Blood is Thicker Than Water?

There has come a time in my life where I’m looking around at the people who are family, and the people who I choose to call family and thinking it all over.

An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship. ~Spanish Proverb

They say blood is thicker than water. I see that, I would do anything for my sisters and brothers, be they full siblings or half. I would also do anything for Navy Guy, my chosen brother. He came into our lives and has been the best family anyone could ask for.

There's an awful lot of blood around that water is thicker than. ~Mignon McLaughlin

How do these people, best friends, children of people our parents once dated, sisters of boys we once dated who now live 3000 miles away, or sisters of friends we knew in high school, become family? And how is it that the people we choose as family can often warm our hearts so much more than people who are tied to us by blood or marriage? Well we often just plain like them more. At the same time they are often the people who care the most for you when they don’t owe you anything.

I’ve learned our place in a family, and the traditions we hold dear, should not be dependant on who we are married to. We can love people like family because we’ve married into them, we can leap gung-ho into their traditions forgoing building our own, but we need to know we’ve left ourselves open to losing that if our marriage falters.

Where are we when we are left out? Well, we’re at our best friend’s brother’s house roasting marshmallows and oogling his wife's beautiful hand made Jewelry (take a look WOW!), playing Rock Band with someone who has become a brother/uncle, chatting endlessly with an old co-worker, hanging out with cousins and aunts and an uncle we always wished we had spent more time with. We’re wondering how 15 years can mean so little so suddenly and amazed at the people who still consider us family.

Building a life no one can take away from you will protect you in a storm. I’m thinking about that today, the day before Thanksgiving. A Thanksgiving with a family I almost lost after Summer Implosion 2009. And I think, after all of the sadness thinking about how what I lost, though I didn’t lose it in the end, I’m ready to build my own traditions, in my own home, with my children, my husband if he so chooses, and anyone who wants to be a part of my family.

It’s my turn to singe the turkey and forget the squash is still in the oven until everyone’s finished their pie.

And thank you for a house full of people I love. Amen. ~Ward Elliot Hour

Best wishes,
RebeccaFlys

On Motherhood

This woman I know, who happens to have been a boss of mine, has made mention several times that she wishes she'd never had children. She has great girls, and she is the first to tell you how easy they have been to raise, how she doesn't help them with their homework and how they succeed at everything they try. They are going to good colleges soon, and are currently vacationing in Europe. Why anyone would say they wouldn't have had their children when obviously it worked out so well for them really bothers me. This woman has degrees up the who-ha, she is educated and cultured, and yet she continues to make mention of this desire to have not had children. It's weird. I wish I could get inside her head to find out how much of what she is saying is truth, and how much is desire for a path the rest of us didn't know she could have taken. I wonder if her husband is a very nurturing man. He must be. In my mind it's all very odd.


I know another woman, girl-woman really, who continually says she wasn't supposed to have children. She has two children by different fathers, one of which she won't acknowledge except with a certain racial slur, which is odd because it is negative toward her actual child, and odder yet because the kid is not of mixed race, really. Anyhow, she says she wasn't supposed to have had kids, medically. Yet she had two, and neither of them resides primarily with her. She is one of the smartest-quick learning women I know but she picks the worst men. Really bad men. And her children's feelings, she just walls them right off from her soul. The situation is sad really, because if she always did what was best for them, it would do nothing but improve her own life. Very paradoxical.

I've worked a lot of different sorts of jobs. And at one of them, working in an assisted living facility, I liked to read the patients files. Doing this is always encouraged; it helps aids understand the people behind the dementia. You can better plug into a person and have things to talk about if you know who they are. Anyhow, my favorite lady at this place, I'll call her Daisy, was an old woman in her late 70's or early 80's. Sweetest lady ever. Polite, with good manners and used to being kindly in charge. Daisy had been a bank executive. Probably one of the first women to work her way up like that in America. She had had a fulfilling career. Never married or had children. Her job was her life. Her friends even came to visit one day and threw her a birthday party. They had all gone to Catholic school together and had stayed in the area and remained friends for the entirety of their lives, though they saw each other rarely. Not long after this, we found out that the bleeding Daisy had been having was due to advanced uterine cancer. She was dying. And she was dying with strangers and didn't really remember the friends and job and life she had lead anymore. I saw other Daisy's in my experiences as a Nurse's Aid. There are tons and tons of Daisys.

~"The grass is greener where you water it."~

When the women I know wish away their children, I remember how it felt to watch Daisy die alone. It's not something that's comfortable to explain, the relief I have in my heart, knowing that I know I won't die that way. I have daughters and a son. I am someone’s mom, and I'll be someone's grandma someday, but it explains why I shake my head when women explain why they wish they didn't or wouldn't have or don't want their children, even as they explain away the rashness of their comments.

Best wishes,
Rebecca Flys