one of my life themes

I've been thinking a lot about family lately. I've always known that family was important to me, but didn't think my view of it was any different from the next person who also said family was important to them. As I was writing some poems about my mom and dad at my writing conference, I noticed, obviously, the other kinds of things that were plaguing people in their writing, that had become certain forms of love and comfort, charms even. It's so easy to love other people's obsessions, how they get at their topics in different ways, think so in-depth about them. For me, my obsession about family in writing has always felt a little like a bad habit or a guilty pleasure that I would keep indulging. And it was clear to me that family, the way I understood it, carried a different meaning for me than for a lot of others. I've felt alternately excited and weighed down by my parents' stories, both the ones that have been repeated over and over and the ones that are never talked about.

At this conference though, writing these poems as a series, rather than as isolated pieces, and watching them interact with each other gave me a type of permission for writing about family and parents that I hadn't felt before. It even seemed like a great choice I hadn't thought of. But, what I'm struggling with is less on the writing side and more on the personal.

I've become a big believer in inheritance, especially in the non-physical things that are passed down from one generation to the next. You can't decide what you will inherit. The things you might want to receive, the things you don't want to. I've become really interested in the ideas of memory and sadness as physical- physical spaces. What kind of shapes do they take? How can people inhabit them? How can they manifest themselves in the body, and do they distort or stay the same over time? What happens if there's not enough (ie. of memory) or too much (sadness)? I am especially wondering about this part: how does personal history, one that technically belongs to one person, affect other family members, daughters or sons, husbands or wives? What does it do when passed from one person to another?

I've wanted to blame my Chinese, Christian background for this self-orientation towards family, since in both the culture and the culture of the religion, family is central.  It seems easier to not think about these things, to wish (but not wish at the same time) that I was less connected to my family. I think for me, that might mean distancing myself- a more superficial kind of relationship- and I wouldn't want that. I know thinking about these things is more necessary than not. I know this burden is one of the richest I've experienced so far. But I am still wondering what the individual looks like in all of this, how freedom, which is another shapeshifter, works, and what God's inheritance means for us as his children.