What is Family?

When someone complains about being lonely, I offer them a few dozen of my relatives.

I’ve never been alone. 

I went from a nuclear family into one of my own.  Then, for a while I was a single parent until I married HB and we created a blended family with his kids and mine. As our children grew, and married, and had children, our tribe grew into a large, healthy, extended family.  Some of our married kids are still childless, yet they are a family – couples without children. Why wouldn’t they be?  We do not live the Ozzie and Harriet life anymore, but what we have now is just as valid and just as comforting.

What defines family?

I am not talking about the cold definition one finds in a dictionary or in the IRS 1040 Instruction booklet, but something that encompasses all the different constellations within our homes.

Isn’t it people who live together, related or not, in a committed, interdependent relationship?

I used to envy the only child, the sequestered num, Tom Hanks in that movie about the island and the basketball, until I realized how truly blessed I am.

I am covered in family.