Ruminations

I know why families were created with all their imperfections. They humanize you. They are made to make you forget yourself occasionally, so that the beautiful balance of life is not destroyed. -Anais Nin

It's Sunday night and I leave San Diego tomorrow. While there is much to tell - how could there not be after four days with my entire family? - I just have to digest it, to let this last night wash over me and sit, happy, in these last few hours with the people that I love the most.

I have friends who have siblings that they are not close to, that they see perhaps on holidays or every few years. Those kinds of relationships completely escape me. I don't judge, but I cannot, could not, survive for long swaths of time without my sisters and brother. We've often talked about living in houses that have connecting backyards. While we all live in different cities and that dream remains forever in the firmament, the idea is even more alluring now as adults since we all get along so well and never seem to have enough time with each other. Though I've seen everyone individually in regular increments over the past year, this is the first time that we've all been under one roof in a very long time and how I've missed the mayhem, the general chaos and the happiness that oozes out of everything as we eat, play and talk with one another.

I feel blessed, fortunate, lucky to have such a group of people to call my own. I'm sitting now in my nephews room. It's nearing 11pm and still the sounds of laughter crawl up the stairs and curl under the door. I'm sad to leave, wish we could stay like this in some sort of suspended animation for a few more days. It's wonderful to have these kinds of emotions, especially when I consider our family's past, its difficult history. My own relationship with my parents was scarred and mangled, something I suspected was beyond repair until it started, five years ago, to evolve into something more than hostile smoke signs that we would send up to one another from a safe distance, each of us letting the other party know how much disappointment they felt, how wounded they were. I don't know what caused the shift, but I'm thankful for it each day, even more so now when my mother stops me in the hallway and embraces me, whispering up into my ear, "I love you, my child." It stops my heart momentarily because there was a time when I yearned for that kind of affection and it didn't come. Now, it is precious.

And so I ache to leave tomorrow because it is never enough. It never is. Despite our differences, our abilities to drive one another mad, our tendencies to be in each others business, there is never enough time to tell each other how much we mean to one another. How much love flows between all of us. So I'll rise tomorrow and enjoy one more sun soaked day with my family before we fly off in different directions and resume our lives. We'll all be refreshed by this time together and will call, starting conversations with, "Remember that afternoon when...?" to momentarily dip back into the memory. And while it's not the same as being able to sit across from each other, pouring yet another glass of wine, it's something. And for those of us who come from a family whose past is filled with such pain, the laughter we enjoy now, the beautiful memories that we are building up, act as a balm to those old wounds and make weekends like this even more precious.