RELATIVELY SPEAKING

Gone are the good old days of father-mother-son-daughter family. Nowadays, things can be pretty messed up. Culture shock is evident for newcomers to an alien land- and in this place one gets to hear things like "single mother", "married but still looking", "common-law partner (gays, lesbians included)", "working towards a successful marriage", "my mom's boyfriend", "my dad's girl friend"etc, etc.

Once I met a girl, who was "together with her husband, but living separately, each living a separate life". Couples nowadays are both celebrating their "individuality" and insist of giving and receiving more "space". And girlfriends/boyfriends can be taken and dumped off at will which isn't an issue at all in the first place. This whole concept of "freedom" and "personal space" in couples is what I think is driving them to insane ideas, and divorce. One can learn a lot from the oriental traditions and cultures of how forfeiting your "space" actually results in happier, stable, peaceful, and noble families.

From just "father" and "mother", it has now to be specified- biological father or biological mother. The DNA make up of a person is exactly 50% from each of his parents. But "family" being so twisted now, the term "biological" has to be mentioned too. There are so many such cases in the west (North America). I met a black guy here, who greeted me "Howdy yo, brother from another mother!" And apparently, being a "brother from another mother" or a "sister from another mister" and other variations are pretty common within a family. Even in the case of biological parents, somethings are even more messed up. For instance, an egg could get fertilized in one woman (or a lab) and then transplanted into another woman's womb. She is not the biological mother, yet the baby grows in her! All this leads to a myriad complexity of relations, both psychologically and medically. Just yesterday, I was watching a movie "BLACK CHRISTMAS", where a girl's father and brother are the same person. And I am pretty sure that if we keep tagging along "my aunt's boyfriend", and "my husband' girlfriend" type of relations, poems like the one below (I got this once in email) would be common place.

Many many years ago when I was twenty three,
I got married to a widow who was pretty as could be.
This widow had a grown-up daughter Who had hair of red.
My father fell in love with her, And soon the two were wed.

This made my dad my son-in-law And changed my very life.
My daughter was my mother, For she was my father's wife.
To complicate the matters worse, Although it brought me joy,
I soon became the father Of a bouncing baby boy.

My little baby then became A brother-in-law to dad.
And so became my uncle, Though it made me very sad.
For if he was my uncle, Then that also made him brother
To the widow's grown-up daughter Who, of course, was my step-mother.

Father's wife then had a son, Who kept them on the run.
And he became my grandson, For he was my daughter's son.
My wife is now my mother's mother And it makes me blue.
Because, although she is my wife, She's my grandmother, too.

If my wife is my grandmother, Then I am her grandchild.
And every time I think of it, It simply drives me wild.
For now I have become The strangest case you ever saw.
As the husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa!

Now ask Confucius to draw a family tree for this!