It being so close to Valentine's Day and all I thought it time to put into writing some of the nice things I love about my extended family - since this could be super long I'll start with my aunts and uncles.
I feel like I come from this notably amazing and incredible (big) family. My dad has five siblings and my mom has eight. (No, we're not Catholic or Mormon.) Pretty much all of my aunts and uncles have kids, so I grew up being around cousins who were my parents' age and cousins who were in diapers. I always liked that. There was always someone around to play tetherball with in Grandma's front yard or play checkers with or paddle around in the row boat at the lake with. And, there were people to look up to.
As a kid, I knew my parents, aunts, and uncles thought the world of my grandparents. And, they were proud of each other and proud to be part of the family. That was so comforting.
I love how my parents raised me and my sister to value our extended family. Most of our family trips involved visiting family - we'd work in a trip to Disneyland with a trip to spend Christmas with Aunt. M. Or, a site seeing trip to the east coast blended with family reunions in Pennsylvania. I never heard either of my parents say anything negative about their siblings and I remember as a kid thinking it was weird when I heard about other families that had the uncle nobody liked or the estranged so-and-so who was a jerk. We never had that. And, a lot of the aunts or uncles who married in to the family have been my relatives since I was old enough to remember, and they're all amazing, too. Some of my aunts or uncles have gotten divorces, but not really as many since I was born.
I've been really impressed with both my Mom and Dad's sides of the family since my Dad got sick, but I was really impressed before that, too. I think I've gotten to know my Dad's side better in the past year since we've gotten the opportunity to spend more time together, and that has meant a lot to me.
My favorite things about my aunts and uncles:
1) They prioritize being in touch and spending time together.
2) The J side of the family: are matter of fact about lots of things especially things that involve the human body. (Think colonoscopy conversations at restaurants, that sort of thing.)
3) The J side of the family: have a hilarious, somewhat off center sense of humor. I love sarcasm and dry/quirky humor.
4) They're smart, honest, and hard working.
5) They're down home.
6) They're big hearted, generous, caring, and empathetic.
7) This could be said for both sides of the family, but for both the Js and Ts: They're kind of nerds. Yeah, as I go through the list, I think all of them are, though some of them might not present as such immediately. I love nerds. Both sets of my grandparents valued education and learning and they passed that on to their kids.
8) They're capable, handy, and creative. Build our own homes? Sure. Make a wedding dress? Already did. Host a dinner for 60? Done it.
9) They're interesting and remain engaged. I walked in to my uncle in his 80s listening to a Rosetta Stone Spanish CD - no big deal. Just learning a new language.
10) They're active. Uncle B is in his 70s and rides his motorcycles all around trails and wins competitions.
11) We've got a good number of green thumbs!
12) They take care of each other. I've seen this a lot since my dad got sick - cards, gifts, candy, pictures, visits, calls, emails. But it happened before that. Before email, the J family had a Round Robin letter where every family wrote a letter, then sent it to the next family on the list.
I'm glad that my sister and I have had a high bar set for us in how we are with each other, and I'm also glad I got so lucky with relatives!
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