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.

Using Your Imagination

When I was young dad would say 'use your imagination'.  I have always thought I don't have much of one.  However, when I see things I get totally inspired and am able to re-create ideas with little twists of my own.  But I cannot claim to have done anything original.  In fact, no one has for a long time.  We are able to take things and improve on them according to our own perceptions.


What I choose to do with ideas and what someone else chooses to do with the same idea will turn out completely different.  Our imagination is at work.  When we create something, albeit based on someone else's idea, our idea blossoms based on feedback from our family and peers.  I have a memory of an instance which would have fed my artistic leanings from the very beginning.


My brothers had to take summer school in high school, the need for credits to graduate I assume. I didn't want to be left out so I enrolled in a speed reading course and an art class. The art class stays with me to this day, some of the fundamental instruction and the free form projects we accomplished.  My drawing was juvenile at best, a page of rain drops colliding - clustered together, so that all you had on the page was a series of tears.  It was interesting at best.  But Dad looked at it with encouragement.  He told me to use my imagination.  


With that in mind I built on the idea and created a series of faces.  Still juvenile; but the difference was someone encouraged me, saw that I had the potential to create something just a bit unique.

So much from Dad stays with me as a reminder to encourage those around us. His encouragement fed my desire for approval.  I will forever be grateful for his perception of what I could do. What we create may not come from an original idea, but our creativity will make the ending results unique.  Thank you, Dad.