Growing up, my father’s favorite complaint to me was “why don’t you be a part of this family?”
I was expected to keep my opinions to myself, to not read, to watch football, to agree with him on politics and religion. He wanted me to change myself to fit his worldview, and the only way to be a family was his way. If I didn’t conform to his behaviors and wishes, I wasn’t part of his family.
Now that I have age and distance away from that sentence, I know that family isn’t forced. It is built. Family takes work.
Yesterday we had a cookout. It was my friends group from college/early 20s. We’ve been in each other’s lives for years. We’ve gone to weddings and baby showers, and now the kids are approaching bar/bat mitzvah ages (omg how is that baby 13, he just spit up on me last time I saw him! and, there’s no way she’s turning 10 next month. she just crawled into my lap and fell asleep and she’s a tiny nugget). Now the party ends around 9pm. And I’m watching these children run and play and hugging my friends that I haven’t seen in 18 months.
But I have seen them. These are the people who organized zoom happy hours and sent winter cards and we like each others’ posts on Instagram and who mailed bagels and cookies across the country.
And when I arrived at the cookout, everyone cheered. And when the next group arrived after me, I joined in the cheering. We chatted and caught up on our lives and ate too much and it was good.
We’ve all done the work of remaining family.
Card: This Might Hurt Tarot
Rock: Quartz pebbles from the beach
Reading: Lunch Portraits by Debora Kuan