Blood IS thicker than water.

It seems that I am learning a lot more about family after being in America for a bit longer than I anticipated. I have had problems with my only grandpa still living, whom I have always enjoyed being around, and the problem seems to be about money. I usually let him buy my meals since he is usually the one to invite me to meals and since I figure he has more money than I do. I also assume that since he is older than me and that since I have limited funds until I return to South Korea, he will be more than happy to buy the meals. The second issue is about the garage that I have used since I was old enough to drive a car. Regarding the first issue, it is not easy to convince Grandpa that I should buy the meal. He seems like he wants to but he often complains about how much more expensive the restaurants in my hometown are than they are in the city where he lives. This suggests to me that he doesn’t really want to do this so I think he should just do what he wants to do. The garage issue is a baffling one, one that comes up time and time again. Though it seemed he brought it up in a very passive-aggressive way, I decided I was tired of hearing him complain about it so I said I’d start paying the $9/month for electricity. Eventually he told me he didn’t like my attitude but we both agreed that I should go ahead and starting paying this part of the electricity. After all, I’m not paying any rent for use of the garage. Though yesterday was rough, today seems to have gone better.

I should’ve known this wouldn’t be the end of the family squabbles. I guess it started when I decided that after all the company Mom had today, she deserved to have a little rest and relaxation with her husband. So I opted to take my nieces into the nearby waiting room. I figured there might not be any people there, there would be plenty of space, it would be easier to keep them under control since they don’t listen to me all that well and I sure didn’t want to my mom to have more stress and have to get after them herself. I thought this was a good idea. Then when their mom came back, we went back with her into Mom’s room.

Now what happened after that I’m not quite sure about. I didn’t receive any information that might correct my negative thinking. All I have to go off of is vibes and the one thing I have learned from Sinae is that it is sometimes better to let someone be mad at me and wait for her/him to talk to me than to make the issue worse by bringing it up. So this is only my perception. Remember, I am an INTJ, NOT an INFJ, so I probably can’t feel very well.

That being said, it seems to me that my sister-in-law was bothered by the fact that I took her daughters away from their grandma whom they haven’t been able to see very much over the past week. She left me in charge of them while she went to change vehicles in case you were wondering why she left. I think she changed vehicles because her husband needed the car she was driving for a business appointment he had tonight.

My hint to this possible confrontation was when my sister-in-law asked my mom if she was burdened by her daughters being in the room with her. Then something seemed different about the way she communicated with me. I did get a response when I told one of her daughters she has a big belly. Apparently, this was one of those moments when I didn’t say everything I was thinking. What I was thinking is how concerned I am about her bloated belly and the fact that her stomach always seems to be bothering her. She seems to be a prime candidate for IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). When my sister-in-law said, “That’s not a very nice thing to say to girls”, I justified my action by saying, “It’s okay this time.” I didn’t really think about what I was saying when I said that. I think that’s probably something my brother and/or father might say. I wasn’t too happy about that thought. Then my other niece asked her mom as if I wasn’t in the room, “Why did he say that, Mommy?” Then I said I was concerned about her sister always having a bloated tummy but I suppose I didn’t communicate that very well.

So, now I guess I’ll wait to see what happens next in this family episode. My sister-in-law hasn’t been sleeping well these days for some reason. I suppose that could be taxing and could set her on edge to some extent. But I would imagine there is something that set her off when I took her girls into the waiting room around the corner from my mom’s room. And perhaps there was something else that caused this upset.

Whatever the answer to this perplexing situation, I suppose I should take a step back and try to look at things from a mother’s perspective and then I would like to return to my overwhelming question, “If family is important, so what?”

The thing I don’t know that might be telling as to why my nieces’ mother was upset, if she was in fact upset with me due to how I took care of her daughters while she was gone, taking the girls out of their grandma’s room while their parents were gone, is the feelings of the girls I was taking care of. My oldest niece didn’t seem to be bothered by my telling her that we were going to go to another room so that grandma can have some peace and quiet but my youngest niece didn’t seem to want to go. Nonetheless, neither of them cried and we had a fun time in the waiting room where we went. And I do believe I asked my mom if she’d like us to leave the room for a while so she and my dad could talk for a while. I do believe I had my mom’s best interests in mind, not the girls. Whoops. I’m supposed to see things from my sister-in-law’s side. The only thing I can come up with as to why she would be upset is if she felt like I was taking her daughters away from one of their grandma’s or if I was just power hungry and didn’t think about their grandma, them or my sister-in-law. I wonder what the big deal is. If someone puts someone else in charge, is it reasonable for the person who left to question the other person’s judgment, especially without saying a word about it to the person who was left in charge?

I do think my comment to my niece does deserve some negative criticism. If it were possible to say what I was thinking, I suppose I could’ve (I’m trying to get away from “should”) said, “It seems like your tummy is bloated (What is the equivalent of this that a 4 year-old would understand?). Does it seem like your tummy feels big when your tummy hurts the most (Again, I question how much of this is intelligible to a 4 year-old).” Then again, perhaps I should’ve just kept my thoughts to myself and talked to her parents about it later. I find this kind of situation hopeless no matter how one looks at it.

This is probably analogous of something I’ve been struggling with since Mom got sick. That is, “How can I help my family improve things for Mom?” I find myself sometimes trying to fix things that I can’t really fix. It seems that regarding one of my nieces, it is really none of my business how my brother and his wife deal with her, even though I think that one of their daughters has the same problem I have.

Now for the question about what to do about those members of society who are most important to us, our family. It seems to me that family is important to us. But what does that mean? Does that mean that we drop everything for them? Does that mean that we do things for them that we wouldn’t do for anyone else?

For me, the thing that makes friends, significant others or spouses so valuable is that we get to choose them. And if we don’t get along with those people we call our friends or whatever, we don’t have to continue relationships with them anymore. Sadly, at least in my family, this happens sometimes, too. I wonder if my family and I were only friends if we would still be friends. There is a part of me that is glad that family members are more sticktoitive than that. But then there is another part of me that is perplexed at these kinds of situations where it seems like we do things much more cautiously for the sake of having peace, rather than being more open as it seems I am with some of my closest friends who surely couldn’t be as close as family. But in my case, especially during my college and seminary years, my friends provided me with at least what appeared to be closer relationships. And yet, it is my family that I meet most often when I come home from another country.

Lest this blog suggest that this question is closed by ending in a statement, this subject is not closed. And perhaps it would do me well to think seriously about the difference between friends and family. Do friends fill the void that family members sometimes leave or are they merely the most plausible substitute for a void that only family can fill?