I spend a lot of time thinking about the natural development of families, particularly those families that include children who are my childrens' age. Caitlin going away to live and returning home for the holidays marks a change, the first of some pretty serious structural adjustments we're bound to make in the next few years. Walker's a Junior, giving us one more year of something like the status quo before things get a good deal quieter around here.
More than just the launching, which is good and right, there is something of a generational nature going on. Someone is "coming home" to our house.
Robyn and I come from families that are in many ways very different from one another. For that matter, Robyn's families are very different from each other. I could write a book on this subject, and may some day.
My family of origin is punctuated by distance, physical and emotional. I have four aunts and uncles living nearby and only have contact with one of them. I have a large number of cousins and we're friendly and glad to see one another when we do, but we're just not regularly involved in each others' lives. My mother left her family and never really returned. My Dad had a very strained and difficult relationship, particularly with his mother, and trips to visit his family were tense, filled with anxiety and unresolved sadness. Perhaps this is why we always celebrated Christmas at home.
Robyn's parents divorced when she was young. Her mother is warm and supportive, rather a nut, loves a good scotch, and is very much a part of our family. She can be counted on to make us an odd meal, let the dogs out, get a kid from school, go to a Christmas concert. My mother and I used to describe parents like Donna as "over-involved." Our implication was that it's the natural course of things for family members to grow up and move AWAY. Donna has taught me that families hang together, support each other in all kinds of practical ways. It's not over-involvement. This is involvement.
LeRoy is really a child of the Great Depression. He was raised to work hard and scrap for everything he got. Sports and the arts were frivolities as far as his father was concerned. LeRoy's dad had the contract for county road maintenance in Benton County and if LeRoy had extra energy there was gravel to throw. He's a very accomplished man, very bright, very active. Connecting with LeRoy really requires a project to work on, however, an idea to be analyzed. Let him use that big brain and deliberately think his way through a problem and he's at his best. He has what could charitably be described as great difficulty with emotional connection. Hug him and you can feel his ass pucker. It's hard to get him to hold still and talk to you about anything real. He plays favorites sometimes, has lost contact with one of his (best) children, tends to give with one hand and take a little back with the other. LeRoy's a hell of a lot kinder and gentler than his father was. I think he's doing the best he can.
Christmas has been structured around these two divorced families for years. Years. Donna get's Christmas Eve, LeRoy get's Christmas day, sometimes the following Saturday. As Donna's gotten older and her house had gotten smaller, the large Christmas eve gathering moved to my brother and sister in law's home. The pattern didn't really change, though.
This year Robyn proposed that we have a Christmas Day open house and stay home. Anyone can come visit who wants to. This caused some rumbling in the jungle. It seems to me everyone is pretty tired of the old pattern but no one feels comfortable shaking it up. My gal did it. This year we get to spend Christmas Eve in our own home. We will spend some of Christmas Day at LeRoy's. Couldn't get a consensus on that one, mostly because the step-sister was still locked into divorce era thinking: "He never gets to have us on the real holiday." She's in her late 40's, and well, as my Southern friends say "bless her heart." LeRoy, at 80, has wisely decided just to give us all some money and let us do our own shopping, which is a big change from his perspective. The whole sitting around a circle watching a lot of people open an endless number of presents until we lose the will to live ritual will be a thing of the past.
Tomorrow, perhaps in the morning, we'll go out to the tree farm and take down a small pine to decorate. Christmas Eve is open to whoever wants to share it with us. Now our kids will be coming home to our house. As the year goes by I have some wishes:
I hope that my children look forward to coming to visit us. I want them to come when they'd like to come and feel comfortable when they're here. When they have children (a long time from now, please, God!) I want them to stay home with them when that makes sense. I want to be involved, on terms that make sense for my kids, and for their kids.
I'm no Christian. I can and probably will rant about how many awful things have been done in the name of someone's "truth." I'm not even really a theist. If God's running this he/she has a wicked sense of humor. At the very least, The Plan is much too complicated for me or any other human to understand. What this holiday means to me is not about virgin birth (yikes!). It's not about family traditions that no longer serve anyone. This holiday is about connecting, giving, taking and spending time.
I will be playing the part of the parent no one dreads seeing.
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