Tonight I am pondering families. My mum had 2 sisters and a brother and between them they had 6 children, me included. This was the family I knew growing up, we enjoyed each others company but we didn't keep in touch on our own. It took our parents to bring us together at times like Christmas and Birthdays.
Mums youngest sister moved to the USA when she was young and raised her family there and in the last 8 years my mum has died, her brothers wife passed away and her other sister is in a nursing home with terminal cancer.
Without our parents, the ties that bind us together as cousins are fraying. I don't mean that as a critisim, it is the way of families. Dynamics change, we all have our own babes and partners and separate lives and these have become our primary family.
With Christmas on its way it has left me feeling rather somber. My dad migrated to Australia from England and we have no family from his side over here. Suddenly I am keenly aware that Andrew and I are only children. What do our small and/or fraying families mean for our children?
It is important these days that I remember family comes in all sorts of shapes sizes and relationships. We have each other, we have our parents, and we have our wonderful friends. All of whom are our family.
This has never been more obvious than with Catrionas family. For the last 4 years we have been joining them for their christmas dinner, we eat and drink and laugh feeling welcome and wanted. For me Christmas is about celebrating joyously with family. With that criteria in mind, Christmas dinner is the most enjoyable part of christmas for me.
Maybe its because I have known Catrionas parents almost as long as I have known my own, or that Catriona is so much a part of my childhood (and life) or maybe it is being with a small tight knit family who include you as one of their own, maybe its the amount we eat, drink and laugh. I don't know, whatever it is it is the driving force in reminding me that family comes in many forms.
People move away, families on average getting smaller, and my perceptions of what family means is changing. The tie of blood is becoming less important than the space made in our hearts and lives for each other.
Sunday 16 November 2008
The Nature of Family
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3 comments:
Well, you are one of the family--there's no question about that.
And has it only been four years that you've been coming to dinner? I think it's been longer than that.
I was wondering about that, it might have been 5, one before i was pregnant with Jack..... or was it two before Jack? I dont remember.
Either way, its a nice way to spend Xmas night with our adopted family :)
I'm thinking two before you became pregnant the first time. I remember the Christmas you were pregnant with Jack, but I'm thinking there was already a tradition prior to that--at least, I seem to remember enormous quantities of drinking on someone's part for at least a couple of years before Jack.
Wouldn't be Christmas, otherwise.
And I'm loving having my nephews around for Christmas these days. Christmas takes on whole new meaning with little boys running around, and I've never had that, not having an extended family.
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