Family bonds are relative
Since I visited Aunt Anya and much of the rest of my “Cleveland family,” I have been thinking about the meaning of family, and how the bonds that form between family members can be affected by things that had nothing to do with blood.
Even when I was pretty young, I knew that families weren’t as simple concept as mother+father+their parents and relatives. My parents divorced, Anna and Vlad were born (fathered by a man my mom would eventually properly marry), my dad remarried and he had a son, too. I have two brothers who are not in any way related to each other - just like Anna and Vlad have siblings that I’m not related to at all.
I wish I got to know Anton better. That we got a chance to hang out more, talk more. It does bug me quite a bit that he’s as much of a brother to me as Vlad is, yet I only really got to know Vlad. But at least I get to talk to Anton, hang out with him a few times. I don’t know about Vlad, but Anna didn’t know she even had any half-siblings until a few months ago. Even though they’re as related to them as they are to me.
Grandma Tanya, my dad’s mom, divorced my dad’s father (Grandpa Gena P.) and married another man (Grandpa Gena V.). And yes, she divorced a Gennadiy and married a Gennadiy, which I’m still not sure what to do with.
Grandma Tanya and Grandpa Gena V got married long before I was born, so he was always family to me. And even though Grandpa Gena V and I aren’t related by blood, he always loved me as if we were, and I’ve always loved him right back - which is good enough for me.
As I’ve written before, I knew Aunt Anya and her immediate family for almost as long as I’ve been alive. But back when Cleveland suburbia, I realized just how little I ultimately knew about Aunt Anya’s siblings. I saw Aunt Tanya a grand total of once, and I’ve never met Uncle Alexandr at all. Yet Aunt Tanya was just as much of a двоюродная тётя as Aunt Anya, yet she was pretty much as a stranger. And so were her many, many biological and adopted children. Maybe it was because, unlike my mom’s other cousins and their families, back in Motherland, Aunt Anya and her immediate family lived only a few blocks from us. Maybe, as hard as it might be to believe now, my mom and Aunt Anya were actually kind of close. But even though the degree of relations is the same, the bonds are very different.
Grandma Kima, as I've written before, was Grandpa Roma’s cousin. That would make her my двоюродная бабушка - I don’t know they even have a word for that in English. When she died, my mom wrote on her LJ that, in spite of the “fairly distant degree of relation” she was close family. And she was. I think that the fact that she also lived only a few blocks from us (albeit in a different direction), and the fact that we’d visit her so often, and the fact that the dinners celebrating her birthday were a cherished family tradition was a big part of it.
Grandma Nina has her own cousin, but she lives quite a few hours away from St. Petersburg, so we never much of an opportunity to know her.
And it is interesting how sometimes, family bonds create connections that people that otherwise aren’t related at all. I remember once, I got a chance to meet Grandpa Gena V’s mother. I didn’t feel any particular family bond to her, but the fact that she was my grandfather’s mother did mean I felt something. I was curios about what she was like, and, when we did talk, I told her that I was glad to have met her, and I meant it.
Most of my dad’s family doesn’t particularly care about Anna and Vlad one way or another. But Grandpa Gena P got to meet Anna and Vlad a few times when he was over at our apartment. When he wrote letters and, later, when we started talking via Skype, he always asked about them and how they were doing. He was even pleased to see pictures of Nadya. My mom, those relationship with my dad’s relatives is, shall we say, complicated, seems to think of his fondly. And he and Grandma Nina still talk and exchange e-mails fairly regularly.
I mentioned in my earlier posts, when Aunt Anya’s husband, who I’ve been calling Uncle Sasha, talk about his own family, I found myself wanting to know more about them, how, even though they weren’t related to me at all, there was some kind of pull. What I didn’t mention before was how, during one of the later conversations, Uncle Sasha asked me how my dad was doing. Turned out that he remembered him for a few get-togethers.
“I don’t know if he remembers me or not, but tell him that I hope he’s doing well,” he said.
As more generators are born, the further apart the bonds pull. Tima and Iya are my second cousins.. Talking to Tima, I found myself reflecting that we only share great-grandparents. Past that, the family tree starts to diverse closer and closer.
And yet, when our conversation turned to Grandpa Slava and Grandpa Roma, and I found myself referring to Genrietta Davydovna as “our great-grandmother,” the family bond suddenly felt much closer.