Dear Mom and Dad, I finally get it….

Happy Monday everyone! Hope all of you had a lovely weekend. Mondays are my day to hang with Baby P, but today he secretly told me that he was planning on taking a longer than usual nap so I could squeeze in a little blog post. Thanks Baby P, because today, more than ever, I wanted to share a few things that have been in my heart.

Family.

I’ve been thinking a lot about family. And I’m not quite sure why that is, but these past few weeks family has been on my mind (and heart) a lot. You see, I grew up in a very tight-knit family…for the majority of my teen and college years, I thought sometimes too tight. My parents always made sure to keep me and my brother close…dinner at the table every evening, big breakfasts and church on Sundays, frequent phone calls whenever we were apart. When I went away for college, I frequently thought it was a nuisance. I can close my eyes now and remember (with annoyance) having to pick up my cell phone on a Saturday morning when I could barely open my eyes from (cough, cough) a little too much studying the night before.

Do they have to call so early? UGH!!!

Maybe I’ll let it ring out….no…they’ll think I’m avoiding their call….

Okay, no, just get it over with…you can do it…

But I did it. I picked up the phone and called my mom and dad, and spoke, even if for a few minutes. And the same went for me and my brother. Even though we lived in separate cities, we still made it a point to speak once or twice a week, to catch up.

By the time I graduated from college, staying in touch with my family was second nature to us, and when I met my soon to be husband, he was fairly shocked at how frequently we met up for our “family dinners.”

Your brother got a new TV so we are having another family dinner?

Um…yes.

We just saw them last weekend!

Um…yeah….

Flash forward to today, I have a house full of boys, my brother has two children of his own, it suddenly hit me a few weeks ago over a family dinner.

Messy kitchen, full wine glasses, endless amounts of food, family jokes, laughter, crazy kids running around….in that imperfect setting my Dad made eye contact with me from across the room.

You get it now, don’t you?

What Dad?

Family connection. Nothing else matters. Nothing. This is what it’s about. Us, right here, right now. Our family, together.

Right then and there, I finally got it. I understood why my parents had always fought so hard to keep us close, to keep us grounded. It suddenly made perfect sense. Through all of our emails, phone calls, and frequent family dinners, it isn’t only our love that grows, but our connections as well. We have become other’s best friends.

And please, don’t get me wrong, we are by no means perfect and I wholeheartedly believe that our fights are as big as our love, but we always come back to together, back to our family dinners, back to each other.

So Mom and Dad (as I know you sometimes check my blog), if you read this, thank you. Thank you for teaching me how important family is, for truly understanding it’s meaning, the love behind it. It overwhelms me to think I as a mom–how could I possibly come close to what both of you have done for me? How will I do it? But then I realize that you are both still here, my biggest cheerleaders, my favorite morning phone calls, guiding us, every step of the way.

Love you.

Natalie