Spaghetti and the Black Hole of Grad School

Today I was thinking about how funny family changes over time.  My dad's family is 100% Italian.  All five brothers and one sister.  I have never experienced a more  boisterous energetic group of people as I have when the whole lot of us sit down for spaghetti dinner.  It's funny the group of us will go to extremes to have a homemade pot of spaghetti.  Somewhere along the lines, all their kids grew up (me and my cousins), and we stopped meeting several times a year.  Now for some reason, as we all get jobs and start getting in serious relationships, family becomes a priority again.  Sort of like how like when we are teenagers we rebel against our parents, then one day we become best friends again...

For my going away party I decided to try to break the habit everyone has established of dodging family party obligations.  I planned a Sunday dinner, made homemade spaghetti (three pots of the normal recipe ... ), and I invited everyone personally to come send me away to Boston.  We may all be busy, but if there is one thing we share a mutual love for ... It's relaxing, and eating spaghetti.  I wasn't really sure what I was expecting, but I was overwhelmed by how many people took time to come send me away!

I had personally emailed my aunt to make sure she knew her whole family was invited and when who I had seen earlier that week.  My cousin (her son) was preparing to go to Japan and teach English for a year.  He went in for a routine physical and the doctor discovered that he had thyroid cancer in his neck.  He immediately went through surgery and has a special diet lined up coupled with a chemo therapy treatment plan.  He turned his "Send off to Japan" party into an "I am beating cancer" celebration.  My dad, his girlfriend and I drove out and I was overwhelmed by how happy my cousins were to see me.  Why do we get so wrapped up in social obligations that we forget how important our families are?  As I was leaving, my aunt stopped me and said how happy she was that I came out.  She said that she wanted to apologize to me because she feels guilty looking back on my skiing accident recovery that she could have been there more for me.

I just started to realize how important my family is ... oddly enough just when I am moving across the country.  I'm going to make it a point to keep in touch as much as I can with my family once I am swallowed up in the black hole of graduate school.  It's so easy to take for granted the strongest support system you have!

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