "I don't need to take notes," he began in exasperation, then he caught the thread of his not-so-dim mother's thinking.

Once a year on Thanksgiving Day, families all over America sit down together for dinner. When you think about it, that's pretty amazing. It's one of the few times nowadays people regularly gather for a family meal. If we aren't careful, though, it's a day that can go by in a gluttonous blur of giblets gravy and pumpkin pie. To keep that from happening, some families make a conscious effort to savor the holiday through their rituals and traditions. The ritual can be something as simple as going around the table and having people say what they're thankful for. Or as elaborate as working together in a soup kitchen Thanksgiving morning before returning home to enjoy the big meal.

VICTORY in the Elian Gonzalez drama, if any, went to family values. Juan Miguel Gonzalez is Elian's surviving parent, a responsible and loving father. That was deemed in U.S. law to be more important than political values. It took too long. Every day that Elian remained away from parent or home was a day too many. Delay was the tactic of obstructionists who tried to keep Elian from Juan Miguel, to create new facts, to play on a 6-year-old's ability to learn and to forget. The courts, from beginning to end, were hostage to the tedium of their own processes, but impervious to the mob. If something like this should happen again, it will probably take too long to resolve again.