Blended is the Operative Word
I grew up with having situations that needed to blend and yes sometimes had a little trouble blending. My mother and father divorced when I was young and he remarried an African-American in the 1960′s. At this time I lived in a neighborhood that did not accept this and took quite a bit of ribbing. I wondered why mostly for even through a difficult situation she was always so gracious.
One of my sisters married a GI and another an evangelist. Still another married a man born in Egypt after moving to Israel to live. She lived there for years and then moved back here with a family of 5 children that all spoke Hebrew. One of my nephews married a women from India, another a women from Columbia, and my niece a man from Ireland.
Having the differences in people and cultures has sometimes made holidays interesting. How do you have Christmas blend with other traditions from different countries and beliefs? Even simply talking about events in the world brought boundless opinions that sometimes just couldn’t come together.
We stumbled along the way. It would be silly to say it was always easy. Yet we learned about each other, turned it to mostly enjoying each other and doing things together, learned to listen about the differences and laughed often. It became apparent that we were all not so different even if there was different traditions, different clothing, and different customs. It was great to learn about countries, about ways of growing up, and that love was the most important aspect of it all.
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