So, to give my blogging more structure, there will be more semi-regular articles going up. We’ve seen Looking at Character, now it’s time to roll out Friday Night Blogging. FNB is going to be my off-topic blog of the week, which is to say it won’t directly deal with writing or writing analysis. Most weeks, it will probably be a look-back at the events of the week, both in my life and in the world, and touching on the points that interest me.
Though a lot of things are going on in the world right now, I have found myself mostly fixated on the events in Ferguson. I don’t feel as if I have to really say more than that to identify it: it has been scrutinized and watched by people outside the U.S.A. as much as we Americans. It brought a lot of events into the public eye in a dramatic fashion, things that had been stewing both in the public consciousness and in the policies of our government for some time. The continued ethnic and economic tensions (often so intermingled they cannot be easily separated), the rapid militarization of our citizen police force, and the common injustices that plague us have now been laid bare. While I’m glad to see that the violence has curbed and peaceful protest reigns, I only hope that, in that return to peace, that the need to see these massive problems dealt with is not forgotten. All too often, when the crisis is over, the general public seems content that the problem has passed and doesn’t press to see the root cause of it fixed.
Personally, the past week, well, two weeks, has seen me finally make a reconnection with my biological family. After my father’s death during my one and only year at college, I splintered away from my family. I won’t go into detail. There isn’t any need to do so and, besides, at the end of the day the causes were everyone’s fault and no one’s fault. What matters is that, for almost twenty years, I didn’t speak with my mother, my brother, or my sister at all. I had found a new family of choice, close friends who had become more than that over the same twenty years.
Last week, I decided I was being kind of an idiot. Oh, not that I didn’t have my reasons, but in the past months, my mother, brother and sister had all started trying to make outreaches towards me. I was being stubborn, trying to ignore it, clinging on to old grievances. Finally, I realized I needed to cleanse myself of it. My mother wasn’t getting any younger, none of us were, and there was no good reason for me to act the way I was. So, I sent my brother an email and told him I wanted to talk to him. From there, it was only a few days before I talked to my mother.
You know, for something I thought would be so hard, it was so easy. None of us wanted to worry about the past. We had all come to the conclusion in the past decades that it was all just foolish things anyway, aggravated by my father’s untimely death. So, well, I added a new old family to the people I love and love me back. It’s great to have one family, to have two? It’s a miraculous thing.
When I sit back and think about it, I wonder if it was meant to be. Was it fate that broke us up, connected me with my dear friends to be there and support them through their own rough times, and then for everything to be reforged into a larger, stronger circle? I don’t know, but I’m just glad it ended up as it did.
J. B. Garner - Musings of a Starving Author 