Tie A Knot

                

           I miss us. I miss the comfort and familiarity. The security and love. The support and guidance. The laughter and celebration. The tears and sympathy. I miss us. I miss our community. I miss knowing that my family stretched far beyond the four walls of my home. By no means am I minimizing the love and importance of my immediate family, but acknowledging my longing for when the branches and limbs and roots of the family tree felt closer. Geographically and emotionally. I had grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins in close proximity. If they weren’t in close proximity then they were usually substituted by the various family friends and friends of friends that became my interwoven tribe of love and support.

            When did it change? When did the ties that bind go from being braided ropes that kept us anchored to our rich history and community to thin threads that strain to hold fast against time, convenience, distance and our focus on our individual pursuits? Please let me be clear, this is not an indictment against you personally. Consider it a moment to catch your breath, look in the mirror and reflect on who you are and who we are.

I feel on some level we are all guilty of quietly letting our community, our tribe, our family shrink to the smallest most manageable nuclear units. We focused on things that made our situation better. Better school districts, better homes, better neighborhoods, better employment opportunities. We committed our energy and our attention to pursuing these things. Sincerely hoping to make our lives and the lives of those we loved better. But did we? How much of who we are was lost or sacrificed in pursuit of who we wanted to be?

Just think back to when you were a child. Don’t think about the social-economic landscape or the political atmosphere or the civil and human rights hardships. Think of how full your heart was because of how close you were to your friends and family. Today if we want our children to play with their cousins we have to perform the quantum mathematics of comparing schedules and setting a date in the distant future of when they can get together. For a child to spend the night at a relative's or friend’s house seems to require emergency contact forms and medical waivers instead of a simple phone call between the parents.  Going shopping with grandma or fishing with grandpa has been packaged into semi-annual holiday trips instead of just dropping by on the weekend.

I want my son to have the same treasure chest full of memories that I have. Memories of people and places and events that shaped me. Whenever I see my godmother she tells the story of how when we lived in the projects of Newark how I would come upstairs to her apartment. I would walk in and head straight to the refrigerator to see what she had to drink or to eat. I was comfortable and connected. (Yes I was also a little greedy). But her home was my home. There were no lines drawn or rules established that made me consider that I could or should act any better, or worse, than I would in my own home.
Think back to that time you met one of your distant cousins. So distant that even grandma had to pause and think before she could explain how you were related. But those details were unimportant anyway, they were family. If they were in the backyard eating your uncle's famous ribs off the grill, sitting on the couch watching the game, or laughing and talking in the kitchen; they were family because one of your patriarchs or matriarchs said they were. You treated that new family member the same as you treated the cousin you knew from diapers to diplomas.

Yes the world has changed. The internet and media has opened our eyes to so many more pitfalls, dangers and ominous possibilities. It would be irresponsible for us not to recognize these and do more to protect our loved ones from harm. I guess I’m just stuck reminiscing. Wishing that we could all pursue our own definitions of comfort, happiness, success and accomplishment but still having a firm grip on the people and places and experiences that gave us our first firm footholds in our climb of the mountain we call life.

So why did I write this? Was it a melancholy report on our current situation? No, that wasn’t my intention. My intention was to shed some light into a dark corner, to provoke some thought and conversation. I have a challenge. I hope you chose to accept it. Reconnect. Reconnect with your cousin that you only call on her birthday. Reconnect with your grandma who you only check on every other Sunday. Reconnect with your brothers and sisters and laugh at each other’s stories. Then share the warmth and joy and strength of those connections with your children. The ropes of our tribe need to be mended and strengthened. Tie a knot and hang on. It's too important to just let go.