Family disgrace

Being born here, and my greek father being born here as well, our ties to Greece are not very strong. In fact, it is his parents who live here with us, that hold the ties between the rest of the family. We can say that they manage our links to the others. My father is not really interested in that, but my grand parents are typical traiditionnal greeks; family is the most important thing. And when I say family, I mean all the aunts and uncles, all the cousins, all the nephews and nieces, all the god mothers and fathers, the godchildren, and even the second cousins, grand aunts and uncles. Everything. For them, the image of a huge family, spreaded accross the world, strong and healthy is very important.

But that mentality means that sometimes, those people are ready to diminish individuals who threaten the traditional unity of the family. And that includes me. I know my grandparents never talk about my love life with the rest of the family, even though I'm now living with my 6 year relationship. But my grandparents do talk about me, they are very proud of what I've done; my qualities, my talents and my education. They sort of edit out what is undesirable. It could have been worse though. They could have edited me out of the family picture. But since they only have 2 grandchildren, and that they are my only grandparents, we have created a strong bond, and they know I care about them. So they kind of don't have a choice to accept my relationship, in a way. One day they won't be able to keep it hidden. Some people already know - the ones on facebook. Thank goodness for facebook. With that, I can know create my own links with the greek family.

Anyway, I am very thankful for an accepting family. It could be better, but at least they love me and they make the effort to try and surpass their prejudices. But everybody's not at the same level, and some things for them are still too hard to change. But yeah, sometimes I do feel like they see my relationship a sort of disgrace. I dream of the day they won't make me feel that way.