Cultivating Relationships: Starting at the Very Beginning - with Our Parents

Today's prompt from Meredith and her Cultivate12 project:

Parents: Whether they're still alive or long since passed, biological or adopted, our parents were the first people to teach us about relationships. How can you cultivate a stronger, healthier relationship with them? How can you reconcile your past with your present and future?

I am blessed. My relationship with my parents just keeps getting better.

They are celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary on December 26. The party will include one fewer child for them, my brother John passed away in between the fiftieth anniversary and this one. They will have their first Great Grandchild: darling Paloma. I imagine my niece will be there: the one who my sister gave up for adoption and we miraculously found her… I can’t remember the exact dates, but I know she wasn’t at the last party.

My Dad & My Kids hiking & geocaching several years ago in Flagstaff My parents have gotten softer as they’ve gotten older. Their blacks and whites are smudgy. My Dad is always happy. He loves where he lives, he is very active, and when he answers the phone we actually talk. In the old days he would answer and immediately pass me over to Mom.

Dad and I share interests: I visited an abandoned Mill in Northern California and I called my Dad, so excited to tell him.

When my daughter had a history project, Mom sent a geneology report. My happiest finding is the first child born in the United States from my mother’s side of the family was named Samuel and there are many, many Samuel’s in our family tree.

I didn’t know this when I named my Samuel.

Nana & Emma bonding with pumpkins and apples in Tehachapi this October Mom visited in October after my surgery. We had perhaps our best visit yet. We made stuff together, we visited an art museum, we laughed together and we picked apples and pumpkins together. The unique pumpkin she picked out became a jack-o-lantern in one of the spots where my brother John’s ashes are buried.

She had it photographed it for me. It is almost like I was there. John and I were exceptionally close, so it meant more than words can say to be “included” in the celebration.

I will continue to do as I have been doing: caring, communicating and experiencing life together.

It is never enough since they live in Flagstaff and I live in Bakersfield, but via Facebook – I get to “see” them regularly.

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