Tuesday, March 6, 2012

21st Century Family


In this day and age I am reminded of how much family needs each other.  The blogs I read are interesting and fun to follow.  Of course, like anyone else I love to have comments on my blogs.  For the most part it is family that comments.  I have several readers, but like me, they don't comment all that often.  So I was thinking about what lengths our family goes through to help each other out.

The common family dynamic is no longer two parents, two kids, one dog.  This would be an aberration.

Check this out:  for years Gramma Brown lived in a mother-in-law home next to Aunt Karen.  Now that Gramma is gone cousin Julie occupies that address, hopefully helping Aunt Karen out as she cares for her infirm husband, our Uncle Don.  Aunt Karen has been my ultimate example of selflessness....but even though she may growl about it now and then; it doesn't take away from her commitment as she in turn, took care of Gramma, Uncle Don as well as Julie.

Then there is my address, courtesy of Mom and Dad....I moved in several years ago and stayed so I would be available as they aged and needed more help.  Dad, of course, is gone now but Mom and I are going through the same scenario.  It has been a life saving location for me.

Or Dawn and Yo, who's house is definately a 'yours, mine, and our' locale, their main extention is Laura, a full time nurse who needs assistance raising her three kids, courtesy of Dawn and Yo.  At a point in time my son  also called their house home.  Dawn and Yo are like that.  If Darcie or Andrew had a say in it, they too would have been raised in that house by them.  Knowing this doesn't take away the love or the closeness Andrew, Darcie and I have.  If I had a choice I would be living with Dawn, too.

Which brings me to another example: Darcie with her little family is currently dwelling with her mother-in-law Angie.  In this case it is a mutual admiration society.  Darcie and Angie love each other and would be close friends even without Mondo or the kids in common.

Point is, our family never stops being our life.  We reach in deep and we make room for whatever is needed.  Lane and Jean do this with their kids....mostly against their will, I think, but they do it because they love their kids even when they don't like them.  In the last 10 years I think that at least 3 of their kids lived with them.  Help goes both ways in that situation.

People can seldom afford to live alone, at least in our family we would be happy with 10 acres and the agreement for everyone to dwell within.  Must focus on that, as I am not sure what my fate will be when Mom has gone.  In the meantime, I have my family.

5 comments:

  1. So so so true!!! And I've come to love it. Keeps us all close :) If we all had our own space I think in a way we would love it but we would be completely bored. I wish we had our own street. We could all be neighbors.

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  2. It sounds like you have a fantastic family. We have fallen on hard times and lived with relatives in the past. It's good to know that no matter what happens, you have somewhere to go.

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  3. Grandma I think your right we should have our own little 10 acres, it could be a farm and we could all have our own houses on it. Oh and we could invite the circus to come do a show for all the people in town all the time. If any of the writers in the family ever wanted to just bust out with a book they could close themselves up and after we don't see them for a month, BAM! Nobody would have to work, unless they wanted to, we could just sell food we've grown. It would be awesome and yes I realize that this comment puts me up for ridicule but I don't take it back. This should be our long term plan.

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  4. LOL Patience! Love the idea of having the circus come to "our neighborhood!" I do agree that our long term plan should be to have that 10 acres for us all to live on! Collie and I have talked about this plenty of times. Jeremy convinced me long ago that we should have cobblestone pathways to connect our "dwellings" with each other. And there was a movie I loved at one point (not enough to remember the name though) that had an amazing courtyard surrounded by awesome apartments and the neighbors would all hang out with each other in the courtyard. I love that idea! And a good hot tub and swimming pool would be nice too. A game room. A craft room.... A fireside room..... oh the list goes on and on!

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  5. I love this post. Family is so important to who we are. As I begin to see small comments and well wishes since my Grandpa Brown's death, I realize how much of my extended family I do not know. We should count our blessings everyday- even when our family drives us crazy.

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