My ABI Brother lives 50 minutes drive south east of Melbourne. My Tradie Brother and Ex Sis in Law live a 50 minute drive south south east of Melbourne. Sister lives a 90 minute drive south of Melbourne, with the need to negotiate the bay and Victoria's second largest city .
It is so interesting that Ray's family in the west of Newcastle all live so close together. His 26 year old great nephew, the one who stayed with us a couple of years ago, has bought a house in the area, as has a younger great nephew. Property is much cheaper than it is in Australia and good on the two lads for making the effort to become home owners.
Using Google Maps, I measured the distance between the extremes of where his family live and it is 3.5 kilometres/2miles west to east and draw it as an oblong circle, 1.5km north to south.
Within that area live Ray's three sisters, their children and then their children, along with two cousins.
Excluding the great nieces and nephews and partners, Ray had 22 blood relatives and two cousins living within five square kilometres.
That is family, all close and all connected. Or are they?
"The only time we all get together is when youse come here", they said. Pretty well weekly I speak on the telephone to my three siblings and communicate with Ex Sis in Law online.
So while Mother's children live miles apart, maybe we are more closely connected than Ray's family who live close to each other. Dunno. My mind is just wandering about connections and relationships.
As per her itinerary, Sister's and Bone Doctor's daughter Jo, as this is published is about to take a Japanese bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto.
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Your family is much more connected than mine. Two of my brothers live in the same city. A niece and a nephew do too. I don't often see them and talk to the brothers every week or so. A further brother lives in South Australia and I talk to him even less often.
ReplyDeleteA great niece and nephew (adult) live here too. I have others in the US of A and in Queensland.
DeleteYou do seem to be very close to a lot of extended family. My one brother lives in Idaho---8 hours drive if traffic or weather isn't an issue. His daughter lives 3 hours from me but has no interest in any sort of communication. My other brother and family live 3 1/2 hours drive away but I haven't seen him in almost two years. I rarely communicate with him, never with either SIL, and rarely with any of his grown kids. He only calls if he is on his drive home from work and that is rare. I never hear from any of my nieces and maybe once a year from my nephew. I think there's something really wrong with our family, being so not close, by distance or any other way. But maybe that's how it is with lots of people and their families.
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