Visiting family
I’ve been MIA for a while, and that is because I’ve had a crazy hectic time during these past few weeks. First, we started some renovations in our weekend house, namely some major structural damage repair which meant ripping off one entire side of the house’s facade, and a small kitchen renovation. Second, I have been on vacation visiting my family in Spain and, as almost very other mother knows, that entails thinking about everything that need to be thought about… EVER (because we mothers do all the thinking, planning and organizing, let’s be honest about that), preparing for and executing all the logistics involved with such plan. I mean, who thinks about what the children may need? Who makes sure all the clothing is clean and ready? And who packs everything for them? Who arranges to have food delievered at the destination’s house prior to our arrival? Who makes sure to arrange for the cleaning lady to come in our absence? And to pay for the nanny? And to arrange all the deliveries prior to the trip so the contractors will have all they need? And take advantage of our absence to call the exterminator to get rid of those pesky ants in the kitchen?… really… who does all that? Moi!!
Hence, I haven’t had much time or energy to write any posts. But now I’m back! I will not say I’m quite “energized”, it was not a relaxing vacation, I did not have time to rest, but it was a very welcomed “reset”, a parenthesis in our daily grind routines, similar to the feeling you get with a nice stretch and a yawn after a long work session. You have to keep working, but your muscles loosen up and your mind regains some welcome clarity.
See, the thing about visiting family is that you get to talk in a couple of days about all the things you haven’t had the chance to talk about for months. It is refreshing but also exhausting… you talk about fun things, but also you discuss important matters that you wouldn’t discuss or reveal to anybody else, you pour your heart and soul into those conversations desperately looking for sympathy, approval and admiration but irremediably sometimes you also encounter judgment and unasked for advice. So depending on the matter at hand, you end up feeling closer than ever to your kin, to your tribe, the people that “get you” more than any other, supported by a web of love and understanding or you can feel like a misunderstood stranger, lonelier than ever, uprooted from your bloodline and inmersed in a cloudy abyss of confusion, you don’t know where you belong.
You want to make up for lost time with such eagerness that you may fall into the too common mistake of over sharing, asking too much and trying to chime in to all the family matters. And they do the same with you! It’s what’s called caring for the loved ones… the only additional challenge encountered by most of us who have moved too far for comfort is that you compress months of occurrences, thoughts, fears and feelings into a couple of days and then everybody becomes overwhelmed by it… it’s like somebody dumped a tanker full of water worth every shower you take all at once; it doesn’t refresh you, it crushes you!
In any event, I must confess that I have a fantastic relationship with my family. My parents are now getting old, really old, and that is hard to watch but my mom still has her incredible energy, sense of humor, intellectual curiosity and lust for life that makes her look and behave twenty years younger… my father is very different, very solemn, methodical and stubborn so they tend to clash often although they love each other dearly and have been married for over 50 years now… they each bring weight in any discussion so it ends up becoming a wonderful balancing exercise. The same is true with my brother and sister who are very similar respectively to my mother and father but with an additional heavy dose of fantastic sense of humor! So we are each very different from one another, we have our arguments and our heart opening moments, we like things and live our lives very differently but what is true now and it has always remain a constant is our massive love for each other and our deafening laughs when we are together. I soak up my family when I spend time with them and when I get back home I drip off love and renewed resolve!
