See Through Each Other, But See Each Other Through
The Magic of Family is that they are an open book, are not really ever much of a surprise, but because we are Family the way we help each other is magnificently manifest only in Family’s special way.
Family is born to us; we are born to family. We gather loved ones to us and make them family. Family gets thrust upon us, like in-laws, or curiously placed at our feet like children of divorce and remarriage, and yet, somehow because we call it Family, and we make it so, a kind of Unity of Purpose makes us all synergistically better than we were before.
Broken Bones, Flowers and Wounded Ones
Family can be an incredible burden. Individuals can sometimes stick out like a broken bone that has pierced the flesh. And yet, because we hunker down, pay attention to the “aching one”, somehow it redounds not only to the helped, but the helper, and the rest of the closely associated ones.
When a little flower of family has grown up and about to go into a new phase, it is family that is there to honor and bring note to the singular soul trying to face life and its challenge.
When a wounded one, broke and wasted and about to become a statistic is pulled up by family and succored in the warm embrace of comfort from one or two or more, the family knows that its healing white cells will surround the one and bring it back to wholeness and vitality. And family knows that this takes time. Somehow Family tolerates. Family puts up with the noise of Expanding Self and also realizes that there will probably “lots of Thanksgivings like that!” After all isn’t that what family is for? To know the cards we are all going to play, and happily sitting down to play cards. Why, because it has its own joy, its own fun, and…it’s family!
Yes, family meets at funerals and weddings and baptisms and graduations, but family also notes through multi modes of connections private victories, joyous promotions, raises unexpected and just cozy fun reminiscences of defeats that were not total, delays that built patience, hindrances that ultimately had meaning. Family explores all of those. The rhyming, the sense, the clarity and the humorous wonder — family explores all of that with each other.
And so, because we DO see through each other, we CAN help each other through.
Yes, you are going to tell a story a hundred times in your life. Only family lets you do that! Yes, you are going to come to a “new outstanding epiphany” – you know, the one you came to last year, that was unique and outstanding and never before understood, which also happened about 5 years before the one from last year.
Families’ Joys and Tolerances
And yes, family tells each other we “look like we have lost weight” and we “look well” and are somehow “wiser and more clever” than we used to be, and truly, just more “happy looking” than we ever have before. Thank God for Family that it weaves illusions, happy and frivolous ones, delicate silken flowing sheer drapes that color the daily ways and the redundant ways life comes around at us. And because of the flavors and aromas of special family ambience we can gather in the smells of the essential oils of family that make the ultra ordinary a little more special, serene and deeply satisfying.
We can sometimes feel that family makes things more humdrum, more predictable, less interesting and completely unfascinating, but alas family doesn’t make life that way, LIFE can get that way. It is just that family puts a little bow on the package with a little note that says: “Hi, we love you”, and you know what? If you were completely alone, (it’s easy to think that you and your utter singularity) you might pose that things would be much more interesting. But really, it’s much more like taking a cotton to “our particular kind of boredom”.
It’s like family takes your “REMOTE” away from you. It’s one of those days. The kids have the remote and you decide: “Because its family you will allow yourself to be bored and let the tedium take over”.
And then, like as not, you get swept up in some silly conversation that makes you laugh, and some nutty comment makes everyone say “Euwwww”. And you realize that family has made you just a little drunk with its own kind of admixture. No, it’s not your usual beer, but a glowing little blonde green-eyed kid comes up and sits in your lap and draws magic marker all over your face. Then you decide: “It aint my beer, but it’s a sweet liqueur”.
And, since the world really doesn’t care about you, family is there to be a weather vane. Are you getting “agoraphobic”, are you becoming too “irritable”; do you care at all about the rest of the human race? Family will tell you in its own tiny little ways from all the lights that flash in their multi-colored ways at your ship of state as it courses through the waters. Or are you just a puttering little tug boat?
The Trending Machine
Family is the ultimate TRENDING machine. All of its members with all of their ages, and all of their particular little worlds, which in fact make up the BIG world, tell you how you are going over. Try your notions on family. See what you get. Like as not big disapproval from the noisy types, kind silence from the ones who think you are actually really nuts, positive pats on your pointy head from those that know you need help, reinforcement, love or just “little criticism”.
But taking the “lack of respect” that we all get. Think about the hot and cold running animosity that sits in the hearts of men and women. And besides that don’t forget about jealousy. Don’t you think Family can be full of jealousy? And yes, envy? And yes permanent deafness?
And then there’s that old “I know what you are going to say, don’t think I think you’re so smart!”
There is “Core Family” – Those that you see and talk to on a regular basis, and “Larger Family” – Family that you touch and touch you at ordinary and happy moments, and “Extended Family” – all that surround the relations and act like the little hurricane around us.
A Prophet is Not Without Honor Except in His Own Country
No, Jesus did not get respect in his home town, but if they grew up with him, even if he did “good works”, there was this gravitational pull of “hometownness”. And perhaps this is the curse of family. The statement that issues from Family is often like a genetic disorder. It says: Don’t go out and try to do TOO much different. It upsets the family order. This is when the Family Order is actually the Disorder.
It is only the best of family that wants someone to write a novel, or get an award, or leave town and make lots of money, seek fame and “make a name for oneself”. All of those things that we all know about. Some families have members that do not fall prey to this disorder. However, most families have many members who give way to the super gravitational effect of ordinariness. Family in a sense represents “generational continuity”, and sometimes Family is not up to the INDIVIDUAL breaking free from the “family identity”. When this happens, either the family adjusts and blesses the search for greatness or individuality, or it sits back in the sofa and fights over the Remote and makes mumbling comments about the new novel, or the emptiness of the new degree, or the hollowness of the search for fame.
“If Jesus Can Handle It, You Can!”
The only way to conclude the negative aspect of the family discussion is to observe that if “Jesus could handle it, you can.” You can’t get rid of family when they disappoint you. Remember the continuity that family represents is there because it “represents” the ordinary individual and provides a safety zone against too much achievement. Why? Because family guards against its own dissolution. Unconsciously of course, but still it is there.
One of the blessed aspects of family is that generally it is still there when you come back from New York, or Hollywood. I don’t mean literally, but in some cases I do.
When you break your leg, lose your job, lose your hope, fail at your second novel, decide to change your life, or just get real tired of being an “outstanding individual”, family is there to invite you to Thanksgiving and fight for the remote. And when you need to lick your wounds, have a place to sleep, hide from creditors, get a loan, start a job search or just plain stay alive; family is there.
Yes, in predictable ordinariness we can “see through each other”, but then in helping when we are desperate, we do “see each other through”.