“A Sense of Family”

Jed moved in with us at the end of July, 2005. His bedroom was in the back corner of our finished basement, right off the incomplete kitchen. My office is down here also, at the other end of the house.

I've always worked long hours — being self employed makes that almost unavoidable — but having Jed down here changed something for me: I regained a sense of family that (I'm ashamed to admit) I'd lost at some point in the years since Corinne and I were first married.

It's not that there was any trouble in our marriage. Not even close. We still felt like a couple, and we've always been in love with each other. We just weren't a family. Maybe it was related to losing Shane, I don't know.

Children aren't a required element of a family: I believe you can be a family of two. Plenty of parents-and-children "units" aren't very family-like. So, to my mind, children aren't the key.

Having Jed around provided me, at least, with that sense of family. The moment he left (Dec 6th), I was instantly aware of the loss of that feeling. I felt family-less.

At the same time, I became keenly aware of Corinne, upstairs, going about her day. She's home more now that she's not working, and her “office” (the bird room) is still having the drywall repaired and repainted, so she spends most of her time in her “new” office (the livingroom right above my head), or in the kitchen which is just one room over. I hear her movements, puttering around the house, talking to the animals or on the phone (or to herself!)

So what of it? I've found my lost sense of family by doing the obvious: spending more time upstairs, with the person (and critters) that make my family unique. I've totally stopped watching TV (for a couple of weeks, now), too, so when I'm upstairs I'm able to pay more attention.

Aside

Related to this — though I'm not quite sure how — is another change. I've been going to bed earlier and getting up earlier, every single day. Going to bed by 11 and getting up by 7 when everyone else is still sleeping, then having my breakfast and doing the readings out on the deck as the sun comes up.

Nothing earth shattering, but it's weird that this happened without my making a conscious decision to do it. For months I had been going to sleep extremely late, and then was too tired to get up at any decent hour.

Again, it changed when Jed left, but I think this is just one effect in a long chain of causes-and-effects.

I can't over-stress what a big deal this is for me. A lot of things in my life feel more “right,” now, than they have in a long time. And of course, this “sense of family” is stronger than it was when Jed was here (brother versus wife...). Plus, work has been more challenging and rewarding than it has been in years.

Questions

1. What will happen when the “bird room” is finished (possibly Friday, with a couple more days to move all the stuff back in there) and Corinne's office is no longer in the living room? There's no room for me to park in the bird room in the evenings, so it looks like we're going to replace Corinne's eMac with a used (or cheap and new) laptop so that we can BOTH be in the living room (or wherever).

   If we're going to do it, I'm hoping we can pick it up before MacWorld SF. It'll be handy for her to have her own machine, so she can still check her email after mine is stolen from the show floor. ;-)

   (Oh, hey, I hadn't yet mentioned that we're going to MacWorld...)

2. With all of these changes, all this new-found sense of family and rightness, will things get even better (or just “differenter?”) when we have the brand new baby girl here in the house?

   (Oh, hey, I guess I hadn't mentioned that yet, either!)