We’ve just returned from a trip to Sweden for my cousins wedding, and like most big family events, it’s prompted some reflection on life and relationships. I did think twice about posting this: does it have a purpose? Does it fit my niche? ‘No’, and ‘not sure’. But you know what? Does it matter? I’ve always used my blog as a space as an open diary of sorts, so why not? So here are some thoughts post-holiday, on the novelty of family…
Not to sound too diaspora diaries, but I was born in the UK and grew up with little-to-no extended family around. The family we had were either distant relatives or adopted family, a closeness forged in the furnace of being an immigrant community in a foreign country. While I now have some cousins living in the UK, they arrived on the scene later in my life/adulthood. So, much of my ‘cousin memories’ live in the nostalgic fog of childhood- intense 6 week summers spent together, interspersed with 1-2 year gaps, before petering out with the passing of our grandparents, the beacons who had drawn us together from across the world.
And in the case of my cousins in Sweden, this meant this was my first trip back in decades: the last being when I was 10 years old. For some of us, our paths had crossed briefly, intersecting at various family events over those years, but for others this was our first time together since childhood. I was excited to see everyone in the way you would expect, but this feeling of contentment, joy and discovery has been a novelty I’m still processing (as you can tell)…
These were faces I had come to know only through old photo albums or school photos carefully displayed in my Nani’s sideboard in Bangladesh- like all precious things in Asian households, protected under a thick layer of clear plastic. And now I had the chance to see them in the flesh and in their adulthood. It was like pressing the forward button. But instead of dwelling on the feeling of accidentally skipping too far and all that lost time, I honestly felt giddy at being around my own. My heritage. My family.
Because yes, there is so much love and joy to be found in the family you create, but it’s been such a novelty to be around people who share the same roots, the same genes, the same name, the same history as me. The novelty of seeing the shadows of an aunt’s smile in the cheeks of a cousin, the brown eyes of my grandma and the strong jaw-line of my uncles in others. Like strokes of a unwashed paint brush, still carrying the colour from the last piece of art. Adding a shadow and a depth that you can’t quite put your finger on, but is undoubtedly there. I had moments of realisation, introducing my children to these new found Mamus, Calas, Chachus and Fupi, thinking ‘so, thats who you look like‘. Like finding puzzle pieces you hadn’t realised you were missing.
Even Taufiq was excited busily taking photos of those first reunions. The novelty not lost on him, “how often do you get to be around your cousins!” Not often enough. My eldest struggled to conceptualise that these were my cousins in the same way her cousins were hers. How could it be? These people we’re seeing for the first time? Her cousins are like bonus siblings who we see all the time, running freely through our homes like they’re extensions of each others.
Really? Was I “sad to be leaving” she probed, “you’re not crying like when we left Bangladesh” with a little added skepticism around my ‘newly found’ family. But Bangladesh felt like a different trip- painfully haunted by memories of places and people no longer with us, and emptied out of those seeking a new life elsewhere in the world. No, I wasn’t sad today. I was excited. Excited by new start, the feeling of being home, feeling a connection you can’t recreate. A feeling I had completely forgotten.
Like I said in my speech at the wedding (made with a few minutes notice): it’s a funny thing coming back into someone’s life in their adulthood, when your core memory of them is being a toddler running scared of pigeons. But there’s something really special about it. You come at it with an appreciation of those ties and genuine pride at seeing them as the person in front of you. Excited to see where the next chapter takes them, and you, together as a family.
What a trip ❤️ I’ve come back home, a little more whole.
love,
