THE GLUE : — a conversation with my grandson.
A grandson and I discussed life today and I am the stronger for it.
His 28th birthday party held just between the two of us over brunch has become a very comfortable way of sharing as he has grown up from boy to man.
He described to me our family in such loving terms, having discerned somehow, within the dynamic of creativity, chaos, busy schedules, and the kind of scrapes people like us get ourselves into, that we love one another in an over-reaching way. He sees our strange family as glued together in a very strong way by love.
[BACKSTORY: — Meanwhile another family member feels estranged and very hurt, I have heard recently — disappointed that the closeness we had during the earlier years has dissipated with separate galaxies squirting off in very different directions. Where is the glue, she wants to know. Why do we speak different languages all the time, and not the old language of earlier family history?]
My view is that we are in the “adolescence stage” of our core family. That the generation that I am the older member of has lost its earlier founders! The last round of grandmas and grandpas have passed away. Some are too young to have memories of those now gone. My father knew only his first great grandchild! Now he has five who never got to see him. So a good deal of our family “personality” has become just a legend, told to the children and each other as if it is a fable. My grandson asked me about a lot of the DNA connected people that he never did and never will meet.
Any kind of change does a certain kind of injury to our known-world.
The phases of growth are fresh and, for our current American family, usually welcome adventures, but current events, in time, fog over our past and make it a memory.
We visit the memory and are, perhaps, “sentimental” about it. What was our only world and reality has morphed into something different. For a time.
What of the adventure of maturing and then becoming ripe and and then receding into old age and diminished abilities?
There are losses for the old, I can knowledgeably say, but we are used to it by now. We have already said goodbye to at least several, and sometimes many worlds. We have done our grief in all its sadness, fear, anger, and acceptance over lost people, places and things.
By now,we know from experience that nothing is forever — really. It all goes away eventually. As we will go away eventually.
Are we made empty by all this? No. Strangely there is a core of strength that remains firm and has learned to count on itself.
My grandson calls it love. I think he may have something there.
It doesn’t look much like love during passages when there are no kisses or cuddling, and no silly times around the table. When someone is missing. When a person is away from someone who was always there in the past, and cannot see or touch them. The only ones left are the ones who have arrived later and they only have second hand tales to share, and are making their own tales in the present.
And they, like we have done, rely on everything being safe and constant, as babies do. Until they find that things are not constant.
I believe that love still stands steady and strong. There is something that binds and has strung all the phases together, just as my grandson described today. Something that will come with us into the next place because it will become part of the next “home” where one can again partake deeply, feeling safe.
And some of us believe there will even be that reunion ahead where the familiar is waiting for us!
©SGHolland 2017
