As I look around me and I see all that I have it makes me start thinking about what I once didn't have and most importantly what I have always had. For this blog I want to focus more on that latter and talk about the things that we have always had and don't sometime show appreciation for that. What I am referring to is family. Growing up we spent a lot of time with family. Our cousins were more like our brothers and sisters our aunts and uncles were more like another set of parents, our parents were definitely our parents and our grandparents they truly held everything together. But as we got older and we began to come into ourselves we began to go our separate ways. The closeness that we once had starts to fad away. We have our own families but our generation of kids don't see each other as brothers and sisters they are cousins and they are not around each other that much so the closeness is not as strong. We, as their parents and cousins are still relatively close and when we get together we reminisce on the good times we had as we look at pictures and remember what we were doing and where we were at. I don't know if our kids are going to have that same pleasure. I'm not saying they are not close but sometimes we are so caught up in our own selves that we don't expand outside of our household so our good times are within our own house.
Ok, here's a question, how many of us live in the same city as a lot of our family but only see them at special events like weddings, funerals, Thanksgiving or Christmas... Is that the way we were raised? No!!! Growing up we didn't need a reason be around family or a reason to stop by their house. "I was in the neighborhood", "I hadn't heard from you so I just wanted to stop by and check on you" or "Michael was asking to see his cousin so we stopped by". No real reason and you were always welcome. We received them with a hug and kids went and played and the parents figured out what we were all going to eat and had "grown folk talk".
It's funny because our parents are still like this. Like whenever we would go to my Dad's in Cleveland, he would pick up the phone and call his sisters and I would call some cousins and next thing we knew we had a BBQ at his house. People brought whatever and we had a good time. I have always loved this and he, my mom and others have talked about our families loosing their closeness. Our families are so large and expanded that we don't know who is "kinfolk" and who isn't. We have to do better and stop taking advantage that they will always be here because they won't. We need to get our closeness back and let our kids feel what we felt and have memories like we did.
I'm going to stop because I could take this down so many different roads and end up writing a book. I will end this by saying, it is never too late to start this back up. I am challenging all my family to get close again. My family is HUGE when you look at both sides and I know we don't all know each other but we need to at least be able to recognize faces. Let's create memories our kids will look back with as much join as we do.
Ready...Set...Go!!! No More Excuses...