Ask a Pleasanton resident why they moved to town and most will tell you it was because they wanted to raise their family here. Pleasanton is, after all, known as a family-focused city. So, when the city’s Community of Character Coalition heard of National Family Week, which starts Nov. 19, it seemed like the perfect activity to honor families.
For the past four years, the school district and City Council have supported Family Week and the coalition has organized activities where families can spend time together. This year, the coalition created a list of family-oriented classroom activities for teachers.
The most important part is for families to spend time together, since the goal of the week is honor families, said Becki Adams, who is heading the coalition’s Family Week activities.
But what is family? With the many different households and personal struggles, it’s certainly more than a group of people living together.
The Partridge Family
When Don and Jenetha Partridge married in 1986, it was the second marriage for both and each had children from their first unions. Don came in with two children, Beth and Dustin, and Jenetha had three, Joy, Matt and Devon. They also have two children with each other, Crissa and Christopher. All of the children are older and live across the country with the exception of Crissa and Christopher who both live at home.Living with what they call a “blending family” was not easy at first and it meant a lot of adjusting to a new way of life.
“You have to be pliable and go with the flow of allowing things, knowing things will change because kids grow up, they change, living situations change,” said Jenetha. “It’s letting go of how we dreamed things would be and seeing what is reality.”
It was difficult bringing two families together–families with separate rules, traditions and other parents who aren’t living in the household–to form one cohesive unit, Don said. But, through trial and error and being open to different situations, the Partridges have made it work. Don said part of this success comes from looking at the idea of family from a different perspective.
“It’s us not only looking through our own eyes, but through our children’s eyes and us asking the hard question: ‘What constitutes my child’s family?'” he said. This means accepting their children’s other household, including their own ex-wife or ex-husband and the child’s half-siblings, and welcoming them as part of their lives. Openness and flexibility–which Don and Jenetha said took years to develop–are important in their family and helps to make them a close-knit bunch.
“The exciting thing is all seven of the kids are extremely close and adore each other,” Jenetha said. “We’d rather be gathered with each other than anyone else.” And despite the long distances between them with children in Virginia, New Jersey and Hawaii, they make a point of seeing each other as often as possible, she added.
The Shuman-Butler Family
For Carla Shuman-Butler and her daughter Keri Butler, 11, family took on a whole new meaning when husband and father Eric passed away in 2003 from an unknown primary cancer. He was diagnosed with stage four cancer in April of that year and passed away two months later. Needless to say, this turned Carla and Keri’s world upside down.With her husband gone, Carla said she revaluated what was important in life and Keri came out at the top of the list.
“My husband was really the family-oriented one,” she said. “I was career, career, career … When he died it seemed like it wasn’t even worth it. It took the need, the greed, away from me.”
Carla left her career at Clorox and the two moved to Maryland to live with Eric’s mother before moving to Pleasanton last year. Now, Carla works as a real estate agent with RE/MAX and her main focus is supporting Keri.
“It’s critical that this time, because our relationship has gotten so close now, I need her to be on my side all the time, and she needs to know I’m on her side all the time. We’ve got each other’s back and we work really hard at that,” she said.
The twosome keep busy with many activities, but they always spend Fridays at home and every day they keep connected by eating breakfast and dinner together.
Even as the pair have come to see each other as the sole members of their family unit, that doesn’t mean they have forgotten Eric.
“We won’t forget him, but as time passes it gets better,” Carla said. “You don’t forget, but it heals a little more.”
The Picone Family
“When I think of my family, I think of fun,” said Mason Picone, 9. That fun he is referring to is in the form of family trips and traditions they share.Samantha and Michael Picone and their children Mason and Sierra, 6, moved to Pleasanton five years ago from Redwood City where Samantha and Michael both grew up. Even though the rest of their extended family is on the Peninsula, they still see grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins on a regular basis, whether it’s Thanksgiving or a regular week.
“Family makes me think of a lot of food, a dirty kitchen I have to clean later, but it’s all worth it,” said Samantha. “I look forward to Thanksgiving and look forward to seeing everybody all the time. Family to me is support, love and honesty–I get all that from my family.”
The Picones are big on spending time together and go on lots of trips, be it to the lake for wakeboarding or the mountains for skiing. One family tradition that has been passed down through four generations is the annual mushroom picking trip. Michael’s great-grandparents started the tradition inadvertently during the Depression when they’d go and pick mushrooms around Mount Shasta for food. As the years went on, they took their children (Michael’s grandparents) and the annual trips turned into a fun pastime.
Since moving to Pleasanton, the Picones have extended their family even further to include a whole new group of friends and neighbors.
“We have a lot of friends here and they really are a second family,” Samantha said. “Moving out here was hard for me at first, but not so much anymore. It’s like we’ve lived here all our lives. I definitely think that family is someone you love and what you can count on.”
The Melchionne-Ott Family
Laura Melchionne and David Ott were busy raising their two sons Jordan and Joshua, now 10 and 8, when Laura’s father Tony Melchionne, 82, joined the household in 2000. Tony was recuperating from cancer but wasn’t healing well, so Laura and David decided that it would be best for him to move in with them. Things were going well, but after a year and half Tony seemed disoriented. Laura and David took him to the doctor and the diagnosis was Alzheimer’s.This meant a lot of changes in the household, from putting a padlock on the refrigerator to simply making sure Tony is never alone for more than an hour at a time. But despite these changes and the struggles they face, Laura said she is more than happy to be there for her father.
“It’s the least I could do for my dad,” she said. “He took care of us–brought up four girls and a boy on a farm all by himself.”
For Jordan and Joshua, having their grandpa living at home is all they know and being a family of five is very normal to them.
“When they are at school and asked to draw their family it’s always the five of us,” Laura said of her sons. “Papa is part of the family. He’s in all the drawings.”
For David, having Tony come and live with them seemed like the natural thing to do. When David was a child his grandpa lived with his family for seven years and after he moved out of his parents’ home, they again opened their doors to his great aunt.
“They were a great example to me of taking care of seniors in the family,” David said.
As time goes on and Tony’s mental state declines, the family is aware that one day he may not be able to live with them anymore. But for the time being, the situation is working out well for everyone, Tony especially.
“I do think with the situation we have with my dad, we’ve all grown in lots of different ways, the boys in particular,” Laura said. “It’s been a great thing for my father because I don’t think he’d be as mobile or coherent as he is today if he was in a facility.”
The Dutra Family
For Suzanne and Mike Dutra, their children–Ethan, 6, and Madeline, 4, and Mike’s children from his first marriage, Brian, 22, and Nicolas, 21–are the center of their world. While this may be true for most parents, the Dutras are especially grateful for every moment with their children since they came so close to losing it all.Madeline was born with a hole in her heart and it wasn’t until she was born that a nurse in the delivery room realized something was wrong. In addition to the heart problems, Madeline’s intestines were turned upside down and she had three spleens.
“My entire world came crashing down,” Suzanne said. “It was so unexpected.”
Madeline was scheduled to go in for open heart surgery when she was 6 months old, but it was pushed up to 3 months because she wasn’t growing at all.
During that first stay, Madeline was in the hospital for four weeks, the first two of which were filled with three surgeries. After the initial blitz, she was scheduled to return for six-month and annual visits, but before she reached the one-year mark, she went into heart failure and almost died after unexpectedly developing a fast heart rhythm. She was immediately taken to the hospital where she stayed for three weeks, Suzanne never leaving her side while Mike made visits and returned home to take care of their other children.
But, after the months of hardship, the family came out stronger than ever.
“After we got her out of the hospital, we realized the most important thing is the kids,” Mike said. “Nothing else matters. We would have sold the house to pay the doctor’s bills if we had to.”
Now, Madeline is just like any child, eager to play and explore the world. The family is able to go out on day trips or longer, so long as there is a refrigerator or cooler to keep Madeline’s medicine.
“We have our moments where we’re ready to tear each other apart, but it’s the kids–they’re first and foremost,” Mike said. “When things get stressful, we just drop what we’re doing and we’ll fly paper airplanes or play pinball with the kids.”
