Family reunion of the third kind

My mother passed away on that Tuesday evening and on Wednesday morning we attended the funeral. Even those family members we saw every two years or so attended. We did all the ritual and religious traditions. We put the dead body on the flour and a clergyman prays for her while others stand behind him repeating. Then we put the dead in the grave and while shaking it some clergyman reads prayers. We said goodbye and buried her. I saw all my cousins and their children that day and also my nephews and nieces. Some of them I had to introduce to my wife since she had never seen them before. We gathered in my older brother's and talked about our memories we had of each other. It all went well. These kinds of family reunions mostly happen at funerals. These last few days have been very tiresome. I received many telephone calls from home and abroad. One was from my eldest brother. He is living in another country. He is a playwright and a theater actor there. I had not talked to him or had any contact of any sort for a long time. "Let us learn to know each other. We are all new people by now after so long time. I will write to you and explain about myself and you do the same. Please understand we have both changed and must not see each other as we knew each other in the past." I told him over the phone in the hope that he too tries to start a new kind of relationship without fixed rigid expectations he feels towards me. He is a good guy but he is the kind of person that when have ideas about someone thought that it was never going to change and that their attitude about other people and their judgment is always correct. For these people it is difficult to consider the present and changes they see in other people and to base their attitude upon that. It is difficult to communicate with him but I am going to give it a try.
Regarding my relationship with my wife, it is starting to work and she seams to understand that the changes she had seen in me is going to last longer than expected. Every morning I get up I say to myself "Take the (right) action – fuck the moods." The feedback of my action encourages me to continue. I feel more relaxed now and take things more easily. More over at night before going to bed I feel I have done all I could. This is not true with everyday though. I can not do much about the ups and downs life brings about. Financial pressures, work, dealing with an eight year old girl and all that. I also had to deal with my moods of depression and mania. I do not fight them but having them and at the same time going on with everyday life is a bit difficult. I have managed so far and hope with positive feedbacks I get I can get through.
Today I got up early though I felt much tiered. I slept all night without springing up in the middle of the night and this is a good sign. My wife is no longer able to take our daughter to work with her. This morning we spent sometime to convince her to stay with her grandmother and so I took her to her grandmother at the shopping center where she goes after her morning exercise in a nearby park. My daughter is a bit spoiled by her mother. But I feel that she needs the love and attention her mother provides and with what I see in her personality it is going to be alright in future.
I said I would discuss what triggered the changes I made in my life and relationship. Well one morning I felt that I had to build things upon what I already had and could not wait for something to just happen and change things. This thought came about by reading other people's blogs. I learn a lot from them. I already had a family, a wife whom I should try to understand more rather than fight to get to my point. Love was at hand and we did not have to look for it in some other place. All we had to do was care for it and let it re-grow and maintain it afterwards and feed it. So I started. Put aside all the past negative thoughts and started from the beginning. Like I have just met her and am starting to know her.


Radin was the youngest child in his family. Then was Fard, four years apart. With all the energy of a young boy and so delicate in his feelings towards nature and animals. He had large light brown eyes and short hair. He brought home cats and chickens and kept them in the garden until they became part of the family. His parents did not approve of this but he had his ways to convince them and when he or Radin had problem convincing their father they got help from their only sister Shal. She had some influence on their father and their father would listen to her. Perhaps because she was his only daughter. She was loved by all the family members and other brothers. She was always the go between when Radin and Fard fought. Her long hair was one of her features Radin always remembered as a child. She had this little white bag that Radin and Fard loved. It always contained some money she had saved. When three of them were alone at home and after some talking and playing she would ask Radin to bring the bag. Took out some money and said " Go and get some ice-cream". That ice-cream was the most delicious ice-cream Radin had had in his life. Fard ate his so slowly so it would last longer and so he was having ice-cream while others had finished theirs. They spent many hours talking about their ideas and thoughts. She sometimes read books for them. Especially at night before going to bed. If it was a thriller they turned the lights off and read in bed using a torch. Radin imagination took him inside the story and he felt every thing as real. He was a very imaginative boy and his mind wandered away. Most of the books they read were translation from other languages and this gave them more insight into other peoples lives in the world. Radin thought how close the feelings of people were no matter how far they lived. One of the books that effected him so much at that age was 'The little prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupyry.
The next child in the family was Asi. He had lived twelve years of his life with another family in his parent's birth town because of problems the family had during their emigration to the big city. Radin did not remember first time Asi joined the family in later years but had heard about it. Asi had been so wild and uncontrollable, the first years. He still resents his having to live far from home and felt to be second rate family member and he never forgave his parents for that. Radin loved Asi for he bought him ice-cream and took him to trips around the neighborhood when he was four or five. He had a very exiting time with him.
Next was Jibi with his black eyes, dark skin and black hair. He looked very different in that all the children were more or less fair and blond. He was very skilful in making up stories but although they knew most of it was made up other brothers and sister would listen to his stories and adventures he said he had experienced during the day. He was so funny and the jokes he made, made everyone laugh.
Then came Bama. He was very different in his manners from others. You could hardly see him smile. And he was all the time nagging about the things they did not have. The family wasn't very well off and the only person who worked was their father, a quiet slow man who didn't talk much. He rarely got angry but when he did he only had to look at them straight in the eyes and that did it. When he came home from work, he had lunch (Radin ate his second round of lunch with him), took a nap during which no one was allowed to make the slightest noise. And most of the evenings he read newspaper, books and listen to the news on the radio.
The eldest son was called Mano. He was the first to go to university and owned a book shelf full of different books. Radin often looked at the books and knew them by their pictures. Radin's mother was a hard working housewife but she was so much full of energy that in the evenings she would gather her children and talk to them telling them jokes and made them happy. Sometimes she talked about the past and told them stories about people she had known. She made life in that house so happy and took away all the worries and made Radin see life so beautiful and full of interesting things and people.