Day 352: Families

Why are families important?  What do families provide that we cannot find on our own?

I struggle with these questions.  Really, I have been wondering the answer to them for years.  I believe we have been filled with a Romanized version of what family means.  We see them on our television in thirty and sixty minute snippets of perfection.  Yes, versions of dysfunction are also depicted, but at the end of the episode, all turns out wonderful in the end of the drama for the time.  Real life doesn’t look like this and many families come up short or nonexistent.

Families are made up of the same people as a faith community, political body, or frankly any group of people with a common thread.  The relationships can be loving, disappointing, toxic, dismissive, and the adjectives can go on.  Some people are blessed to have a family that comes together through thick and thin.  Other people get families that abuse.  The rest fall somewhere in between.  And many of us find friends to fill in the gap.

For me, family is important for history and tradition.  I love studying my ancestors to see where they came from and what they endured.  They left the old country for a better life.  They traveled out West to make a better life.  One great, great grandmother survived the death of three children in two years.  They give me an idea of myself, my strong self.  We have mental illness that has run through the family, helping me to be a little more understanding with those struggling.  I watched my grandmother in physical pain, and I am now in pain.  I see a thread of common occurrences traveling through the generations.

I strongly relate to my Norwegian ancestry in the art of craftsmanship through my grandfather and down into my oldest son.  Story telling continues through many of the family.  The love of nature and gardening are a common theme.  I am adding religion to my section of the family via my grandmother.

Family provides continued history through the centuries.  My sister and I come together like sisters in the past.  We tell stories, blood, memories, and traits.  Oh, we also share laughter and tears.  We don't share a city.  We live three hours apart when the Montana roads are clear, longer when the roads are snow and ice covered.  Unfortunately, we can't be there for each other physically all the time, but we are in spirit.  I have no relatives in town, so this is how it is with all my family.  Luckily, I am blessed with an adoptive family.  But that is a whole other story.