Family FOMO
my sister, mother, and daughter this summer in Martha’s Vineyard
In the run-up to our wedding, I was consumed by the idea that my next-of-kin was about to change. On August 23, it was my mom; from August 24, it would be my husband. I’m sure a therapist would say that this obsession was a way of focusing - or maybe displacing - any stress of the wedding onto something discrete and manageable but, honestly, it still blows my mind a little.
We live less than 20 minutes away from my parents and see them regularly, so I very much still think of them (and my sister, despite the fact that she lives in Boston) as my immediate family in a way I might not if there was more geographic distance between us and they weren’t as much of a presence in our lives. But I remember being taken aback a few years ago when my grandmother, who at the time lived in New York and has since moved to the DC area with my grandfather, lovingly discouraged me from visiting because my hands were full with “my family.”
My family? She is my family! Nana and Pappy and Mom and Dad and Sarah are my family just as much as Jon, Robbie, and Claire are; I don’t feel any less responsible to or for my grandparents or parents as to or for my husband and children.
On Sunday night, though, I FaceTimed my sister knowing that she’d arrived at my parents’ house for the holiday week - and discovered that Nana and Pappy were over for dinner, too.
I was overwhelmed with a wave of FOMO.
They were my family! Why wasn’t I there if they were having a family dinner?
And then I remembered: Jon is my next of kin. While the US is apparently moving (back) towards a “vertical family structrure” that includes the extended family, my primary nuclear family identifies me as the parent, not the child. No matter how present my parents are with us, relationships have shifted. Based on what I see with my mom, whose parents moved from New York City to the suburb next to hers a few years ago, they’ll shift again in a few decades and I’ll experience this strange nostalgia for a previous identity all over again.
I let myself sink into melancholy for a bit, then started trying to find compounds out in Maryland where we all could live together as an extended family unit. That’s a healthy response, right?
