How can you connect with siblings and family as adults? If your family lives far apart like mine, it is hard to keep up with the siblings with whom we spent roughly the first 18 years of our life. Even with all of the technology available to us todayFacebook, cell phone, e-mail and even old fashioned letterstoo often the pressing needs of job, our own immediate families, church, school and personal to dos leave no time to maintain what can be a very rich connection. You end up seeing each other only at weddings and funerals, if then.
My sister proposed a road trip for my mom and us three sisters to go visit my brother in northern Florida in late February. At first I thought, there was no way I could take off work for a week, leave my husband in the cold north to fight off the remains of winter (a record breaking winter in much of the Northeast), and go sit on a beach. We figured that we had not traveled together as a family for any distance for more than 46 years.
But eventually I decided to go. I met up with them in Huntsville, Ala., where one of our nephews lives. We spent the first couple of hours of travel reminiscing about trips wed taken as a family while we were children. On many trips, we seemed to remember different details, or were fuzzy on the details. So much for memories to last a lifetime. Ive learned that in many cases, what is not preserved in some way, is frequently lost, sorry to say.
We remembered Mom making all of us identical shirts so that we could find each other at tourist attractions and being allowed to wear pedal pushers (capri pants) for the first time.
We all remembered having to eat orange pineapple ice cream for breakfast at Hagars Homey Huts near Niagara Falls (because we were leaving our motel and had no way to keep ice cream frozen as we traveled). Most of us ended up hating orange pineapple ice cream.
But we disagreed on what kind of road calamity befell our vehicle (was it a flat tire or something more major) on the way to New Orleans. Since Dad is no longer with us, we couldnt settle that question.
We all remembered being so homesick to get home from a six-week camping journey out West that we rushed through Mt. Rushmore and headed the rest of the way home in one day.
On this trip, there was a cold wave right before we got to Florida and another one as we were preparing to leave, but it did get warm enough in Floridas Panhandle to soak up some sun on a relatively unpopulated beach. I got my feet wet and my Yankee sister even donned her swimsuit, just so she could say she did. But mostly we shivered while enjoying the still-breathtaking, pounding surf.
Getting to know my brothers children and grandchildren was the far greater highlight of the trip, along with reconnecting with him and his wife. Their grandchildren in Florida, at ages 5 and 8, will be old enough to remember us I think. My other nephew in Alabama has kids 7 months old and four years of age, so that is more iffy. But with all of them, Facebook is a great connection to keep up with their lives more than we used to.
There is no shortcut, though, for face to face connections and personal visits. Photos, videos, gifts sent and Skype conversations with video can all help, but as Johnny Cash used to sing, Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood. I remember interviewing one woman who moved to the U.S. from the Philippines. She budgets money every so often to go visit her parents there. It is just a priority, she said, and when they cant afford the cash, they borrow money to keep that family connection alive.
That is why I spend money and take off from a very busy schedule to connect when I can. Not as often as Id like, but hopefully often enough. Its not too late to make some family connections a priority in your summer vacation plans.
What are you ideas or tips for connecting with adult siblings? Send me your stories or tips to use in a future column. Send to: melodied@thirdwaymedia.org or write to Another Way, Box 22, Harrisonburg, VA 22803 (Include the name of your paper in your response.)
You can also visit Another Way on the Web at www.thirdway.com.
Melodie Davis is the author of seven books and has written Another Way since 1987. She and her husband have three adult daughters.
