Ever since my parents left this past weekend, I've been feeling a little low. It was so good to have them here. We spent many hours together each day, drinking wine or taking walks or watching Jeopardy or playing games or reading near each other. My parents spent so much time with my daughter, doing sewing projects and baking projects and house repair projects and taking her to activities and listening to her practice her instruments. They took us out to dinner and watched Carla so my husband and I could take a mini vacation. They fixed things and helped tremendously with Thanksgiving dinner. And now they are gone and the next time we plan to get together is in March. I miss them. I hate saying goodbye.
But there is a distinct possibility that our goodbyes will be fewer and farther between. I am so reluctant to post about this because I am afraid I will jinx it… but things are moving forward, and it looks like my parents may be moving to our state. Like, thirty minutes away from us. I am suppressing an excited squeal just at the thought of it!!! It is so exciting!!!! All the exclamation points!!!!!
I am looking forward to this for many reasons – not the least of which is that I will breathe a little easier once they are no longer spending 100% of their time in the remote northwestern forest surrounded by literal wolves and lions and bears, a ninety-minute drive from the nearest emergency room. But I am also just so excited that we will live near other! Within a reasonable driving distance! We could just decide, out of the blue, to get together for dinner!!!
Ever since I left home for grad school, I have been separated from my family by no fewer than 1,500 miles. Currently, we live 1,900 miles away from my parents. Previously, it was 2,200 miles. (My brother, for comparison, lives 2,400 miles away from our parents and 4,000 miles away from me.) Planes fly to cities near my parents' house, but there are no direct flights to these cities and then you have to drive 90 minutes to get to their house. Visiting one another requires long hours of travel and lots of expense. When my husband's family lived in Europe, it took less time to get to their house than it took to get to my house in the United States, from our college, which is also in the United States. This is a lot of boring numbers to say WE LIVE FAR AWAY.
You are starting to understand my excitement, yes?
I am also excited, of course, for Carla. She will have grandparents nearby! They will be able to attend her sporting events and music performances! When she has an urge to make a pumpkin pie with a real pumpkin, she could just… join my mother in her kitchen and make one like they did this Thanksgiving! Maybe my parents will babysit occasionally, or even have Carla over to spend the night! I don't know; we haven't worked out the expectations yet. But it's all really wonderful. I feel sort of breathless with the possibilities.
I grew up seeing my grandparents very infrequently. My parents moved away from their (separate) home states once they got married, to a very rural town in the northwest. Their siblings, too, scattered to farflung states across the country. If I was lucky, I saw my grandparents once a year. Maybe an aunt and a cousin or two every couple of years. (Although admittedly, my memory sucks. I can remember specific occasions with family, but not the dates or frequency with any sort of reliability. Maybe we saw them every year; I don't know.)
All this means that I have NO IDEA how to exist in the same place with my family. And I don't want to overwhelm my parents with "CAN WEs" and "WHY DON'T YOUs" and "I CAN'T WAIT TOs" when they are probably going to want to settle in and make their own friends and establish their own routines. But obviously I want to be part of their routines!!!!
* Deep, calming breath. * Okay. Clearly, I need to chill out. I am just so over the moon about them being close to me.
Here's where you weigh in: If you live (or have lived) near family, I want to know how and when and how often you interact with your family members.
First of all: Which family lives nearby, and how near are they? Is it your family of origin, or your partner's?
How often do you see each other? And what do you do? Are there regular get-togethers, or one-off interactions? Do you have Sunday dinners each week? Do your parents take the kids every Friday? Do you go out for coffee with your sisters every first Wednesday?
What do you do for holidays? Do you all get together, or do you split things up?
Do you have a "come over any time, let yourself in the front door" type of relationship? (I… do not think I could do that. And I don't think my parents could, either. But I think my in-laws would be that kind of people.) Do you get antsy if you go an entire day/week/month without seeing your family members?
I am most curious if anyone has been in my specific situation: where you went from No Family to Family Nearby. What kinds of adjustments did you undergo?
If you could re-design your family interactions, knowing now what you didn't know at the outset, what would you change?
Possibly because I grew up in a small family – just me and my brother, and we are six years apart in age – and spent so little time with our extended family, I find bigger/more tight-knit/more physically-near families to be so fascinating. Like my friend whose brothers all get together weekly on Zoom for a family chat. Or my friend who goes to her in-laws' house every single Friday for dinner. Or the friend whose sister married her husband's best friend. Or the sisters in Bad Sisterswho are so up in each others' lives they plan a murder together. What do I know – maybe that is a totally normal level of familial intimacy.
I want to know all about your experiences – and hey, even if you don't live near family and never have, I want you to weigh in on what your ideal Family Interaction Situation would be.
Guess what? It is the final day of NaBloPoMo! I made it! Thirty posts in thirty days. Congrats to everyone who participated and thank you to San for hosting! Thanks so much for sticking with me, this month and beyond. To find a list of other NaBloPoMo bloggers, visit San's blog here.
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