That's Your Family

I was never very close to my family. It wasn’t necessarily that we didn’t get along with each other. It was more that I never felt very connected to them. I didn’t feel like any of us really understood one another. With the exception of my mother, my family was a separate entity from my friends. Friends were the people I wanted in my life and family members were the people I was stuck with it.

It was especially true of my siblings. I love my brothers and sister, don’t get me wrong, but we never hung out with one another the way other siblings did. We never spent time together just for the sake of spending time together. It was tougher, in our defense, to bond. Nate and Jenny, my half siblings, are 18 and 21 years older than me, respectfully. They were both out of the house by the time I was 3 (they lingered as I am), so they weren’t a big part of my immediate life.

Harry, my younger brother by 3 years, and I for the most part always got along, but we were --are-- different people. We never really fought, but we never really spent enough time together to have the opportunity to. We lead different lives. By the time he was 13, he had dropped out of school and was determined to find life outside of the private school world that I was so involved in. My school was my life. All my friends were there, all the parties and events I attended were in the surrounding neighborhood of Chestnut Hill. I was happy with my small life and he wasn’t. Neither of us could grasp, or wanted to grasp, the alternative life the other had chosen, so we just stepped aside and allowed ourselves to grow apart.

And then came Zoe. Nate and Zoe were married in October of 2004, the week my parents decided to separate. It was the worst timing and I remember calling my best friend right after the wedding and crying for hours. It wasn’t just that there was a wedding to remind me of a love that my parents no longer shared, but they were awful to one another, sharing a bitterness I had never really seen in them. I left angry and heartbroken with their behavior, and angry and heartbroken that I couldn’t really revel in my brother’s new found happiness.

When I finally did get the opportunity to, when I moved passed the divorce of my parents and the anger with my father (for the most part), I got to see Zoe, really see her, for the phenomenal person she is. Nate is so lucky to have found such a wonderful wife and we are so lucky to have her become a part of our family. I love my sister-in-law. She’s this amazing person filled with energy and light and laughter, and what I adore most about her is her dedication to family. Over dinner once, she said “yeah, but don’t you want to know about them? I mean, that’s where you come from. That’s your family.” I smiled a sort of half smile, suddenly feeling unexpectedly embarrassed that I didn’t know them, that I hadn’t ever really wanted to. Why didn’t I want to?

From then on, things were somehow different. Zoe always called and invited me to family gatherings at the new house she and Nate moved in to. They always listened to what I had to say about myself and my life. They told me stories about their own. I’ve learned more about Nate in the last six months than I have in the past twenty years. We bonded over struggles with our father and our siblings. He told me things about my sister that I’ve never been able to drag from her. All of the pieces started to come together. This is where I come from.

Last night we went out to dinner and then to watch Zoe’s nephew, who’s sort of my nephew by association, perform as Daddy Warbucks in his school’s rendition of Annie. Sitting there, delighting in Jared’s smile as he walked out onto the stage, holding his little brother Gabe in my lap, my brother and sister-in-law laughing on either side of me, I finally understood what Zoe was trying to say about family. This was it. This overwhelming sense of pride and happiness was what being a family was all about. This is where I come from and this is where I belong.