Rebuilding Rob

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

Do you prefer having a large/close knit extended family, or a small/distant extended family?

The answer to this prompt really is a matter of one’s own perspective I think.

I’ve never had what I would consider to be a “close-knit extended family”. If anything, I would say that my family was definitely closer than it. While, I was younger. and as we got older, I think we all drifted further apart. I also think this is quite normal. I feel like having children determines the closeness, or lack of closeness in a family. More point, I feel like as the children get older, they start to have their own lives and intern they have less time for their extended family. Typically, this is not out of anger. This is just the way people are. We develop our own networks and our own activities in our own lives. All this is just a part of young people forging their own identities.

Another thing that I know happens, as I’ve experienced it firsthand, is that when the matriarch or patriarch of particular family passes, a lot of things get let out of the proverbial closet. People start to reveal their true families about one another. Often times, the mom or the dad, or the grandmother of grandfather as it may be – are the glue that holds a particular family together. They are the firewall so to speak. I saw it happen on my mom side of the family win my grandfather – my mom‘s dad – passed away. When my grandfather died, the firewall on my mom’s immediate family had been breached. Then alot of true feelings the family members had for one another were revealed.

Of course, then there’s always the “outside interference“ factor: in-laws. There’s a great quote by Malcolm X where he says “in-laws should be considered outlaws. I have seen more Muslim marriages ruined by in-laws than any other thing“

I bring up in-laws specifically because again of my own experience. Years ago, when my grandfather died, my mom, her half sister, and her brother were discussing plans on how to look after, visit and take care of my grandmother. Mother and the old man ultimately picked up the lion share of the weight on this one. In fact, my grandmother did live with us for a few years when I was younger. When I was about 12, I think.

One of my aunts, my mom‘s youngest sister by 13 years, picked up her things and moved to Texas following the death of my grandfather. My mom‘s oldest sister, technically, a half sister, instead of helping out from time to time with my grandmother, taking her over to her house for overnight and even weekends. But I specifically remember one day when we can watch my youngest cousin for a weekend. His dad/my uncle/my mom‘s brother, and his wife came over to pick up Eazy-E. Mother and the old man decided to confront my aunt and uncle about possibly taking my grandmother from time to time. My aunt, by marriage, freaked out! She had a way of controlling my uncle so my uncle just went along with it. This actually led to an estranged man between my mom and her brother for several years. In fact, they did not even reconcile until several years later when all of us kids were older And my uncle was actually quite ill.

Why do people do that? Why do people wait until almost it’s too late to reconcile? And maybe even more than that, why do in-laws make their way into families and infiltrate things?

I get it, this is my uncle’s wife. And he has to think about his own family. That is something nobody really talks enough about: this idea that when you get married at the side to start your own family, they are your primary family now, not your immediate family growing up since childhood. Evidently my aunt must’ve forgotten that when you marry into a particular family, you marry whole family as well. She wanted none of that evidently.

I look at what happened with me and X 2. I very nearly sacrificed my relationship with my. Nuclear family in order to build another family of my own. But look how that turned out…

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related (and perhaps, not-so-related) posts:

• Teacher Armor and the Saturday Clearing
• The Extra Day: A Ten-Year Memory
• Of Training Wheels and Christmas Lights
• Charity Starts at Home (And I’m Back in My Childhood One)
• The Muscle of Empathy

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The article “Loosening or Tightening Family Ties” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.