I don't know about you, but I love seeing my family on major holidays. As much dysfunction that has gone on in both sides, it always gets swept under the rug over a delicious meal. I have grown up in a setting where the fighting and loving were furious in equal measure. Chalk it up to my father's Irish Catholic heritage, but time goes on, healing every war wound inflicted. Everything is different now that I have a daughter and my sister has a son. While I miss my brother in law more than you, the reader, could ever imagine (he suffered a heart attack in his sleep and did not make it), I am so grateful for this new generation bringing my father's side of the family closer to me.
My mother's side seems to be the side that had all the babies when I was growing up, so when my daughter and my nephew arrived not too far apart from each other, there was a meta-physical shift in the day to day lives of all of us. It made me a woman, and it changed me in a way that every holiday I get to celebrate with my daughter that much more sacred.
This Easter it was one of the most perfect Easter's my father's side of the family has had in years. This summer my parents and I will pack her up for a visit to her great-grandmother to celebrate the handful of birthdays that congregated in the month of July.
Life goes on, and it becomes more beautiful to me with every passing day.
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