The Miracle of Family

Ah, holidays.

Sometimes they feel so peculiar.

I spent the weekend with my family. It was normal, more or less. We ate, and ate, and ate. We played table tennis. We exchanged names for our Christmas gifts. We laid around and watched football.

But there is this agonizing ache, among my immediate family in particular.

It's so easy to relate in time of trouble. Death, divorce, major health problems...these things draw a family out of its shell and force them to open up in front of each other. It's awkward and painful in its own right, but it's real. After some time goes by we're left with this horrid feeling of semi-familiarity. We had all the normal conversations. "How's work?" "When are you going to retire?" "When is your Christmas break from school?" "How is the car running?" "Where are you travelling next?"

But these topics aren't real. They aren't the conversations I have with my friends, at least I don't share the answers that reveal anything true about me. My parents understand my software consulting job about as much as I understand what it's like to work in the same factory for thirty-plus years.

In the midst of a cluttered house that's too big for it's two remaining occupants I watch my family: my dad with his poor fashion choices, my mom and her crafts, my brother and his dreams of hand-made hotrods. How am I so normal when they're all so weird?

Oh, yeah. I'm the one curled in the corner, with my nose buried in a book, brooding like I'm in high-school all over again.

I finally get alone with my brother and we're drinking beer and watching football. Quintessential male bonding.

Our complaints are the same. We know our parents, and yet we don't. They know us, and yet they don't. They never ask, or press, or inquire as to what is really going on in our lives. And we both admit that if they did we would awkwardly dodge the question.

The chasm is palpable and we don't know how to bridge it. And our discussion turns to the future. We know we'll regret these days. We can almost taste, my brother and I, the tears from the unasked questions when it's too late to ask.

I love my family.

But how am I supposed to buy Christmas presents for people I know too well and yet hardly at all?