the family rub!ks cube

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It's interesting, reconnecting with cousins and family that I have not talked with in years. Family shifts in the last couple years have made some of us look at each other with new interest outside of our habitual typical connections. It's completely unexpected but invigorating too.

Some of the old patterns lurk in the background with the potential to trip us up, but wow, there is so much possibility. We are adults now, with experiences and perspectives that let us rise above childhood petty needs.

We are still testing each other out in some ways... I hear echoes of other generational issues sometimes. Mostly though, what stands out is how we have broken through some of the old crap that kept us apart now that older members of the family (whether through death or aging) have lost the old controlling grip on what we think and feel about each other. Or maybe we are simply learning to know each other as adults. Instead of playing out old patterns from our parents, we are making new ones, improvising a new relationship.

I am interested to see how I click with relatives I never thought of as friends before. And conversely, some of the people I was closest to early in my life have receded in importance, mostly through personality and philosophical differences. Toss it all up in the air, and it all rearranges.

Relationship improvisation. It's way cool...

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Seeing a pile of children, a new set of cousins, tumble and play on the same floors where we used to play, I couldn't help seeing with double vision the past overlaid with the present. Familiar voices drifted about. I kept expecting my aunt (recently passed away) and my Dad (not here this weekend) to walk into the room... and I caught myself looking around to see others not present.

Once, talking to the child of a cousin, I gestured to my uncle and referred to him as "grandpa," and had to pause for a second to get my chronological bearings! (My uncle actually is his grandpa.) What year is this again? I'm watching the years expand and contract simultaneously, refracting in all directions, and we're all caught in time, the same cycles and family connections over and over again. Whoa!

It used to be me, down there playing with my cousins, all of us. And now the generations have moved up a bit, and I'm in the middle generation. It feels kinda nice, actually. I enjoy being a relative to a new generation, one of the responsible adults who entertain and raise the younger ones. I enjoy being in this sea of family.

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