theartofthetangent

 So my fiance brought home the first season of How I Met Your Mother, and Bob Saget’s narration got me reminiscing.  You see, in the show Future Ted relates to his children how he met their mom in what in what has now taken four seasons.  In the narration, Future Ted always refers to his friends as “Uncle Barney” or “Aunt Lily” even though it is apparent that these people are not his brothers or sisters.  This of course leaves open the possibility that maybe the as yet not introduced mother (I’ve only watched the first season) is in fact one of the aforementioned aunts’ or uncles’ sister.  This could also simply be meant as a term of endearment for his friends that are so close they might as well be his siblings.

But all this got me to think back to my childhood when almost every Saturday my Uncle Louie would come eat hot dogs on the back steps with my dad, my sisters, and myself.  It wasn’t until I was six or seven that I asked my dad if Louie was his or mom’s brother.  My dad explained to me that he wasn’t either of their brother, but sometimes friends become such good friends that they adopt each other as family.

Rekindling all these old memories made me begin to analyze what family truly is.  What is a family?  Is it the old sitcom format of mom, dad, and a few kids?  The nuclear family?  My family sure isn’t like that.  My parents are divorced, I’ve pretty much had two stepfathers, a stepmother, four sisters, and two stepbrothers.  But my fiance does have that nuclear family… mom, dad, one son, one daughter.  Is his sister considered family more than my stepbrothers would be?

A lot of people say that a true family can only be that nuclear family.  Sure, at one time I had that, and like every child that comes from a divorced home, I really wish it would have stayed like that.  But can that really be the only way a family can be a true family?  What about the kid who is raised by his grandparents because his parents died?  Are they any less of a family?  Or the child who is adopted by his bachelor uncles, such as in the movie Secondhand Lion.  This is one of the best movies of all time, and you probably never watched it.  If you haven’t, all I can say is FOR SHAME!  You run down to the video store or log onto Netflix and you watch it!  After you watch it, try and tell me their family is not a real family.

The fact is that there is no such thing as a “true family” or a “real family”.  So what is a family anyway?  A family is simply a group of people who live together and love each other.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Sure, those people are usually related by blood, but not always.  Do parents love their adopted child any less than other parents love their biological child?  No.

I haven’t seen my Uncle Louie since I was a kid.  My dad’s and his friendship fell apart years ago.  But I never stop thinking of him as Uncle Louie.  And I’m sure my kids will call my close friends their aunts and uncles, because we’re so close they might as well be my siblings.  Just as I’m sure my kids will call my stepmother “Gram Ma”.  They’re apart of my family now… whether they want to be or not.  After all, you might not get to pick your family, but I do.

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