All in the family

My younger daughter, Neeta, moved from California to Northern Virginia a few days ago. So I now have my three children and two grand-children within a few miles of where I live. I also have my brother, Peter, and his family in close vicinity. So I have an abundance of family physically close to me!

It is the dream of most parents – and especially Indian parents – to have their children living close to them though it is an aspiration that is rarely realized given the demands and exigencies of life today.

I recall reading an internet posting of a former colleague of mine who hailed from England and who I worked with in the early/mid 70s’. He posted on some site that was for the alumni of his high school that he was from some small town in England but he considered “home” to be where he now lives in the Mid-West since his only child and her children also live – he said “home, after all, is where one’s children are located”!

Now there is a certain irony to this situation as it pertains to me: I have, perhaps because of the influence of my father, never expected that my kids would or should live close to me. My father always felt that his children should go wherever opportunity beckoned them. He left India for Kenya in the 1940s’. I left home at the age of sixteen to study in England and thereafter, other than brief vacations, lived thousands of miles away from my parents. It was not just me – several of my siblings were in the same boat.

I recall in conversations with my siblings and others, arguing that we should never let our children feel obligated to be located near their parents – nor should we feel the need to move close to them. Now things could and probably will change as opportunity beckons my children to greener pastures …………. but until such time that happens I will relish having them physically close to me.

George Burns said: “happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city”. Perhaps a day will come when I agree with Burns – but right now, it feels like bliss!