Families

Born into a family with brothers and sister, mother, father, aunts, uncles, cousins and even what my mother referred to as kissing cousins, I barely knew what privacy was, let alone who I was.

There was always someone around and yet it was still possible to be lonely. I never questioned that then. I find it understandable now, but still rather amazing.

Large families like mine were invaluable teaching aids. Sharing, caring, loving -- these things were simply part of life. Never questioned, in fact, taken for granted while I was plopped down among all this living and learning. There were other, slightly less savory things learned and taken for granted too and that is what made life more difficult as I grew older.

First of all, my expectation of everyone else having had these same experiences of people and family turned out to be a false one. Secondly, not everything I learned was necessarily something I really wanted to carry forward. Only there was no list of these things for me to peruse as I did the unthinkable and moved far away from the world that I grew up in.

It has been one long experiment: doing what I knew to do, living how I'd always lived and learning from the resulting good, or bad feelings what worked and what did not. I was able to discard some of my habits immediately with the pliability of youth and desire to make things better. Other things took longer to change because they were so deeply hidden within the folds of my thoughts and actions that I had no idea they had anything to do with what was going on in my life. I am sure there are still things here that need work and if and when I am able to discover them I will weed them out or prune them, or do whatever I am able to do with them.

I discover other things that seem to be more strictly me and these too need to be nurtured, or disposed of depending on the feelings that spring up from them. It has taken me a lifetime to bring this garden of diversity that is me into some kind of focus I can understand, but lately I am finding myself more and more at peace here, almost as if I am part of a new big family. One with an unlimited number of aunts, uncles and cousins, but also one with a much larger house where privacy is the norm and I have more time for contemplation.

In the company of me there is no to take the blame, or the accolades for the peace, love and joy that surrounds me moment to moment. This is the jumping off point for the rest of my life. There may not be any great splashes, but there are bound to be moments when I am so immersed in it that I lose perspective. That is what it is all about.

Life isn't over until it's over. In the meantime it is a learning process.