There are some things that defy the "if you just work hard enough, you can have whatever you put your mind to" ideology. Family is one of them. Family reminds us that there are some things we just cannot control, despite the cultural illusion that we are all masters of our own fate--other people, the weather, our genes, and actually, life. And that might be a good thing.
I grew up in a very small family, and the family that I did have around was not at all tightly knit. Like many young kids who fixate on what they don't have, I always dreamed of that warm, sprawling extended family that got together a lot, shared laughs, were there for you when you needed them. The kind that was always around, that came over on a summer evening and did cartwheels in the street with you. The big Italian family I always thought that I should have. It wasn't to be--there was no one even remotely my age in my family. The family I did have (on my mom's side) fought all the time. Most of the time, they were negative, critical, and dysfunctional. I should not make it sound like they had no redeeming qualities. They were generous in their way, and they were absolutely unpretentious. Not an ounce of snob in their bodies. My dad's side of the family was also very small, and scattered around the globe. I can count on my hands the number of times I have even talked to them, let alone have seen them.
My mom tried to make me understand that this was, in fact, a blessing. Family, she told me, came with a lot of obligations. "Being there" could be a very difficult thing--it could lead to dependence, a drain on one's emotional and financial resources. The way she saw it, I was cut free from the tethers and demands of family.
You would think that my parents would try to compensate for the lack of supportive family relationships in other ways, but they didn't. Both being introverted, they had very few friends. They were not joiners. They were not church-goers. I was the oldest of 2, so I didn't even have an older sibling's friends as a start-up network to draw upon.
I recall seeing this not as being liberating, but rather lonely. I had some friends who had large families, and I was pretty jealous. One was particularly inclusive, and they were a bit like a surrogate sprawling family, but at the end of the day, I was still always the one who felt like I was on the outside, my face pressed against a glass windowpane, not quite feeling the warmth of the fireplace crackling inside. My home life growing up was not always happy. Weekends were largely spent listening to my parents fight endlessly, with the house being torn apart and destroyed in the process, my brother and I largely pushed aside and told to go to our rooms and be quiet (or else--hitting and beating was quite common). It wasn't until I left home for college that I started to learn this wasn't normal behavior. That not everyone acted like this, and indeed, that it wasn't acceptable to do so. It wasn't until I started dating good men, the best of whom became my husband, that I realized how drama-free and wonderful a home life could be, and experienced a love relationship without constant turmoil and tension.
2 weekends ago, when my brother and his wife showed up pretty much out of the blue, having driven across the country, I was excited. I took my son to my parents' house to see them, but once again, it was not to be. The entire weekend had devolved into a disastrous fight between my brother and my parents, and I walked into a house filled with screaming.
Ever since, I have been going through my own mourning period. The knowledge dawned on me that my son will grow up the exact same way I did--with no close family. 1 set of grandparents, a couple cousins on his father's side who live far away. That's it.
But wait. There is something redeeming about all of this. For not having ready-made supportive relationships has caused me, throughout my life, to look very hard for them in other places. It has not been easy, because I was not raised with either the tools nor the resources (having a safe home for other children to visit, for instance) to make friends. I was not made with a gregarious personality, so it is a pure miracle that God has brought wonderful people over the years to me. A friend of mine happened to mention the other day the circumstances of an acquaintance who has just the type of supportive, extended family of my dreams...yet her relationships with men have been one abusive disaster after another, and she has few if any friends to speak of. Maybe not having a ready-made kin network has allowed me to fill the need for a network of people in other ways. No, I do not have anything like "a sister" in my life, and I do not consider my friends "my family," but I do know a lot of wonderful people. I have good female (and male) friends, and been absolutely blessed in having positive romantic relationships, and never having falling into destructive or abusive ones. I have a husband who is the opposite of my parents--steady, uncritical, accepting, non-judgmental, supportive.
And although Himal will grow up without the benefit of a large, loving extended family, I've come to see families as wildcards anyway. There's no guarantee that even if we were to have 6 more kids (impossible), they would be close or there for each other. But, what I CAN do is make sure he has the tools to meet an interesting variety of people. I can give him the secure and stable home environment that will make it safe for him to have friends over. And, I can protect him from the screaming and chaos that I grew up with--although I can't give him the size of family I've always wanted, I can give him the kind of homelife I think he deserves.
I have learned.
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