tonight, i miss my family. and what's funny is that most of them are gathered around me. my very lovely mother-in-law, iara, arrived today from brazil. she comes yearly to stay for six weeks. she is the only person, pretty much on the surface of the planet, who i can imagine only being value-added as a family guest for that length of time. she personifies joy and refuses its opposite. a lovely thing for the space of a visit - i wouldn't want to live with it in the forever plane, i mean, i am all over the intensity and starkness of life point of view, but this joy and pleasure piece works really well when you're a house guest.
my own bio family, at least part of it, is struggling around the care of my grandmother, her increasing debilitation and the resulting insane mountain of duties falling on my mother and her partner. i live 13 hours by car, about $300 by plane away from this. they have a lot of work. i make phone calls.
my brother, sister-in-law and nephew stayed with us for awhile over the summer - not six weeks, although i'd love to try - before heading back to germany. now we're back in infrequent email and phone chat.
the rest of my partner's near by bio family are currently in africa, brazil and argentina.
i miss my family, in that weird mix of nostalgia and one-eyebrow-raised reality.
i live in this lovely community of individuals with children and adults. we are interdependent in that concrete real everyday way - taking care of each other's children, calling in the middle of the night in crisis, showing up for all of the events, planning them, cooking for each other, missing each other when we haven't talked for more than three days in a row.
i know that even having this - this concrete community that some of my friends and family outside of minneapolis envy - is not typical for an overeducated middleclass white midwestern girl living in a city she didn't grow up in. queerness helps with the creation. so do other things.
but i am sitting here wanting it all. wanting the people that i have in my everyday and the people that i was supposed to have a few generations ago - the biofamily, the neighbors more deeply entwined than some of them are. i miss what so many overeducated middleclass white midwestern girls living in cities they didn't grow up in miss - a mixture of romance, a mixture of roots and a reminder to stop and really notice the glory that i have.
3 comments:
I have to say that I don't miss the small town back stabbing that my mother once referred to as, "everyone gets thrown into the snakepit, but otherwise it's an ok place to live".
I do with Iara lived here though. I need constant, fierce, joy.
i read this the other day....i did not reread it...some thoughts
it occured to me
my family - for the most part live here....in the city and metro area ....and i often find myself missing them....and feel sad that we are not better at seeing each other...i often have felt like if i did not contact them i we would be way out of touch....but i work to let go of that...remind myslef that i have no idea what life is like when you have kids & family (no excuse for the sister who travels all the time and has not kids) mostly i just try to not take it personally and enjoy them when we are togethe. i spent a lot of time being miserable around my family and have no desire to live in that place anymore
peace
leigh
For what it is worth, your bio family misses you, and increasingly so .. think it has to do with my age, she says smilingly .. but more then that.. I cherish time in a way I have not since you were little ... when there just never seemed to be enough time .. now I cherish time, because I KNOW there simply is not enough of it left ... I am glad you are happy where you are, but sometimes a drive of a few hours would be nice ....
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