Family...The love and dramatics that go along with it.

She pulled my hair!
He gets all the attention!
Why are you always so mean?
She hits me for no reason!
Why are you such a cry baby?


Do you have brothers and sisters?  Then you are familiar with these statements and questions.  No matter how old you are, you have experienced the drama that comes with having siblings.

If you asked most people, they would say life without brothers and sisters is unimaginable.  I believe that to be true (most days).  I grew up in a very large family.  A family that was never ashamed of showing emotions, wasn't embarrassed to fight in the middle of K-Mart, never backed down from an argument, and never quite understood what "stay out of my business" meant.  I grew up in a house with two sisters and my single mother.  Outside of that existed a family the size of Norway.  Grandparents, aunts, uncles, great-aunts, great-uncles, 3rd cousins, 2nd cousins, 1st cousins, families of those married into our family, and trust me...this list can go on and on.  We lived in a somewhat small town, and all of these people live in this town when I was growing up.   Life as a child was filled with picnics, family gatherings, potlucks, church, confirmations, baptisms, weddings, graduations.....never a shortage of "togetherness."  You cannot even fathom a life without it when you are fully in it. Then you grow up.  And the happiness and togetherness fades.  

The Love:
As a child, I can clearly remember Christmas as my favorite holiday.  The ENTIRE family would gather at my grandparents house around the Christmas tree we spent every year "hunting."  (Funny enough-we called it Christmas Tree Hunting-as if the tree had a chance.)  There would be my aunts and uncles, their spouses, all of their children, and their grandchildren.  Imagine the chaos!  At least  30 of us on a good year.  We wore our handmade Christmas sweatshirts, gaudy Christmas jingly jewelry, and gathered around over the yearly tradition-oyster stew. (Is this a German or Norwegian tradition that I just don't know about?)  We opened gifts, we ate treats, we partook in the holiday joy!  It wasn't just Christmas!  We gathered at our great-aunts every Halloween...one for popcorn balls and apple cider, and the other for the GOOD candy in the trailer court (plus we didn't have to walk as far because the homes were so close together.)  

We have an odd family.  We cry  A LOT!  We cry when we are happy, sad, confused, and angry!  I cannot explain it or find reason in it...it's just the way it is!  We hug, we argue, we find joy in the smallest things (like camping together-YES over 40 people sometimes).  We live modestly and for some reason rarely do any members leave the small town in which we all grew up.  Why? Fear?  Uncertainty? Separation anxiety?  Not sure!  I could sit here and list off all the uniqueness of my family, and the quirks and traditions...but that's just painting a portion of the picture.  My point is, in the absence of a family unit---life is undoubtedly boring and lonely.

The Dramatics:
The topic of most phone calls throughout the day are probably family to family. Be it bragging about who made the honor roll, complaining about which person failed to meet your standards, whining about how your siblings cannot get their sh*$ together.  Why do we do this???  Why do we feel that it is necessary to ruin other peoples day by deflecting our problems onto other family members?  This doesn't mean that we don't care or that we aren't concerned.  But let's try to place it into a new type of context or just not mention it at all.  We know there are problems.  We all have Facebook, right?  Choose what you are going to participate in.  Let's quit getting suckered into bickering and he said she said by just minding our own business.  My grandmother said it today, "if someone has been the same their entire life, don't try to change them now."  She is so wise!  

My two sisters and I couldn't be more different.  I won't go too much into their personalities, but let's just say they are very much "egg-shell" type relationships.  You really have to be careful how you react or approach a subject or situation-because you aren't sure which reaction you will get.  I love them both unconditionally, but there are moments I wish I could snap them back into the girls they were 20 years ago.  Happy, a full future ahead of them, dreamers, saw life at their fingertips....now all I see is two women who feel stuck.  As children, swarmed by this life of togetherness, I saw us a attached and bonded for life.  Our relationships with one another were fun, stable, unbreakable, and I couldn't have imagined a future where this wasn't the norm.  But it changed and in a sense-I grieved.  I grieved that they cannot see a life beyond their imagination!  A life full of opportunities!  A life so abundant in love that you cannot contain it.  But instead of airing my opinions about their lives and their life decisions-I have just learned over the past year to let things go.  I cannot control every outcome but I can control how I react to the outcome.  Let it fly.  

Not only do we witness our own failures as siblings...we watch it happening with our aunts and uncles too!  They bicker, argue, and whine as much as us younger generations!  And at times it may even seem worse!  At a certain age, these siblings lose their filters and just let one another have it!  We watch them spend less time together, more time judging one another for their faults and decisions, and less developing a new  relationship with the person they are now.  So when we begin starting our families, the older generation we once idolized begins falling apart before us and we realize the "togetherness" we experienced as youth will never be the experience our children have growing up.  Its actually quite sad!   This is where we WAKE UP and realize times have changed.  The world is evolving and we have to stop comparing our days growing up to the youth now.  All we can do is pass along our good morals and share our bad decisions.  (And really hope that our children are as perfect as we think they are.)

But I know I am not the only one who has a dysfunctional family.  What can you change about how you read and respond to a situation within your family?  Does the situation impact you directly?  Does the situation change your future?  Does the situation harm anyone you love?  The answers to these questions can help you determine how serious your response to a situation within your family should be.  Stand still, evaluate, then respond.

Takeaway? Feel free to share your thoughts!
Goodnight chickees!!! 

---