Of Aunts, and Generations, and Family

It's one of those times when I think of family. I rarely talk about my family here, but perhaps that is because our relationships seem too complicated for me to even begin to analyse. The ongoing conflict of two very different generations, and many different personalities and a gradual resolvement as maturity grew on me.

I was one of those kids who never really had a role model, although now I'm older I realise the full impact of those strong female figures in my family had in my life. My mother and my aunts have very dominant personalities and although more often than not, it would cause a clash of personalities, it shaped me into who I am now.

Today I thought of my aunt, perhaps because I feel as if we have more in common than I realise. The doctor of the family, she too did her studies in Australia more than a couple of decades ago, and I always find it easier to talk to her than I do with my parents.

She would visit our family on Sundays, and how I looked forward to those Sundays. It was a ritual for the family to go down to the local mall and have ice cream and buy new books to read. I found it hard to explain how it was more than just going out to the mall, it was the actual familial interaction that I craved, how I felt like we were doing things together as a family.

When I talk to my aunt, I sometimes wonder what she went through during her studies here, and how they affected her. Sometimes I realise how little I know of her past, and my parents' past, and I wonder about the events that made them into who they are now. It's an alien thought, a thought that I hesitate to explore because it seems like such an intrusion of privacy.

Sometimes I wonder why they so rarely talk about the past, as if it was something painfully private, those emotional moments where for a time in their lives, that generation of elders were once hopeful and loving and young and innocent. Caught up in passion before they had to embrace responsibility. I wonder if they were always like the way I've seen them, or if life has truly changed them.

It is one of those times where I think of family. And I miss them.