The Importance of Family

We watched an old video of The Darling Buds of May the other night which is like comfort food to me. The perfick life of a mad but loving family, always getting into scrapes that Pa Larkin usually manages to get them out of.

For those of us who don’t have children, and live far from our siblings (Sussex and Surrey are both a significant distance from Cornwall), it is possible to forget the importance of family. We don’t have children on hand to remind us.

So it was all the more special yesterday to see my older brother and his family who are staying in Cornwall. The children are 17, 16 and 13 and the youngest has recently been singing in a choir in Venice and playing soccer in Denmark. A far cry from trips to the beach when I was a child. But I adore all the children in different ways, for they are very different people, growing up to be very intelligent, well mannered beings with a rich interest in life.

I used to be very close to my brother and his wife, before the girls were born, and even when they were little. Then I met Himself and moved to Cornwall and they had another child and were caught up in that - and work and – well, now we only get to meet once a year. If that.

It’s difficult finding the right time to ring them and usually they leave the answerphone on anyway. My brother tends to ring when he’s stuck in a traffic jam. But I’ve found that I am more sensitive to their sensitivities, which means that quite often I don’t say what’s bothering me. Like, knowing that they’ve had a hard time workwise (ie financially) over the years has made me shut up about our own money worries. We have a lot less money but we don’t have a big mortgage or three children to bring up. My sleeping problems have been mirrored in theirs. But at least I work at home and don’t have to get into a car and drive miles to get to work. I can write in my nightie if I want. Our worries don’t equate.

Our work is very different, which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s another difference. And sometimes, when we haven’t met for a while, I wonder if we have anything in common - other than shared blood?

Yesterday that answer came back loud and clear. YES! Despite the rain (it’s rained all week, poor things) and the fact that they were all suffering from a lousy cold, we had a wonderful two hours. There wasn’t enough time to talk to them all as much as I wanted to, but we had a flavour of them which made me long for more. It made me understand once more the importance of family, (and made me wish, oh wish that we’d had children, but we won’t go there). I wished also that we lived nearer, that we could be more involved in their lives.

But that’s life. Perhaps when the children are a bit older we can all get together more. That would be Perfick.