For Better or Worse

Nope, today's topic is NOT marriage,
it's Family.

Although we think they shouldn't, and often we don't want them to, some relationships, including friendships, marriages and heart throbs, come and go.

On the other hand, for better or worse,
family is forever.

You can love them, like them, hate them or despise them. You can interact on a regular basis or ignore and avoid them for years, but family is always family, whether you want them to be or not.

You can pick your friends; you can choose the people you date and get serious about, but you are basically stuck with your family, and you can make the best of it, or not.

So what do we do when we aren't surrounded by family? Most of us create a circle of friends who become a new "family" for us, and in some ways they fill the spot even better than family, and in other ways we still know that it's not the same. We can't get away from that basic craving. We need that family connection in our lives.

Holidays are good excuses for families to get together. Thank goodness the holiday seasons and weekends are usually long enough for us to recover from an overdose of "family!!!!!"

You know what I mean. No matter how much you love your family, spending a lot of time with them can be exhausting.

There's usually lots of food involved at these get-togethers. Bad, candid photos are almost a given. And then there's the talk-talk-talk. Seriously, how long can you talk with your family without someone saying something that doesn't aggravate someone else.

Come on, who knows you better than your family or what buttons to push? Who knows better how to evoke laughter and tears in each other? Who knows those stories, that make us moan and groan, but we still long to hear, about 'what was' better than the people who were part of it all?

These are the people who share the memories of your lifetime, and sometimes remember them better than you do yourself.

But how well do we really know our family?

We get busy with the concerns and pressures of our own lives and put off spending time with our family. Oh, sure, we say, "call me," "we should get together for lunch," or "I'll see you at Christmas." And then somehow time gets away from us, years fly by and and we miss whole chunks of time and experiences we could have had with each other.

We assume we have all the time in the world to catch up, but we don't. Something happens; lives or feelings change. We get older, get sick, move away and apart, or die; the kids grow up; the babies are having babies, and all we're left with is a useless handful of "what-ifs".

What if I had done this or that. How much different everything would be--if only.

This holiday weekend is all about remembering, but there's no reason it can't be a time for new beginnings.

I'm sorry to say I don't know my family as well as I should.

I don't spend as much time with them as I could.

I am only now learning to make more time to be with them and seize opportunities to tell them how much I love them.

It has taken me a long, long time to discover how lucky I am to have the family I was dealt. They are funny, smart, beautiful, loving, wacky, and complicated, and I wouldn't want them any other way.

Happy Memorial Weekend!

Hope everyone's was half as good as mine.

I spent time with my family.