#PromptParty 2: Family as friends, friends as family

I chose this week's theme of Family for our #promptparty because 1) I wanted to see how many Steemians, like me, think outside the proverbial box when it comes to our loved ones, and 2) I wanted to pay tribute to some of my favorite family members.

When I was two years old, my parents divorced. I have exactly zero memories of them together, but somehow, I remember the family dog. A German Shepherd named Max--so named so that tiny baby me could pronounce it, though legend has it that I ended up calling him Maxy Boy--I remember burying my face in his neck fur and pulling his tail. I remember that he ran off one day, chasing deer, and was hit by a car. My grandparents broke the news, because my parents were already separating and my mom could've cared less about the dog, and my dad was off doing guy things. I was at my grandparents' house A LOT.

Then my mom remarried. A year later, I had a baby sister. I barely saw my dad. When I was six, my visits with him resumed because he'd met someone, a woman who would become my stepmom, and that woman encouraged him to push to see me more often. When I say she encouraged him, what I mean is (I found this out when I was a teenager), she told him, "Look, if you want to eventually get married and have kids with me, you better show me you can be a man and a father." He loved her, so he did. And he realized that he loved me, too. I visited with them regularly as I was growing up, and by the time I was 11, they had a son, my little brother.

When I was 17, my mother kicked me out of the house. I was a good kid, if a little sassy, but she and I always butted heads. I was a lot like my dad back then: gregarious, friendly, sociable, irreverent, loud, dramatic, a clown. My mother hated it. I'm not imagining this; she told me so in no uncertain terms, and often. We got into a stupid argument about phone privileges on school nights or something and it devolved into abusive cruelty on her part and I tried to defend myself (I am waaaaay oversimplifying all of this right now) and it led to my being shown the door. She had shown me the door before, but this time, I took her seriously and called my dad. By the weekend, I had moved out of one parent's house and into the other's.

Life at my dad's was strange--loving and comforting, but also tinged with a strong feeling that I didn't really belong there. I went away to college shortly after, so perhaps it's more fair to say that I never fully settled in. I had a hard time in college for a few years, not applying myself and partying and just generally unhappy. My dad and stepmom didn't understand. I was all but completely estranged from my mom and stepdad and sister. An age difference of 11 years between my brother and me meant that, while fond of each other, we weren't bonded, having not grown up together.

I was trying to repair all these relationships at one time and it wasn't working. I was in pain.

I gave up. On everyone. They gave up on me, too.

What even IS family?

I'll tell you.

Since I was 15, I have been best friends with Sarah. This woman is my sister. I have put her down as my emergency contact, even while living states away. I held her tiny newborn babies and wept. She practically flew to the hospital when I delivered my son 15 weeks early and we both wept beside his incubator. She put the straw in my mouth and made me stay hydrated while I breastfed that impossibly small little boy who is now larger than life and asks me excitedly, "Mommy, can we go to Sarah's this weekend and swim in her big pool?!" Sarah is tribe.

Since I was 23, I have been best friends with @teneiced. She is my WSF, my writing spouse forever. I have sent her drafts of absolute garbage, and the occasional original line of lightning that made my skin buzz, and she has trusted me with her writing, too. Ninety percent of our relationship has existed in a gmail chat box. We have railed against the patriarchy in one breath and geeked over sourdough grilled cheese the next. I read her horoscope every morning, and she reads my tarot from a distance. Sometimes she'll text me, "Are you ok? I got a weird feeling..." We survived a decade of co-editing an online lit mag together, and have such strong and hard-won mutual respect for one another that we can bypass agree-to-disagreeing and just actually have the difficult conversation. Teneice is tribe.

A few years ago, I came across @shawnamawna's blog and felt this blast of recognition, kind of like--stay with me here--the beautiful moment when my parents' dog Eli smelled my son for the first time and looked at me as if to say, "Yes, ok, he's ours, I can tell, he belongs to us." Like can sense like. We just connect. I find that such connections are so much fewer and farther between as we age. Ours is a younger friendship, but it doesn't feel like it. I can honestly say I don't know what I'd do if we didn't check in with each other almost every day. Shawna is tribe.

There are other women with whom I feel this kindred spirit-ness. What is it, if not familial?

Over the years, I came to reconnect with my dad's side of the family in a big way, and that means a lot to me. My stepmom IS my mom. She was the first one I called when I found out I was pregnant. When I was leaving an abusive relationship and had nowhere else to go, she opened their home to me. She took me in, twice--once as a damaged 17-year-old and once as a damaged 33-year-old. Without her, I might barely know my dad now. No matter what kind of a day either one of us is having, we can find something to laugh and laugh and laugh about. She has the all-time world's greatest unapologetically loud and identifiable laugh. I'm sitting here right now, typing and thinking of her laugh, and it's making ME laugh. She's another best friend. My stepmom is tribe.

My family? It's full of badass and big-hearted women. When I think of family, of course I think about my dad and my son and even Eli, who is still in love with my kiddo and follows him everywhere. But mostly I think about the presence of these strong and brilliant female creatures who make my existence so worth it.