Family Ties

I’ve been thinking about families lately – the constant wax and wane of our relationships to the people we consider our family. We hold them dear, then we hold them at arms length, then we push them away entirely. I don’t know whether this is part of normal development, (or whether I care about the norm) but this is how it works for us. There is a tense need for connection at times, a fullness of spirit and a strong gravitational pull towards each other. Then the bonds loosen, the orbit lengthens, and we drift a few million miles apart. Part of me wants to control these cycles and part of me floats on this unpredictable tide of emotion and personality. We are a bizarre group.

I’m the oldest child, the people-pleaser and standard-bearer. This position brought with it the enviable role of babysitter for my younger brother and sister as well as an overwhelming sense of responsibility for their safety and happiness. I also developed the annoying need to fix people and the problems that they inevitably face. Frequently, I’ve come to the realization that these ‘problems’ exist for reasons outside of myself and are not mine to fix. I worry about them in any case.

My brother is the middle child and the only boy. Far from being the moderator for family dissent, he appears to enjoy sparking controversy and focusing any attention (even negative) upon himself. He was a sensitive child and carried some of that sensitivity into adulthood. That trait could have been used by an artist in his craft, but my brother instead concealed his sensitivity with a masculine swagger, not unlike a young John Wayne. Attempting to dig through his protective defenses to encounter the truth of his feelings takes monumental effort, however. I leave that to my mother.

My sister is the youngest of three. Since her age difference of ten years separated us greatly in relating to each other during our formative life experiences, we’ve lived very different lives within the same family. She was the child of tired parents, the follower of competitive siblings, the wide eyes in our dramatic family plays. We set boundaries for the ‘baby’: she could not go in our rooms, touch our toys, or enjoy our privileges. So she filled the empty places that we allowed to exist. She still walks her own path and watches our antics from a separate plain with a sense of serious amusement. She broadens us without even realizing it.

I’m a creation of my family as much as a creative force. We are all products of those early interactions. We listen, we learn, we lock away for later. Then we bring our past into our future relationships. I have to remind myself what is integral to me and what I brought forward from my family. At times, those lines are blurred – a jumbled mess of a group of people bouncing off each other in the span of a lifetime.

Yes, it’s a family.