You don’t choose a family, you are born with it! I am not talking about choosing a husband, I am talking about the family that you are born in. Nowadays with nuclear families, we don’t get enough time to know our own first cousins, let alone an extended family! So how do we keep that warmth intact?

I have a pretty decent number of uncles and aunts on both sides of my family, but I was born in a nuclear family as dad had to migrate for his work. So we were too far away from the immediate relatives of both sides of the family. We could only meet them in summer vacations, and that too was usually only 10 days at each place, but I share a great bond with my first cousins and I guess a lot of its credit goes to my parents and uncles and aunts.

A Thankyou Note to family

 

Travel

My parents made sure that we went to our granny’s place every summer. My aunts and uncles co-ordinated their visit to ensure that we kids could meet each other every summer. Now that I am a mom of two, I truly understand the effort that went into ensuring a truly memorable vacation for us. We are talking of an era before the advent of What’s app and mobiles!

Letters

We were introduced to letter writing at a young age. The real romance and beauty of long letters were presented to us, by our parents, who themselves wrote such letters to their parents and families. The blue inland letters carried every detail that an 8 year old could think of – the small mischief, the big tiff, the greatest secret and the occasional salty tears. This tradition continued long after the advent of mobiles. We still have those letters and reading them, still equally sentimental.

Family Albums

Our favourite time-pass was pulling out old family albums and enjoying the entertaining narration that mum gave. This introduced us to a lot of extended family. Even today nothing can beat the flipping of large albums on a sultry afternoon with entertaining tit-bits of information that go with it.

Visiting relatives

I made horrible faces, if I had to visit some long lost cousin of my parents but I had no choice then! It was a rule that we will visit relatives as a family and my parents ensured that it wasn’t more than an hour if we were meeting for the first time. This ensured that I meet a lot of relatives. I love observing people and this was the perfect occasion.

Thanks to the efforts put in by my parents and uncles and aunts, we have a gang of cousins who continue being in touch using the modern communication mediums that we have at our disposal. I truly hope to give a similar environment to my children. A communicating and engaging family is a pillar of strength when life hits you hard.

Staying in touch, in the age of nuclear families – A #ThankyouNote

Linking up with Tina and Amrita for the #AThankYouNote contest all through the month

19 Replies to “Staying in touch, in the age of nuclear families – A #ThankyouNote”

  1. I feel the same that we don’t choose our family, we are born in it and we accept them. I love writing letters though I wrote to my friends. My parents always show me the family albums and introduce many new faces.

  2. Such a lovely heart touching post, it took me back to my childhood days, life was simpler during those times. Nowadays nobody has time to spend with their families let alone meeting extended family members. I wish I could give the same childhood to my son.

  3. These types of articles like this one which is written very logically with beautiful description can take the readers to the memory lanes,specially those who already have experienced the fantastic times with relatives and specially with cousin brother and sisters.
    Very nice read.

  4. Connectivity with friends and relatives is must to strong the bond specially in the age of nuclear families. I like the idea of visiting to relatives. It can help to stay in touch with them

  5. This is family scenes from my childhood home. We would meet every summer vacation and then whole platoon of kids would raid places with so much fun. Lovely time it was. Nuclear families has its own charm and settlement. Lovely post the way you have described.

  6. Awesome write up , brought back a lot of memories especially that going through albums, I love doing that

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