Grace

My belief system should be clear to you, Constant Reader. I’ve often used the Einstein quote in my four years of blog-iverse blather. There is a God and He offers miracles daily. I believe. It’s a choice.

I also had grand Parents, who tried their best to get along and raise four kids…though they didn’t raise the siblings to get along with me.

My mom and dad were egalitarian, gallant – my sibs not so much…

We’ll talk another time about the ‘outlaws’ to which I’ve shifted my kinship. With no background battles to win in present day turf, we’ve always gotten along gracefully, with grins.

My parents modeled parity and I fully subscribed to the plan. As an invested observer, my husband, a wise man, has said, “Your mother got tired… (I was the oldest) and quit teaching.” Thus the tantrummer and the disabled won, and, sigh, I was raised with all of the responsibilities and none of the rights. In the end, bullies often run families, not cooperative spirit and love.

I feel it now, in the holiday season, because my husband and I made over a hundred trips to spend time in our families’ cities, neither of which was our ‘Back Home in Indiana’.

Seriously, none of the sibs – either his or mine – recall our dedication. We didn’t grow up in the towns where they’ve lived forever-and-a-day. Our discomfort is keen in their apparent lack of mutual caring and concern. Like the earth is flat and we live on the other side, falling from their sphere.

Thank God we live on the sunny side.

But having recently endured a holiday feast from hell, a meal fit for Franken’s novel, Corrections, with our friends’ two children, spouses, and grand children, we find the unfitness of families to truly celebrate all members is universal. Cain killed Abel, Joseph’s brothers stuffed in a well in a jealous rage… Modern times sibling rage is unrivaled by Biblical tales.

Yes, we’ll continue our pattern of ‘Home for the Holidays’. Our home, that is. We gave up on our roots family visits because few recall we equally divided our time, to the minute given my math expertise, for 30 years. The relatives lost our presence. They squabbled and quibbled, harrumphed and squashed thought that we had others to visit in the area, no kitchen to contribute to meals, were travel-exhausted, etc.

They granted us no humanity, no grace or gratitude. God, I miss my parents.