Like genetic pool, same environment
My brother and his wife said they would bring Christmas Day dinner.
They brought meatballs and mashed potatoes to refrigerate overnight. I had prepared meatballs and mashed potatoes for Christmas Eve.
I rarely make meatballs, but my brother and I grew up with them in the regular rotation. We each had thoughts of childhood.
I received a jigsaw puzzle, walnuts and pears, and a book. I gave them a jigsaw puzzle, chocolates, and a flower.
We are unique individuals exerting our agency in this world.
Maybe we actually have a tribal mind, those of us from the same tribe.
The exchange of the same gifts was not unique to this Christmas.
I can remember other family holidays where family members exchanged the same gifts: towels, globes and world maps, the same-titled books. I don’t have an explanation for random gifts like towels or maps. We didn’t have any discussion that would lead to that particular choice. Books are a Christmas tradition going back to childhood. But maybe it says our values include practicality and education.
We are not particularly close as siblings, but we share the same family norms. It’s like when a younger in-law, in playing a card game, said, “Now help me, I don’t know if these are the rules or they are our family rules.”
Families have their own rules, spoken or understood. Trouble comes when the rules no longer fit.
Family rules. Holiday traditions. I have noticed holidays are when the ethnic foods or ornaments with old stories come out.
Knowing someone fully might explain the attraction between partners that grows with time. I have explored, life-long, what it means to love, because I have been confused. I did not have clarity earlier.
But for me to truly know someone, or be known, is to love.
We who grew up as stoic Midwesterners didn’t talk about our emotions. We were supposed to intuit them.
Two years ago, I met an old childhood friend for lunch while visiting her city.
“Let me take you out for your birthday,” she said. As someone who attended my childhood birthday parties, she remembers that date.
Those memories could be part of getting together for ritualistic celebrations. We honor the rituals, while making fun of them at the same time. There is a period of time in our young adult years when we stay away. New families form and require their own accommodations, as well as in-laws to integrate.
But then the memories and stories build on one another.
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