What is Chouse?

Family parties are a kick in the pants. I’m the oldest of nine kids and seven of them live within 10 min. from my mom. I’m the semi-black sheep living a full 20 min. away and Brady, the full-black sheep, is all the way in Ca. Anyway, now that three of us are grandmas the family groweth. My mother’s quiver is quivering.

When you put all those people together, with roughly half of them under the age of 8, half who are ‘tween and teenage boys and another half who talk too much and are highly opinionated (I was never good at math), it makes for LOUD. And they eat a lot too.

Future in-laws wander in a daze, being introduced to miscellaneous people and they gamely try to make the connections. “This is Allie. She is Emily’s two-year old, and you remember that Emily is married to Jevan who is Auntie Di’s second oldest? Oh, you haven’t met Auntie Di yet?” That kind of stuff. Who can remember that? I am so sorry Christine for the chaos. (She is marrying my nephew in a month.)

Speaking of chaos – the following is a totally true story – my friend Mary was in a Sunday School class in her young adult ward and the teacher was giving a lesson of how to avoid chaos, except that she pronounced is as ‘chouse’. She informed the class that she had never heard of chouse, but she looked it up and it is something we definitely all want to avoid. And so the lesson went, with no one wanting to spill the beans.

Our family has now adopted the unique pronunciation and we delight in chouse. But it has to be the chouse that occurs when people pick up and comfort the crying baby next to them, regardless of who it belongs to, and the chouse of dishing up food twice, the first time being for a small, and the chouse of listening to and attempting to contribute to three conversations at once. Chouse is when 55 people all come indoors because it is raining, except for said ‘tweens who will make their appearance only after they are thoroughly drenched, and then they have to stand on towels. Chouse is trying to give everyone in the room a kiss or a hug goodbye, giving up and finally pronouncing loudly, “I’m off, love you all” but then it takes ten minutes to leave because three people have to move their cars.

Chouse is family and I love it.