all of a sudden i miss everyone

We don't have a family photo. Not one. I was just going through some old albums, and also looking at my aunt's wall - she's got them plastered everywhere - and it suddenly struck me - we don't have any on our wall. Does that make us less close knit than all the rest? I wonder. Who invented that concept of family photos anyway?

We also don't speak our mother tongue. None of us. My parents can - my mum does with her sisters, and my dad does with his mother, so we know they can, but they never speak it to each other, or to us. Us kids, well, let's just say the apple does not fall far from the tree. As I remember it, we didn't even go shags ever till I was like 13, and we only started going on a regular basis like every Christmas when I was in uni.

In our house, breakfast and lunch weren't meals. We never used to sit together to eat till supper time. Breakfast and lunch, it was like a buffet, the food gets made and put out and everyone serves themselves at their own convenience. Well, not always for lunch, sometimes we made a meal of lunch. But always for breakfast. That's probably the reason I even stopped taking breakfast altogether. So it follows that other than the nightly bible devotion time tradition we started when I was in Class 6, there wasn't a lot of family time. On the bright side, said devotion did help me learn the Bible. We used to rotate the teacher so everyone of us would get a day in the week where they'd be the leader.

When I was 17, we found out that our older brother was, in fact, a half brother. It explained a lot, thinking of stuff that had been happening over the years. Not the least of which was that we didn't even meet him till I was like 10, and then he suddenly just came to live with us. And also, all the time my mother's sisters introduce me to someone they always introduce me as her firstborn (so we share a father not a mother), which didn't used to compute. No worries, there were no tantrums thrown about "You lied to me! How could you??" (me to parents). I guess I understood, or I didn't care, I don't know. And really, what difference did it make, half brother, full brother. Po-tay-to po-tuh-to, right?

We lost our little sister her first year of primary school. The help had been left with her, and she'd also been sent to go get groceries. So she hatched a brilliant plan - take the girl with her to the market. Thing wrong with the plan - the help was new. Didn't know her way around. So they go to the market and on their way back, they get lost. So naturally, she asks my sister for directions. Boy did she get them! Anyway, long story short, we found her later that night - she'd led them both to a certain uncle's house where she used to be left before we got a help. Needless to say, my parents let her (the help, not the sister) go.

These are some of the things that haven't really moved me over the years but ideally should have. I haven't been very good to my family in the past. I haven't made the effort to be friends with them. To build the connection. I've trivialized our relationship, in a way you could say I have made them too small in my eyes. But as I've gotten older, and as we've gone through certain crises at different times, I've learnt - they're the one group of people on whom you can depend, no questions asked. They're the one group who're always going to have my back whenever they can. And so if they feel that way about me, it's only fair that I should reciprocate, right? And so I'm trying these days. 

I want to be the rock they can lean on. The good influence a firstborn second born should be. So our walls may be empty. So our house might not contain any of those tell-tale little memories people bond over coz we've lived in like 9 different houses since I was a child. But what are four walls anyway? A house should be what it contains, no? And that's the thing that doesn't change. Hasn't changed. Unthinkably good things can happen, even this late in the game. I'm finding that it's never too late to reach out to the ones you love. Or the ones that love you.

I was watching old episodes of Veronica Mars once during one of my spells. She had a mum who had a drinking problem, so at the end of season 1 Veronica took all of her college money and paid for rehab, and then fast forward some, the mum suddenly shows up at their doorstep, ostensibly having gone clean. And then when Veronica dug deeper, she found her mum abandoned rehab, was still drinking, and was really just back because she ran out of cash. So Veronica calls her in sometime when her dad is in the hospital and in tears breaks down telling her how she wants her gone. "You can't be here when dad gets home," she sobs, "I know, Mom. I know you're not through drinking. I know you didn't even finish rehab. You checked yourself out and that was my college money... I bet on you and I lost. I've been doing that my whole life. And I'm through." Well I haven't bet on my people yet. Not really. And I want to. As I write this, I hear Chris Martin crooning in the background that Coldplay song us people who've come to depend on second chances love so much:

tears stream down your face;
when you lose something you cannot replace;
tears stream down your face;
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes

END