Family Vacation

Well, it finally happened. After two long weeks of posting in a row, I missed a weekly blog post. I’m sure you were all devastated, except for those of you who bet on the under, or whatever. I don’t know enough about gambling to confidently make jokes using its terminology.

Honestly, I’d be surprised and flattered if anyone noticed that I didn’t make a blog post last week. I don’t recall if I explicitly mentioned it on this website, but last week I was traveling with my girlfriend and her family to attend a wedding. Therefore, I wasn’t planning on writing anything, and it’s a good thing I followed through on that plan.

I typically reside in the midwest of the United States, but this wedding was in Florida. So while I was excited to soak up the sun, rather than the chilling February winds I’m used to, this wasn’t an entirely “for pleasure” trip. I hadn’t been to a destination wedding before, but it turns out that this one was more like a family reunion than a family vacation.

I was meeting a lot of people for the first time, which was a bit tiring for me, personally. Even when hanging out in a hotel on the beach, if you don’t know anyone there, it can still feel lonely. That being said, my girlfriend and her family did their best (mostly) to make sure I was comfortable. And I’m very grateful for that, considering last weekend was not about me at all.

It was about family. A different family than I’m used to, but between you and me, I hope that one day I will feel used to it, because I really love my girlfriend. On the trip, though, I noticed several stark differences between her family and mine. Some of those differences were great and fun, while others made me a bit uncomfortable.

I want to again acknowledge that this trip was obviously for someone else’s wedding, and therefore not about me at all. However, from my perspective, this was still a pretty big event for me. I was traveling with my girlfriend for only the 2nd time, and I still haven’t had much experience spending a lot of time with her family. I was meeting new people, and re-meeting others with whom I had only been briefly acquainted before.

So it was a lot of new experiences. So much new and unknown can be terrifying. When people experience new things, we desperately search through our brains for any memory that has some similarity, so we can make a comparison and have a better idea of what to expect. Or at least I do that. I was told in college that other people do the same. Something about “Uncertainty Reduction Theory” or something like that.

Many times last week, I searched through my own record of family experiences only to draw a blank. Being out of my comfort zone, combined with the stress of traveling and the stress of weddings/big family events in general, kind of freaked me out a bit. After several dinners and drinks with new people, I felt very much out of place, despite their efforts to welcome me.

However, when it came time for the toasts at the wedding reception, things began feeling familiar again. The week hadn’t been perfect, obviously. As usual with weddings, all sorts of unexpected things happened that caused plans to go awry, and required everyone involved to make adjustments. And during the father of the bride’s toast, I realized that even though everything I had experienced that week had felt so alien, I had actually seen it all before.

I won’t share too many private details of the speech, but essentially, it boiled down to this: the man was smiling as he spoke, introducing himself and thanking everyone for coming to the wedding. He acknowledged a few elephants in the room—the problems that had arisen throughout the week, which caused a lot of stress for many people in the room.

But when he acknowledged them, they didn’t seem so big or stressful as they once did. In fact, we were all able to laugh about them a bit, and he laughed as well. He mentioned how proud he was of his daughter and her new husband, and how he was excited for their future together. He invoked memories of past weddings and family events, as well as memories of older family members who had passed away and were unable to attend. Many people wiped their eyes and noses in response.

A smile appeared again on the man’s face as he gave another message to the groom. The man reassured his new son in law, in front of everyone, that he was a welcome member of the family.

And what a perfect representation of family that toast was! Family isn’t perfect. Sometimes, it sucks real bad! Families have baggage, drama, hardships and mistakes. But they work through those things together, because doing that alone would be so much worse. So I’m sure that the groom felt good to be welcomed in such an honest and heartfelt way.

But really, the man giving the toast wasn’t only welcoming one person to the family. Because if you want someone to be a part of your life, you have to be willing to include the other people who are important to them. Adding one person to your family causes a chain reaction that results in many more new family members. I realized that as he gave a final thank you, to all the people in the room, because in that moment, all of them were part of the same family.

Not all of us were related by blood or law. Once again, I knew very few people that were in the room with me. But as I listened to that speech, and saw my girlfriend smile at me, even I felt like part of that family. I thought I was just a plus-one at a wedding—just along for the ride on this trip, and at first, I was.

But at the end, I was part of everyone else in that room. We were all brought together by the bride and groom, two people who have decided to try to share one life together. It took me a while to learn the lesson, but that’s what family is. And if I want to share a life with someone, then I need to be ready to share it with everyone else in their life as well.

I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to write this. After missing a post for my “vacation”, I hadn’t put much thought into what my next post would be until today. I’ve had to play catch-up with the rest of my life, and so this sort of feels like a rushed, half-ass post to me.

As I’m typing, I don’t know for sure that I will click publish and share it with people. But I told myself I would, and I’m still trying to follow through. So hopefully you enjoyed it! If not, then write your own blog.

Okay, love you, bye.
-Josh