Family : Now and Then.

I grew up in a family of eleven - my parents (both of them), my dad’s brother, his wife and their three children, and my two sisters, and our grandma! It was a complete madhouse most of the times. Everything was a battle, to get the remote, even to get a chair to sit in. Those days an average household had just 3 or 4 chairs.  You gotta be loud you gotta be fierce or you get lost in the crowd.

Family type started to change then, from a joint or extended family ( with dad’s sibling/s’ family, and with grand parents) to neutral family. Now, along with the type, the number too has changed so drastically low. Single parent with one child. My generation is witness to this huge transformation- Me from growing up in a family of 11 to possess a precious family of 2 including myself.

Sometimes it breaks my heart to see how our value system lost its luster. I don’t blame the increasing  divorce rate alone for this change. We are after money and we relocate without thinking about the family we leave behind for that. There’s also no point in reminiscing or blaming it on some reason.

Even if it is a big family, even if you live with your both the parents or grandparents…with the work set up we all leave in the morning and come back late in the evening. We spend just few hours with our loved ones. That is sad.

Solution: Quality time and variety of experiences!

My 12 year old daughter and I spend the morning hour to get ready to leave for school and work. It is the busiest time of the day for us, yelling and running are basically the routine. And in the evening we spend may be 3 or 4 hours before her bedtime. I compensate the lack of family members and the lack of our together time by spending quality time with her. Sitting on the balcony, looking at the stars while listening to our favorite songs with our choice of drinks in hand and candles all around us- a perfect example of a quality time with her! (of course we fight too over the songs ilayaraja vs something loud and dumb)

For no fault of hers she has no dad and I have to take the extra mile to fill the void. At least I have to try.

A few months back we took a long ride to Madurai from Coimbatore with her riding pillion. It was a strenuous 5 hour ride because of the snacks breaks and the pee breaks, but a new experience. That’s the ‘variety’ I meant earlier. 

With quality/variety we can compensate the missing hours, or even missing relationships.