I really wish that all of the important relationships in life came with an owner’s manual attached. It would save a lot of time and avoid painful relational grief. I have mentioned in previous posts that I did not grow up associating with extended family on a regular basis. That is putting it too tactfully actually…We just never did anything with extended family. There were no big holiday gatherings or family reunions. There were several reasons for such familial isolation. Some of those reasons were legitimate and some were not. In 1984, I married into a family that has an extended network of relationships that