Remembering

Sometimes I forget. I forget the pain, the sadness and the anger that my family evokes deep within me. Most of the time I don't. Sometimes I forget the amusement I oddly enough find in our dysfunction. Most people will say they have dysfunctional families, but mine takes the cake. It goes so far beyond embarrassing, weird and sad that I actually laugh at it. What I always fail to remember is how very good it feels to sit with someone who understands. Who can laugh with me and not just because it's so ridiculous that there is no other way left to react, but because she understands, she has experienced it. SHE KNOWS. There is something that brings about a sense of peace deep within me when I am able to spend my time with someone who doesn't listen or speak of it out of sympathy, but as a way to remember our shared history.

My cousin was here last week and words cannot describe how very amazing it was to see her. We have not seen each other in 12 years, and I could probably count on one hand how many times we have seen each other in person. We do not talk often. But despite that, we have this weird, freaky cousin sense. We are a little over 9 months apart in age, our children are exactly nine months apart in age. We begin and end relationships with similar people at roughly the same time, with people that came into our lives through similar paths. We seem to have rough spells at similar times, and after talking about our parenting experiences, parts of it are eerily similar. A friend of mine who got to meet her said it was like looking at a shorter, more blunt version of me. Five days was nowhere near long enough.

I have spent so much of my life trying to let go or forget a large part of my fathers family that I forget how very much I love and cherish some of them. Why does it have to be the part so damn far away? Having Katie here reminded me how even in the parts of life that I have deemed painful, there is beauty and love, and something to cherish. And, she is just too awesome for words. I am truly blessed to have such wonderful people in my life.