Thanks to those readers who offered suggestions for topics you'd like to read about! If you have any further suggestions, feel free to leave them as comments here. Today's topic was suggested by one of my elementary school friends - how do I deal with living so far away from family?
To answer this question, it probably helps to start a few generations ago. Most of my great-great grandparents immigrated to the US from Germany a little over 100 years ago, and I'm assuming they left many family members behind in the process. Another branch of the family came from England by way of Canada, and they probably also said farewell to relatives when leaving the motherland. So, I may be genetically predisposed to relocation.
My own parents are also trailblazers of sorts. After growing up on the East Coast, my father was the first of his siblings to move away, accepting a one-year job out west (where he still lives 40+ years later). Every two or three years we'd make the pilgrimage out to visit our grandparents and all the relatives. That was probably one of my first new cultural experiences, actually - learning how they said "frankfurter" (well, technically frank-foot-ah) instead of "hot dog," and catching lightning bugs at night.
Meanwhile, my mother left her small town in NW Oregon for college nearly 2 hours away and wound up staying as well. What can I say, the mid-Willamette Valley must have hypnotic powers :) During my childhood, we saw my mom's side of the family a lot more often than my dad's since it was a relatively short drive. I mean, when I was a kid I thought it took FOREVER to get there, but really it's not that bad. We spent lots of time with our cousins, creating our own "cousin language," putting on plays, coming up with new games, and generally enjoying being kids.
Now, the extended families are starting to scatter as my parents' siblings reach retirement and decide where they want to live out their golden years. My immediate family still lives in Oregon, though.
So back to the question at hand: how is it living so far away from family? Memphis is definitely far away. DF has an aunt in Arkansas and I have one in North Carolina. Those are our closest family members. But to be honest, I'm pretty much used to not living near family. I haven't lived with my parents since the first summer of college. I've tried to get back and visit as much as I can over holidays, and summer breaks during grad school. We stay in touch these days mainly by text and email. With the grandbabies now, we're also Skyping from time to time.
I know that I miss out on the more routine aspects of life by not living nearby. My family members are pretty good about telling me stories of interesting things that I miss (sometimes such good storytellers that later on, I actually think I was there to witness the event!) We have a number of traditions that we try to carry on around holidays and birthdays.
But now that we have kids, I'm starting to realize the perks that I'm missing by being so far away from relatives. #1 at the moment is free babysitting by people I trust who actually would love to hang out with the kiddos. The boys don't have any first cousins (on either side of the family), though hopefully someday they will. Once they do have cousins, I hope they will have the kind of fun together that my cousins and I did. For that to happen, we'd probably need to live close enough that they can visit each other regularly.
Perhaps DF and I are just too independent for our own good. We've talked about ways to live closer to family. We're somewhat limited by his job in terms of location; his employer has several different offices, but none in his home state on the prairie. California is a realistic possibility some day, but then I'd have to be a Californian and I really don't know if I can handle that! Plus I don't want to live in the next dust bowl... And then we have to consider our dream of living in a foreign country for a few years, which would be a whole new ballgame with kids!
I think the key for us will be creating our own traditions within our new little family so our boys have a sense of belonging right from the start. We'll also make it a priority to visit both sides of the family as often as we can to create lasting memories. Beyond that, we'll have to figure it out as we go along!
File under: NaBloPoMo Day 25
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