Family LIfe
Kentucky Fried Chicken and fireworks- as a child, no other combination of two things was as exciting to me as this. When my parents talked about chicken and fireworks, that meant that the Fourth of July was coming up, and that was when my mothers' side of the family had their family reunion each year. It was always held at my Mamaw's house, because their was so much to do, and the house itself was colossal. She also had a swimming pool, and that's where all of the children would go while the parents went inside and talked (or argued) about family matters. Regardless of what was going on with the grown-ups, the children loved this holiday more than any other, because it was a day of playtime with fifteen or twenty of their closest friends! We would play swimming pool games, such as seeing who could make the biggest splash off of the diving board or an hour-long game of Marco Polo; it was more fun than any kid could ever dream of! The best part of the day was the fireworks. We would all sit on the driveway, each child waving a brightly-colored sparkler, watching the men (including my father) light enormous fireworks, and on some occasions, lighting themselves as well. Everyone would stay unti
I have a wonderful set of parents, and my brother, sister and I are all very close. That's one aspect of my family life that I wish wasn't so much like the Fourth of July. My brother and I have stayed up until 2:00 in the morning on many occasions talking about everything from what we ate that day to how our relationships with boyfriends and girlfriends are going, and those conversations are ones that I'll always cherish. The tremendous delight I felt before the trip to my Mamaws is much like that which I feel in my home everyday. We use family dinners as our time to share the events of the day with each other, as well as how they made us feel. The physical distance between parents and children on the Fourth of July is much like the distance between my parents and my siblings and I. My extended family sometimes can hold a grudge from one Fourth of July to the next, as my nuclear family can from one day to the next until someone takes the blame. On the Fourth of July, you have an entire year of events that you want to share with the people around you so that they get to know who you are becoming and what events shaped the changes they see in you. l the last firework, the largest of them all, was fired. The most cherished similarity to me of my family and my Fourth of July experience is the time we spend sharing pieces of ourselves with each other. One person gets angry, and tends to stay angry until the other person apologizes, instead of being the bigger person and apologizing first. My family can sit down and talk about things that many families can't or wouldn't talk about, just because of the relationships we have with each other.
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