FAMILY TIES OVERCOME SOME THINGS, NOT OTHERS

via amazon

Everyday I wake up I see a little gold tree with small family portraits hanging from the bare branches.

Maybe you’ve got one that looks like the top image? That’s not mine.

Mine used to be on my childhood fireplace mantle beside my grandfather’s railroad watch.

Now I’ve got them both, and they’ve grown more popular over the years, but to who?

After both my parents passed, some of their family treasures came down like they ought to.

Some kids got surprises. The watch and tree were a very nice surprise for me, though others in the group were disappointed.

My stuff didn’t show up after a last minute material raid to get more stuff.

That’s not how sweet memories work.

I still got a phone call one day asking for the watch. I could have given it but didn’t. Does that make me a bad person?

If that didn’t do it, this did. I said the watch is a family heirloom with the family name and I wanted it to stay in the family with the family name and not handed down a hundred years from now to someone who’d never heard of the watch.

Look, it’s a watch inscribed with my last name.

I said I couldn’t give the watch because when girls get married they often change their name, and in this fast paced society some married people split up. Did I want this watch to end up in a settlement, or snatched up in revenge after a bad divorce?

Family Tree

When I see all of the pictures hanging on the branches every morning I see a couple in their early forties with expressions of ‘look what we’ve done, what have we done?’ It’s the same expression most people with four kids have now and again.

There’s the boys in junior high and grade school, and a swaddling ten years after the last boy with the same parents.

Those are the treasures on the tree, the family fruit fifty years ago.

I’ve got twenty years on the old man in his frame, maybe more, and every time I look at the tree I feel a rush of time.

Here’s why:

My folks divorced when I was the tender age of twenty four. My dad wasn’t concerned about the kids. He knew his boys would move on. His daughter would grow up and be an asset as an adult, but he didn’t want to mess up her early years with custody battles in court.

Just as his prediction would have come true and they would have better connected, he died.

Every time I look at the family tree object I want to call my kids and tell them how I feel about them. Okay, I’d tell them I love them. That’s how I feel.

For every dad waiting for the right time to reach out to their kids, now is that time.

For every kid growing up and wondering how to make connections they’ve been advised to avoid, make the call and discover you’ve not been forgotten.

Or text, email, you know the drill.