Family and Blogging

This “blogging with family” experience is affording me new insight to my family. I’ve found myself thinking a lot about our family, after reading daily posts from my sister, my two daughters, new friends who share about their families, and discussing it all with my unnamed sister who won’t join us.

Of course, I’ve always been aware of Quilldancer’s talents, her intelligence, prose and humor. I have some published works of hers, and have long been the recipient of her letters and chats. It’s phenomenal how her mind works. But now I am seeing strains of the same in my daughters. They also have a talent for expressing themselves, for sharing, for humor. And they have those unbreakable ties that are at the core of my heart. Like the family ties that I see as they correspond with each other and with their Aunt.

To describe my biological family as dysfunctional, would be describing it kindly. I had a councilor once tell me that it’s unusual that I have a closeness with my siblings…that the normal for siblings that come from families like ours, is to completely distance and divorce themselves from each other. That has not happened with me and my siblings. Thank you, Higher Power.

And my children, oh my. I have been so blessed. I always ‘maintain my gratitude’ for my life, for my family. Cindra, Brooke and Scott have been my very life. Because of them, I was able to carry on through some times I never thought I’d make it through. And like the wind that blew in my life…I’ve been some of the wind in theirs. (Trees that endure wind over long periods, bow with the wind and are the strong trees. Weak ones are toppled by the wind). Nearly twenty four years ago, I ended an 8 year love affair I had with alcohol, one that made me ‘emotionally’ absent, and that was at odds with being the kind of mother I wanted to be and thought I was. I was blessed in the fact that I got to end the dysfunction within my family.

I don’t dwell (too much) on the negatives aspects that were wrought during either my upbringing, or during my children’s. Since I can’t change it, I’ve learned to embrace the wind. What came before is what made us who and what we are. And oh how much I like who and what we are! No victims. We are strong. We are survivors. We are fairly intelligent, interesting and interested people, caring, thoughtful and loving. You can knock us down, but you can’t keep us down. Somewhere along the line, (the good and the bad) we got some hardy genes!

But the best of God’s gifts to me, is the love and like my children have for me. And that which I have for them. Not only do I love them with my life, I like them each so very much. That they like me too, is a blessing. Though they’ll always be babies to me, though I’ll always tell them what to do (not that they listen!), and though I’ll always worry about them – I am aware (somewhere inside me) that they are adults. Wow. I don’t know how that happened. But they grew up to be wonderful people. People I never get tired of spending time with, and never get enough time with.

Cindra is a vibrant, alive woman, with multiple talents. She has a great passion for what we are leaving the next generation, and she doesn’t just talk it, she walks the talk. She is the kind of mother to her children, that I always wanted to be to mine. Brooke is my mercurial child. She spits one minute and giggles the next. She is full of life and loves it, and it shows in all she does. She is in the helping profession – and gives of herself by going on missions overseas – to give back. Scott is a ‘mama’s boy’ at almost 34 years old. He has no problem with that – and his wife just laughs at him. He’s my baby, the youngest. Yet he’s the father of 4 children. He married a woman with 2 children, they had a baby together, and they adopted a baby three years ago. I think that this one fact will earn him jewels in his crown someday: if you observe him playing with his four children he loves so….I’d wager that you couldn’t pick out which one is his biological child. And I’d wager that if you tried, you would be wrong. What a good, honest, loving man he is. And what a sense of humor he has!

So far, this blogging has had great returns for me – and seeing my family interact in a different manner is just an added bonus!