When I was a little kid nothing got me more excited than getting something in the mail. Usually it meant that Christmas was coming (my English relatives would send stuff so early it was torturous) or my birthday. But it always meant that someone, somewhere was thinking about me and went to some effort to show me they loved me.
See, when you are a little kid your sense of time and distance is pretty much non-existent. A week could be a month, a block might be a mile. When your family -the people that you love and that you think love you back- are far away and you only see them once or twice a year (if you’re lucky), it can sometimes be hard to remember that they really do love you. Little kids are no good for email or telephone, so that doesn’t really help. The best thing, barring visits, is mail. Send a post card from your travels, send a photo to remind them what you look like or of your dog, send a calendar with days marked off for your next visit. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy or expensive, just send something to remind them that you think about them and you love them very much. Because sometimes being a little kid can be lonely. It is your responsibility as an adult relative to maintain that relationship, don’t expect a child to extend themselves to you first, they just don’t know how.
So why not do that today? I bet you haven’t visited the local post office in a while, they would be happy to see you too.
And if you think this is directed at anyone specific, it isn’t. But if you were thinking about sending something to a certain person who lives here and don’t have our current address, that’s ok, use the old one. We have forwarding paid on it for a full year and we get all mail redirected here. Alternately you could email me (that would be my name, Caitlinjane, and I use gmail) and ask for the current one or ask Shannon.
Amended to say: This is in no way, shape or form about anyone’s parents. She lives full time with her dad and sees her mom at least once a month and speaks to her every day on the phone. Any and all visits with her mom are very eagerly anticipated, marked on calendars and counted down to. And this also wasn’t about her grandma on her mother’s side-she’d gotten some gifts in the mail about a month ago that made her very, VERY happy.
So take a deep breath.
Okay that was really sad. The thought that a grown person (I know this isn’t about anyone in particular, I am just talking about a generic grown person) would hold back affection from a child to “get even” at them or whatever for not contacting them first is depressing.
Kids don’t have huge attention spans. They don’t sit there and think about you. They think about whatever is the most exciting thing going on at the moment. Hell, I have grown relatives that act like that, but that is beside the point.
When you are a child, the grownups take care of you, and give you love. And in turn it’s your responsibility to return that when you yourself are older.
I need to stop commenting before my morning tea. It makes me not understandable.
I think that it’s a lot of out of sight out of mind. When you don’t see a person for a year it’s easy to forget about them. We were lucky, growing up, we were the kids that lived SO far away, it made us special. Plus we were the youngest by far on that side, so that helped too. And we had North American accents and that was good too.
Also, these days, staying in communication with family who live miles and miles away is easier, but that doesn’t matter to a kid who is only just learning to read. Kids don’t give a rat’s ass about computers, and maybe they even hate them a little because they steal time from playing with parents.
Ali, it IS sad. When a kid looks at a picture of whichever relative and says ‘I miss grandma/grandpa/auntie/uncle’ it’s heartbreaking. I come from a small family, more than half of which live in England, so it was easy for me to understand. When your family is a few hours away and you still don’t get to see them or hear from them, it’s a little harder.
Family isn’t just parents. It’s a big network of people that should be able to rise above personal issues to be truly able to take care of what’s most important:the future. I really mean it when I say a little effort now will go a long way.
And why the hell are you up at 4:04am???
Your clock is off by about two hours because I got up around quarter to five (I worked 8-4:30) and I woke up before the alarm went off because I had to pee so bad.
The timestamp in here I mean. And wow, I really need to try and get everything I have to say into one comment instead of these afterthought ones I keep tacking on.
Yeah, I fixed it. I think, -5 hours, right?