"Blood is thicker than Water."
First time I heard this argument, it escaped my paternal grandmother's lips. She was trying to bar her daughter-in-laws/ son-in-laws access to something... a family meeting or decision... I always thought this was a stupid argument - especially for a Mormon family.
What does that even mean? Of course it's thicker... when you're dead. Or when you've got high blood sugar. When you put oil and water in a cup, the oil floats because it is lighter. When you put blood and water in a cup, it mixes, and the water turns red. Blood really is not thicker... or it'd puddle at the bottom... Blood is always considered and treated as dangerous for possible transferral of disease and germs. Water is only considered dangerous to the touch when we're swimming in a stagnant swamp... or an infested lake...
And what does blood and water have to do with anything when you're in need? If you can't pay your bills, how does the fact your "blood" theoretically shares properties to your family, help you? Is there some sort of contract written in the DNA of that blood that says, "You're his sister; your required to help him. Obliged to help him. Humanity requires it of you and your blood."
Maternal Family
In my mother's family, they emulate what I assume this saying means - that they'll help you out no matter what. But they are really one step better... they do it because they are kind and caring people and really do care about you... it's not just that they feel some unspoken family obligation to help you. They really wish the best for everyone and that doesn't just stop at family... it's their friends and neighbors too. Anyone they meet.
That doesn't mean they just hand out money everywhere they go... everyone has to know their limit and capabilities for helping others.
Paternal Family
My father's side is a bit different. Most of them believe that appearance is everything. My father is one of ten siblings. Some of them will never ask for help from their siblings because they want them to think they're doing wonderful, even if they're dying of cancer. At big family dinners, they're constantly trying to show off their new toys, home, or brag about their job. They talk about pulling together in times of crisis, like when my Grandparents died, but it was mostly a show... one aunt had tried to change grandmother's will when no one was looking... so she could get an inheritance immediately. One uncle would visit once a year or so and always leave via the garage, grabbing items as he went. Another aunt would stop by and steal rare books out of the home library in the name of "home schooling." She never brought them back... including the one I was in the middle of reading. After both parents died, they had one day of "oh, sad, our parents are gone." Then everyday after that it was wolves around a carcass... "I want this, I want that... I deserve this... Dad gave that to me... That Actually belongs to Me... That 'Favorite Child' clock is MINE! No, it's not! Mom gave that to ME!"
Four years before my Grandmother passed, my father was the only one who A. was willing to take care of Mom in her old age, B. was willing to do it on his own dime, and C. didn't owe the parents any money. Another uncle had sort of been helping her for several years previously, but they had had a falling out, and it wasn't a good situation anymore. I later learned that one reason my dad may have agreed to do this is that he didn't really remember growing up in this household. He'd had a couple of bike/motorcycle accidents and he remembers very little of his childhood.
In those 4 years, it was a lot of hell and a little bit of heaven. My mother endured a lot of hardship that she had little control over. My dad, though it was his mother we were taking care of, he was out trying to get a job or working or trying to find a better job that covered the bills. Some jobs were in the state, some were not. My mother took the brunt of the care-taking. At first it wasn't much. Grandma would fall down out of her wheelchair. But then accidents started happening. Grandma would plug her bathroom sink and flood down through to the basement. She canned grapes that had already fermented. She tried to microwave a TV dinner for the time it takes to cook it in the oven. She melted a cutting board to her coil stove because she was too blind to see what she was doing. It started a 2 foot fire. She ate her fire-retardant covered sandwich before anyone could tell her 'No.' I remember mornings I'd walk out into the hallway to find a trail of poop coming from Grandma's room through to the kitchen. I remember being embarrassed to invite my friends over because Grandma hadn't taken a bath in over a month, and the whole house reeked. And an hour after she'd taken a sponge bath, the house smelled even worse.
On top of that, Grandma was a mean old lady. She talked bad about everyone behind their backs. She told my Father that my mother was a "She-Devil." Once my grandma was so mad she was trying to hit my Mom and I... and run us over with her motorized wheelchair. She was very weak and very slow, so it was almost comical. (I can't remember what we were refusing to let her do... something like disabling her from plugging up the bathroom sink so she could flood the basement again.)
Once my blind grandma said my my room was dirty and how dare my parents put up with that. I had the cleanest room in the house - cleaner than grandma's room. I was mad. Dad said it's just because I actually had furniture. He said they had NOTHING as children... only a bed. Sometimes they had a book or one toy.
Family Drama
Why didn't she get declared "incompetent?" Well, when her kids came to visit, she acted very normal. Very lucid. She could pull that off for a 3 hour stretch. No one believed my mother - was was an IN-LAW. Water. No one asked the grandkids. Blood. But children are not to be included in family affairs.
I heard a rumor that my aunts and uncles thought my parents were spending all of Grandma's money while living at grandma's house. I'm sure they didn't believe me when they passive-aggressively asked me years later if my parents had been doing that. I told them 'no'. My mom whined to me for many years, since I was a young girl, about the things that were upsetting her. And she did at this time too. She whined that she had to pay for the toilet paper that Grandmother's visitors used, because grandma couldn't fathom that her visitors might be using more than one square of TP for #1 and two squares for #2. Some of them were using half a roll - like the grandkids who had just been potty trained. I remember my mom crying every December that we weren't going to have a Christmas because we were going broke... and every Christmas morning she would cry again, about the pile of presents that arrived under our Christmas tree - from "Angel Tree" and "Secret Santa" neighbors. I think if my parents had had money, I would have gotten a decent haircut in high school... and some braces for my teeth.
Within a week of grandma's passing, my aunts and uncles said, "Move out. We're selling the house and splitting the profits." My mom put her foot down and said, "My kids will finish the school year." There were 2 months left. My dad was unemployed. I moved out to college one month into the summer. My parents moved out a couple months later. It took over a year for the estate to be sold - for a ridiculous price, was my understanding. One uncle wanted to buy the house, but my other aunts and uncles, supposedly, underhandedly and back-stabbingly, sold it to someone else... for ten cents more. He's never forgiven them.
Likewise, neither has my Father. For them treating us so unkindly. Everything was behind everyone's back. Prying questions were always presented as a trick question. I remember one family dinner before Grandmother's passing, all the adults started screaming at each other. It seems it was started by one of these trick questions. All of everyone's children of every age was in shock. None of us knew what was going on. None of us understand why the adults were fighting. None of us had seen our parents shouting before. I've never seen them do it since. When grandma passed, my parent's didn't tell anyone where they moved to. They didn't give anyone their real email. They didn't give anyone our new home phone number. Avoidance was the answer to all conflicts.
It's been nearly 8 years since that terrible summer. Some of the siblings are friends again. Some of them do Sunday family dinners together again. Quite a few of the adult grandchildren come to it. The aunts and uncles still try to show off to each other and the grandkids. Appearances still matter to most of them. They occasionally enjoy some "friendly" bantering and teasing. Sometimes they cross the line and offend. Every few months, someone asks a prying trick question. It usually ends up with the person asking getting offended.
So much for "Blood is thicker than Water"
So much for "Blood is thicker than water." If that were the case, my uncle would have been sold the house before anyone outside the family had the chance. If that were the case, my parents wouldn't have been thrown out during unemployment.
My mother later told me that it would have been cheaper for them to pay for a nurse to LIVE there 24-7, and stay out of state, then move in and do it ourselves. My father's career has and will never recover. My mother needs two shoulder surgeries from picking grandma up from falls, moving between chairs, and rolling over in bed, etc. She will never get it.
A Little bit of Heaven
Earlier I mentioned there was a little bit of heaven in all this. If we hadn't moved, one of my brothers and I would have been lost... I would have been lost in a religious and moral sense. Shortly before we moved into grandmother's house, things were happening in my and my brothers' lives that we knew were sending us down a path that would have caused my parents far more grief than they could have imagined. Far more grief than the destruction of my parents' relationships with their siblings. Moving saved our lives.
Tangent
This post kind of steered its way away from where I was originally planning on going... that happens when I talk about the dynamics of my Father's family...
Family Ties
Family support means nothing if the relationship is not there. If the dynamics don't include trust or love, than Water is more reliable than Blood. If your family knows your faults and they use it against you, they're not your support. They're not your safety net.
We're in a day and age where people hardly know their families anymore. They've never met some of their cousins. They've met some of their aunts and uncles only once. What do they owe us? They don't know us, they live across the country... How does blood relation mean I owe them any favors? We live in a world where we feel closer to our friends than we do our brother that's ten+ years younger. People regularly pick their boyfriend over their family's opinions of him... even if they are founded concerns. The loyalty of family is disintegrating.
Another Perspective
I have a friend I've been thinking about lately... she's well into adulthood and irresponsible. Her family is constantly bailing her out... of debt, from bad relationships, replacing expensive things she keeps breaking... because she won't be responsible and take care of it. She acts embarrassed and talks bad about them to her friends; her family knows it; and yet, they continue to take care of her. Enable her. Protect her from consequences.
She thinks that because she's related to them, they'll just provide free services to her. It appears to me, that it has not crossed her mind that she Should be providing services and favors back. I know that occasionally she does, babysits, etc, but I doubt it's a balanced relationship.
And I wonder, how long will that Blood be thicker than Water? How long will they take care of her and enable her to continue to be irresponsible?
