You must be water

I just helped my grandparents set up Skype so that they could talk to my sister and I. We have not often talked on the phone, so this is a real step up in terms of meaningful contact. I also just showed my grandmother how to search for & watch my sister’s youtube videos. It felt good inside, to open this avenue of communication for them, since they’re not as up-to-date with technology, but it’s frustrating that there is so much separating us. We live more than five hundred miles away from them, and the fastest way to travel to them takes more than ten hours and several hundred dollars each way.

What’s more, there’s a cold war going on in my family, and the belligerents are my mother and her parents, who have not spoken since my mum’s divorce.

The end result is, I cannot escape my mother’s specter whenever I visit or speak with my grandmother and grandfather. There’s always an unspoken question; “Who do I love more?”

The answer is, I love both. I will not cut one part of my family off in favor of another, no matter what they do. Yes, there are things that my grandparents and I do not see eye to eye on, such as

1. (REDACTED)

2. (REDACTED)

3. (REDACTED)

But that does not mean that I cannot love them, or spend time with them. All it means is that I must watch my tongue and be sensitive to their beliefs, just as you’d do with a friend or family member with different politics. There may never be reconciliation between my mother and her parents, and I have come to accept that. Whether or not they do, I am still my mother's son, and Oma and Opa's grandson, and I will fulfill both roles as best I can. 

You can‘t fix everything, and whatever you can’t fix, you must live with. That does not imply that you can (or should) ignore the problem; it means that if you can’t fix a problem, you must be adaptable. That is a sign of emotional/intellectual health.