I guess everyone feels like their family is unique, a truly original blend of personalities and quirks that they embrace or reject as they grow up, become their parents and adapt old traditions, believing they’re original. I have always been like my Father and I’m growing more and more like my Mother. Makes sense, she’s never stopped teaching me what it is to be a woman, right now she’s teaching me how to be loving after 26 years of marriage…
I know that I am very blessed to have the Mother and Father, Brother and Sister that I do. We share life, love and a lot of laughter. They have been my foundation, my respite and my honest mirror.
Throughout my teenage years our home in Grendon was always full. Men and women, boys and girls that would enter our life, some long term, others for a short time and they would call my parents Mum, Dad, they would call me sister and for a time they would have a place to call home with us.
Typically I thought this was normality, being the only experience I have, but in later years I’ve realised how unique an environment that really was. My parents don’t build ‘community’ or ‘intentional friendships’; they expanded the family and offered love.
Since leaving home eight years ago I’ve become a little detached from the comings and goings of Grendon. When our family was expanded one more time, to inaugurate the Cooke family into the Trundle clan I was not at home. It was the first time I realised that family life was happening without me.
For the last few years Andrew and Rachel Cooke have called my parents Mum and Dad, their Children Elliot, Livia, Ethan and Jonas have called them Mammy and Pappy and they have enriched our family with generosity, fun and energy.
My journey into sisterhood has been a little slower with the hindrance of distance but this weekend the Cooke family came and joined the new branch of the Trundle/Harding (henceforth Harndle) clan for fun in the sun on the South Coast. It was fantastic – well save the fact the sun was chased away by wind and rain.
I realised this is the first time we’ve hung out without the rest of my family, it was great not to have to vi for their attention, instead we ate far too much food, faced off on the Wii and enjoyed blustery walks on the lunar-like beach.
It was a brilliant weekend. I am so glad we can call them family. There’s a lot we can learn from them. I’m looking forward to enjoying expanding our own nucleus as the years plod on… xc