Family of Origin

I am very close to my family. My parents are still married, and my grandparents were married, too, until, one-by-one, they each died. That sounds confusing. But I don't mean that my grandparents were in an unusual 4-way marriage. I think you know what I mean. Moving right along. I have two younger sisters.

We have each had our personal problems, of course. But up until relatively recently, I would have told you that as a family, we were pretty much perfect. Growing up, we had family game nights, and we still do. We had family bike rides, all in our matching helmets. (Oh, how I hated that. No one wore helmets back then.) We still go on family walks when we get together at the holidays, each sub-family - all three girls are married now - with its own dog loping alongside.

After I had Ellie, and she was so sick, and things were hard, I began to turn inward. Gradually, I began to define "family" as Paul and Ellie, and define "home" as St. Louis rather than my parents' family, my parents' house.

Perhaps I began this process when my mother insisted that we come to their house for Christmas that first year, when Ellie was 2 months old, had been diagnosed with failure to thrive, and had heart surgery scheduled for a couple of weeks after Christmas. Our house was clean and decorated - we hosted family for her baptism a few days after Christmas - but my mother wanted us to drive 300 miles with that sick little baby, through the snow, to her house for Christmas. In retrospect, I can't believe that we did it, but at that time, not having Christmas with my family seemed inconceivable.

Over time, I've begun to feel uncomfortable with other things about my relationship with my family, specifically about the role I play.

When we go to visit my parents, it's hard not to be lazy, to feel like it's a vacation and surely someone else can take care of . . . the cooking, the dishes, whatever. (Exception: the kids. I never expect someone else to change diapers, help Ellie onto the potty, or watch the girls, unless they offer. The girls are my - and Paul's - personal responsibility just like going to the bathroom and showering myself are my responsibilities, iykwim. Baseline expectation of myself: basic hygiene and taking care of my children. Though I do expect my family to want to spend time playing with my girls. After all, they don't get to see them every month.)

It's also hard not to fall back into the predictable patterns of interaction, especially when people are treating me like they expect me to react the way I used to. You know, when I was a kid. This is uncomfortable, because I'm not a kid, and I don't want to be the kid I was.

I also don't like the specific part I've been assigned. People like to do things; we all reflect back happily on fun things we've done as a family, and some people complain if we sit around and do nothing, but getting the large group of easily distractable people to mobilize in concert is a Herculean (or Sisyphean) task.

I am the cheerleader, the ringleader, the bossy first child, the A-type personality, the boss. Just roll your eyes and follow along, folks.

If I don't start the conversation and marshall it along, the conversation often does not happen. I'm not just talking about which movie we should see on a Friday night, I'm also talking about which dates everyone is planning to be there, so that we can adjust work schedules and overlap our visits to my parents' house. So it's chaos and last minute scrambling and lots of time just sitting.

And it's become a family joke that Sarahlynn always wants to play board games. Of course, everyone likes playing games, and they frequently play even when I'm not there to suggest it.

But when I'm around, it's done with a let's-humor-Sarahlynn attitude, because that's my role. I don't like that role. I don't like being cast as the one who wants, who needs, the family and its corny-but-fun activities more than everyone else. It makes me feel like the worst parts of being a very young teenager again, with the seeking to belong, the fear of rejection.

It's not like all these issues are new. Some of them have been around for a long, long time; I've just been denying them. One summer, when I was home on break from university, my middle sister kept her diary on my computer. She didn't bother to password protect it; she just typed out her thoughts and plans and frustrations into my keyboard all summer. "I hate Sarah," she wrote. "She's such an ugly fat pig." And so on.

Over Thanksgiving, I overheard her talking to my mother. (When will they realize that I have always had very good hearing?) "Sarahlynn is acting just like she did back in high school," MiddleSis said. "She's totally . .. blah blah blah." I don't choose to remember it anymore; it was ugly. Also untrue.

So I decided to leave that afternoon and come back to St. Louis early. (That wasn't the only reason; there were lots of good reasons to come back here on Saturday, rather than Sunday, and we were all glad for the extra night's sleep in our own rooms, the extra day's rest at home before Monday.) In the car, on the way home, Paul and I talked a lot about what happened, and the ways in which being with our families can be stressful. The end result is that we can't and don't expect anyone else to change, and that we're all imperfect people. We can only monitor our responses and adjust our expectations. Hopefully, the Christmas visit will go more smoothly.

It seems that, perhaps, my picture-perfect family never really has been so picture perfect underneath, no matter how much I wanted that to be so, and believed that it was so. Here I am, in my 30's, surprised that we're an ordinary family with ordinary problems, after all.