Looking T'wards It

What is family? Is the definition related solely to a genetic linkage or a governmental contract?

Sure, those things are part of it but I sure think it gets deeper than that.

This Thanksgiving I spent in my home, with my roommates. Each of us prepared part of a meal, ensuring that we had the necessary items to designate the day as a 'real Thanksgiving'.

We flowed around each other in the kitchen, cooking the meal was a real pleasure. We watched movies and played board games. There was a relaxed comfort in our little family of choice.

So how did we end up as we are?

[Insert another rambling story here]

I worked with one of my roommates at my practice job. We were friends, we did stuff socially, we talked non-stop (to the point of getting in trouble sometimes).

Early in my transition, I helped a friend through the process of FFS (Facial Feminization Surgery). By helped I mean stayed by her at the hospital, held her hand, made her soup.

The first night after her surgery, she was miserable. She had a lot of discomfort, her mouth was constantly filling with blood, her eyes were swollen shut. She looked like a truck hit her and then backed over her to try and finish the job.

Her first words to me after getting out of surgery were "Don't do it." (she has since altered this assessment).

I was shaken, scared. I was upset that my friend was in pain and that she felt she had made the wrong choice.

Another friend stayed with her in the hospital that night, I drove home.

But I stopped by the store on the way home. I don't know why but I really needed to see my future roommate. When she saw me, she dropped what she was doing, rushed over to me and gave me a big hug.

It is what I needed. I cried on the way home from the store. It was a good cry - I was happy to have such wonderful friends. I realized that she was family. When she moved into my second room I knew it was going to be for a while.

A few months later she brought our second roommate into the picture and we all got a bigger place together.

We bicker, we chide, but we have a solid comfort together (all of us). All of us have our biological families in the picture still but, in our own way, we are family together as well.

In a few weeks I will be going to my parents house for Christmas. We will all putter around the kitchen. We will leave the SciFi channel on all day long and probably fall asleep after our smorgasbord type meal (all hail the comfy chair - no one dare risk it's clutches lest they lapse into unconsciousness!). A really close friend of mine will join us (as is becoming tradition), she fits in with us quite well.

I don't know if I have really defined family with this rambling post (but I think I have). To me, the relationships are self-defining.

I don't know if family really HAS to be defined - it just is.