I think many people will agree that families, in many ways, are strange things. If I remember correctly, sociologists consider the family the basic social unit of society, although exactly what a family exactly is may be slipperier to define and also varies from culture to culture.
Since I've been single most of my life, with the exception of about 2 years when I was married, I still consider my birth family my primary family unit. Currently that consists of mom, two brothers and one brother's 2 sons.
As far as families go, I think I had it relatively good growing up, although as an adult it's been a bit rockier. I'm the oldest child and the only girl, so I mainly remember from about 11 or 12 years of age through high school I didn't relate too much to my brothers except some afternoons when I had to babysit them until our parents came home at dinner time. Eventually, as we grew older, it was no longer necessary for me to babysit them, but I still felt like the effects of that former responsibility lingered on. I remember one of the brothers whiningly asking me to tell the other to stop doing something annoying, which I didn't think they would do (ask me to do that, I mean) if there weren't still some effect of the babysitting past still hanging on.
When I went to college I decided I wanted to try to relate otherwise with my brothers, so I made a conscious effort to build our relationships. That kept up until I went overseas for a long-term work position when I was about 25. Then my energies and focus sort of drifted elsewhere.
During childhood I never really knew what my brothers thought of me. Was I the illusive older sister who virtually ignored them? I never really intended to ignore them; it's just that I was always busy with a lot of other things, whether it be school, teaching Sunday school, working part-time, hanging out with friends, or any number of other such pursuits.
Now, decades later, however, I'm the fall-guy who's done everything wrong, made everyone mad and tried to destroy families... at least that's what I'm accused of. Of course, there's always more than one side of a story, and I'm sure their accusations have a grain of truth to them, but I never meant any evil and I still think I'm right in many ways. Some things are pretty complex though, and it's possible that no one really understand all the aspects. Now that we're all adults, there's no responsible parent to demand all sides of the story from their young complaining children. And young children aren't usually as clever as adults are at covering up the truth. (I doubt a child could pull off Watergate, although that was not leak-proof either, and there probably is some child somewhere who could prove me wrong).
So now our once fairly idyllic family is in shambles, with no responsible adult to patch things up. And the one parent left is completely dependent on my brothers, so the chance of her taking an objective view on things is pretty minute.
I don't think these things usually happen over night, although, as in my case, there can be an event that sort of unravels everything, not unlike the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.
Well, I think that's enough serious thought for today, and I'm feeling it affect my fibromyalgia again, so I'd better leave off here. I will say, though, that I looked for a childhood family photo to post here, and I'm thinking of one in particular where we're all dressed up to go to church, but there must be a photo album somewhere that I haven't found yet among my unpacked boxes.
Enjoy your day...
Meg
