Family Day: joy and trauma

By any measure, family can be fraught.

Poet Philip Larkin famously noted in This Be the Verse what mums and dads often do to you.

To counter that take, actor Michael J. Fox has said that family is not just “an important thing. It’s everything.”

Another Family Day holiday has rolled around in Ontario, the February long weekend delivered by former premier Dalton McGuinty, the quintessential family man.

The great cosmic meteorologist has honoured the weekend with a gift of snow in southern Ontario, the better to aid in the winter sports and frolic.

The prolific novelist Joyce Carol Oates once wrote that “in the end, all drama is about family.” And to a large extent, she was right. We all know what it’s like.

The late genius George Carlin once said: “The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.”

But let one stranger insult anyone at the table and unity is instant and vehement.

That sort of bond is often summoned to describe other units. To achieve success, the virtues of family are regularly cited as the very best examples of forces for good.

Members of the Canadian women’s hockey team that won gold at the Beijing Olympics last week no doubt consider themselves a family. United. Committed. Individual goals set aside for the common good.

So, too, the Canadian men’s soccer team, taking the nation to new heights of success in the sport in its bid for a place in the World Cup in Qatar.

It’s not for nothing that teammates invariably speak of each other as brothers and sisters.

Still, if families can produce greater love and loyalty than we once thought possible, they can also do more damage, inflict deeper trauma.

That is part of the reason that, in modern times, many have redefined the notion of family, regarding chosen tribes of friends and like-minded souls as kin at least the equal of blood relations. If it works, so be it.

One definition of love is the willingness to put another’s interests ahead of your own; a definition of caring is the commitment to ensuring another’s safety and well-being.

If that’s so, there have been disturbing images confronting Canadians for weeks from Ottawa and elsewhere.

It is not just the appalling images of children being taken to what seemed a potential battle zone. The wrong-headedness defies understanding.

Almost as unsettling were photos of a youngster with a jerry can strapped on like a backpack, or in our nightmares a suicide vest.

What many parents chose to expose young children to in recent weeks was misguided in the extreme.

So, the family that is Canada faces a challenge.

The national family is embroiled in internecine dispute of deep and toxic bitterness.

Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, often raised during his political career the question of “what we owe each other.”

Families, for the most part, respond instinctively — in word or deed — with the answer “everything.” Forgiving hurts and wrongs, offering support in all ways possible, putting the other’s interests ahead of our own, ensuring their safety.

It would make for a great Family Day 2022 if Canadians were to apply such standards, or something like them, to one another.

And if one can’t tilt toward idealism on such a day, then when?

In modern times, many have redefined the notion of family, regarding chosen tribes of friends and like-minded souls as kin at least the equal of blood relations. If it works, so be it