For Leslie, In Response to the Mean and Spiteful Things She Posts on Her Blog About Me... Because I Am A Nicer Person Than She Is

Lately I've been discovering what growing up is all about. It's an adventure, and one I rather like. It's been much more intentional than I'd have expected. I'm redefining a lot of things in my life.

Like family. I'm discovering more each year that you make your family just as surely as you are born into your family. My research paper on Marriage and Family Counseling taught me yesterday that I'm moving into the "Unattached Adult" stage of family development, characterized by "differentiation from family of origin," "development of peer relations," and "accepting parent-offspring separation."

This morning Anne Lamott, in her book Bird by Bird, taught me a lot more:

"They've gone from being four tense, slightly conceited, lonely people who wanted to write to one of those wierd little families we fashion out of whoever's around us. They're very tender with one another. They all look a lot less slick and cool than they did... because helping each other has made their hearts get bigger. A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing; it doesn't protect itself and it doesn't hide."

"You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath."

When you don't have family, when you don't have your tribe, you end up like this:

"Still, the next thing you know--because you are spending too much time alone--you are convinced that you have mouth cancer, just like good old Sigmund, and you know instantly that doctors will have to cut away half of your jaw, trying to save your miserable obsessive-compulsive head from being cannibalized by the cancer, and you'll have to go around wearing a hood over your entired face, and no one will want to kiss you again, not that they ever really did."

Did you notice that I'm reading this really excellent book called Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott? (Betcha never woulda guessed.) Mostly I think my posts lately have just been excuses to quote from it. It's not my book, which makes me crazy, because I have to mark it with post-its and copy the quotes all down later, or scribble them onto scraps of paper which float aimlessly around my backpack until I find the time to make them memorable, like I'm doing here on my blog. I love this book for the same reason that I like any class by Chris Blake: It's not just about writing, it's about who we are and the things that really matter in the world, and why they do.

Family matters. The one you were born into matters, but if yours isn't what you want it to be, that's okay. You get to make your own. That's the great part about family.

They're the people who fart in front of you and you don't even care (except maybe a little when it makes you think your lungs might actually hemorrhage from the stench). You let them listen to Amy Grant or Christmas music in October in front of you and you only roll your eyes to keep up the facade of hating Amy Grant and Christmas music before Thanksgiving--after all, you have a reputation to protect. You drive to the airport a dozen times to drop them off and pick them up and just keep them company on the way, knowing all the while that you'd go a hundred times if need be. They bring you hot drinks, or material for the bane-of-your-existance research paper you're working feverishly on, unexpectedly. They write mean and spiteful posts about you on their blogs, but they do it out of love.

They're more than just family. They're your tribe.