Families.
That one word holds so much meaning and emotion for people that it is hardly surprising to find these labelled units are rarely simple or perfect or describable things. If you know someone who claims to have a ‘perfect’ or ‘simple’ family then you know a liar.
It is often a ‘loaded’ word. One which infers what you should do, how you should behave. I do not like being told what I should do or how I should behave. I like to take the word and fit it around what it means to my life and the people I love. I do not believe in the tribal, Mitchell-esque, loyal-to-the-day-that-I-die, ostracised if I am not, model one iota. I would like to think I am intelligent enough to judge for myself what family means to me and I absolutely will not be made to feel guilty for that.
My family is absolutely, 100% dysfunctional. And I bloody love them for it because, guess what folks? It makes them human.
My central family group, the people who will invariably sit round my mothers table for a Sunday lunch and treat the place like Picadilly Circus, swanning in and out, pillaging for food and tea and begging for trousers to be turned up (or is that just me?) consists of my mom, my step-dad, two step sisters plus their significant others, my Nana, my nephew and my nephews mother. Oh, and my husband of course, who manages to cope with the eccentricities of us all, so different to his own, quieter and much smaller brood.
Only three of these people are blood related to me but it matters not a jot, I love the bones of all of them. However, when my 7 year old nephew asked me recently whether I was blood related to one of my step-sisters it suddenly became a bit tangled. He is at that age where he seeks to figure out how it all fits together. I don’t blame him for being confused; our tribe is a bit of an unorthodox jumble to say the least.
It is the one social grouping in life which we do not choose but inherit. A very close friend of mine always says ‘friends are the family we choose for ourselves’ and I think this is bang on the money. I have written extensively about friendships and how I think they should work in an earlier post and to my mind my friends are indeed the family I choose. Many of them know me much better than the majority of people I share actual DNA with and I value them as highly as members of my family. I would also add that depending on your workplace, colleagues are an additional ‘familial’ group in your life. My team at work spend more time with me than anyone else does and invariably some of them know my day to day life very well.
It stands to reason as we have no choice in the family group we are born into that some of these people you would never naturally cross paths with or choose to spend time with. This is normal. Obligations to stay in touch only mean something and work if you actually happen, purely by luck, to genuinely like the person anyway but this is not a given.
Going back to central family groups though, the ones you are deeply embedded in and actually love; your parents and siblings essentially. You may be given a place within this for free as a child but as an adult, I believe that you earn your place in a family. In the same manner you can also lose it. To keep it healthy you have to nurture it, like any relationship.
This means that when you screw up or let go or lose contact there is generally always a way back, but it takes work on both sides, forgiveness and the ability to move on and stop raking up what happened in the past. Unfortunately some people are simply not equipped to do this. In fact, some people believe holding a grudge is an Olympic sport.
What matters to me is the wellbeing of my central group. After that I have a lot of time and love for other members of my family and would always do what I can for them if they needed me, although I may not see them on a frequent basis. Then there are the members I do not really know but have nothing against and will be happily civil to. Finally there are those that I literally, teeth grittingly tolerate at events where I cannot escape. Now, be honest, you just read that and mentally identified which members of your family fitted which group. That’s fine. That’s normal.
Unless you live in cloud cuckoo land of course where everything is perfect and everybody loves each other and lashings of ginger beer flow freely and people really say ‘golly gosh’.
Anyway, blood means nothing unless you are lucky and I cannot tell you how lucky I feel to have my step dad in my life. To say he is ‘like a father to me’ is wrong. I already have a dad and he is ace and I love him loads. My step dad gives me a ‘bonus parent’ role, one which is brilliant because you get the best bits from both a best friend and someone you are allowed to ask to fix your car and know they will do it because they love you. My parents divorcing was a blessing, both are now in happy, healthy relationships and I have two ‘bonus’ parent roles, both of whom I love. I was lucky.
My mom is an amazing person in so many ways. She is an amazing role model to me as a woman and the person I always want to run things by in my life. We can quite happily spend hours on the phone talking about anything and everything. As I get older I value this more and more. As she gets older I find myself adopting the parent role with her more and more (“you really should stop smoking/go to the doctors about that/stop reading the Daily Mail”), I can amusingly see she does the same with her mother, my beloved Nana. The three of us often sit and chew the fat, I am glad I get to do this. This mother-daughter-grand daughter relationship is precious to me but not because we are blood related – that is incidental, but it gives us the basis of a bond which we choose to embrace and enjoy.
Human nature means, however, that people naturally are not inclined to just get on. Life was not meant to be simple and the Middle East would be a fantastic holiday destination if everybody would just chill the fuck out. Really.
So…..the last few years have been difficult in our family for various reasons, mainly due to the aforementioned human nature issue. I spent the whole of 2009 and 2010 feeling like a cornered tiger protecting it’s young in relation to my parents, defending them and trying to repair damage and hurt. I had many difficult conversations with members of the family. Unfortunately the directions and solutions I hoped to achieve were impossible. On the plus side I think we could probably field a family team at the next Olympics for the Holding-a-Grudge relay. This guide suggests sensible solutions to unresolved family conflicts – unfortunately it takes both sides to make a resolution happen.
No human being is perfect. All of us make mistakes, say things we don’t mean, can be downright hurtful to the people we love and occasionally behave like complete and utter imbeciles. I know I have in the past and I am sure I will again at some point. Admitting it is easy when you put it in context, picking up the pieces and moving on and drawing a line under it is harder. And far more painful. And sometimes needs time. But it is never really a closed door until you make it so. Resolution takes a bigger, more intelligent and robust person than clinging on blindly to an accusation and clearly not everybody is that broad minded.
And I guess this is my point. Families come in many shapes and sizes. Some are pretty conventional, some are not. All will at some point and at some level go through crises. It is highly normal for Auntie X to not be speaking to Cousin Y or some kind of variation of this equation. You get arseholes, idiots, absolute gems, comedians, good eggs, bad apples, princesses, petty thieves, dictators, diplomats and the perpetually vacant. It is sort of like the coalition government but closer to home, both in terms of the fact you didn't vote for it but ended up with it and together you are not convinced they know what they are doing.
How you make it work is entirely down to you. Stressing about it will get you nowhere. Black and white thinking will not help one jot. Holding a grudge is the greatest symptom of the narrow minded and should be avoided. And sharing blood does not determine ranks of importance, nor should it.
Tell the people you love that you love them as often as you can, spend as much time with the people that matter as possible. Tolerate those you have to and avoid the ones that cannot be tolerated and take no regrets to the grave because seriously, people, life is too short.
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