The Tie That Binds

My family is freakishly close.  We probably talk more often in a week than most people talks to their family in a year.  One thing that keeps us close is our collective love of food.  To explain this, let's take my phone records from last Thursday:

10:01 (8min, 57sec) -- call from Mom.  She calls to talk to me about my aunt being in town, my blog, and other assorted topics.

2:06 (7min, 18sec) -- I call Daddy.  I've just left the grocery store with salmon steaks, and I call him to ask about seasoning the salmon and assorted cooking preparations.  Via Daddy, Mom shares the recipe for the dill sauce we always eat with salmon, and answers my "what to have as a side dish" question with about five or six ideas.

5:29 (32min, 28sec) -- Kara calls.  She's on her way home from work, and just wants to chat.  We talk about my new living room paint color, a new K-12 finance program she's working on with Pitt County Schools, what we eat for lunch at work, the benefits and disadvantages of a protein-and-carb diet, what I'm fixing for dinner, how Kelly fixes salmon, and I'm sure several other things.  There was a stream of consciousness with this conversation, though I can't trace it now.  My favorite Kara quote of the conversation "Don't tell Addison that today's [Thursday's] blog was about a squirrel, and not her."

6:08 (16min, 24sec) -- My phone rings again (6 minutes after I got off the phone with Kara).  Jason says, "It must be your other sister."  I check the caller ID and start laughing, because it is actually Jill on the phone.  I tell this to Jill, and she says "Does it freak other people out how much we communicate with each other?"  (which is what inspired today's blog, by the way)  We talk about Jason's brother's upcoming wedding, the details I know about it, and assorted memories from weddings we've been to before.  I interrupt the wedding conversation to ask her a question about salmon preparation, because as we're talking, I'm making dinner.  She had to go when she got home, because her puppy very eager to play with her.


Things I love about talking to my family:
~Don't take this the wrong way, but it's a great way to kill time.  We talk to each other very often during commutes from work or errand-running.  Between me and Mama, we can get Jill the whole way from Charlotte to Atlanta.  If our first call-choice doesn't pick up, we'll call our second choice, and so on.  I can't tell you how many times I've called one of my sisters back three minutes after they called me, and they're already on the phone with Mom.

~There's no pressure.  Everyone has that friend or family member whose call will last a minimum of 30 minutes if you pick up.  With my family, we talk so often that no one is offended when we have to get off the phone.  Kara doesn't talk when she's at home, because she's spending time with her family.  Jill gets off the phone when she arrives home because there are dogs she has to immediately deal with.  The other day, I answered Jill's call by saying "Hey, we're about to eat" followed by an immediate "cool, talk to you later" from her.  We know we'll catch up with each other again in a couple of days.

~We can talk about anything.  I mean anything.  Holiday plans in July, decorating plans in my new house, recent Addison behavior, details about something I'm teaching, Jamesville happenings, work frustrations, the list goes on.  If there's a lull in the conversation (good luck with that in a family of chatters), there's the universal topic -- food.  Oh food, I love you.  Almost as much as I love my family.