We stand alone. Photo by Heidi Liddle.
I recently went out for whiskey cocktails with some other moms from my kids' school. Our topics of conversation ranged from our diverse religious backgrounds to various experiences eating roti here and abroad (word to the wise, don't eat a lot of it before boarding a ferry in Trinidad!). Toward the end of the evening, when the bourbon had reached its desired effect, we were mainly speaking quietly in pairs, and a friend who is about to embark on a major move back "home" to London with her six-year-old son waxed eloquently about her giddiness over moving back in with her brother and the oodles of cousins available to him to play with just a few short hours away, much shorter a distance than what exists now. The pervasive sentiment was this... she missed her family. Wildly. After years living a grand experiment with a small son away from most of her extended family, she was going home. And here's the thing... her brother, about to take in his sister and her small son, couldn't be happier. After all, it's the norm. It's what's right. It's what's expected. No stigma or sideways glances. At least in most parts of the world.
Here in Chicago we are like many others in the US. Our closest family is nearly nine hours away in southwest Missouri. The majority of Nalin's family lives thousands of miles away in northern India, and we see most of them only once every two or three years, usually (luckily, most of his family lives together in an extended communal home so we see most of them all at once). Some friends are flabbergasted that we've managed to have/raise three children with very little family support, due to distance. Others understand perfectly, as they themselves chose a more independent path as well and live far from their families, relying on au pairs and babysitters to help them navigate the waters with small children and demanding jobs and lives.
Whenever I even hint at a complaint about our island existence, my mother is quick to say, "Heidi, you chose this." And it's true. She's totally right. When I was leaving a doctoral program in comparative literature, just two short hours from my family home, Nalin and I made the decision, primarily due to our seemingly impractical humanities degrees (his in philosophy and cognitive psychology) and our supposed abandoning of academia, to move to a bigger city, where we could become consultants or writers or editors or creative types in larger corporate or publishing companies. We had friends in Chicago, so that seemed the most reasonable choice, and so here we are, seventeen years later. We never really thought we'd move back to either of our family home towns again, for a variety of reasons; however, we've realized, with pangs of loneliness at times, that despite the village we've created, we feel the solitude more acutely than we ever expected. Usually this happens upon returning from our trips to India. Cousins, aunties, uncles everywhere. Family meals that take part in two or three acts, due to the number of people vying for a place at the table. With the boys a bit older, Nalin and I got two-to-three days of luxurious jet lag recuperation with the elder cousins taking the younger under their wings without a single bribe necessary. Neither of us can imagine giving up the big city life, with all the diversity and opportunities available to us and our children, but we know all of this comes at a cost.
Granted, the recession in this country challenged the American "you're on your own" mentality. Couples with children moved back in with their baby boomer parents... and stayed. College graduates slunk back home and became productive members of their families, contributing their meager post-college earnings to grocery and utility bills while they searched for a path to their own independence. Last year, there was an article in the The New York Times entitled, "Guests: Meet My Relatives (They Live Here, Too)." After years living abroad being the foreigners without family amidst communal living arrangements from Cairo to Paris, they moved back home with their children to live with the author's parents and elder brother. She writes,
“So when we finally returned “home” to the United States, it did not seem strange, as much as comforting, to initially bunk up with my parents. But then we realized the built-in benefits. There was always someone around to make dinner, collect a child, watch the dog and lend a buck, be it for the mortgage or medications. Together we can live much better, financially and emotionally, than we could apart — and that includes my older single brother who is like another parent to our children, particularly when we travel for work. Most important, despite our fast-paced life, we are able look after my parents as they slow down. In many ways, we get more space by living together. By sharing the work of each age group, we are all less burdened — the old saying, “Many hands make light work” is true — even if some of them have arthritis.”
The fascinating thing about this article is how she seemingly had to overcome feelings of embarrassment or the perception of failure when explaining her arrangement with others. Even in families where everyone has remained in the same home town, where grandparents see their grandkids on a daily or weekly basis, the expectation of independence and privacy is front and center. You may live in the same town as your parents, but the walls and miles dividing you, however few, are clear and distinct. All the benefits without the suffocation. Even the family summer cottage, a big thing for my middle class grandparents generation and still the norm in lots of places in Europe (oh the memories I have of all of us crowding in to a small cottage with outdoor plumbing in northern Wisconsin when I was a kid), seems to have gone by the wayside in favor of time shares and summer Disney excursions. By the time my sister had come along, those idyllic summers had pretty much come to an end — the cottage had been passed down, renovated, and then sold... no more big family retreats. She and I don't even share the same memories... just seven short years apart we are in age.
Another close friend and I were recently out for dinner and a play and our conversation drifted to the death of her grandparents and the impending sale of the grand home where she spent every single holiday and most summers her entire life up until now. There was a tinge of grief in her accounting of all the memories and thoughts of the future and the impact of her grandparents on her larger hopes, desires, and interests and how she was formed as a person through her time with them. I passed along to her the opening "story" of the denim brand out of Nashville imogene + willie and how they became who they are today:
“It’s probably exactly the same as yours… just different character names.
Matt’s parents and my parents gave us the most amazing gift ever when we were young… and that was easy access to our grandparents.
Willie and Imogene, my maternal grandparents, signify our relationship with all of our grandparents… Leo and Sally, Anthony and Hazel, and James H. and Gladys.
imogene + willie honors those eight, as well as our amazing parents and our siblings and their children and our aunts and uncles and cousins and their children that we love like our own.
And then… our friends and the team at the shop might not be directly related to those eight, but for sure there are oh so many “indirects” on how we all are together. And then we think what we want most for our children when we get them someday. We want them to experience that indescribable love from our parents, their grandparents… just like we were loved so much by ours.”
Nalin and I continue to hold on to the notion that whatever the distance, chosen or not, our rootedness to who we are by virtue of where we came from is inescapable and profound. Even in our children's names we celebrate our heritage... Ettu has the middle name, Rajan, taken from Nalin's dear uncle; Nooa has a Scandinavian name in homage to my father's roots, Anu's middle name, Mila, is a shortened variation of my maternal grandmother Emilia's name. I write now to remember the stories I've been told from loved ones far and wide. I write to be connected to them in one small way or another. Life is a series of relationships and patterns, and wherever we are in connection to one another, it is our job to preserve the value of our families, both given and created, where independence gives way, just the teeniest bit, to interdependence, and the world is greater for it.
Note: you may notice the new name of this site, Mila and Bros. For now, you'll see the "Ham and Twist" name on the blog, but I am slowly but surely embarking on a new venture where content, discourse, and eventually commerce will all come together in one place. I've named this site after my daughter and her brothers; because, after all, my family is at the heart of it all. Stay tuned!