Family Impact

Just how important is family? What IS a family?

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from my own personal experience, it’s that there is no cookie cutter family, no ‘this is what a mother does’, no caving in when you’re presented with, ‘well everybody else is allowed to’, etc. etc.

I try not to write too detailed about my family (that’s a book that’s just staying inside me for now) to protect their innocence (ha!) as well as save us all from embarrassment (we prefer to laugh privately at our own expenses) but I have felt a great sense of ‘family’ in the last little while, and feel compelled to write, so I will try and make this as generic as possible, with the intent that you too, dear reader, can relate to, as well as share, my family.


You Can Go Home Again
One of our four have returned to the nest. This little baby bird has brought summer into our already spring-like home. The love, appreciation and laughter, is priceless. What once was a chore to do (making lunches, folding laundry, being at my children’s ‘beck and call’ – all my choices, but sometimes done grudgingly), now is something I can’t get enough of. Since the teenager at home is trying to grow up as quickly as possible and hates the ‘babying’, the young adult welcomes it. Notes in her homemade lunch, waiting up for her to come home – she is giddy with the ‘rules and regs’ of the household.

A Home by Any Other Name (is still a home!)
It’s all about being wanted and loved, isn’t it? What greater gift can there be? Recently I was able to perhaps play Yenta (matchmaker) and put together two young people. Now when I say young, I’m talking babies! What a wonderful world we live in, when those without a home or family and those that desire to make a home with a family, can be connected. Two very fine people that I know (that do NOT know each other), have recently adopted babies from Russia. I don’t know who is luckier or happier; the new parents or the new babies. Life works in strange and wonderful ways, and one thing I know for sure, there is no such thing as being loved too much.

Name your Poison
Two of my other daughters frequently call for recipe advice,(and one is a budding chef), or to ask ‘how did you make the……’ taste so good. This is in reference to the meals that they nonchalantly chowed down while bickering with each other or discussing weekend plans. Food was soooooooo non important, especially mine. Now that our youngest is gearing up (insert, chomping at the bit) to leave home for university next year, we’ve been hanging out in the kitchen together as well. Since so many of our family favorites are more ‘methods’ than ‘recipes’, methinks it’s time I get them down on paper. Staples such as Sloppy Hair, Chicken Sokoloff, Vicki Chickie, my brisket, meatballs, matzo balls, and the infamous apple noodle pudding (ok, that’s not mine, it’s an adapted version of the late actor Ed Asner, that I found in the newspaper) need to be reinterpreted and renamed (seriously, sloppy hair?) by the next generation.

You Can Call Me Al
This is my stepmom, I’m at Karen and Dad’s house, this is how we’re related, you’re not my mother, etc. etc.
Words words words – explaining to someone else is sometimes more difficult that the reality that works and is ‘us’.

I was introduced last week as ‘one of my mothers’ (I’m hoping that my hairstylist daughter didn’t see me crying as she repeatedly introduced me (and proudly) that way, and if she did, I was prepared to say it was the hair dye run amok.

Doesn’t matter what they call you, as long as you answer.

They say that you can pick your friends, but not your family. Aren’t I lucky that my family picked ME!!!