Writing to the Storm

Finding family in the midst of a storm

“Family” means many things to many different people. It can conjure up a myriad of feelings, memories, experiences, and fears. Sometimes, we do our ever-loving damnedest to avoid those circumstances that plague our souls and give rise to our nightmares. At other times, we embrace the chaotic good our families embody, from the tiniest humans to the wizened elders many years our senior. 

Some families are an overabundance of people, experiences, and reckless good times, the composition of which is a menagerie of in-laws, out-laws, kin-by-blood, and kin-by-choice. Others are tightly coupled knots of rich experience and close, intimate relations with a strong trunk and few branches. Whatever the brand or branch you find yourself aligned with, there’s no denying that families, for better or worse, are a wild mosaic of experiences.

I’m sitting on the back deck of my wife’s family cottage in Nova Scotia, reminiscing about the fabric of families. A thunderstorm is brewing somewhere out over the Northumberland Strait. I’m reminded, time and again, of the moments that knit the warp and weft of who we are together into this wild and woolly semblance of “family.” Coming from an intensely small, single-digit count kind of circumstance and marrying into what could best be described as a “delightfully chaotic” clan of strong-willed and open-hearted people has given many an opportunity for cheerful contemplation. 

Each encounter with my wife’s family inevitably leads to a further understanding of humanity and humility. These people have built lives together, separated by the kilometres of back roads and highways that wind their way from ocean to dale and back through the hidden valleys and mountains. These are sturdy people, not broken by time but made more glorious for every day that they live…and live they do. They’re a menagerie of experiences: business, academic, humanitarian, medical, geological, insurance, and others I can’t remember at the moment. They’ve compiled a rich history of experiences that, when taken together, would undoubtedly fill more of these digital pages than I have the ability to write.

I write all of this preamble as a means of conveyance, of a gentle encouragement that, when all else seems to have absolutely gone to shit in your life, there remains a solid foundation in family, perhaps hidden within years of history and experiences. In a pinch, maybe they’ll collectively move tables, under threat of thunder and lightning, into the cramped quarters of a 70+-year-old creaking cottage on the shores of the Northumberland Strait. Perhaps they’ll run out to the local store for two cans of beans, or maybe they’ll be the ones who offer freshly tapped maple syrup in a bottle with a wine cork because that’s who they are. 

Maybe these “perhaps” are the moments that defy your lived history. Maybe this is where you start to realize that your expectations have created an insurmountable bank on the shore that needs to crumble a bit. Maybe, just maybe, your hubris got in the way of humility, and family is there to show you how that can be done, without words but with actions.

I don’t know your story, and you’re perhaps becoming more familiar with mine. We’re on a journey together, you and me, and in unveiling these little moments, I’m trying to impress upon you the need for connection. Too much is made of our rugged individualism these days. The clarion calls of “corporate success” or “individual wealth” belie a growing tendency of isolation and insular behaviour. 

We’ve left behind the idea of community and connection, seeing tacit alienation as being de rigueur in society more and more. We’re at each other’s throats over politics and religion, choosing to weaponise our dogma and beliefs instead of embracing our differences. We choose fear over love, isolation over acceptance, and anger over conversation. 

And yet, sometimes it takes a thunderstorm, on a hot, humid summer day somewhere on the Northumberland Strait, to remind us of what family is and should be: a bedrock, a foundation, a warm embrace, unconditional acceptance, and a hell of a good time.

May it ever be so.