I used to hate family bonding time with my extended family. Growing up, I saw the drama that the family business cause (both directly and indirectly) to how we all got along. I’ve never been a huge fan of big family meals, and up until recently, I didn't very close to my father’s side of the family. After a series of events that happened last month, I have since changed my mind about that particular thing.
Yes, good looks run in the family.
As I mentioned on my previous post, I recently took a trip to El Paso, Texas to visit my cousin, A. At the time, my biggest worry was trying to figure out if I should wear or not a certain black dress during my trip, once I was there, I realized how pointless my worry about it had been (but for those of you who care, I did end up wearing it). While it was a short trip, It has been probably one of my favorites in my short almost-26 years of life. Two days in the middle of the dessert with my older, wiser cousin A, her husband J and my younger, carefree cousin F taught me more about family and acceptance (of both, others and myself) than any other extended family bonding time I’ve had before.
We spent our time driving around the Texan freeway, spilling our hearts out, asking each other for advice of things as simple as what shoes to get a boyfriend back home, or as complicated on how to properly raise kids. We also spent a lot of time drinking. Honestly, if there was ever a prize for red wine consumption, we’d take gold, silver and bronze. It was precisely during one of those day-drinking moments, when we were all talking about how crazy our family is, and how we each have lived (and survived) through the scrutiny of our very conservative and religious relatives, that I realized something that changed the way I feel about our loud family.
We could all write a whole book, maybe even a whole saga, of pages filled with how fucked up our families are. I mean it, there aren’t enough pages in a notebook to tell all the stories of how our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles have traumatized us or made us feel less than worthy. At the same time, we could all write ten more books about how blessed we are, about how much our families have done for us, wether we realized it at the time or not. We could write endlessly about the crazy, but for every bad story, we could write an epic novel about the good times. And no, I don’t just mean my family. Pretty much everyone has this same experience. All families have bad, but also, all families have good in them.
It took a little rosé and some pool time for the three of us, the family rebels: the drunk, the fat and the gay, to figure out that no matter how far we are, and no matter how bad we screw up, we will always have each other. It took a few couple bottles of red wine (I told you, we’re good with alcohol here), for me to realize that it’s easier to try to understand the other person’s situation, than it is to judge and hold on to old grudges.
Xo,
C.