Prevent communication breakdown…
Saturday morning, Zoom, a priceless ritual.
What a fun talk this morn on zoom with all of my fellow sibs.
It’s always great, but today was one of those days when the energy rises gently to a satisfying degree.
Zoom with my fellow sibs has proven to be a positive growth activity. It is a most worthwhile effort. An understatement that bears repeating. From one to ten, ten being excellent, it’s easy to give it a ten. Relatively minor effort in setting zoom up.
Credit goes to my oldest sister for setting up the zoom and herding us together every Saturday.
There’s even something ingenious about gathering loved ones for a zoom session. It gives the feeling of being ahead of the game, like having a leg-up on the growing difficulty of maintaining close relationships with one’s family.
Of course, there are fortunate families that live in the same city once the siblings have moved out and started their own home life. Ideally then they have Sunday lunch to gather. Reality paints different pictures too. Not to be Pollyannish about family unity either. There are family members that live near one another but hate each other's guts or choose to never see one another.
For countless families it’s considered a joy to stay in meaningful touch with one's kin. For me it’s always a genuine pleasure sharing with those wonderful people, my sibs. People from my childhood and, more importantly, from my immediate present. The past is past, gone. All one can do is continue ironing out ancient ruffles in the cloth of life. Nothing eyebrow raising for heaven’s sake, but things that for whatever reason call for repeated viewing and resetting.
The present. Now that’s another thing. Being in the present comes with its own mysterious unit of energy and, as it is the present, it’s fresh, invigorating and enlightening.
This Saturday we covered the things we’re reading, the latest books. The gamut of stuff read is as varied as are the passing clouds in the sky. Before I knew it, we’d launch into other things, including my older brother’s admittance that he’s having prostate problems. The comical side to this is a story of him not getting to a bathroom soon enough when he was on the road somewhere.
I shared I was enjoying the same conundrum. For those of you still prostrate, trouble free, first be thankful, second if you are getting some initial signs, get checked and it’s very worthwhile reading up on the subject. There are several tricks you can do to get to the toilet before you pee yourself.
Al, my younger brother, just finished a solo motorcycle trek across Africa, this after he completed a leg that went from the Canadian border to the Mexican border. Then on down to Guatemala. From Guatemala, another segment of his global journey took him down through all the Central American countries where he attempted to travel only roads off the beaten track.
This off-road travelling in crime ridden Central America is remarkable in that at any point things can go bad. But his determination to see the countries’ backsides or undersides was admirable. His pictures and videos are testament to the dirt road, far-flung rides he took.
He did all these huge rides on, of all things, a Honda CRF 250 dirt bike. A rule of thumb being that at the very least the smallest bike you’re going to see is rarely anything under 500CCs. Just the power needed to get up the steepest climbs on an over loaded motorcycle requires a much more powerful bike. Not to mention the ability to get away fast from a tenuous predicament.
He told us he’d discontinued writing up his daily runs. Until almost near the final stop in Morocco, he’d kept up a running log of his travels which he’d post in Medium. I asked him why he’s stopped. He explained it was more about possibly gearing up for a book effort. He feels that finishing this last effort on Medium could wait for a while.
It’s the gathering of loved ones that is the grace of a family maintaining open the lines of active communication. Many years ago, it was our ‘round robin’ as our monthly rotating letter was called. When the wonderfully thick envelope arrived, then I’d remove my past letter and write an update and send it on its way. This was the way we used to keep up the priceless familial ties that bind. At least back then, it was precious and highly recommended.
Then it was group internet then Skype. The round robin had petered out for a while. In part it was because some of us moved from one place to another. Life went on, which perhaps partly caused for our temporary halt in the group effort. Which is always a danger. But now with zoom it’s so easy.
Despite the usual glitches that Zoom can’t seem to shake, it’s virtually trouble free. Not perfect, but compared to the old letter writing round robin? No comparison. We meet each week, so our communications are much more up to date than with the letter writing.
We find we laugh as if we are still kids. Gentle jabbing keeps the talk lively and on its toes. There is the danger of it becoming droll, so you have to work on it, though not much effort is required.
I feel that too many families pull apart when all the sibs have grown up, married, have had their own brood of kids, realities of life take over. But ideally, this shouldn’t degenerate the bond of older brothers and sisters. It requires a bit of get up and go effort, but once the hour starts, you wouldn’t miss the time together for all the money in the world.
There is little doubt in this age of hyper electronic communication that in some segments of society there has emerged a strange distancing of loved ones, family members. This, of course, is especially true for nuclear families where the different sibs are often spread out all over the US, or the world.
After the zoom session I come away with the sense that I’ve just taken part in an energizing sharing of commentary, upbeat and refreshing. Kept positive by design. This is not a cry in your soup event. Were that the case, the weekly meet would soon grind to a halt in darkness and complaint. Rarely, does negativity help, if ever, when attempting to keep up family banter.
My fellow sibs’ average age is seventy or a little more. Making the talking with each other become a clearly vital, even necessary ingredient in life. The growing awareness of the sands of time coursing ever faster through the hourglass, now most of the sand is on the bottom, makes the gathering even more urgent.
