Just the title creates so many different feelings. Anybody who sees a blog with the title "Family" instantly considers their own and all the history and feelings that come along. Some folks call that baggage. Some folks call it warmth. I'm sure some folks are somewhere in the middle, carrying a mixed blessing of baggage and warmth. Maybe it's warm baggage.
A very dear friend wrote in her blog of a visit to family she was about to endure. Luckily, the event was more pleasant, or at least less painful, than expected. Conversing via blog on the topic this morning inspired me to create this entry. Warm Baggage. I'll think I'll go up and change the title to include that. Oh yeah, that looks provocative. Maybe even evocative. Therein lies part of my purpose. Evoke thoughts and perhaps emotions in my readers.
I love my family. How many people do you hear say that and follow it almost immediately with "but"? More to the point, I think, do you know anybody that DOESN'T follow it? I don't. Everybody has some reason why some part of the family is nuts, psychotic, criminal, criminally insane, twisted, drugged, or otherwise abnormal. Statistically speaking, unless you're an only child from a family tree of only children, the odds are pretty good that there's a nutjob in the branches. Of course, nutjob is relative, no pun intended. One person can be seen as a nutjob to one and charming to another. We should all realize this. It helps us to tolerate our nutjobs.
But what about those that aren't merely "a little off"? What about those who are mean, belligerent, downright nasty? Do their friends see them as charming? Or do they only hang around with like-minded people? If there are people who see our nasties as charming, then we have to look to the branches and determine if we're the only one who thinks they're nasties. If we're not alone, then we can guess that either our nasties don't like family or they wear two faces. We love them anyway.
My family? Scattered. No, not scatter-brained. Just scattered. Our history spans coast to coast, in one tree, since about 1720. As a result, I have relatives all over the place. Even within only the last couple of generations, the only ones I know, we're spread so far I can't even track them down. I have cousins from Alaska to Florida, Montana to Pennsylvania. As far as I know. My own siblings range from Southern California to Washington to Wisconsin and one that's only Creator knows where. Even my own offspring, and those of my soulmate, are spread coast to coast. I have daughters in New York, Fresno and Los Angeles. Her kids are in Bakersfield, Rhode Island and Fresno. Part of that is what happens when they get old enough to leave the nest. Of course they go off and make a life for themselves. Of course they start new independent lives.
In this age of instant messaging, text messaging, voice mail, email, social networking, you'd think families could stay closer regardless of the miles. My mom stayed in touch with her brothers better using snail mail than I can with my siblings and offspring. Yes, that's sad. Sometimes worse than sad. I have a granddaughter and two stepgrandchildren, from whom I rarely hear. Miles apparently do that. As do past hurts. Yes, there are reasons why I don't hear from my grandkids. Some valid, some considerably less so.
And now, as my friend has also said, my closer family is the group of people I've met through various social networks. There are several whom I love dearly. There are a few that are more significant than most of my blood family. How can this be? How do "people" who only exist as pixels on a computer screen become more "real" than those who share DNA and bonds of lineage and with whom we share common memories? Pretty simple actually. Communication. On a nearly daily basis, I talk to them, they talk to me. Maybe not directly. Maybe it's just a wall post or a blog entry. Not necessarily directed to me. If I choose, I can comment and then a dialogue, however brief, begins. I know more about some of these people and their families than I do my own.
It's a strange kind of isolation.
No comments:
Post a Comment