Family?

As I first write this, I'm all but asleep; kept awake only by the fact it's too early for bed. Just a warning. I'll hopefully review it for typos later but really this is sleepy musing. On family.

Well more on wondering why extended family matters.

I make no secret of the fact I'm not close to my extended family (for this entry, I'm going to consider extended family anyone beyond parents, siblings and grandparents). It's not like my extended family is small, there's four children on Mum's side of the family and a total of 15 grandchildren and 6 (and another on the way) great-grandchildren. Dad's side is much smaller, only two children and five grandchildren. My brother and I are included in those grandchildren counts on both sides. Keeping that many names straight is hard and I do not even bother trying to remember the names of partners- I know one partner's name and that's only because he's seemed to make the effort to be at family gatherings and to talk to me (or Dad who sits by me). While Dad's family lives nearby, Mum's family lives up in Sydney bar her mother who lives five minutes walk away.

Still following? Good, you're doing better than I am some days.

This entry is mostly about my Mum's side of the family. I'm not close to my cousins on Dad's side but that could be more about them being ten years older than me and I've a somewhat decent relationship with my aunt and uncle.

Not so much Mum's side. Until 2011, I hadn't seen them in fives years or more. All those people...and we hadn't seen another in half a decade.

It wasn't always like that. I do recall getting gifts from Uncle P and Aunt P when I was little but it was always the same gift- one of those stationary kits. I have a half dozen of them I never used fully because I had no one to send letters to. Uncle G used to pass down old books from his six kids to me and both he and Uncle R had children around the age of my brother and I (who are the youngest pair of cousins, if only by a year or so). There was a pool party once and a family reunion with dozens of distantly related family members (I met and hung out with the grandchild of my mother's aunt. Or something distant like that.)

Then it stopped. Barely a Christmas card exchanged, maybe a mention of them visiting our Nana who lived down here but nothing for us.

Fast forward to 2011. We have a more limited family reunion. Discuss how everyone has lost contact, realise it's probably Nana's fault with her attempts to drive us apart. And my uncles and mother decide to try and get everyone back into contact and for us all to get to know another.

And I want to know why. Yes, they are my family. But we've not talked for years, and even in the last two years only Mum and her brothers have had any sort of extended contact. Us cousins have seen another maybe, three times. Or the ones who live in Sydney have seen me maybe three times, I think they're closer to another than my brother and I are to them. We're all so different in terms of our personality- I'm going to University, none of the others my age have done so and not that many of the older ones have (if any). They're into sports in one family and the rest of us aren't sporty.

Should we be friends? Why? Does family instantly mean you're supposed to like and hang out with them?

I've got to go to all these parties and events now. I make no secret of the fact that most parties bore me. I'm going to end up just eating your food and hiding in a corner. Yes, sometimes the conversation is fun- like today's lunch included a discussion on the inheritance of blood types- but it also tends to include them discussing people or topics that do not interest me (like the best time to go the zoo in Singapore or soccer).

I'm still not sure if I should be over joyed at the thought of finally having an extended family. If this continues, and the baby shower next month seems to indicate it will, I might actually have to learn their partner's names. And how to tell the twins apart.

Written Later:

Rereading this, I'm not finding much (anything) I disagree with. I know it's probably selfish or something and my cousins do seem to be nice people I'm just...not interested? I'm uncomfortable in big social situations and any meeting with my cousins is basically going to be big just because there's so many of us. And I expect so little of them... I invited my cousins on Dad's side to my eighteenth dinner and had to hide my shock when all three actually showed! And gave me presents! I didn't expect anyone beyond my aunt and uncle...

I guess... I guess I just don't know what to think. I think I rarely do.

Nothing Has Changed

I suck at keeping a diary.

I always have. Probably always will. I'm one of those people, who will be so excited over writing in a diary when they first get it, spend hours putting their life into context in the first entry and write religiously for a week or so then forget it exists. I have one diary that I wrote in for a month or so, forgot it for two years until I found it in a box and wrote another entry dated two days to the day of the previous entry AND THEN I forgot it again but found it once more, again two years to the day since the previous entry, and wrote another entry. I've a dozen diaries in my room, none of which have ever gotten past halfway.

Why am I mentioning this? Well the other day I had a thought about something that was in one of those diaries- the one I mentioned with the entries spaced two years apart. The very first entry was about 2001-2002, just before the invasion of Iraq. In it, my- oh let me think- say eight year old self worries about what will happen if Australia joined the USA in a war. The entries written by eight year old me never make it to the invasion, I forgot the diary existed before it.

But in the next entry, ten year old me says that "nothing has changed" when commenting on the eight year old's fears. That even though my country was at war there was nothing to fear because really it didn't effect me.

The absolute privilege in just suddenly occurred to me while I was waiting for my mother to pick me up from Uni.

My eight year old self only had (limited) knowledge of the World Wars as an idea of a war and was well aware of their effect on the population via the (fictional) diaries of children who lived through them. She was worried about that happening to her. Ten year old me had near about the same kind of knowledge, though possibly a bit understanding of exactly what everything meant. She didn't grasp the fact that just because her world hadn't changed, it didn't mean that nothing had changed. She just wasn't aware of it.

I am. I'm fully aware that the war in Iraq has killed thousands of people, so many of them innocent and just like my eight old self. I'm very aware that the media coverage of the war was such that a ten year old who already had limited interest in the world's events never had a hope in hell of understanding that just because she wasn't being bombed daily it didn't mean that others were as lucky. I'm acutely aware that a fifty year old in the same time as ten year old me would have been nearly as unlikely to know exactly how the war in Iraq was affecting the people.

I'm so every aware that everything changes daily and that the phrase "nothing has changed" was a mistake...

I'm not sure what this is. A reflection on the sheer luck I had to be born when and where I was. Or on my inability to keep a diary and some of the interesting thoughts I had. I don't know.

Friends

Everyone has that one friend. You know, the one for whom saying you'll meet up at midday actually means you'll meet sometime after midday that is closer to one or even sometimes looks a lot like two. Their sense of time sucks but you don't care beyond being a bit annoyed when they are their usual version of on time or making sure they think you're meeting earlier than you are so they'll be on time.

But I've been thinking recently and I realised-I don't have that one friend. I've a load of that one friend. 

I'll admit, I'm always early. You say midday and I'm there no later than a quarter to, ten to if I'm running late. Five minutes late for me is like being fifty minutes late. I don't do if at all possible. Recently I went to a play in Sydney and I was two hours early for it. And that didn't bother me at all.

But I've noticed that- for the most part, there are a couple of people who are on time- none of my friends are like that. Sure, some of them are only ten minutes late but if you've already been waiting fifteen minutes that's a lot of waiting. Not all their fault but still. Others are later by a lot more or just don't turn up at all. 

And I don't get mad.

At all. I'm not annoyed. I don't get pissed. I'm just a little ball of worry until they show then I'm like a puppy, so happy to see that they actually came that I don't get mad. Even if they don't show at all, I just accept it and move on. After all I can just go home and talk to my friends online and that's almost the same. 

I'm sure this isn't healthy. That I'm so worried people will forget me and not show I'm so relieved when they do that I don't mind they're extraordinarily late and if they don't show well that's what I expected and it's not a big deal (and I hope my worried texts as to their whereabouts haven't annoyed them too much). My sense of self worth has always been low and I guess I've just found another aspect of it. 

Still, it's useful. Being upset or mad when people don't show or are late seems to make my mother a bundle of anger so I'm glad to avoid it. Which also might be a part of why I avoid it, to honest.