A family trip pt1

We went up to Malabar, Florida to visit family for New Year's. With it having been more than ten years since the last visit, it was definitely long overdue. It used to be a trip that got made every year when I was younger.

Then awhile back there were some issues between my mom, myself and one of my brothers that never really got resolved. It's water under the bridge now, but for quite a long period of time, I was upset about it and really didn't want to have anything to do with my brother.

Between that and the passing on of my great-grandparents I just couldn't make myself be part of our annual gatherings.

Though outwardly, not much has changed, I am a much different person than I was ten years ago. Many of the things that I did then, I would do differently now and would get much different results.
Some of the relationships I had with family in the past could certainly do with some improvement.

Also, now, I have more immediate family of my own. And it is important to me that they have the opportunity to form strong familial bonds, just as I would like to strengthen and regain some of the ones that I had before and grow new ones.

Between children, parents, grandparents and great grandparents, there were four generations of our family represented. Not everyone was there due to some that could not make it and some that chose not to, but it was the majority of the people that I have come to accept as our family.

When I was just a few years old I used to hang out in the kitchen with my great grandmother and "help" her cook. And I used to love watching my great grandfather's home movies. His voice was always the perfect narration for whatever happened to be going on at the time.

My great grandfather's birthday was New Years and mine is on Christmas. We always used to have a small celebration for the two birthdays when the family would gather. I could care less about mine. But I really enjoyed celebrating his. It was when he really started to get sick that I lost interest in the family gatherings. I just didn't want to believe that one day they would be gone.

Seeing a picture of the two of them on my grandmother's refrigerator almost brought me to tears. Even now I'm tearing up while writing this. I never realized how much I miss them.

Then it occurred to me that they were directly responsible for all of the people who are still here that were gathered together as family. And I had to smile at that, because although they were all very different some soft and gentle, some rough around the edges and others at varying stages in between, they were all good people.

There were more than a dozen of us, so quarters were a little cramped, but not unpleasantly so. It was fun and interesting learning and observing people's habits and points of view. Before, I was one of the members of the  younger generation of the family.  I remember the ideas, thoughts and even prejudices of the older generation that would get shared in idle conversation. Some of them are people whose names and face I have forgotten.

But, it was fascinating to see the impact that their beliefs had on the middle and younger generations. How some things were accepted and complied with and others were shaken off through either rejection or rebellion, but each thing still made an impact.