20131223.0719

As I noted yesterday (albeit briefly), I spent the last week in the Texas Hill Country, reconnecting with family.  I enjoyed my time among my people--and even among my wife's people (with more of them coming to visit at Sherwood Cottage tomorrow)--and I even managed to behave myself.  Mostly.  It was a remarkably good trip, overall, and I am glad to have taken it.  (I must admit, however, to being glad to be back at Sherwood Cottage; sleeping in my own bed is better, and it helps to be among my materials for The Work.)

As with any trip back home for those who have left, there is the issue of being in a place where people knew you when, as my former bishop commented (and I have discussed).  I was fortunate enough to have few old ghosts arise to haunt me; I saw, but did not have a chance to speak with, a puppy-love person, and a performer with whom my father and late great uncle worked was on stage at a show I attended.  (Yes, there are shows in the Texas Hill Country.  No, they are not all country and western or pickin' and grinnin', although many are.)  So I was fortunate to not have to endure so many reminders of old idiocies and youthful indiscretions as I usually have when I am where I grew up, and that, I think, did much to make the trip a good one.

I have observed (although whether here or only in talking with my wife, I do not recall) that on family visit trips there is an often unfortunate tendency to fall back into older patterns of relations and behaviors.  We revert to what we remember being with the people we see--and this tends to mean a return to the dependent/provider relationship.  It tends to suppress or abnegate the growth that years and distances have compelled, doing much to undermine what has hopefully been the self-betterment of all involved.  And that is not good for parents who have been able to focus upon themselves again now that the immediate and immense burden of raising children is lifted from them.  (I know that they will always be parents, but there is a difference between being the parent of adults who are able to make their own way and the parent of dependent children who cannot.)  It is not good for the returning children, either, although I know it sounds much as if I whine to point it out.

On this last trip, I feel that I did not slip, or I did not slip so far, as I have in the past.  I was not a pleasant or easy child, I know, and I have apologized to my parents more than once for the trouble I know I caused them while I was growing up (there; I may well not yet really be an adult, although I had damned well better get there if I am not).  My own return to that does nobody any good--and I think it is the same for many others.