Family. what is family, precisely?
Although I have been bombarded at an easy pace these past few days with the struggles and uneven dynamics of my immediate family unit as of late, I have not felt the burden nor the empathy to truly evoke any further thought on such issues, despite the blood ties I have to these people. Yes: situations are bad with my schizophrenic cousin, now resigned to a psychiatric ward of a nearby hospital. Yes: my aunt is feeling the guilt, presumably, of a mother who tries so hard to keep up appearances while her world shatters in angry fragments around her. Yes: my cousin, affected by it all tremendiously-watching her sister's recession into a fate that has no positive end-while dealing with the breakdown of her own nuclear family; holding up two separate burdens while cradling everyday life, wonderful children, and the intuitive knowledge that she could have achieved so much with herself, had she prioritized her person as she does her world.
All the struggles of my family, all the heartache: and yet, I rationalize it all; getting angry at past neglect and present realization of such; shaking a mental finger and repeating a sage 'I coulda told you so' in my minds eye at the surreal circumstance no doubt faced in such a time; removing myself from all associations, if only because I do not feel as though I am involved to a degree in which I choose to care more than when exposed verbally to such realities of my family.
In retrospect, I am not surprised at my own apathy. Beyond the odd visit over coffee or a dinner, or the once-yearly Christmas reunion that segments the family into age categories and minds it's p's and q's, I have no relation to these people beyond snippets of biology and a shared-albeit obtusely so-history between us all. Muted further, perhaps, by my own independence in general, and my deviance from the whitewashed, white-picket mentality that my cousins, aunts and uncles seem to have resigned themselves to: for better or for worse.
Reading Barak Obama's 'Dreams From My Father' (indeed I once again reference this iconic text in a disjointed and cynical modern world) has illuminated me to another idea of family, another perspective on the communal unit that encompasses such a fickle and intriguing bond. Obama, not knowing the intimate family history of his now-deceased father, has recently (in my reading) traveled to Kenya, his family's place of origin, to meet his other relatives and collect the mental artifacts that will piece his associations together, forming a more cohesive idea of who his father was; who he is.
Reading his recollection of his family in Kenya, I found myself noticing some stark differences between his family and my own-beyond the obvious of location, culture, race, gender dynamics. His family was, much like the people he encountered in his work in Chicago, tied together by strife of circumstance, hope for a better future, and necessity of relation to maintain a sense of shared struggle. They instinctually cheered in unison when encountering a brother who went beyond their collective norm of communal life and, moreover, who remembered them in the process. They situated Obama as a beacon to a better future and a steady stream of hope in the form of one of their own: at once striding the line between family and icon. They did not overtly express a need for this man, yet the undercurrents of circumstance and reality denote a responsibility, for any empathetic family member, to help out those so readily accepting and culturally tied to their family bonds.
Obama enlightened me, in his prose and his story, to an idea of family that was at once need-based, selfless, and bold. It was routed in far more history and sociological context then I could ever know or imagine, and the push-pull of necessity and mere momentary exchange-how both could be encompassed in a few words of advice, or a mere drop by meeting-created a framework for a family that, at it's core, was deeply humane and mortal in nature.
My family, as a byproduct of being bred and raised in a new world, is not these things. Beyond my immediate family unit, the breakdown of communication is inherent in the lack of caring, the inward-oriented mindsets, the independent and raw attitudes of groups of people with no real connection to each-other, trying desperately to maintain composure for an outside world that forces us to be happy and hugging and laughing, as a unit. Don't get me wrong, these people, my 'family', are nice and innocent people. But the central unit ties to a lack of empathy: a general lack of true concern or bother with things they can't relate to, or don't understand. An attitude that all can be resolved from within, and keeping up appearences are all that is required for a tolerable Christmas gathering.
When I think of the dynamics between my own and Obama's family, I wonder how a similar situation would be handled from his perspective. Would there be this hush-hush exchange of communication concerning the plight of our relatives? Would such open and honest fall from grace be treated as a pity party for those indirectly involved? Would it become an elephant in the provincial room, one to watch out for when we all get together at our next drawn-out exchange? I very much believe that this overt subduing of real issues and emotion, and the child-like quality to the exchanges surrounding such concerns, would not be apparent in his world. Perhaps it is due to an overarching knowledge of the dire straights his relatives experience on a daily basis, wherein they do no privledge, nor hide, issues of the heart and mind from collective understanding. Perhaps it is because they know how important their fellow sisters and brothers are to their foundational outlook on life, and how any one of them could be afflicted as such, and would desire the same concern and aid had it been their own person in this position. Perhaps it is because they care about each-other.
Questions abound on a sleepy sunday morning..
