If you’ve ever met me, you’d know that one of my defining characteristics is how close I am to my family – I’m a total Daddy’s girl, my mom is my best friend, and despite our requisite sibling rivalry over the years, my brother is one of the few people in my life whom I trust with all my secrets. Such a loving, close-knit family is sort of a rarity this day and age, and being a part of one is such a great comfort to me. Growing up, we always ate dinner together, even if it was just a quick bite at McDonalds before we all went our separate ways for evening rehearsals and meetings or whatever. My parents chaperoned on a number of trips, and they were always a big hit with the other kids. On our youth orchestra trip to New York (we played at Carnegie Hall – w00t!), everyone wanted to be in our group, because my parents were the “cool” chaperones. And even now, living 550 miles away from home, living my life as a “grownup” (that word seems to mean such a completely different thing at 6 or 16 than it does at 26), I still talk to my parents several times a week. We’re that close.

I live on my own these days, but still, my life is still so intertwined with my family’s. Everyone has cherished memories from their childhood, some more significant, others reduced to just a glimmer of a feeling you experienced… Most of my clearest and most fondly-remembered memories are in some way tied to my family. Every time I see a Mel Brooks movie, I think of my dad. (There was a question on Jeopardy yesterday whose answer was Blazing Saddles – I got the answer right before the contestant did, and I smiled as it reminded me of Dad.) On cold days when I’m digging through my dresser looking for some warm socks to wear, I pull out a pair that Mom knit for me, and I remember the story behind them and smile. When I’ve had a bad day, I stick When Harry Met Sally in the DVD player and reminisce about our “crappy-day-need-a-chick-flick” nights (WHMS being our favorite default, of course). And whenever I make a pot of spaghetti, I always think of my dad, who cooked most of our meals when I was growing up, despite his lack of expert cooking skills and extensive repertoire of recipes, since my mom worked 80 miles away from home when my brother and I were young.

All this reminiscing about family life and memories of my childhood came about when I was thinking earlier this morning about the long conversations I used to have with my dad. My dad is a quiet man – if you’ve ever met him in person, you’d know he’s a man of few spoken words, something you’d never believe if you’ve only known him online via his blog or his emails. The man writes, and he writes well. He tells stories – stories I could never begin to tell without severe editing because I get so wrapped up in tangents and side-stories. He tells eloquent stories, funny stories, stories that tug at your heartstrings, stories that make you laugh. When I was growing up, he and I were the night owls in the house. Mom and CJ would go to bed, and Dad and I would sit up and talk. We’d talk about the weather, or politics, or books, or family. We’d talk about evolution, reincarnation, philosophy, religion. Really, anything went during these conversations. And a lot of the things we talked about have stuck with me through the years. Short stories about when he was growing up, like the time he was making lemonade and broke his mother’s glass pitcher, or when he’d visit his grandmother who lived near the railroad tracks, or the “day old” doughnuts his mother would bring home from the bakery that she worked at.

One of his half-baked theories that we discussed a few times was that of the origin of the human species – how humans must have evolved on a planet with something like a 25-hour day. (Let me throw in this small disclaimer here that he doesn’t truly believe this – it was merely a topic of conversation that’s come up many times throughout my life.) Studies have actually shown that the human circadian rhythm – their internal clock – is not set to a 24-hour day – it actually is more like 25 hours, and if you put a person in a room with no windows or access to sunlight and no clocks, their internal clocks will reset to 25 or 26 hours.

I was reminded of this when I stepped back and looked at my schedule these days. Without a set schedule, I’m finding myself staying up a little longer each night and going to bed a little later. About once a week, I’ve been forced to manually reset it by either making myself go to bed at midnight, despite being completely awake, or by pulling an all-nighter and hitting the sack early the next night.

When I sat down to write this, I really only intended to write that last part, about our internal clocks and the conversations about it I’ve had with my dad. But thinking about that led me to so many other memories (when you’ve been up for 19 hours – I’m pulling the stay-up-all-night thing tonight – your mind tends to wander pretty freely), and I wanted to share. I want people to know how awesome my family is, what an incredible relationship we all have, and how special my childhood was. My family is awesome. My parents, despite their flaws (hey – everyone’s got flaws), gave me everything a kid could hope for in their childhood – love, attention, compassion, discipline, intellectual and moral education, and friendship. There are very few people I know who got all that from their parents.

How many people can say that their family dinners often lasted hours after the food was gone because the conversation just kept going? Or that their friends always loved hanging out at their house because their parents were so enjoyable to hang out with? How many people, as adults, actually truly look forward to going home to spend quality time with their parents? How many people call their parents for no reason, just to talk about the latest episode of such-and-such TV show or to rave about the newest book they just read? How many people like their families in addition to loving them? The answer is not nearly enough. And I’m proud to say that I am one of the few.

I do have some knitting stuff to blog about, but I’ll save that for another post later today. I think this one is long enough. :)