I love my family, but...
There's always a caveat to that sentence isn't there?
In my case it's that I love them but I wish they were more like a 'real' family. I wish they were supportive and loving and close and caring. Unfortunately they're distant and diffident and unemotional and logical. My brother less so, thankfully, else I'd probably not come back here more than once a year - if that.
My parents are incapable of showing love and support at times when I need it. Open emotions make them uncomfortable - their repressed Englishness means they just can't deal with it. I honestly can't remember the last time my mother hugged me properly or without awkwardness. My dad only hugs me when he picks me up or drops me off at the airport and it's always a big quick 'manly' hug.
Which is lovely and all, really. It's not what I need but I know they're not going to change. I wish things were different but have to be realistic that in their seventies the ability to alter their personalities so fundamentally has pretty much gone. So I try to find the family I crave elsewhere - with friends. Which blows since I'm not very good at making friends, and appear to be excellent at losing them.
Anyway.
I just wanted to share this gem from my mother. When I arrived here I told her that the relationship I'd been in had ended and obviously I am looking a bit sad and haggard. So she proceeds to pretty much tell me to take a teaspoon of cement and harden the fuck up - except that, in her inimitable way, she does it by quoting a 17th century poem at me. Then tells me to go talk to my big brother.
Hell, even as beaten-down as I am that made me laugh. Family: can't live with 'em; still illegal to hold pillows over their faces till they stop wriggling...
5 comments:
what a wonderful woman
Close your eyes and think of mother England....
I maybe didn't quote that bit of malarky correctly, but whatev, you get my point.
you are really crap at losing this particular friend, just for the record.
love, you are completely and utterly stuck with me.
*biggest hug*
xxxx
I hear you man, but at least you get a manly hug at the airport. I've never had more than a handshake from my father, and I just want to say thanks for all the times you've picked me up from airports, because neither of my parents have ever met me at the airport before.
And on isolation - I crave that kind which means no sight nor sound of cars or industry, just nature, but the isolation I sometimes feel in big cities is altogther another matter. It's disturbing to say the least.
Dude, as long as I actually have transport you can rely on me to meet you at the airport every time you visit. With a hug. Shame that I live in one of your most hated places in Australia! Hopefully I'll see you in Godzone sometime this summer - miss you man.
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