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Family Visitation
Ah–home sweet home. I believe there is no greater way to appreciate your own house than to go and pay an extended visit to your relatives. Don’t get me wrong; I’m fond of my family (my mother’s side, at least), but imagine yourself in my shoes:
You have spent eight solid days in their home and felt yourself increasingly under obligation, and thoughts of homicide have begun dancing in your head. And then you have the privilege of being witness to a classic mother/daughter spat, and you think to yourself: “My God, is this what my mother and I will be in twenty years?” It’s a frightening portrait, and to escape it, you take off to the nearest metropolis, and spend entirely too much money at the bookstore. (What can I say? Reading is cathartic for me.)
But then it simply gets more awkward. Your uncle and grandfather come into the house, and all three of you sit in the living room, trying to think up topics of conversation, when they begin babbling on about the farm, and the cows that have to milked, the chicks that have hatched, and the horses that have to be broke. You’re slipping into a deep coma of depression, but then they manage to save you by relating the mule/plowing/flying grandmother incident, and you hang on for another day.
I used to love visiting my grandmother and her farm, that was always overflowing with baby chicks, piglets, colts, and calves. I loved throwing a saddle onto the red, short-tempered mare and riding a good three-mile trail to the lake and back. It was an important facet to my childhood, and I’m very grateful for it. I regret that the older I get the farther away I and my grandparents seem to drift. Don’t mistake me–the relationship is not totally ruined, not by far. I still enjoy telling my grandmother about flying across the “pond” and watching her face contort in horror, and listening to my grandfather chuckle about bragging to his cronies that his middle granddaughter had visited England and brought back that exact baseball cap atop his head. But it’s an enjoyment that is best in small doses.
You have spent eight solid days in their home and felt yourself increasingly under obligation, and thoughts of homicide have begun dancing in your head. And then you have the privilege of being witness to a classic mother/daughter spat, and you think to yourself: “My God, is this what my mother and I will be in twenty years?” It’s a frightening portrait, and to escape it, you take off to the nearest metropolis, and spend entirely too much money at the bookstore. (What can I say? Reading is cathartic for me.)
But then it simply gets more awkward. Your uncle and grandfather come into the house, and all three of you sit in the living room, trying to think up topics of conversation, when they begin babbling on about the farm, and the cows that have to milked, the chicks that have hatched, and the horses that have to be broke. You’re slipping into a deep coma of depression, but then they manage to save you by relating the mule/plowing/flying grandmother incident, and you hang on for another day.
I used to love visiting my grandmother and her farm, that was always overflowing with baby chicks, piglets, colts, and calves. I loved throwing a saddle onto the red, short-tempered mare and riding a good three-mile trail to the lake and back. It was an important facet to my childhood, and I’m very grateful for it. I regret that the older I get the farther away I and my grandparents seem to drift. Don’t mistake me–the relationship is not totally ruined, not by far. I still enjoy telling my grandmother about flying across the “pond” and watching her face contort in horror, and listening to my grandfather chuckle about bragging to his cronies that his middle granddaughter had visited England and brought back that exact baseball cap atop his head. But it’s an enjoyment that is best in small doses.
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