I am beginning to feel that some of the problems I am having raising my children are due to not having any family close by. There is nothing to be done for this...but I try to visualize what my childhood with my dad would have been like without the huge extended family we had, which included my mother's family, who stepped in to help when she took off. I don't know if he could have done it. I don't know how we would have fared. No grandparents, no aunts and uncles? No great grandparents or cousins or family friends? Incomprehensible. I cannot imagine that...but aside from my sister and brother in law, and family who comes to visit from back east, that is the reality for my kids.