New Year’s Eve is when you come together, right? You celebrate your life, your friends, your family. You celebrate everything that is good and right in the world. It should be a time of peace. By pure chance, this New Year’s Eve was a time of conflict for me.

For the last three or four years, I have gone to spend the night at my grandparents’ for New Year’s Eve, so I could go with them to my aunt, uncle, and cousin’s party. We play games, we eat good (okay, GREAT) food, and at midnight, we pop the champagne (or in my case, the sparkling grape juice). It’s fun. I laugh. I feel like I’m going to die from eating too much. The food, the games, I wouldn’t miss them for the world. The people though, occasionally, I could do without some of them.

I have several family members, specifically two “cousins” (In all technicality, they aren’t my cousins, but I’ve grown up thinking of them as family), who despite my best efforts, I’ve never been able to relate to. They’re quite a bit older, and in their minds, I’m probably still the “baby.” I’d love to scream from rooftops that “NO!! I AM NO LONGER A BABY! SO STOP TREATING ME LIKE ONE!” (But, that’s another story!)

Anyway, back to the point, they both spent the hours awaiting the New Year making comments that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, could be taken a little bit hateful. A few of those comments were directed at me. Let me make clear, that although I could have done without those comments, they really only bothered me for a little bit. I have tough skin, I am not an emotional person. I am often accused of not being emotional enough. And over the years, I’ve learned to deal with most of their not-so-nice comments. I’ve realized that many of them are not at all meant to be hateful, but still come out that way. It’s something we all do. It’s something I’ve been guilty of many times. Something is said, and it’s taken much more hateful then it’s supposed to be. Life goes on. You don’t let it bother you.

The one thing, though, that really bothers me, that will send me crying in a bathroom, is when someone I admire says something to crititize or reprimand me. Even if I deserve it, it still really hurts me.

About halfway though the party, I was sitting in my chair quietly taking pictures, when one of my cousins made one of those hateful comments about me taking pictures of her. I brushed it off, let it slide. But right after it was said, my grandmother (better known as Granny) called my name. I looked at her. “Put the camera away,” she said.
“But, but, (insert aunt’s name) is taking pictures..” I started to protest.
“Put it away”, Granny said sternly. I didn’t argue anymore. I put it away. Because arguing with Granny would be a phenomenally stupid idea.

Nothing else was said about it for the next couple of hours, but I was left with extremely hurt feelings. I had no clue what I’d done wrong. My aunt had been sitting right next to me taking pictures of all the same people. And in reality, she was probably being more disruptive than I was. She was using flash, I wasn’t. (Not that there was anything wrong with what she was doing.) No one seemed to have a problem with her taking pictures, so why did they have a problem with me? It upset me, more than I could describe. If I were to have to make a list of all the people in the world I admire, my Granny would be one of the top ones. To speak of the kind of amazing person she is would be impossible. And this person, who I admire unendingly, I thought she was mad at me for no good reason.

Then we left. And it all made sense. The first thing Granny said once we were in the car was that she “didn’t like what all was going on down there tonight.” Right after that, she mentioned to my grandfather that the reason she’d told me to put my camera away, was because the cousin responsible for the hateful camera comment had been “smarting off to me.”

It hit me. I felt even worse, but for totally different reasons. Granny hadn’t been mad at me, she was trying to protect me. She was trying to keep me from having to fend off comments about my taking pictures. She was trying to keep me out of the path of “Hurricane Cousins.”

So, at one in the morning, I had a bit of a breakdown over the phone to my mother. I cried for being stupid enough to believe that Granny would ever be mad at me without a good reason. I cried for her, for how out of place she felt at the party, and for knowing that one of the only reasons she even went was because I wanted to go. I cried because at seventy something years old, Granny shouldn’t of had to deal with any of it.

In the next couple of days, things started to get better. My aunt figured out that Granny was upset by some of what had been said, particularly the things aimed at me. Granny told her that some of what had been said hurt my feelings. She said that she wasn’t too happy about a lot of things that had gone on at the party too.

My aunt called up my two cousins and told them they’d more or less hurt my feelings. One of them messaged me almost immediately, told me she hadn’t meant to hurt my feelings and that she was sorry that she did. Her comments weren’t intentionally mean. Just some of those comments that come out sounding meaner than they’re suppossed to. I’ve heard my other cousin doesn’t think she did anything wrong. That’s okay. Maybe she didn’t. It’s not for me to judge.

Granny realized that what hurt me most was not my cousins’ comments but that I thought she was mad at me for those few hours and she felt terrible. And I felt terrible that she felt terrible. Because all she was doing was protecting me and stopping a fight before it started. It’s like I told my mother when I had my little mental breakdown. “It’s okay now.” The second I realized everything, that Granny wasn’t mad at me, everything was better. ”It was all okay.”

I come to a conclusion in all of this. Family, is family, through it all. You never know how much longer you have with them. So love them fiercely. Love them depsite their imperfections. And maybe they’ll do the same for you.