Che Cosa è la Famiglia

Scene from Celeste's VERY sober wedding

View from Michal's kitchen

‘the hell is this thing we call ‘family?’

The definition varies from person to person. Really.

For me ‘family’ is a designation that I use for folks who nourish and nurture me, who give as good as they get. Sometimes we’re connected by blood or marriage but, often enough, not. Being kin, merely because we share a bit of biology, a smackeral of DNA, isn’t enough for me to name a person ‘family.’

Jen on Ice

Yes, yez, we ARE still technically famiglia but I don’t necessarily feel the connection or feel the duty/need/pull to save a life tonight (to wax all purply hyperbole).
Elton John -- Someone Saved My Life Tonight

What inspires this? There’s a lot of mother-love/gratitude/missing happening on Facebook lately. Including a funny from my pal Brian.

My fab talented cousin Della

My mother and I were never close. We were far too different and she lacked the ability to understand me in any meaningful way or accept me for who I was. That is, until The Amazing Bob and I married. All of a sudden she could love me, she could be open, more relaxed and supportive. Apparently I'd been a wholly alien being before.

Cindy's wedding

She would’ve been able to go farther still had I been able to have children/give birth but she understood that, due to the Nf2, I could not. She spent most of her life feeling sorry for me -- thinking, because I wasn’t married, that I was unloved and had no friends. Truth be told, I wanted her to accept me/love me on my terms NOT just because I was connected to a man. This being a significant part of why it took 17 years of living in sin (I just love that phrase!) before I agreed to wed The MOST
Amazing Bob.

Jenny's puppies -- Odie and Bonnie

Me, Daddy and Helen

Oni, Jen, TAB, The Green Miles and me

She felt horrifically guilty for passing Neurofibromatosis Type 2 down to me, in large part because this meant I couldn’t risk pregnancy and childbirth (this being no big deal for me. The only children I ever wanted were The Green Miles and my fabulous Helen. Someone’d already gone through that nasty prego shite for me! Yea me -- I won!)

In any case, in her last few years on the planet, I let go of my need for her to understand me. (took me bloody long enough, eh?) and focused on providing her with news and chatter about the things that mattered to her -- children, her relatives, TAB and my friends (who she could see, now that I was wearing a wedding band).

We got on well in those last few years.

I have a lot of fabulous sisters and a few awesome brothers now. Genetic connections not required, nor does it automatically put you outside the velvet rope of my heart.