Family Un-ties

I think it was a wonderful Christmas.  It has been something like 11 years since the husband's entire family was together for Christmas, so that in itself was a good thing.  And adding in our two sons-in-law did change some of the dynamics, but I  believe each of them added something special to the mix.  Then there was the visible (if not actual) presence of the next generation.  Having JLO pregnant, looking it, at a stage where all who were patient could feel the baby move, and for some of the more invested ones, hear its heartbeat (thanks to my stocking stuffer stethoscope) was nothing less than a blessing that was a joy to share. 

So the food was plentiful and good.  Everyone got along and had fun.  There was shopping.  There was swimming.  There was a poker tournament (the husband won).  There were presents.  There were laughter and tears.  And while I certainly couldn't have done it without KT's help, it was relatively painless.

The thing that had the strongest emotional impact on me is actually something I never expected.  The girls have grown up hearing the husband and his family talk about his childhood and their history.  They have been to see 2 of the houses he grew up in, and the grandparents still live in a third.  We have taken several holidays that have incorporated places he was taken on holiday when he was growing up.  All of this and the family stories are now part of my children's history, and while I am glad that they have this (I'm a big supporter of passing these things on), it only points up how much they are missing from my side.

There is only my sister and me left of my own nuclear family.  I have an aunt and an uncle on both sides and some first cousins, but all contact with them is through my sister.  There are no negative reasons for this--it just evolved.  As a pre-teen and teen I was extremely uncomfortable with adults (especially women), not having any reliable role models to help me figure out all those social things I should have learned.  As an adult, geography was added to the mix--we never lived close to my family so contact wasn't something I ended up thinking about.  It was a different situation with my grandmother when she was alive.  Even though she was no closer geographically, it was a given that I would talk with her on a regular basis and visit when I could. 

So with just the 2 of us, there has never been this ongoing dialogue for my kids to overhear--no family dinners with that easy banter that reveals a shared history, no 'remember when' moments, no story telling.  They have spent almost no time in my part of the country.  They have never seen the house I grew up in and lived in until I was 17.  They have never been to the one place my family went on holiday.  I can count on one hand the number of times they saw my grandmother or father and on 2 hands for my sister (maybe only 1 now that I think about it). 

It is a very different thing for me to tell the girls about my childhood and family--without other participants it becomes more of a tolerated discourse than something they can engage in or just absorb from hearing it repeated.   Never having met my mother and having only vague (if any) memories of my father, these are not people who seem to have been part of their lives, unlike even the great grandparents on the husband's side who they remember and visited repeatedly.  And I guess I kind of wonder--if they are missing all of this 'information', aren't they also missing a whole chunk of me?  How can they really know who I am if they don't have any idea of how I got to be me? 

So while I treasure the family that surrounds them and look forward to more of these times in the future, I have to admit that I am jealous that 99% of their memories and therefore their stories to their kids will be based only on one side of the family, and that when my sister and I are gone, our family's history will also be gone.  And the only thing I can think of to do about it right now, is to include some of those stories here, as the mood strikes...