"I don't care if you're half my size, girlfriend! The rules are the rules. Now play ball."

"Wow, look at you all dressed up in a skirt. And so patriotic, too!"
I look down at my white skirt, italian villages sillouetted in red, sailboats and water sketched in blue.
"I just played touch football in this outfit."
"Touch football? What are you, a Kennedy?"

Yes, in a way, as we are a large family descended from immigrants (Norwegian rather than Irish) and although there are no senators or congressmen in our family, there are some with drug issues, a few in Hollywood, some in the Navy and a collection of family secrets I'm not allowed to disclose. Oh, and this family is very Republican. Except for me. Some might include that fact in the collection of family secrets.

The major difference is that this family lineage (not my father's side) is at this point very female. Although it started with the strength and strict religious and moral code with which my great-grandfather ruled his 11 children, all of whom are still living by the way, by the fourth generation the women seem to outnumber and outrank the men.

At Easter, it was the women and girls playing a heated game of basketball. We start in our skirts, but bring shorts for these athletic battles. My cousin in white pants began by cautioning her daughters against getting her dirty but by the end it was, "Mom, you've just stomped on my foot for the fourth time!" The competition is fierce, despite the ages running 9 to 39, we all want to win. Family even brings out the competetive spirit in me, and I'm the least competetive person I know! There is no accounting for what occurs when so many bodies containg the same DNA get together.

Sitting in the lawnchairs sipping their diet cokes and encouraging their sweating daughters and wives to stop for a second and drink some water, please, are the men. The spectators. They remind us that there is school and work tomorrow. Homework to be done. Baths to take. They break up our fun and bring us back to our responsibilities.

This is how we are most like the Kennedys: We play hard. We work hard. And we marry well.