Estrangement & Awareness

I have never understood families that live with estrangement. Stories are told of sisters who don't talk to sisters, parents who don't talk to children, and relatives who purposefully don't see each other for years. I've heard good Christians remark on their own families with this same notion and always wonder what came to be and how they can live with the divide.

I am standing on this bridge of a change of phase in my life and reflect on this notion. I think I have never understood it because the family I grew up in lived with a great awareness of each other. We lived with a way that put the other, that put family, before the self. And this awareness called for compassion, consistency, caring, and a selfless desire to hope the best and care the best for the other. As decisions and thoughts were made and formed, it was always a family decision and nothing was made without the family in cohesion about it. We were a unit, one.

The starkest story to prove this point was my twenty second and twenty third birthdays. Both birthdays, I cried. The twenty second I was a college graduate, living under my parents roof, with no job. Feeling the void of leaving college life and seeming to have nothing to prove my worth as a result. So I struggled. Most people forgot it was my birthday, barely any cards or phone call received.

And I walked through the lodge house in the morning and mom was packing a cooler and dad was washing down the boat. Mom smiled and matter-of-factly stated, "Your dad was thinking about going boating today. We were thinking maybe of going to Gull Lake. What do you think?"

Dad wasn't thinking about boating. Dad was thinking about me. It was his way of caring and reaching out to me on my birthday. He knew that my favorite thing in the whole world was to go boating, especially on a different lake. So he passed it off as commonality, but really, it was his 'dad' way of caring beyond measure and lifting me out of my birthday and making it be special.

My twenty-third birthday was the same. Another year back under my parents roof, no friends around, a job quit and none ahead, and feeling like a failure. I remember saying "I don't even have a cool car to drive. I just wish there was something, anything, cool about me right now." But dad, once again, was hooking up the boat and just so 'decided' it might be a nice day and he was getting antsy and wanted to go boating on a different lake. So 'he just so happened' to put a few skis and life jackets in and mom 'just so happened' to pack some Diet Cokes and Doritos so we 'just so happened' to go boating on my birthday as a family of three.

These special memories of family awareness are held so special to me. A deep, caring sense of each other and each other's needs and talking and communication, and silent concerns shown through remarkable ways.

Other decisions were made and noted as such: curling in the family room to talk about how we all felt about changing churches when I was in elementary school, or touring a new house on Ivanrest to see how we all felt about moving.

But its this family awareness that is necessary, that keeps one together. Its the need for communication, care, and concern, that puts the other before the self. At any age, at any stage. It is this matter that makes all feel important, keeps estrangement at bay, and makes ones family feel like family.