Family today, Gone Tomorrow

Family - noun fam·i·ly \ˈfam-lē, ˈfa-mə-\

Dictionary:

: a group of people who are related to each other

: a person's children

: a group of related people including people who lived in the past

Thesaurus:

a group of persons who come from the same ancestor family

made remarkable contributions to American life for more than two centuries>

Synonyms blood, clan, folks, house, kin, kindred, kinfolk (or kinfolks), kinsfolk, line, lineage, people, race, stock, tribe

Related Words blended family, nuclear family; extended family, household, kith; brood; descendant (also descendent), issue, offspring, progeny, scion, seed; clansman, kinsman, kinswoman, relative; dynasty

Near Antonyms ancestry, birth, descent, extraction, origin, pedigree

When I hear the word “Family” a part of me looks up confused.  I find myself still that little girl stuck back in the slums of Kingston, hoping that someone will choose me.  The word befuddles me and has for as long as I can recall.  I remember the boys who lived down the street, two of them about my brothers’ ages.  Though we were never allowed to play with them, I would look to their parents wishing, hoping, praying, in the innocent ways of a child, that these strangers would wake up and realize the straggly girl down the street with the bruises upon her body was their long lost daughter. 

With each foster home I was transferred my definition of the word “family” became a little bit more fractured and a lot more cynical.  Was not a family supposed to be parents who wanted to keep me?  Obviously there was something wrong with me.  Was I not pretty enough… strong enough… good enough… Maybe if I changed the way I spoke and my mannerisms the new “family” would wish to keep me. 

As the years flowed by, rushing forward into time and space with the rampant flow of a raging river, my hopes for “family became diminished.  No one was going to adopt me.  No foster family was going to wake up tomorrow and keep me.  I did not need nor trust “family” for in the end the phone would ring sending you onto the next place.  “Family” was a temporary way station while I waited for the new ticket onto my next destination. 

It was not until I became pregnant with my daughter, Cassie, at 19, that my much skewed view of “family” began to change.  All of a sudden, where no one had been there previously, now this tiny being was reaching out from inside me, depending upon me.  Where I had been searching for parents, I was now one.  She would help me to understand that you make your own “family”, when there is none.  She became my “family” and 6 years later her sister would join us.

I finally had that which I had searched for, and then run from, only to find that I could not escape.  The idea of “family” is not one that can be simply defined within a dictionary.  It is more than bloodlines and relatives.  As I look back upon my past I may not have been wanted in a traditional sense, by neither my biological parents, nor any of the foster parents I was placed with, but I did learn lessons in how to become a mom for the future.  I learned what I wished for my “family;” the one I would create for myself. I am still that little girl confused and mistrustful of the idea of "family;" and yet I am also a woman, who loves and cherishes the gift of two beautiful young ladies who call me mom.

References:

(Merriam-Webster)

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/family