I M Perfect lady

Everything always comes down to feelings or maybe the absence of feeling a feeling.

 

It is hard to explain, but I feel the absence of feeling a part of a family.

 

And by tossing in ‘a family’ the feeling wouldn’t be satisfied, not just any ole family will do.

 

When you think of family, do you have any idea of how much space of memory it takes up in your world, how much of your world consists of family?

 

Unexpectedly a feeling of being an orphan ripples through, a feeling of being alone, floating unattached, no firm strings of feeling holding you secure and protected, that you are out in front, alone.

 

Each year the ‘feeling’ of being outside of a family lessens, but there are moments when I am moved to revisit the loss.

 

Families carry a feeling, families carry you when you can’t carry yourself, families carry your confidence until you find your own, families protect and nurture you, families have certain connections that those on the outside can’t see, families.

 

Families create their own little circle of protection against the world.

 

Without family vulnerability comes in along with an absent sense of who you are.

 

I can catch a little glimpse of being adopted, how you are still not connected to your birth parents, one step removed, good, but not good enough.

 

It almost seems worse to have had birth parents, but absent the makings of a family, minus the correct feeling from family. 

 

Our birth parents didn’t form a protective circle around us; instead we lived unprotected from them, vulnerable within the circle of family.

 

Within the circle of family you are hurt and abused. 

 

Wouldn’t that be like the wolf living inside with the chickens?

 

Here is a clip my mother put in her Grandma Journal, in December 2001.

 

The stick-together families are happier by far.

Than the brothers and the sisters who take separate highways are.

The gladdest people living are the wholesome folks who make

 A circle at the fireside that no power but death can break.

And the finest of conventions ever held beneath the sun are the little family gatherings when the busy day is done.

 

There are rich folk, there are poor folk, who imagine they are wise, and they’re very quick to shatter the little family ties.

Each goes searching after pleasure in his own selected way,

Each with strangers likes to wander, and with strangers likes to play.

But it’s bitterness they harvest, and it’s empty joy they find, For the children that are wisest are the stick-together kind.

 

There are some who seem to fancy that for gladness they must roam,

That for smiles that are the brightest they must wander far from home.

That the stranger friend is the true friend, and they travel far astray

And waste their lives in striving for a joy that’s far away,

But the gladdest sort of people, when the busy day is done,

Are the brothers and the sisters who together share their fun.

 

It’s the stick-together family that wins the joy of earth,

That hears the sweetest music and that finds the finest mirth;

It’s the old home roof that shelters all the charm that life can give;

There you find the gladdest play-ground, there the happiest spot to live.

And, o weary, wandering brother, if contentment  you would win, Come back unto the fireside and be comrade with your kin.

        By Edgar A. Guest

 

Isn’t it amazing and profound that she feels sticking together is the utmost importance, even ahead of what you are sticking to.

 

The stick-together family and she tried valiantly to save that family at all costs. 

 

At all costs.

 

She spared nothing to see to that.

 

She also wrote of her two sisters, one is 25 years older than her, “and very seldom came to family gatherings.  She was very self centered and she missed out on fun and love.” 

 

Another sister was 8 years older “she went her separate way. She never took time for family unless she needed something.  She died in California at the age of 39 of ovarian cancer.”

 

She goes on to write, “What I am trying to say to you is always take time to call, write and visit each other. Be there for each other, even if your own plans need changing be there.  You will never regret it.” 

 

Her perceptions still amaze me even if I have lived the consequences of all of them.

 

Putting family first.

 

Love, where is love in this?  All I feel is responsibility to hold it all together, to keep sticking it back together no matter what!

 

The guilt at not being a stick-together family girl overwhelms me at times, the comrade that fled, abandoned them in their darkest hours.

 

I didn’t stick together, I fell apart.