Family time

One of the things I value the most is family, this is not unique nor unusual, but I'm discovering it's not universal. Some people have given up on family. Some families are broken, scattered from sea to sea. Others meet at the dinner table every night, but are divided by invisible fault lines. A silent, silverware-scraping dinner table is a sad one.

I've been graced with a wonderful family: two loving parents, a wacky older sister who gives me hell sometimes, but I can always find heaven in the countless smiles that she has painted onto my face. We always sit down together for dinner, even through the worst of times. I've sat through those silverware-scraping meals, but somehow someone always breaks the ice. My family talks, a lot, and we don't detour around the uncomfortable. We face it head on and work through it. But all these things can't be true all the time, we are far from a perfect family, but at least we try.

But what about those families that have lost hope? That don't talk to each other, feel like they can't? What about the families that have been accepted as broken, to have an "Out of Order" sign taped on its front door for the rest of their lives? Even if that's how its been for two years or two decades, could they still be fixed? Should they? Is family still a prominent enough figure in every human heart that it is worth the effort?

I can't imagine that anyone would be able to honestly answer no to the last one. No matter what your family's been through, I think everyone still has that longing to have "the perfect family" or at the very least a family that could stand to be in the same room as one another. Nobody wants to stay broken.

So why do we stop trying?

Do we assume the rest of our family wants to stay apart?

Do we think our family doesn't want us? Are we so scared to ask to be taken back, that we just stay quiet. Shrink into our separate rooms. Don't say how much I desperately miss the way things used to be, and I hope your doing well, because I don't even know you anymore.

Why should we be afraid to say this, when our brother or sister, mother or father, is probably going to bed after those silent dinners thinking the same thing.

Thinking about you.

~Kat