In class yesterday, much of the discussion was about Scout and the absence of a mother figure in her life. We all agreed that this absence changed the family dynamics and probably played a large part in molding Scout's overall personality etc. So, I was wondering if there are any absences of important family figures in your lives? How have these absences changed your upbringing or effected who you are as a person? How would your lives be different if that figure had been there?
Keep in mind that this doesn't just apply to parents... maybe some of you are an only child, how has your life been different without siblings? Or maybe your grandparents died or live far away and you never really got to know them, how has this absence influenced your family? Looking forward to reading your comments!!
This blog is for the “Legacy of the Family Story" course taught by Kathryn Collison in the University Honors Program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM, USA. It provides an easily accessible, electronic space for 100-level Honors students to discuss texts and ideas, develop critical thinking skills, and practice college level writing. While anyone may read our work, only class members may post.
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12 comments:
I consider myself to be very lucky because as far as my immediate family goes, I am not missing a family member. I'm close to my parents as well as my sisters too. I think that since I only have sisters, if we would have had a brother it definitely would have changed our family dynamics. I think if we would have had a brother he would have been very spoiled being the only boy aside from my dad in the family.
The only absent family member that I never met was my grandfather on my dad's side of the family. I'm extremely close to both of my grandma's and was even closer to my grampo (my mom's dad.) I always hear stories of my grandpa about what kind of man he was and everything he did. My grandma has and still tells me how proud he would be of me and how much he would have spoiled me being the youngest grandchild on that side of the family. It makes me so mad that I never got to meet him because he passed away before I was born. I think his absence in our lives pushes us to look after my grandma more because she lives alone. Other than that, there have been no other absences in my family.
I grew up with divorced parents, however, I was close to all of the members of both sides of my family. My dad got remarried when I was in 5th grade and by the time I was in 8th grade, there was so much conflict that I moved out of my dad's house and moved permanently in with my mom. This solved much of the conflict going on in the family and I view it as one of the best decisions I've made so far, except that it put a lot of strain on mine and my dad's relationship.
He became an absent member of the family because of all the hardship and misunderstandings. It was difficult going through high school without my dad around because he was always insightful and could have easily helped me through many problems that my mom could not understand. I just had to continually remind myself that it had been my choice to move out.
Throughout the years, I saw my dad from time to time and everytime, he would try to rekindle our relationship. My mom did not approve of this and made it very difficult. It just seemed like life was too busy.... even though that is not a valid excuse at all.
We have been working on our relationship much more lately and it is starting to develop again! :) Therefore, he was only an absent family member for four years or so, but that was still very difficult to deal with.
A first, I didn't really think I had any absent family members. My parents are still together, I'm not an only child, and all my grandparents and other relatives like uncles, aunts, and cousins are still all alive. However, if we classify living really far away as absent, then I guess I'd say that my extended family is somewhat absent.
My grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, etc. all live in China. So I do live really far away from them. Also, we have a bit of a language barrier as they don't understand English, and I understand not enough of complex Chinese. However, my extended family and I still remain really close. I really don't feel the distance between us, as I often e-mail my uncles, aunts, and cousins, and I call my grandparents pretty often.
The only thing that makes me really feel their absence is during the holidays. Usually, families have huge gatherings, but for my family, it's just my immediate family. We can't visit China all the time, so we can only celebrate holidays with my extended family once in a while. I actually think the distance makes each visit that much more special, and everyone cherishes it more.
I don't think living far away from my relatives is the same as Scout having a absent mother. I feel that even though they aren't physically in my life all the time, I always have the option to contact them via telephone or the internet. I think just knowing that they are there and a part of my life, even though I don't see them all the time, makes them not really absent in my life.
My father left my mom when I was two years old. I've had one step father since then, but that didn't really work out either. I've never really had a good, steady father figure in my life and that has certainly affected me. I don't feel like I'm missing a parent so much because there was never anyone to miss. I think in a way it makes me appreciate my mom and all the strong women in my family so much more. I'm not really sure how I would be different if I had, had a father figure when I was younger, but I'm pretty content with who I am now. All of my cousins, aunts, and uncles live far away, but it's okay because my family that lives here more than makes up for their absence.
I guess if anything the absence of a father figure makes it much harder for me to respect men, but I still know a good person when I see them, no matter what gender. I certainly feel like I missed out on having a dad, but I'm just glad that I have the amazing family I do.
When I read through the question the first few times, I wasn't sure how I was going to respond. I am lucky that I have had almost all of my family around in my life. I have both my parents and my brother, who I have come to realize are such an influential part of my life even though we are a small family unit and are now apart.
Then I read through the responses, and Ruth's gave me a different situation to consider. I realized that I do have people missing; I guess I just never labeled them as missing.
When I was younger, all of my mother's five brothers and sisters were married. We only saw them and my cousins once a year, and I was shy, so I wasn't very close with any of them. All I knew was that they were my family and I loved them. You know how when you get older, grown ups start telling you things? Well at some point I found out that one of my uncles had been married, got divorced, and my aunt is actually his second wife. I never knew there had been another aunt before her. When I found this out, it seemed like it started an avalanche of information. I then found out my godmother had been remarried more than once. I think after that was when I found out another of my uncles was getting divorced, and not long after the other uncle got divorced as well. Then I found out my aunt was seperated from her husband, and now my godmother is getting divorced as well. It's so much to think about, family members who were there aren't anymore, and family members I never even knew about. I still can't wrap my head around it when I hear them talking about it. However, I think through all of this, my mom and her brothers and sisters have grown a lot closer, and we have all grown a lot closer as a family. I may not understand what happened, but I do know that now we spend more time together having mini family reunions, and they seem like they talk to each other a lot more and I'm really happy for that.
When I was reading through the posts, I eventually reached Bridget's. What happened with her grandfather has happened to so many people I know. I'm not sure how to word this, but here it goes. A lot of people I know, my age, have had a grandfather who died right before or after they were born. It's just a weird observation I've made, maybe it's me trying to find a connection to other people, I don't know it's just something I've noticed a lot of people have told me. Anyway, this is what happend with my mom's dad, he died 3 months after I was born. I always felt kind of special, though, because I was the last grandchild he met. Now my dad's dad I never knew; my dad barely knew him because he died when my dad was 4 years old. I always wonder what it would be like if they had been around, and not just my grandmas. My dad likes to tell more stories than my mom does, but I have still heard about both of them and I wish I had known them.
Almost two years ago, my mom's mom died. So now I only have my dad's mom, but I am much closer to her. My dad tries to prepare us, saying that Grammy's getting old and she won't be around for much longer, that's just life. I still don't like to think about it. Whenever I do I get sad because I went away to school, and I feel like I'm missing out. I know that with my Granny, though, she'll always be proud of me, and so I try not to let her down and do my best.
I know I've said a lot, but I am grateful for the family members I have and have had, and the parts they played, some leading roles, and some supporting, in my life.
I guess my dad could be considered an absent family member. He's still alive and a part of my life, and he and my mom are still married, but they have a long distance marriage. He doesn't live in New Mexico with the rest of my family. He left New Mexico for work. He got a job first at the University of Missouri, and now works at the University of Kentucky with minority students. We talk often, an he visits from time to time, always saying that he wants to get back home, but he's not there everyday. I've gotten used to him being away so its not really weird to me. He is present in my life, just not physically everyday. I think this situation has just made me closer to my mom. I love my dad, and I we talk most days, so it's not anywhere near the absence of Scout's mom in her life, but it is an absence of sorts.
As far as absence in the permanent sense of the word, I've only known one of my grandparents. Both of my dad's parents died before I was born, as did my mom's dad. I never had them in my life, so I con't say that their absence changed me, but it has shaped my life in some meaningful way. I've always wondered what it would have been like to know them. My dad always talks fondly of his mother and would say things like "she would have liked you," and "you remind me of her." That just made me want to know her, and my other grandparents, more.
For me, I think that having absent family members, be they ones I never got the chance to meet or ones separated only by distance, makes me appreciate the family I do have.
In my immediate family, I was fortunate to have all members in my life growing up. However, both sides of my grandparents and, for that matter, all of my extended family, live in Texas. This didn’t necessarily have a drastic impact my life but now that I am older I wish I had a better relationship with my grandparents in particular. When I was growing up, my next-door neighbor’s were almost like my second family. My friend’s grandmother lived just a few blocks away. It was always so much fun to go over to her house in the summer because she would let us swim in her pool all day and have a barbecue. As a kid, I missed having large family gatherings like my friend’s family was able to have. I love my extended family dearly but I am not as close to them as I would like to be because I did not have the ability to spend a lot of time with them. When I was younger, I used to be extremely jealous of my cousins that did live in the same town as my grandparents because my grandparents were able to be apart of so much of their lives.
I do keep in contact with all of my extended family, but I can’t help but wish that some of them were close by. I don’t think this absence of family shaped my life the way the absence of a mother affected Scout. I understand that a variety of reasons, such as the success of my dad’s current company, required my parents to move out to New Mexico but I personally want to try and stay relatively close to my family if I ever have a family of my own.
For most of my life, I have had a "complete" family, including all four grandparents. However, most of my extended family lives in Illinois, so I haven't gotten to see them very often- usually about once a year.
While it would have been really nice to grow up closer to them, I don't think being separated from my extended family has clearly marked my personality, or influenced my nuclear family. If anything, I feel as though the rarity of visits has only made me appreciate my family more. Spending time with them is always special, more so than it would be if it happened frequently. It's not as if there's an emotional rift between my parents and their families; there's just a couple of states in the way. It's true that I don't know them vey well, though, and I'm sure I'm missing more than I realize.
I don't know how the distance between us affects my parents. As my grandparents age, they probably wish they were closer- but I also suspect that the distance insulates us from a lot of the drama in the rest of the family (not that there's very much.)
I am also a very fortunate person in that my parents aren't divorced and I have a brother, so in my immediate family I am lacking no one. On my mom's side of the family, I have an aunt and an unce who are close and I see them a lot. But my dad is one of seven so his siblings are all over the place and I usually only see them on holidays. However, as far as absense of family members goes, I have no grandparents left. On my mom's side, my grandmother died when she was 14 and and my grandfather died 7 years before I was born so I never met either of them. On my dad's side, I knew my grandparents, but they both died when I was in high school and they lived far away.
I never considered myself missing out, because I had my aunt and uncle to spoil me and be that sort of family member. I don't really know how my life would have been different if I'd had close grandparent relationships. However, I don't think that it would have significantly changed who I am today.
I've been very fortunate with the family I have, for my parents and siblings have always been there, and for most of the time have been healthy. Something I rarely thing about though, is that for my entire life I have been virtually without grandparents.
When I was a baby, I lost both grandfathers and my mom's mom, leaving only my dad's mom as a living grandparent. For part of my childhood, my family was able to visit my grandma in South Carolina, but around the age of ten, my uncle did not allow us any contact with her.
In the past two or so years, my grandma was in a retirement home in a very unhealthy condition. She was very rarely responsive when we visited her, and in March of this year she passed away.
The one thing I cannot do is say absolutely how I would be different if I had grown up with loving grandparents in my life. I could speculate, however, that I might have been more spoiled and felt more important had I known my grandparents. I know that this is a big difference in my life compared to others, and I wish I had gotten to know my grandparents. It was hard for a while to accept that I would never know the people who were so much a part of who my parents grew up to be, but this was something that will never change, and I know God had a reason for taking them when He did.
I am not really missing any of essential family members. I have a mother, a father, a brother, and a sister. The closest thing to an absent family member that I have is my grandmother. My grandmother died when I was 8, and it took away some experiences I might have been able to have with her as I grew up, but it was not the same as a lost mother or father, both of which have been very active in my life. The other sort of absence I experience within my family is communication with my abuelito and abuelita, I don't speak the same language as they do, and communication is strained between them for that reason.
I have also been blessed to have both my parents with me my whole life. Even though they are divorced it only strains our relationship when one needs to contact the other. It is, to put it nicely, very awkward. My parents do not get along and it is easy to tell through the fake "nice" voices they try to use over the phone when they talk. Even though this aspect is weird I still consider myself lucky to have them both.
Ruth and Miranda's comments stuck out to me because I would absolutely agree that if a family member is not always present it would seem like they are absent. Even though Miranda says her and her father can easily keep contact and she doesnt feel his absense. I might have to disagree, my mom's whole side of the family lives in the Midwest and because of their distance I feel like they are mostly absent. It is just hard to really keep in contact with someone who are always far away, even with numerous technologies, I will never be as close to them as I am with my dad's family that live in NM.
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