Sunday, December 6, 2009

The Extended Family I Never Had

After stopping at Stories today, I decided to take a different route home and got lost in Angeleno Heights. Near MacArthur Park, a multi-generational extended Mexican family was having a barbecue: kids riding around on tricycles, elderly men and women in lawn chairs, colored paper plates, music, several conversations taking place simultaneously. I watched them for a bit and for the first time in my life, wished that I was part of an extended family like this one. Where everyone is up in everyone's business. Where there are weekly barbecues, and birthdays and anniversaries and celebrations and everyone is obligated to be there. Where everyone has known everyone else forever. Where most of your memories are communal, and those you are closest to, those who know the significant details of all of your experiences are in your life every day.

I wonder if I've started to feel this way because so many people I love are far away, and it's been getting me a little sad lately.

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