Family

I just spent the weekend with my mother's family. Some of my closest friends growing up were my cousins. Four of my mother's siblings still live in or near the town where I grew up, although many of my cousins have moved on, some even to other countries. I love my cousins and aunts and uncles quite fiercely, and I miss how easily and regularly we once got together. My cousin Deb's husband says that facebook was made for people like her, and I told her, "It was made for families like ours. That's why we call it 'cousinbook!'"

In so many ways I am not like my family. I vote differently, I attend a different church, my opinions and tastes are in sharp contrast with many of theirs. At the same time, and oddly enough, I feel so at home and able to be myself when I am with my extended family. I especially feel free to be the kind of parent I truly am. My kind of strict is their kind of strict, and my level of "don't worry about it" was introduced to them by my own mother years ago. They're used to it by now.

When I walked out into my aunt's backyard and saw two eight year olds trying to climb the tent poles I had to laugh- that is SO my son! And when I asked one of them, the one highest up the pole, if he also climbed trees he said, "I live in the country, of course I climb trees!" That is the kind of confident, "What's wrong with you?", answer any of my kids would have given. Later I saw one of the college age great-grandkids up in a tree and I had to grin.

It's not that there's never been friction or disagreement in my mom's family. They like to say there are as many opinions as their are Ramseyers, and family legend has one uncle telling one of the aunts, "You go on and pray about it 'til you come around to my way of thinking." A cousin said he'd be more likely to come to this event if I could promise him no one would start talking politics. I also don't think everyone in the family has that same sense of, "These are my people," that I have. But I guess I can't write their story, only mine.

My family makes me feel like the quirks in me make me both fit in and stand out. I guess that's really what everyone wants, isn't it? To be unique enough to be special, but not so weird that you have no home? I'm glad that I have family that gives me that space.