"Let your love cover me, Like a pair of angel wings, You are my family" Williams Dar

When are you going to start a family?

How many young, or especially nowadays older, couples have heard this question from some well meaning, albeit too nosy, relative or friend? It's as if by being childless, by virtue of not having procreated, that they are less than a family unit. We have been brainwashed from birth to see this perfect husband/wife/2.5 children as 'family'.

Hogwash!

Websters defines 'family' as: "Parents and their children; a group of people connected by blood or marriage and sharing common ancestry."

Why?

Oxford has the good sense to delve a little deeper, be a little more lenient in their definition. "The members of a household, especially parents and their children", thereby encouraging the parental inclusion, but not being limited by it. Also, "a group of objects distinguished by common features". Hmmm, common features....well...we pretty much all have eyes and noses and things like that.

Why can't a family unit consist of the group of YOUR choice consisting of relatives, children, friends, cyberpals, even pets!

It can!

What is vitally important is that the group you consider your family is a circle of individuals you trust and care for, as well as feeling confidant that in them you can also receive the same care and trust. Being related to someone does not guarantee that you will like each other. Being connected by blood does not mean that, although you may feel an obligation, you MUST feel affection, and in some cases...even CAN. In Italy, family feeling is translated to "lo spirito di famiglia"... a beautiful language expressing that one can consider that the 'spirit' makes a family, how you feel, not necessarily that you were thrown together by ancestry or marriage.

Like many others, I am by nature not quick to commit, but when I DO commit fully, I stand by IT ALWAYS. I have no friends who don't know that given their need, I would not drop everything and crawl on hands and knees to be there. Are they any less my family because we do not share the same genes? I must admit there have been several occasions when a few of us have shared the same 'jeans', but we'll save that for another story.

I have buried all my grandparents, all my aunts and uncles, my father, my brother, two children, and my mother in law, a cousin or two and several pets. Is my family shrinking? Do I find myself, not yet near middle aged, without family? Hardly!

In song, this theory is awesomely supported by Petra, "friends, all in the family of God" Isn't this how it should be? Gather those around you in heart and soul and make your family. George Santayana said it best with "The family is one of nature's masterpieces." The family IS our canvas. We can diversify; paint in oil, paint with acrylics, smudge with charcoal now and then, and never forget a good old number two pencil and a sketchpad on a warm fall afternoon by a lake.