Family Ties

Oh hey there, cadre, my golly, how's your day going? I'm normally not 6pm kind of live streamer, so it's nice to see at a different time of the day. Thursday, caregiver day, my golly, if you look back at this line up today, off the top of my head, Steph, Shannon, Speak Wonder, Ms. Shannon Paul, Clean. So many wonderful opportunities to connect with people in the cadre sphere. So cool to see so many of you sign in on, say hey let me know how your day is going. Oh I just thought that's a lot of hearts.

I'm guessing that's either Luke or Jules, who are heavy handed on the hearts today. But how good, well good evening sunshine, nice to see you Jules. So on caregiver day, I have this little live stream called family ties. Family ties, of course, referencing the ties that bind us to the people that we are either biologically attached to or the people who we choose to be attached to in our family spheres, but also family ties, the name of a wonderful sitcom from the mid-late 80s. I love to take a moment on caregiver day to share a little bit about my family ties and connect it to a world that has helped me and that is television.

It's amazing how we can tell stories, we meaning humans, in a way that makes them a little bit more easy to take, a little bit of humor, maybe a little bit of light emotion when we see it through families that maybe aren't our own. So I am an old millennial myself, I'm 42. I have six siblings who are Genexers, a mom who's a baby boomer and a dad who is a greatest generation individual and with that the makings of so many stories that are worthy of 22 minutes of crazy situational comedy television.

I am lucky to have both my parents still able to live together on their own relatively independently, but as we know time changes and as time changes slowly, it's a little bit harder for us to realize it, but when time changes fast, we go. So being the youngest, the farthest away, generationally from my parents who are both the oldest individuals in their family trees, my mom's the oldest of three, my dad was the oldest of five. Their parents are dead, all their grandparents are dead, they are the oldest living people in both of their lineages and I am the youngest of seven.

So the ability for me to see eye to eye with my parents is often a far stretch, not because we don't desire to see eye to eye, but because the worlds in which we grew up and were formed and things we've experienced invite us down different pathways. I'll tell a story, so I move my parents to Florida every six months and every six months I move them back. Actually that's not going to be the case for much longer, they are deciding to go down for less time and they think this may be the last year that they go down talking about those changes.

But a few years ago I was moving my parents back to Minnesota, my dad drives his truck and I fly down and I move my mom and I drive her van back with her in it and I had to sneak them out of Florida during COVID, they got scared that they weren't going to be able to get back to Minnesota, so moved them back quickly. That year there was another year where there was a young black man who was shot by a police officer and killed in my hometown and my mom had done a lot of work from 2020 onward to go, "Huh, what's happening in the world and why does it seem like the world thinks differently than maybe I've always thought?"

My mom was doing a lot of learning, a lot of growing, well, all of a sudden this horrible incident happened and my hometown where I was literally driving my mom back to was the center of the universe and chaos was literally right down the street from my childhood home, the home that my parents made, and all of a sudden I watched my mom regress. Growing up in the town I grew up in, it wasn't always the best town in terms of its perspective to the world, its reputation, so my family worked really hard to be like, "No, we love our hometown, it's a great place to be."

My parents would be like, "Let's neighbors, world, let's be proud of our town." And as the whole world was saying, "We're not proud of your town." My mom went into protection mode and all of a sudden it's literally driving my mom into chaos. I was listening to my mother say things that I wasn't proud of her saying, she was hurting, she was struggling, and I was having a real time go, I understand that but also where we at. He speak London, nice to see you. And then we got home, drove through literally the chaos of new stations from around the globe and protesters and all the things, literally two blocks down from where I was bringing my parents back to, and all of a sudden I had to do a little bit of work, I had to do a little bit of work to go, "Huh, what is my mom dealing with right now?"

I had to in that moment realize that she was going through stuff, and in that moment I realized that as she goes through stuff and the things that she can do that irritates as the people who we care for can irritate, I go, "Oh, but I'm born of that. I am made of that. I am in the good, in the bad, in the real, in the imaginary, the irrational, irrational, born of that cloth." That's cool, it's cool to be able to be in that moment, literally driving into the center of the universe and watching the person who made me see their world fall apart and change.

We are so often for the people that we care give for, so innately connected to them. A week from tomorrow, me and my mother are going to get to see Barry Manilow in concert for the last time in Minnesota. Barry Manilow is doing Barry's farewell tour. I have seen Barry Manilow in concert more times than I can count, and yes I am by far the youngest person at the concert every single time. But as a hyper-emotional gay piano playing kid, Barry Manilow is kind of your superstar, especially when your mom was Barry, so you learned to love Barry too.

Within this very real situational comedy of life that I get to live, I'm very excited to get to see Barry one more time, is Barry wraps up a music career that's sp anned decades and decades and decades and decades. As I often do, I'll finish today's live stream with a little song, and you may be like, wait a minute, Barry Manilow isn't a sitcom star. Barry Manilow is actually on one of my three favorite sitcoms, Will and Grace, because Will was a fanalow, so that's the tie. Yup, good old 8 tracks, Barry lived, Barry lived from records to 8 tracks to CDs to all of the things.

It is still, has not lost his voice, he's phenomenal. So this is kind of Barry's first song, it's off of Barry's first album, and I think it makes a lot of sense for today's message of we being born, of the generations that precedes being connected to those people, often cellularly, that we end up caregiving for. I am your child, wherever you go, you take me to, I know, I learn from you, whatever I