Family

Family. I find a wasteland where my kin should have been. They all had children—yes, the propagation still in full swing—but my family’s children I don’t even know. A whole generation of indoor children, screen-to-screen babies. I’ve heard about those people. They have the same last name, and yet, all your children I still have yet to know—and you know nothing of mine.

The old, large, too-long table in Grandma’s kitchen, too big for the room, would have still fit everyone around it, including all the kids. Where have the real grandmothers gone? Her crippled legs—an extension of that table—used to have room for what seemed like every little one in the family, plus a few of the neighbor kids. A true matriarch in all her flaws. The family’s adhesive—her charms and vices both the glue. But our new grandmothers’ knees seem too weak now to hold more than what they consider their own.

I sit here and wonder what was so bad that exclusion—exile from the extended family—became the answer. As it takes hold, it feels as though you’ve been removed not once, but thrice. They misunderstood me and my proximity to those who think they know me—abhor me—make me the dumping ground, the sheep with black wool. Their sleep comes easier knowing they’ve fed to me what they revile.

A family is only as good as its weakest, but one day, when their carefully constructed image inevitably falls, the one cast out will be there—not as comfort, but as reflection. They bring no comfort anymore. The shunned do not possess an endless void for others to throw their defects into. The hermit is here to reflect. He is a mirror, ruminating—a muse for their judgment.

Family.

Grandma.

Grandpa looms, but the grandchildren aren’t afraid of his shadow. He left his heavy hand with his sons, and was shredded down to a soft smile for the grandbabies—a shroud of fools trying to pass down fond remnants regardless of truth. The sons act it out anyway, mimicking what the father refused to face.

But the mother—she had the best illusion of all. She kept the family together on a short string: Wednesdays and weekends, like church. Those gatherings were support, no denying that. But when grandmother died, the sons knew how to bury all too well—and the new sons saw no smiles on their orphaned fathers’ faces, buried alongside their mothers’ graces. A far cry from the supposed god-given devotion, the home-fire kinship that is a birthright—a domestic glow, a reliable heart—unmaintained, unguarded. With each generation, we grow strangers to family.

A sick sorrow and a guilty conscience make an empty soul of missed opportunities—unknowable moments meant to be cherished together. But we learned to compete. We learned to measure.

We were fond of each other once, before the yardsticks and the bank accounts. We were hard on each other, but we relented. The humiliation, the emasculation, the embarrassment were forgotten quickly—for the most part—and the mantle of the fool could be worn by anyone the next day. So you piped down, ran home together, bickered, and wore that same last name. It was nothing but an opportunity to bond in a devil’s world—two fools, jesters yes, but members of a family with an active court, scaffolding of similar bone and blood that will not budge.