Family, Family, Family

This has been a good holiday season. All the kids (and their significant others) made time to be home for extended time. This is my dad’s first Christmas living here, and although he’s anxious to hit the road and head South, I think he’s enjoyed his time here.

I get dopey this time of year. I love being with my kids and the people they attract to our home. Right now, I’m sitting watching Little Lion Man (hence LLM) playing a vintage video game with a good friend as the rest of us putz away on various “technological” devices, just … being. 

On the rare occasions everyone is here for an evening, I suck in the time like a woman suffocating sucks in air. I know the time is short, and these evenings will get further and further apart. I am bothered when duty or people not on my “short” list (that would be people I love with all my heart) interrupt our time. 

I grew up in a family that was big on love but short on relationship. I love my siblings dearly, but don’t really know them. Time and distance keeps us apart. We all are lost in our lives, and the busyness that accompanies work, and children and just living. There’s a hole in my life because of it, because my extended family is truly amazing, and the times we are together I hold close. 

But MY family … my husband, my kids, and those who are like family … I wrap around myself, a comforting quilt that fills the emptiness I sometimes feel from growing up a youngest like an only to parents who had already lived a lifetime before I arrived.  They are close. They enjoy each other. They share experiences and friendships and are always gracious to invite me alongside them in their living. It’s a blessing. 

Often, it is life for me.

And so, nothing too deep tonight. It’s been a good holiday season, and I still have a couple precious days to hold tight and share and laugh and breathe in the lives that swirl around me, giving me happiness I could have never created on my own. 

It’s good, this family of mine.