Musings about family relationships.

Today was my grandfather's 80th birthday party.  In attending the celebration I found myself contemplating on some of the paths we take in life.  I am the 6th grandchild on that side of the family.  There are now 45 grandchildren,  I think.  When I was in my growing up years,  my mothers family would get together often.   I knew who my cousins were, and they knew me.  As we have all gotten older, and families have grown larger, we don't really see each other very often at all.  I still know who most of my cousins are, however I don't know how many of them know who I am, and I know some of my younger siblings feel like they have cousins they don't know at all.

Family is something that I was raised to value,  so I know it is important to my parents as well.  And I would hazard a guess that they were quite likely also raised to value family.   So why do we let ourselves get so busy that we don't take time for the things we find important?

I know I do it too.  Sometimes when I am around my family I feel lost, and don't know what to say, or how to best interact with them, so I just stay on my little shelf off to the side, and observe the happenings, instead of making the most out of the situation and opportunity I have to spend time with them.  Even at that, in the 9 years I have been married I have lived 5 of those years in different states than where my family members live, and didn't have a lot of opportunities to see them.  Now for the last 4 years we have lived about 45 minutes away from my parents,  and yet we only take the time to see them maybe every other month on average.   Yes, that is more often than we would see them when we lived out of state, but not as often as we could see them.  Am I putting my priorities where I really want them? And if not, what am I going to do about it?

My husband tries to call home and talk to his Dad, and brother every weekend.  And he usually spends a LONG time talking to his brother.  I have to admit that sometimes I feel jealous during those conversations.   However,  I am not sure if what I am jealous of is him spending so much time talking to his brother and not to me, or that he has that close of a relationship with his brother, and I am not that close to any of my siblings.  Once again, what am I going to do about it?   It does no good to notice things, and/or complain about things if you aren't willing to do something to chqnge it.