When Your Family Your Family ….
When I hear a statement like that I always think of the Italian Mob. A bunch of middle aged overweight men with their shirts unbuttoned down to their navel, chest hair everywhere and a gold chain or three. None of them actually related but all of them brothers, uncles to each others children and grandparents to their children’s children.
I think we lost something as the close community groups moved farther and farther away from one another. The independence lessened the sense of togetherness. It used to be if you were Italian and someone threatened another Italian it was all hands on deck to handle the situation, didn’t matter if you were related or not (although I’m pretty sure all the Italians are related 🙂 ) If you were Catholic you lived around other Catholics and you took care of one another. We don’t have that anymore, there is little sense of community or loyalty. There is your family and then there are your friends. Your friends who somehow always end up coming in second to family even though your relationships with them may be stronger than those with most of your supposed family members.
I see little point in distinguishing friends from family. I grew up without a lot of family around and those few biologically related people who do live in my state I rarely if ever see. I don’t know them, they don’t know me, but by some misguided sense of obligation I call them family.
I moved recently and those people who were there are my family members; biologically related, marriage inherited and just there because they wanted to help. It was this “family” who carried my couch in the rain, watched my son while I tried desperately to maintain some type of order and who literally set-up and organized my kitchen.
My family are those people I see every week, the ones I talk to one the phone and by e-mail. The people who have been there with me throughout tough times and the ones that I will return the favor for. I want my son to know that family does not necessarily mean sharing genetic information. That family are the people that you rely on and who rely on you.
My son will call our closest friends aunt and uncle he will grow up knowing that while he has biological aunts and uncles he also has other people who fulfill those roles as well. That these people will love him and that they do it without any obligation. They will be part of his life because they choose to and because we mean something to one another.
I think if we can get back to that sense of community, that sense of family regardless of if you are related or not, our world would be safer and our children would be happier.
My family is a hodgepodge of relationships that make-up a better community than I can imagine. To all these people I say thank you and I hope I can be for you what you are for me.
