It used to be that very wealthy people, when they built huge homes and wings on homes, housed multiple generations.
Take the Adam’s Family.
They were always so much fun. Okay, quirky and weird. They had multiple variations of generational occupants that probably had few other options.
And then there’s the Queen of England. If she isn’t currently housing multiple generations, she could.
For all sorts of various reasons extended families live together and while most of them are explored in gory, dysfunctional, and negative detail, writing fodder for TV sitcoms, it turns out that’s not the whole story.
Every morning, one by one, the grown men in my family, ready themselves for work. Between the three of them, they have a perfectly timed schedule so that no one sucks up the hot water while flushing another’s morning pee. They shave in orchestration, make their to go coffee and then each one, separate to their schedule, climbs the stairs. They walk to the right side of the bed where I lay half listening to their toilette, and each one bends slightly, smelling of clean soap and iron pressed shirts, to kiss my cheek.
I don’t recall requesting this.
I have no idea how they have all three come to do it.
They never fail to do it.
These kisses are the sweetest, most generous gestures of love I have ever received.
They start off my day in ways they would never imagine. The inhabitants of a family home come and go but some things are forever.
God bless my men and this time given to me.
