Family is very important to me. While my family never used the motto "Family First", family has always been a very integral part of my life. I spent every night sitting at the dinner table with my family talking about our day. Sunday was "Family Day", friends were always welcome and treated like family but for the most part we were expected to spend time together on sunday afternoons. My family was the one that had to agree what to watch on our one television every night after dinner and spent lazy afternoons playing board games.
It was never explicitly said to me, oh they’re family, we can’t talk down about our family. We have to put up with their shit, they’re family. If there’s one thing my family does not do, it’s put up with each other’s shit. However, family was emphasized to me in a subtle way, the way we always spent time together, the way friends that didn’t have family were brought to our house on christmas or easter or thanksgiving and treated like family. Family is probably my most precious core value.
This novel is not what you would expect. Yes it’s a funny romance novel about Fixie and Seb. But, the true story, the one just below the surface that is obvious in some parts and not so obvious in others. This is a novel about family. This is a love story, between Fixie and her siblings.
Let’s be honest if you weren’t an absolute ass to your siblings or didn’t have a sibling that was an absolute ass to you as a kid...were you even really siblings? I have an older sister, she’s amazing. In high school the best paper I ever wrote was about how she was my hero. She still is, she’s this incredibly strong amazing woman who has kicked ass at the hard life situations she has been dealt. Did I always feel that way? Hell no, I was the asshole sibling. We did not get along very well as kids, my mom was always trying to get us to play together, probably because she was tired from homeschooling us and making the house nice so Papa didn’t have to worry about it after work, and just wanted us to go away and leave her alone. But, we did not get along so well. We have very different personalities.
My sister and I started becoming friends, real friends when I was in high school, I would honestly say the turning point was after she moved into her own place and had her son. I would spend my weekends over there babysitting, sleeping on their couch and relaxing with her and my brother in law. We still have very different personalities, but the maturity has changed, I tell her everything. She knows when my husband and I fight, she knows when I am having trouble parenting. She knows...everything.
My point is, that I feel every set of siblings has some sort of reckoning when they grow up. They move past the childhood rivalry whether it was extremely apparent or not. I was so freaking proud of Fixie when she got so fed up she finally burst and yelled at Jake. My sister would have eaten me alive the moment she found out I’d been such an inconsiderate fuck.
I loved that Jake didn’t instantly do a 180 turn and start being a respectable brother. I like that he was outraged, it made it actually believable that he turned things around.
Family is so important. But letting people walk all over you because they are family is the completely wrong way to go about it. That’s not true family, that’s not really unconditional love. I was raised that you love your family no matter what, while I don’t fully agree with that because in situations that’s toxic. I believe that when you love someone, you love them no matter what. However, loving someone no matter what doesn’t mean you let them walk all over you or be a shitty person. You don’t stop loving them just because they’ve been a shitty person, but you call them out. You help them be better. That is what unconditional love is, whether it’s between siblings, between partners, between parents and children. Call each other out, have the hard conversations and really love the people in your life, because letting them continue on a bad path without saying anything isn’t love...it’s indifference.
“I Owe You One” by Sophie Kinsella
https://www.google.com/books/edition/I_Owe_You_One/18thDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
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