On distance

I've been procrastinating lately. I should be working on the memoir, but I'm not. (I'm busy job-hunting, by the way. If any of you hear of anything, please let me know. Notice, too, that I now have a Not Like That email address in the sidebar. Oh yes, this blog is advancing.)

The problem I'm struggling with is writing about my family. It requires a lot of introspection, this process, and sometimes I wonder if I can do it. I guess the scariest thing is wondering how well you know your own family. Sometimes I find myself wondering if I really know them at all. All I can come up with at the moment are a lot of questions. If any of you want to tell me your thoughts, please do. I would welcome your perspective.

Here's what I'm wondering ... What does it take to really know someone--and to really know your family? Is it a shared history, or a shared present? Or continuity?
How do you negotiate relationships with your family when you are grown, and live far away, and pay your own bills, and choose your own vegetables? It is so commonplace, these days, to live so far away. But sometimes it feels to me like a betrayal, or a desertion.

At our Brisbane wedding celebration, my brother told me, in a matter-of-fact way, that "we don't really know each other anymore." In lots of ways, this is true. He is nearly a decade older than I am, and moved out of home by the time I was nine or ten. He lives a long way away, and I see him about once a year. If I had him and his wife over for dinner, I would not know what to serve. But his statement made me feel so lost. Are my family some people I used to know?

I am close to my parents, but it seems like my brothers and I have scattered as we've grown. The age difference probably didn't help. And now we mostly hear about each other's lives through our parents, not directly. Perhaps this is normal. I just assumed it was, until my brother made that comment. Now, I just don't know.