12:41am December, 25th, 2024
You get older and one day, suddenly, you realize why "family reunions" exist.
You grow up a baby and a kid with your cousins and aunts and uncles, all celebrating Christmas together under one roof because, hell, we're all 3 and 4 year olds - and all of our mom's and dad's are raising kids, and so they turn to each other for community within that experience of being new to parenthood, all together.
But one day we all grow up, go to college, get jobs in different states. Boyfriends, girlfriends, fiances, wives, husbands etc. And so we can't all meet up under one Christmas roof. Your family is all meeting up in Texas this year. My family is all here in California. Their family is on the east coast.
And so one day, there you are, like a cohort of high-school graduates held together by their shared fondness for a life they used to share together. Only what you graduated from together was a chapter of family life. You never planned how to handle what comes after, because at the time you were so in the moment of just BEING a family together - you never questioned what it was that brought you all together in the first place - and so when that thing grew up and went away, you suddenly lost the compulsion that originally drove you to BEING a family together.
Family reunions are the day one of you says, "hey, we're all the parents now, and we have our own kids, and we haven't seen each other since we were our kids age now. Why don't we get together and spend some time with the life we used to share together. Spend some time marinating in the thing that was the foundation for our life growing up as kids.
And maybe you all decide after the weekend is up to go back to your own lives and meet again 5-10 years later. Or maybe it is enough impetus to remember the value of family, and go back to the roots of prioritizing it above your busy individual lives.
Food for thought.
Marry Christmas, from my small house in Atascadero with Mom and Dad alone this year, to you.
Documenting Struggles Unique to Men 1. Men don't live with the privilege of knowing for certain who impregnated them. In other words, if a woman is pregnant, only she knows for sure who the father is - whether it is her boyfriend/husband's, or a secret lover's. This, of course, excludes considering the option of a woman who has so many sex partners that she herself doesn't know. In this world, at her discretion, a woman can carry the child of a secret lover, and then deceive her boyfriend/husband into believing it is his in order to drain him of his resources, and steal his ability to devote those resources to someone faithful to him. This is a vulnerability that is not only most dangerous to him, but one that most of society doesn't even think about, let alone lend credibility to. So he carries this vulnerability with only the support of his brothers, but alone from the rest of society.
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