Last year, on my 43rd birthday, I celebrated with my friends and family for the first time in my life. It felt a little weird, inviting other people out to celebrate with me - as though I were demanding attention like a petulant three year old. Yet, it was something a friend convinced me I needed to do at least once in my life. My birthday is just before Christmas, and I was the youngest child of older parents - they never wanted to be bothered. My mother told me one year that I was having a birthday party, but that no one had accepted the invitation. It wasn't until years later that I realized, looking at pictures, she had bought only a very small cake, and a handful of plates. She'd known all along no one would come, because she hadn't invited anyone outside our family. My immediate family was very private and closed off, and they didn't want to let anyone from the outside in. It's easier to maintain a façade that way.
Growing up, my parents insisted that family was everything, that you couldn't count on anyone else. My mother came from a huge family - she was the youngest of six children - and they were always around. Even as we moved around the country, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents would show up and stay with us for a few days before moving on. Somewhere, my mother still has reel-to-reel tapes from those visits - grainy, distorted colors flickering, with all of us slipping through waves at the beach, raking leaves on the lawn, running through sprinklers, and playing in snow banks. The adults always had cigarettes in mouths, and other than my mother, usually a drink in their hand. No wonder we kept to ourselves - my mother's family are all alcoholics. They might have stuck together, but often were so mean to one another that it would send me to hide in the closet. Yet, they were a clan that was nearly unbreakable. My mother was the baby sister of five brothers, and they protected her.
My brother, David, and I were raised in near isolation, and certainly a lot of insulation, from the rest of the world. We didn't often invite others into our home, and in all the time I was living with them, I never knew either of them to have friends outside of the family. I had friends from school, and they were invited over to my house on many occasions, but always for a limited amount of time, as my mother could only hold her best behavior for so long. My closest friends saw enough that I was often embarrassed, and yet I still clung to the idea that my loyalty had to lie with my blood relatives. Even when they were cruel to the people who were the nicest to me.
David, as we grew older, pulled away from our insular family and moved more into a world of his own making. I married young and moved half-way across the country to escape their painful affection, only to find that my parents had followed me. Guilt drove me to continue to feed the lie that we were close even as I had children of my own and fostered my own kind of family.
There was a Thanksgiving a few years ago when we were sitting stiffly at my parents' table, where I was seated across from my then husband, our daughters a physical boundary between my mother and I, and I was fuming because my mother had managed to put meat in every single dish on the table, including the vegetables, because she still thinks my being a vegetarian is a phase I'll grow out of. Like sucking my thumb, or refusing to step on cracks. And while I was sitting there, pushing a roll back and forth on my mostly empty plate, having eulogized the turkey instead of saying a real blessing - because passive-aggressive humor is more my style than full frontal confrontation - I thought back to some of my best holidays. Shortly after I had been married, a group of friends I would gather each year and cook together in one of their homes. We were all, mostly, pretty mediocre cooks and we never managed to get all the entrees cooked at the same time, and our tables were a hodge podge of whatever dishes we could throw together. What we had were people who had met through happenstance, who came together because we wanted to spend time with one another, not through obligation, but through mutual admiration or affection. And I couldn't help comparing the two experiences and feeling a little bit of a loss that I didn't have that same sense of joy and connection with my biological family. I could see my mother's connection to her roots - it was all around me, from the china we ate off that had been her grandmother's, to the lace table cloth my father's mother had made, and the silverware that was passed down through generations of her family. And I didn't feel connected to any of it.
For years, I agonized over what I might be depriving my children of, if I didn't give them enough time with extended family. It was my own daughter telling me she didn't like the way my mother talked to me that made the biggest impression, though. They noticed more than I thought, and weren't hurt at all when I was sick one Christmas and wanted to stay home for the holiday. And I remembered one of my favorite Christmases, early in my marriage, when we had no family in town and our car was in need of repair. My then husband and I woke up in no hurry to be anywhere, to get dressed or cook the traditional items. Instead, we dressed at leisure and walked to IHOP for a late breakfast, then walked on to a movie theatre, where we took turns picking out movies to see for the remainder of the day. Outside, the rain fell down and it was cold, but we had good day together without any of the things that drive me crazy about holidays.
I've learned to find a balance with my parents, but despite our blood bonds, they're not people to whom I feel particularly close. I care about them and I check on them now and again, but they're not who I turn to when I need something, and they're not the people I want to share with when I have good news. Those places have gone to other people in my life. People who share more than just DNA with me, but are, rather, the people I choose to have in my life - and the weirdos who chose me back. It was reinforced for me this past December, when I invited people from all parts of my life to come have a drink with me to celebrate my birthday. No matter how self-centered that made me feel, it was a good night. And, on that very cold December night, as we sat around a fire pit, talking and laughing, I was able to look around and see my daughters, friends I've known for 20+ years, new friends, training partners, coworkers and people who have nothing in common in their lives except that they share a part of mine.
Those people, the ones who care enough to spend time with me when they don't feel obligated, the ones who will get out on a Friday night when they'd rather be at home, or those who will pick up their phones and text me because they realize they haven't seen me around in a week, or those who send me jokes at 2 a.m. because they know I've had a horrible day and I'm likely to be awake - those are my family. I love each and every one of these goofy, brilliant, talented, sometimes alcoholic members of my family. I'm way more forgiving of them than I am of those who hang off a branch of my family tree.
I don't think I'm too worried about my children's roots any more - they have plenty. Not necessarily the kind that come from relatives, but from the good people I've brought into their lives and the stable influences they bring. My girls see that I have people who mean something to me, and on whom I can rely when it comes to that. They get to share in our laughter and hear about it when I'm angry with one of them and their decisions. Sometimes we don't get along, sometimes we make up, and sometimes we just pretend the fight never happened. It's what families do.
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