Life, Day by Day

When we get married, the next logical thing that happens are the coming of the children.  But when a marriage fails, what happens to the children?  Often times couples forget that the failure of a marriage does not only involve the two of them but largely affects the children. It cannot be denied that the family is vital in the development of children.  I do not think I would be the person that I am if my parents did not prioritize family, specifically their kids. We knew our parents had problems in their marriage but they never made us afraid that our family will fall apart...we were raised secure, comforted by their love and devotion. Yes, it may sound selfish but when you are a child, your parents and family is the only world you know of.  This is why parenthood is such a big sacrifice albeit, a fruitful and joyful one.  So, even if the marriage can't be saved, the children should always remain the priority of the couple. The children should be m...

I looked up the legal definition of a family and this is what I got...and this ...and then this . It only goes to show that today's family is difficult to define because of its diversity primarily due to the many changes it has undergone through the years. In school I was taught that a family consists of a father, a mother and a child.  That teaching continues to this day even when families and family dynamics are no longer as simple as that.  When my son was in Grade 2 in a local Catholic school, his social studies teacher asked them to say something about their families and some of the children gave unusual answers.  She obviously was unprepared (or simply clueless) for what they gave because, not getting the "right" answers, she further explained that a father is the one that made your mother pregnant and a mother is the one who carried you in her tummy! Of course, when he was picked up from school, the first thing my son asked was, "where is my father" and...

As I am making more progress on my parents' respective family trees, I am also discovering a lot of family secrets...or maybe they were not really secrets but just got buried in the past.  As I unravel our family histories, I realize that human behavior then was not much different from what it is today. The only difference is that in the past there were clear cut rules on appropriate behavior while in this modern age, what is right and wrong has become relative. The poignant movie The Age of Innocence is a good example of how relationships and it's complications were handled by the middle and upper class in the 19th to the mid 20th century. There was a standard of behavior that put emphasis on importance of family and respect of society. If you fail to observe these, you are banished, exiled or marked as a persona non grata doomed to be set aside and ignored by family and society the rest of your life.  In the past, arranged marriages were common and if you're lucky, you m...

I am a relatively honest person...what you see is what you get and I have very few secrets, probably because I am not very good at remembering or keeping one.  On the other hand, I would always tell my friends that if they have something to confide, they should make me promise to keep it a secret and I will honor that promise till the end of time. But what about family secrets ? The kind that everyone wants to forget...those that are considered taboo...those which changed lives...or that which was deemed so humiliating and scandalous that to talk about it will mean banishment! (big grin) Well, I think every family has at least one and family secrets have a way of making themselves known...sooner or later. Why?  Oftentimes, simply because the time has come to tell the real story.  Although I personally believe that family secrets are not subjects for bedtime stories, I also believe that there are those because of their very nature, have been the subject of sp...