The Pull of Family

Usually I use this site and these posts to talk about food-related or weight-related matters.

But why not talk about family here?

The book is, in large measure, about that. Uh-oh. Should I use the words "large measure" in connection with "Born Round?" Is it a phrase too freighted and, um, weighty? Let's say the book is "in significant part" about family. That's better, safer.

I spent much of last weekend in Sunapee, N.H., where my older brother, Mark, and his wife, Lisa, have a house in the woods near the big lake. Lovely. But the setting wasn't the best part. The best part was, really, getting to know his three kids even better than I already do. They're 13, 11 and 9: little adults, almost. And I find myself pulled toward and invested in and protective of them in ways I can't even explain.

It's amazing, isn't it, the sort of primal tug one can feel toward family, at least--or especially--if one's experience of family has been a relatively positive one? It makes me understand tribalism, tribes being extra-large families of a kind.

The tug I'm talking about seems almost to be encoded in my genes or something. It feels that fundamental and visceral and automatic. I love the three little people my brother and his wife have produced, and I want the best for them. And, yes, maybe a big part of that is because I've been taught and conditioned to feel these feelings, by the rituals and the articulated values of my family through time. But that doesn't fully explain my sense of connection to them.

I certainly see their weaknesses, their faults. Sometimes they're very entertaining, but sometimes much less so. None of that shakes my commitment to them, which runs deeper than any of that, and which isn't, I'll shamefully admit, expressed through time spent with them. Six months can go by between our visits, though four is more likely. Doesn't matter. I'd be with them in an instant if one of them really needed that.

Where does that come from? And why does simply looking over at them as they watch the end of a Yankees game or as they take their last bites of dinner provide such gentle contentment?

I don't want or mean to romanticize family, which can make demands, be inconvenient, be disappointing. In a family acrimony bubbles up quickly and comes easily to a boil; injustices are perpetrated, feelings overlooked, insults inflicted.

Even so, there's a peace and a sense of belonging. There's a bond that transcends a moment's circumstances, and that doesn't even need to be nurtured much by physical contact or frequent communication.

The other day a cousin came over to my apartment for what was supposed to be a brief visit and for a specific purpose. She ended up staying for 90 minutes as we chatted, wine glasses in hand, with an ease and candor that suggested that these chats of ours happened all the time. In truth we hadn't talked like that in many, many years.

But she was family. I felt that in my very bones.