The One in Which I Talk About Nuclear Families and Nuclei

I was brought up by parents who have instilled in me the value of "La Familia". (Nevermind that I'm 3/4 Polish and have not a smidgen of  Spanish) in me ...the phrase captures the feeling perfectly. It's more than "the family". It's The Family is Everything.)

Growing up, my family was all from the East Coast. In fact, when I was choosing a college, my parents gave me one constraint: nothing west of the Mississippi. They were afraid that I would meet someone from far away and end up moving, separating the family. I ended up at The George Washington University (yes, the THE is part of the name - Google that shit!) in D.C., so I did abide by that rule. The wrench in their plan was that Steven, from San Jose, California, was also attending GWU. In fact, we were living a couple doors down from each other in the freshmen dorms. Ah, we try to control our kids, but in the end...

We married in 1990, and in 1992, we moved to California "for a couple years" in order for his family to get to know us and our growing family. (That made sense to me because I thought, "Why should my family have easy access to the family, and Steven's be so far away?) It turns out, we can't control our parents or siblings very well either, because eventually Steven's sister & her family moved to Portland, Oregon (where his family lives), his father and step-mom built a home in Baja and spent about 9 months out of the year there, and his mom moved to Arizona. In the midst of all this, Steven began working in the wine business, so "a couple of years" in California has turned into the rest of our lives.

I give my parents so much credit for their determination to remain connected with us - especially their grandkids - despite the 3,000 miles distance between us. My 75 year old father still works full-time - Loves it! -  and travel has always been a part of it. They tie trips in with family visits and use airline miles to stay connected. When the kids were younger, my mom would buy duplicate children's novels to "read with" April on the phone. (Kiddies, this was all before Skype, y'all!) They still move heaven and earth to gather their children - and grandchildren when it works together as much as possible. The hiking trip (stay tuned for more about that!) is part of that. Oh, and Katherine & Aidan are off to Italy (for the 2nd time) in Sept./Oct. with Nana and Grandpa! So cool!

I wrote a whole blog already about my hiking trip with "Ma Familia" in New Hampshire last week, but I felt compelled to write about this first. We were sitting on the patio, and I was discussing how I was having difficulty adjusting to an obvious transition in our family. April is married with a husband and baby. She has her own new Familia, and that is her priority - and rightly so. Aidan and Katherine are infected by wanderlust and keep talking about living abroad, at least for a little while. Katherine already spent a semester in Spain while at UC Santa Barbara. Thank goodness for Skype!

In the middle of this conversation, I looked across the table at my mother, and we held our gaze as everyone chattered around us about the subject. Silently, she was saying to me, "See? See how hard it is to have your children go away?" I got it before, but now I really GET IT, if you know what I mean?

I get it now, Mom!

People talk about "nuclear families, but how does that take into account that cells divide, and there are more than nuclei? In the olden days, people continued to live close to their original nuclear family. FYI, My maternal grandmother was devastated when my father moved our family from NY to NJ because of his job.  We used to go to dinner at her apartment in Brooklyn on weekends, and she would load us with that blue tin of Danish butter cookies for the "long drive home". To this day, those tins make me think of her and those drives.  

Heaven forbid we should get hungry on the "long journey" home and resort to Donner Party-esque behavior!

My parents didn't forgive Steven for "taking the family away" until he earned his stripes through this challenging time we are going through right now. Being so far away, they've had to trust him to take care of me the way they would. I think that being a caregiver is a #freepass to La Familia, don't you?

For Steven and me, it's a New World, and we're still just trying to figure it out. We talked about this on our walk yesterday. We resolved to go on scheduling family traditional time, and whoever can come on any given day/year, we'll be blessed to see them. (Except Thanksgiving. EVERYONE must be there for Thanksgiving. (It's the first rule of La Familia, kind of like the Fight Club only different...)

Thanksgiving 2014

I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about the legacy Steven & I will leave behind when we are gone (whenever that may be). I hope that is at least one of them that we've passed down to our children. April was the one that made the rule that the siblings couldn't go to college more than 2 hours away.(Katherine cheated a little by saying, theoretically, one could fly to Santa Barbara in under an hour.)  This month we'll meet her halfway in between San Jose and Santa Barbara. A new world calls for adaptation and ingenuity, right? She's bringing her boyfriend. Hmmmm....we've yet to hear where he's from....or what he knows about La Familia....