Family

Well, I have just returned from my impromptu trip to Portland to visit one of my moms. I had planned on making pretty much the same trip a few weeks from now, but after she suffered two strokes in three weeks, I was prompted to move things up quite a bit. This all happened the same week that my other mom and sister were in a car accident. Having so many emergencies with family members certainly forces you to look at things, and spending extra time with them added to my contemplation. This is really an attempt to lend words to my thoughts without much purpose, but that is the great thing about journals- they serve whatever purpose you want them to.

As always happens when I travel, I become even more thoughtful (a scary thought, I know) and I often get inspired in different ways. In addition to the family significance to this trip, it was also the first time I have driven so far alone. I drove my car to Portland, and my brother and sister-in-law are driving it back even as I type this. I was able to spend some time in Denver, and make a quick stopover in Salt Lake. I really like both of those cities. Salt Lake is really too far away from anything I want to live there, but it is nice to visit. It is certainly beautiful, and like Atlanta, many improvements were made to the city because of the Olympics. Denver, on the other hand, is certainly a place that I could live. I am even more convinced now that it is a great stepping stone for me between KC and my eventual residence on the coast(s). I haven't made any hard movements yet, but this trip certainly has me keeping my eyes open in that direction.

As I mentioned, my family situation certainly received some examination. It is the first time in a few years that I have even seen some of my "immediate" family that was there, and definitely since I was able to spend some serious time with them. The best part of the trip was spending a lot of time with my brothers, Jack. When he was younger- about 15- he lived with me, but since that time, we haven't really spent a ton of time together. I see him every week or so, but it isn't really anything substantial. Things have improved somewhat since his fiance came to work with me and his son was born. I am in love with my nephew.

I really liked getting to spend a lot of time with him again. When he was younger, we were really close, but he started spending a lot of time with another brother, Mike. They are only a month apart in age, so this makes a lot of sense, but Mike and I... well... took different paths in our life, and have very little to do with each other now... intentionally. Though I still care about him, he and I just don't mesh well at the moment, and when Jack started getting involved in that life, we also fell apart. I am excited because after this trip I think we kind of got past that, and after spending more time with my nephew, I am even more in love with him (though he was a heathen for most of the trip), and I think that considering some of the interactions Kellie (Jack's fiance) and I had with our family, we are even closer now. Add it all together, and I think that if nothing else, this trip pushed us together and made at least the four of us more of a family.

I wish I could say that it was the same for the rest of my family. It was a weird combinations of feelings that I had. On one hand, the scare with my mom as well as the environment she and my other siblings lived in, definitely kicked my protective nature in overdrive. I wanted so much to make their lives better, and it exasperates me to no end that they haven't seen the need to do so themselves. It is not that they are happy where they are, but that they haven't initiated any change that will improve their situation. I am still unsure what will be done, but I know that no matter how complacent they are, I have to do something, but also have to remember not to do everything for them either. That delicate balance with people is something that I am getting better at, but is still a challenge.

Another feeling that I unfortunately felt was distance. Kellie and Jack arrived a day before I did, and when I was driving into town, Kellie called urging me to get there as fast as possible so that she would have someone to talk to. I wasn't sure exactly what she meant, until the first 10 minutes I spent there. There is a level of closeness with Jack and his brothers that I don't necessarily have, and when they are together, they sometimes exclude the rest of the world. That in and of itself was hard enough, but as more time passed, I just felt that in some ways my life is so disconnected from theirs. Kellie certainly felt the same way, but I am not sure to what degree. To feel that way with my own brothers was deeply concerning, but I realized it wasn't even just them. My mom is seeing someone, and he has 5 kids of his own, and even they seemed more connected. There were just similarities that we didn't share and it seemed burdensome.

I think that part of this goes back to something that I talked about before, about the connection to family. I only felt a very tentative innate connection, and as I watched and listened to them, I realized how utterly different my life is from theirs. Somethings were tiny, like the fact that all of them were drawn to speaking Spanish, whereas I speak French. Some things aren't so small. All of them to some level are still grappling with the fact that I am gay. Though they won't say so, it is obvious sometimes when they don't mean it to be.

Maybe the differences don't matter. Maybe I can draw enough from our similarities that our differences won't matter, or in some ways will even make things better. Some of my best friends are very different from me, and some are the differences are the best things about our relationship. I am not even sure why it feels so different with them, but I couldn't shake the feeling of being an outsider. Strangely enough, there is also a certain amount of idolization that some of them (strangely even the adults) express, and I think if anything that this is making the situation worse. I think Jack respects me, but doesn't feel the need to go beyond that, which is probably something that makes us able to have a stronger relationship. I am not even sure what to do with that.

I have always been the caretaker of my family in one way or the other. I raised one of my brothers and sisters since they were four and five, and as the oldest was a support for my mom as well. When my other mom appeared with four more younger siblings that had spent their lives hearing about the existence of some mythical older brother, they immediately fell in line. Since that time, partially because I am the oldest, and also due to my ambition, I have been the most financially stable person in my family, and have often been the source of financial aid to them as well. I am also the only one related to everyone in my family, and for some reason have always wanted to keep the family together, so I also seem to fall into the connector/peacekeeper/emotional rock as well. Mix all this up and it leaves a difficult situation that everyone deals with differently. As my siblings have gotten older, some of them have resented my position in their life, while some embrace it, but none of them seem to have found a simplistic relationship with me like they have with one another.

Well, it is getting late, and I could probably go back and forth thinking about this for a long time. Perhaps now that I have come back, being detached will give me some answers, and maybe even this trip will be a positive step in cementing some of my family connections, or answering some of my questions as to the nature of family.