Bliss, Ignorance is: Definition of Family...

On Bliss, Ignorance is: Definition of Family... MG and I had a quick conversation about the definintion of family yesterday as I was heading out for a date with My Guy.

It's kind of funny that we talked about this because I had just written about the same topic in my journal a few nights ago. One of my uncles, my mother's brother Aubrey, died early Sunday morning while I was visitng Memphis last weekend and as I was thinking about that, somehow my thoughts segued into what family is, its function, its definition, what it means. According to sociology and anthropology, the family has the primary function of reproducing — biologically, socially, or in both ways. Thus, one's experience of one's family shifts over time. From the perspective of children, the family functions as a family of orientation: the family serves to locate children socially, and plays a major role in their enculturation (if that's a word) and socialization. From the point of view of the parents, the family serves as a family of procreation with the goal of producing, enculturating and socializing children.

Carson McCullers said that family is "The we of me." Given the circumstances, we sometimes feel that our families will be "the end of me" but family in the purest form are the people who share goals and values, have long-term commitments to one another, and usually (but not always) reside under one roof. Now whether a person's family resembles that of the traditional nuclear family is actually non-consequential to this conversation, but it is important to recognize that a family can also be seen as a group of people sharing common ancestry, lineage. But our family can also be those who share no blood relation, the friends that have stuck it out thru thick and thin no matter what the case, those who MG says "have your back."

As I sat letting my words flow easily from my pen to the page, I came to define family like this: Family is so much more than a mama, a daddy, a sister and a brother. It's so much more than those you share a blood line with, a last name or, if you're lucky, the holidays. Family is also a history book, one that you can't always open and read at your leizure. It's locked up unless you have a key--the ability to ask questions. You want to know why Uncle Junior has a glass eye. You got to ask. Wonder why Cousin Bertha disappeared for 3 years then came back with new name and identity. You got to ask. Want your ghetto burgers to be just as good as MeMaws. You got to ask. Want to know if Aunt Jackie was really married to a pimp. You got to ask.

What I'm getting at here is that family isn't just the people who help form it, but it's the knowledge, the history, even the secrets to the "me" in the "we" and vice versa. Family is what we fall back on (not forgetting the Lord) when everyone else forsakes us. It's where, I think, we first start to search for our individual places in this crazy ass world.