A few weeks ago I wrote about taking a month off and, to my own irritation, missing my family over Christmas. No tree. No routines. No polite pretending. Just distance, sunshine, and the uncomfortable realisation that when the noise drops, what’s left is affection. Even for the people who can still do your head in.
That blog surprised me. Mostly because I don’t enjoy discovering I’m more sentimental than I let on, and I definitely don’t like finding that out while wearing flip-flops.
Fast forward to this weekend. My nephew turned thirty. Which meant a family party in Bristol. Full turnout. Multiple generations. No escape routes. The exact thing you miss when you’re away and then quietly dread when it actually lands in your calendar.
Family has a habit of doing that.
What used to be a manageable group has quietly turned into something closer to a travelling circus. Not because anyone’s messed up. Just because life keeps happening while you’re busy assuming everything’s roughly the same.
Siblings aren’t “brought along”. They’re a consequence. A side effect of relationships. You don’t just get the partner. You get the ecosystem. Parents. Brothers. Sisters. History. Habits. Emotional baggage that didn’t start with you and won’t stop because of you.
Then it gets messier.
People remarry. Exes stay friends. Which is healthy, grown-up, and also means the family network expands again. More people. More connections. More children. More parents of partners your family chose, and their other kids, all turning up in the same room.
At some point, you look around and think, when did this become Glastonbury, and why am I still here.
You don’t dislike these people. That’s not true. You just didn’t choose them. And no one really talks about that bit, so instead you smile, refill your drink, and pretend you’re not already planning your exit.
And then something shifts.
Late night. Last people left in the bar. As usual. I’m sitting with the youngsters. The ones who exist in my life purely because of other people’s relationship choices. The ones I’d mentally filed as “fine” and never really gone any deeper with.
They were brilliant.
Not in a polished, impressive way. Just honest. Funny. Thoughtful. Talking about work pressure, relationships, therapy, ambition, fear, and that general sense that nobody really knows what they’re doing yet.
Somewhere between drinks it landed.
I hadn’t been pushed out.
The family had just grown, and I’d been sulking about it instead of paying attention.
And then I noticed it wasn’t just them.
It was everyone.
People I’d known for years but hadn’t really been curious about in a long time. Siblings. In-laws. Parents. People I’d quietly frozen at a particular age or behaviour and never updated the picture.
I realised how often I confuse familiarity with knowledge.
I think I know how they’ll react.
I think I know what they’ll say.
I think I know who they are.
Mostly, I’m just recycling old data.
So I stopped deciding and started watching. Stopped reacting and asked a few questions instead. Not clever ones. Not “deep” ones. Just basic curiosity. How’s work actually going. What’s been hard. What’s better than it was last year.
Family, it turns out, is far more interesting when you stop narrating it in your head and actually listen.
The frustration isn’t always about them. Sometimes it’s about the fact you’ve stopped being curious and started being certain.
Family isn’t fixed. It doesn’t stay where you left it. It expands through love, divorce, second chances, friendships, and decisions you didn’t make but still get to live alongside.
The danger isn’t the growth.
It’s assuming you already know the story.
The best conversations don’t happen at the table or during the organised bits. They happen late, when the bar’s closing, the noise drops, and nobody’s trying to be who they think the family expects.
So yes, I missed my family over Christmas.
And this weekend reminded me why.
They’re loud. Complicated. Expanding. Occasionally irritating. And constantly changing.
If you’re willing to drop the assumptions and shut up long enough, you might find you actually like who they’ve become.
And yes, I was drunk.
But this time, that just helped me listen.
