Skeletons

There are those moments in life when you have to just sit quietly and listen to the waves wash over the rocks and the sand.
I have to let the words wash over me. I have to remain silent.. and possibly giggle every once and a while about what I'm hearing.
A family is a very intimate thing. What goes on behind closed doors of a house is no one else's business but the family behind it. Or so some people think.
A family is a hard thing to manage. You will never love, or hate, any single person more, than a direct relative that you can call brother, sister, mother, or father. They are the bane of your existence, and your rock in the sea, when all else is but ocean and foam.
A family puts on a face for the world. When children are being beaten, they hide their bruises, afraid. When a husband is unhappy, he buries himself in work, alone. When a wife is lonely, she creeps into another's arms, ashamed.
But all you see on Sunday is a wife bouncing a new baby on her knee, the children kneeling on the floor coloring in their books and constantly fussing over who gets the right color crayon. You see a husband with his head in his hands, listening intently to the sermon.
And you say to yourself "What a nice family."
The kids hate their parents, the wife hates her life, the father hates himself. What a nice family.
There are those families that really are perfect, the exception to what should not be a rule. I've found a few. But only a few. If the problems aren't prevalent, then they are in the past. But they are there. There is always a black sheep somewhere, skeletons in the closet.