As much as I get frustrated with my family, and as much as we don't see eye to eye on the finer details of my life...I live for the days when we're all together. Family is family. You sometimes hate them; you fight with them; you scold and get scolded by them; you joke around and tease one another; you know the best and worst of each...and through it all, they will always be the people you love the most. I'm not sure if its because the biological bond is so irrefutable, or because your lifeline is so tied in with theirs...but it's the truth.
I'm the eldest of the 'children' in our family: the first child; granddaughter; niece. I was spoilt rotten since before I was even out in the world. My parents insist that I arrived with eyes wide open, already eager not to miss a thing. And if the stories are to be believed, I had everyone wrapped around my tiny pinky finger - the golden child. Right up until I grew old enough to realise that I didn't have to be what everyone else wanted me to be. I used to be the child who aimed to please...but I soon learned that every time I obliged others at the cost of my own happiness, I grew to dislike myself more and more. And despite the dissent it has sown between my parents and myself, I have grown to depend on this person I've become - because if you can't live with yourself, then really, you should be rethinking your life and who you think you are.
Any of the people who really know me (or get as close to knowing me as anyone ever will), know how much I frustrate my parents and how much they frustrate me. They know too, how it never pleases me to aggravate them so, or any of the other members of my extended family who invariably feel as if they've contributed to the state of affairs simply by being the main contributors to my life growing up. It's never easy being the one who falls from grace, but I guess it's even more difficult for those who push you off the precipice, especially when they're the very same people who would take a bullet for you (if it ever came down to it). Which, I suppose, is the main reason why we've all managed to meet in the middle. I love them and they love me, and all we want is for one another to be happy - and yes, sometimes world war will occur (we are a family after all) - but there's usually a ceasefire before anyone's rope truly snaps. It helps a lot, I think, that I lock away that part of me who rebels, and think of it rather as a compromise for the greater good, rather than a casualty - remembering that I will always be their 'baby'; their little niece; their impish grandchild no matter how old I grow, and that their patronisation is their own contorted way of holding onto that child of the past who entered their lives and stole their hearts.
And here's the thing, when it's good between us all - it's really good. My family can honestly make you feel as if you're truly and undoubtedly a part of something. As if you're the only puzzle piece that will fit in that spot. This whole post is really an effect of this weekend - sitting around joking and laughing and teasing and playing board games exuberantly, or playing thanee amid the tumult that usually accompanies such games; mealtimes, which are always such jovial affairs (you should see us on Eid days, it's an absolute riot when the whole clan is together); watching a movie with the children...and this morning after breakfast, when I went to wash the cars (since I use them, at no cost to myself, I figured that the least I could do was keep them shiny), true to form, the simple business of washing a car was never really that simple at all....Standing there in the sunshine, watching my uncle chase my brother around with the hose pipe, already dripping wet myself, delighting in the laughter of the children at the back and the yells of my brother as he tried uselessly to fight the onslaught of water coming his way, I couldn't help but smile in wonder at how lucky I was to have this family. This family who aggravates and stifles me; who doesn't understand or can't understand who or what I am; who sees the world in their one hundred shades of black and white; who taught me my abc's and 123's and drove hundreds of kilometres every weekend when I was little, just to make sure that I had the best childhood they could possibly imagine...this family, I love. And I wouldn't trade any of them for anything in the world. No matter how many times I feel like I don't belong, there are always days like these to remind me that I do.
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