Movie-inspired musings

Last night I finally watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Funny movie; I loved it. But it made me realize two things, one good, one not so good, about my relationship with elisandra.

The good is that we both come from large, loud, chaotic families where almost no family gathering is quiet. Mine is Portuguese, and even though I was raised away from them for the first half of my life, I had enough contact that I'm one of them. We're brash, loud, often crude, and very very funny. When new people are brought to meet the family, we even take bets on how long before they run from the combined might of the Bettencourts (which is my Portuguese half's name, duh!). So we're neither of us suffering culture shock around the other's family.

Now the not-so-good. The members of my family I'm closest to live no more than 15 minutes from me, so Elli's getting to know them pretty well. But Elli's family all lives in the Bay Area, and while that gives us excuses to visit the area (as if we needed them), and sure, it's only 2 to 3 hours away, the fact is we can't go as often as we'd like -- so her family is still largely unknown to me. I have surface knowledge of most of them, enough to know I like them, but not enough to really get to know them and become part of them.

Of course, this is the kind of thing most people deal with all the time -- to become part of them will take time, and that's perfectly fine so far as it goes. But when you come from a clan that sticks as tight together as mine does (even when we're annoying each other, we always have each other's backs), you get used to that.