WordSisters

Category: Family

  • Thoughts on Aunthood

    Many families are close-knit with aunts and uncles living nearby who attend every birthday party, soccer match, school play, and graduation. But I’ve always been the aunt who lived hundreds of miles away from my nieces and nephews. I wasn’t around so they haven’t known me well, but I knew more about them than they realized (after all, brothers and sisters do talk).

    My side of the family 2022

    I used to regret living too far away to actively participate in their lives, but lately I’ve realized getting to know each other as adults is good. I can see them for who they are now. The adult version. Minus the endless stories of their youthful foibles to trip us up. We visit in-person once or twice a year and supplement our ties with social media posts and occasional texts.

    During visits, I ask about their work or whatever is most important to them. When several of my nieces became mothers, we talked about their experiences. I validated their challenges—sometimes caring for tiny people is monotonous. Breastfeeding can be hard—do what’s best for your situation. A couple of nieces have expressed their thoughts about relationships, and I’ve supported whatever approach works for them. I happened to be around when one nephew was having a bad week and he shared his feelings with me. Conversations with another nephew might cover philosophy or food. 

    No doubt there are other older people in their lives—coworkers, in-laws—but as the sister or sister-in-law to their parents, I have a special perspective. I can share history and insights about their parents and other family members, rounding out what they know. I’m free to appreciate and accept them without the judgment a parent brings. Sometimes I offer different views than their parents’, but my nieces and nephews are old enough to draw their own conclusions. If nothing else, I’m an additional older person who likes and supports them.

    In the moment, I think they appreciate my efforts. I don’t expect too much though, especially when I recall how little I knew my aunts and uncles when I was younger. They were kindly presences but largely peripheral, or so I thought. Now, I understand how aware aunts are, even if we remain behind the scenes.

    My interactions with my nieces and nephews are brief—not much to go on—but they mean a lot to me. I always knew being an aunt was important, but I didn’t always know why. Finally, it’s this—they add to my life and I hope I add to theirs.

    My husband’s side of the family 2018

  • One Generation Gives Way to the Next

    When our sons were small, my husband and I invented our own customs for Christmas, because my parents and his lived hundreds of miles away. Making the holiday special was up to us. We missed our extended families, but we were free to do whatever appealed to us—there was no other schedule or tradition to consider.

    A few years ago

    We read “The Night Before Christmas,” filled stockings with candy, assembled big toys like the play kitchen, and added batteries to toy guitars and handheld games. We took a bite out of the cookies left for Santa and scribbled “Thanks!” on the notes our sons wrote (Santa has good manners). 

    As our boys got older and Santa became a sweet memory instead of an actual visitor, our habits changed. The four of us began cooking elaborate meals together—three days of them. Christmas Eve Eve’s dinner would be whatever the group craved—maybe Southern BBQ or cassoulet. An Italian feast (calzones, fagotch*, and homemade pasta) became a required ritual for either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, and the third meal might be something fancy like Beef Wellington. Later we welcomed our sons’ girlfriends (now wives) into the kitchen.

    When they married, we understood some traditions would have to flex; after all, our daughters-in-law and their families have traditions, too. Changes have already begun. This Christmas the six of us will be together on Christmas Eve. My husband and I will miss our three-day extravaganza, but believe this is the right way forward.

    If we have grandchildren, I envision more changes on the horizon. I’ve watched and learned from friends and family who have married children and grandchildren. They’ve all had to adapt and invent new approaches to holiday gatherings. My brother and sister-in-law spend either Thanksgiving or Christmas with their married child and her family, but not both. Other relatives get together after Christmas, because their child’s divorce means accommodating two separate parents and three sets of grandparents. A friend doesn’t see her children and grandchild until New Year’s Day—scheduling the group at Christmas has gotten too complicated.

    My friends and family don’t relish being alone on Christmas, but they accept the situation and make the best of it. As grandparents, they are no longer the center of holiday celebrations—their adult children and grandchildren are. It’s their turn now.

    I expect changes will continue for my family. As my husband and I age and grandchildren arrive, we’ll adapt again and again. Gracefully, I hope. After all, this is how life is supposed to go. One generation gives way to the next. Inherent in raising children is the assumption they’ll become independent adults, and as a parent, I will be less central. One day, they’ll be responsible for arranging (and cleaning up!) our holiday celebrations, and eventually their children will do the same for them. 

    That’s as it should be.

     *The family’s phonetic spelling for a form of focaccia in which ground meat, tomato paste, fennel seed and other spices are spread on bread dough, rolled up, baked, and sliced into pinwheels.

  • Learning a New Language: Love

    “Every household has a first language, a kind of language of the home,” says Alex Kalman in The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration and Discover Joy in the Everyday.

    If that’s true, the language of the home I grew up in was chaos.

    My dad worked long hours in a Honeywell factory, assembling parts for our nation’s space program.

    Sometimes he came home after his 12-hour shift. Often, he went out drinking. Sometimes he got drunk. Occasionally bad things happened. Like the time a buddy who was driving plowed into the back of a parked car, sending my dad through the windshield and to the emergency room to have his scalp stitched back together.

    I learned about that the next morning when my mom sent me into my parents’ bedroom to wake my dad. I was in sixth grade at the time and, nearly 60 years later, can still picture his dried blood on my parents’ white sheets and the rows of stitches that ran up my dad’s forehead and into his balding scalp.

    There was also the time my dad drove his car off the road and into a house. And the many times he just didn’t come home. By then, he owned a neighborhood bar where he and his favorite customers often stayed drinking until the wee hours of the morning.

    And, no surprise, there were the frequent fights his drinking caused, fights he often didn’t remember but that I still find hard to forget.

    Although there’s a lot about our COVID-induced isolation that I resent, one thing I do appreciate is that it’s given me the time and space to think more deeply about the patterns of behavior I grew up with and which ones no longer serve me.

    Therapy and a supportive partner are a big help. So is Dr. Gary Chapman, whose work centers on helping people learn what he refers to as the five “love languages”:

    1. Affirming with words
    2. Giving gifts
    3. Offering physical touch
    4. Performing acts of service
    5. Spending quality time together

    Although I wish the language of my home would have been different when I was growing up, I’m working hard to make love its language–and mine–now.