Friday, November 23, 2007

Time with family

I'm in Oregon again this weekend. I drove up with my friend Michelle starting Wednesday at around 5:30. We got to Sisters, Oregon,
around 9:30 on Thursday morning. The trip was disgusting. Michelle was surprising her family, who came over from Roseburg to have Thanksgiving dinner with some good friends. I was glad to help her do that, especially because it reminded me of my junior year when I flew home to surprise my family at Thanksgiving.

Since being here, though, I've been thinking about something else that has to do with my family. For a long time I've thought that getting married and having children would be something that, if I do it, will happen later in life. Many of my reasons for putting it off in my mind have to do with not wanting to rush into things, or not being ready, or other sorts of things. I don't know for sure what they all were. But I realized something while hanging out with my grandparents and seeing my cousin with her two little kids. I want any kids I may have to know their great-grandparents. I am really happy that I have some memories of two of my great grandfathers. They're not really clear memories, but I'm still glad to have them. Well, my remaining three grandparents are also fantastic. I hope that any kids I have will get the chance to know them and remember them. But the more time that goes by, the smaller the possibility that will happen. As annoyed as I am when I see my cousins who already have kids, and how disturbed I am to think that they can't provide for them very well and that they're being raised around a lot of ignorance, I envy the time those little kids get to have with my grandpa and grandma. Any kids I have will most certainly get less time with their family. And that is really too bad, on a personal level and on an intellectual level. I think it is important to know the people and history from which one comes, and it is harder to know that stuff without having actually experienced some of those relationships.

So that's been running through my head a lot since arriving at my grandparents' house on Thursday morning.

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