Caught Up With Family

I’ve spent the past hour trying to write about how I haven’t been able to catch up on my family duties, barely getting past the first two sentences.

It seems like tonight is one of those nights where I have a great idea but my brain refuses to string the words together.

Ever since we got married, I’ve been instructed multiple times to call someone or arrange for people to come over and do the traditional congratulatory visit (never mind the fact that the wedding feels like it happened ages ago). And because this is me and life after 5:30 pm mainly consists of cooking, doing the dishes, and plopping myself down on the couch trying hard not to fall asleep, I never got around to doing much of that.

I haven’t even thanked most of the people who were kind and generous enough to get us wedding gifts. Yes, it is extremely rude and unforgivable. But I swear, it was on my post-honeymoon to-do-list for a while, until it started looking more like and afterthought. I think that is even more rude.

So how do you expect me to get the phone and call an uncle or a distant cousin and ask how they are doing or if we could get together? I barely do that with friends- friends who share the same interests and views on life and are the in the same age group.

Communicating with family is on a whole different level, especially when everyone is so much older than you and you’re trying to act all grown up while you’re still grappling with what the term means.

I especially dislike the formal visits- those very first ones that many do just because they have to, because they would be marked as absent or disrespectful if they don’t.

Those are the very same visits that end with the guests bringing over all those useless crystal bowls. Please stop doing that, for the sake of my dining room sideboard that can’t fit them anymore.

I always feel like the house and my wife “skills” are under scrutiny because I’m trying hard not to conform. And that in turn, makes me doubt myself and what we’re doing.

I feel like I just haven’t come to terms with the idea that I now have to take the initiative. This goes hand-in-hand with my conflicting feelings on adulthood.

But mainly, I just can’t find the time.