"Sort out my relationship to my parents, sister, & niephlings."

[jazzfish]

At this point I've reached a detente with my parents, and it works alright. It turns out that when I'm not forced to live with them, I kind of enjoy spending time & catching up. I can't really talk about writing with them, not yet, and there are plenty of other areas that we steer clear of, but, you know. There's a lot of good sailing to be had in calm waters. Not every relationship has to chart every dangerous reef.

To the left, I don't like my sister. I mean, I actively dislike her. Some of this is bad blood going back decades: her feeling betrayed that I wasn't the Big Brother that society had promised her and lashing out at me, me resenting that my parents just handed her things I worked hard to get. Some of it's bad blood that only goes back years: the last time we talked for more than five minutes it ended in a huge fight. More of it, now, is that she's just not someone I want anything to do with. She's a very angry person; most recently that anger's been directed at people who don't want the treason-in-defence-of-slavery flag flying over US government buildings.

ZUKO: I know what you're going to say. She's my sister, and I should be trying to get along with her.
IROH: No! She's crazy, and she needs to go down.

So there's that. I expect that this will make sorting out my parents' estate much more difficult than it might be otherwise, but since they're white-collar white folks with excellent medical care that's likely decades away.

The tricky part is the niephlings, my sister's kids. One niece, born 2004; one nephew, born 2009.

I have no problem with being the Cool Uncle but I'm not sure how one actually goes about that, especially from three thousand miles away. My default method would be "provide cool books" but my niece has some developmental problems: she's reading at about the level of my nephew, for instance. So... I really don't know.

Be happy to see them when I visit, try not to take my sister's issues out on them, and send cool Christmas presents, I guess.

Comments

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Zuko and iroh?

[thanate]

Do you want kid-book recommendations?

(ETA- In random thoughts, cool uncledom probably changes in the digital age, and for recommending media it helps if you've got a fairly good handle on the kinds of the things the kids like. Being the kind of grownup who listens & treats kids like they're people goes a long way, even if you only do it occasionally. So far the Megatherium is pretty skeptical about her uncle, but at the moment she's not so sure about any adult males besides her father.)

[novel_machinist]

Well, you know what they say - the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. Just cause you're family doesn't mean you have to like them.