We Are Family

The duo in MUCH warmer times

at MGH this past Saturday night

Jen and Oni, AKA The Kids, AKA Thing One and Thing Two are the most amazing friends. OK, they're family and have been for some time.

Another pal, eons and epochs ago, prompted me to think about this thing—family. What is it?

Two of the billions of meanings at Dictionary.com are:

a group of persons who form a household under one head, including parents, children, and servants. (damn, we don't have servants. I knew we forgot something!)

and

a social unit consisting of one or more adults together with the children they care for (cats—they totally count as "children.")  

I've talked about this family thing before—once or twice, maybe more. Absolutely nothing spotlights the family-ness thing, nothing brings it into sharpest focus more than hard times.

On Monday, before the travel ban went into effect, Jen made sure to stop in at the Heart Break and Repair Hotel to visit with our Amazing Bob and have a quick snort with me at the Liberty Hotel bar before heading *sob* home to Valhalla.

Oni was home battening down the fort, prepping the houses and such for Juno and the expected (but no show) power outages as well as feeding/cossetting our respective herds.

our adventurous boy

They both kept in touch via text and email during our in town odyssey, sending encouragement and cat pics. They cleared the drive and our porch of the mountains of snow. We don't own a snowblower so. OOF, their backs must've been screaming at them the next day.

our warrior girl

Jen is my friend, my sister. Oni is my friend and brother. Those designations just don't cover what the two of them are to me.

GodDAMN, I'm a lucky woman!

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
~Thomas Jefferson
I don’t have to look up my family tree, because I know that I’m the sap.
~Fred Allen

We Are Family—Sister Sledge