Are we related?

On family and the things that tether us

I have been thinking a lot about family. Not about mine exclusively but, of course, mine included. About what it means when we say we are related. To be caught in each other’s orbits of mess and debris. 

I think about how, when we learn about someone’s family, our instinct is to prove a connection between them. Your friend hands you their phone and on the screen is a photo of them with their father behind them, the father’s hand on your friend’s shoulder, their siblings are laughing just behind them. Your instinct is to say, you have your father’s eyes, or your sister’s smile is just like yours. Which is to say, there has to be something to this beyond coincidence. There has to be a tether that binds us, an anchor that explains who we come from, beyond mere chance. 

As my parents are aging, they often forget that I am too. In the spaces between these passing years, we misunderstand each other. We forget that we are different. There is sometimes blame and hurt and as I build what I hope is a life of love as an act, not love as an obligation, there are also boundaries. I learned that boundaries are a way of saying, you cannot control me in this way. I control myself. And with any loss of control comes an attempt to exercise it in other ways, and it is here that I remind myself that it is their first time moving through this small and brittle life too. 

I think of the apologies I will probably never hear and the silences we will not be able to fill, but how I still secretly hope that someone will tell me I have my father’s eyes—that I look like him, am smart like him. I think of whether my sisters would look at me twice if we were just strangers on a subway platform and yet, how I think about them all the time, everyday, wishing to share the small hilarities of my day with them. How I hope they will again ask me to edit their essays or braid their hair. 

I find myself thinking of my mother. I think of how we are made from the same fabric, how her hands have the same lines as my hands, and how these days, I want simply to be her daughter. Not her fixer or support system or pride. Just her daughter. The sun is slightly brighter and the clocks jump forward to give us longer days and more time and maybe it is the promise of March that makes me feel like someone’s child again. I leave for work in the morning, without a scarf despite my bare neck, leaving it open to the wind, and I find myself wishing my mother would tell me to be careful, she doesn’t want me to catch cold.

I find myself wanting to be nothing but a daughter. To be cared for, hair brushed, fed with toast buttered heavily, crust cut neatly off. Loved without transaction, without a catch, simply because I came from someone. Like Fleabag says to the Priest in the confessional, mourning her mother and not able to keep it in any longer: I want someone to tell me what to wear in the morning. I want someone to tell me what to eat. What to believe in, who to vote for, who to love. How to tell them. 

I think about the families we forge. The ones we build on a daily decision to choose one another, again and again and again. The ones that have nothing to do with coincidence or genetics and everything to do with purpose and intention and magic. It is not who we come from but who we come to. Who we turn towards.

I have been thinking about blood family, the ones we do not choose. I think about the space I occupy as an eldest daughter in mine and whether I have always been so caught up in playing the part correctly, giving what I could correctly, that I forgot that giving can come with receiving. That it’s okay to ask for something in return.

One of the earliest languages I learned was absorption. But I find, at 26, the sponge of me is leaking. The role I have always played is wavering. I find, with a great and blinding shame, that I can no longer be my family’s best everything and also be my own best self.

There is love between us. This I know. In the spirit of March—the spring of it, the hope of it—I wish that we will meet each other soon, in a space of understanding, in a place of respect, despite what we have caused each other. Despite the long distance between where we are now and where we can be.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

I wanted to start this letter with an apology for the lack of letters over the past couple of months, but I read somewhere recently that we can’t be late for our own lives. And so, it feels like this letter is late but it also feels right on time. 

Thank you, as always, for being here, right on time. I love having you here. If you enjoyed this little love letter, I want to know! Shoot me a message on Instagram: @ramnasafeer. If you have another question or comment or sweetness to share, you can also send me an email at ramnasafeer@gmail.com. Let’s chat!

I hope you stick around. Sending love and rest,

Ramna