Families are a very hard thing to think about or talk about. Most of us are raised in some kind of situation where there's stability of people. Sometimes blood-related people. But those people don't know much about our individualities -- they start acting ON us before we can even express ourselves. They may try to influence our environment but sometimes they either don't care to try, or they fail. Sometimes our innate characteristics just collide against theirs.
I felt -- still feel, although they're very dead -- involved in my parents' personalities and lives. I wish I understood their histories, their parents' histories, what made them the way they are. I look at them like characters in a novel that would be incredibly rich and complex but that I'm too much in the dark to write. But I wouldn't have sought advice, or emotional support, or kindness from either one -- I think I stopped doing that at about 9 years old.
When my mother was alive, I saw her a few times a year. I drank a lot. It was a distant relationship, and we never talked about anything more personal than I could have put on a Linked-In profile. She claimed she couldn't remember most of my life.
Now I maintain distant mostly superficial relationships with my siblings by email. One of them has a husband who has a serious cancer and I'm thinking about whether and how to try to get closer to them. I regret that I haven't been a kind or thoughtful sibling, but it might be too late for any of us to start behaving in ways (like being kind and thoughtful) that we weren't raised to behave in.
I was just stopping in with flowers, but your posts made me think, as they so often do. Thanks for listening!
Virginia bluebells -- bluebells are blooming now beside a playground in my neighborhood.