Kith and Kin

As this pandemic season lingers, some of us are hoping for our favourite store or restaurant to reopen. We want to return to normal. Around our home, my young girls ask every day if they can visit their friends and cousins. They miss time together and do not really understand why we cannot get back to the way it was. We were outside this past weekend sweeping up around our garden and my daughter burst out in frustration, “I hate this sickness, I just want to see my cousins and friends again.” Me too.

We long for the days when we can be with our favourite people. This longing for others reveals in us this inherent desire for connection and community. We were made to be among others. We were made for friendship, and these days we may even find ourselves missing people we never thought we would. We find ourselves longing for the familiar people we love.

Kith and kin are two English words that have been used together for seven hundred years. Today we might say friends and relations, but the meaning is of these words may be even deeper. Kin are those who are related to us – our family. The word ‘kindness’ comes from this root word, too. When we are kind, we are extending the same treatment we may give to our kin, and offer it to others. 

Kith is a word we do not use often, which often has been used to mean friends. Kith, was really used as the opposite of uncouth, that is, unacceptable things. So kith are those things that are acceptable, or familiar, or well known. Kith, then, are those person who are known or familiar, your friends, acquaintances, or neighbours. 

Today our world is not ordered around kith and kin. Modern people do not need family connections, or the help of neighbours, to get ahead in life. It may seem to be an archaic layover of a bygone era to trust in kith and kin. Yet this pandemic may be changing how we welcome others into our lives, and rely on them.

Social isolation may instil in us a longing for kith and kin, those familiar and those related. This pandemic is a chance for us to take stock of those we know and care for. We can extend kindness to people who are not related to us, and we can embrace the gift of having familiar people – well known people – neighbours, who are a part of our story, too.

Canadian poet Robert Service wrote this poem, “There’s a race of men that don’t fit in, a race that can’t sit still; so they break the hearts of kith and kin, and they roam the world at will. They range the field and rove the flood. And they climb the mountain’s crest; their’s is the curse of gypsy blood, and they don’t know how to rest.” 

Today we do get to rest, we are learning to stop and appreciate others. We are not running about in the same way we did before. This season may reveal something new in us, and may re-introduce us to our kith and kin all over again.