Family Pictures

Close your eyes and imagine... No. That's not going to work. Now that you have your eyes closed, you can't read the rest of the post. We'll have to wait here until you get bored and peek...

OK. You're back. Let's try this again. Get your crayons and a fresh sheet of blank paper. If you have no crayons, then borrow some, or else you can draw with imaginary ones (just remember to open your eyes when you're ready to read again.) I want you to draw a picture of your family. That's right, just like kindergarten. Don't tell me you can't draw,either, because if perfection were the goal, I'd have asked for a photograph. This is crayon art, and what matters is the spirit you put in the lines.

When you've finished your masterpiece, hang it up on the refrigerator and look at it. Who's there? Is it the same collection of smiling stick figures you drew as a child? Most of us begin with the concepts of mother, father, sister, brother, whether these figures were part of our personal family portrait or not. Later, they expand to spouses and children. Maybe you're blessed with a network of aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. Maybe your family has become complicated with divorce or remarriage. Maybe your family portrait wouldn't be complete without the fuzzy brown scribble of a dog or cat on the page. We each have our own idea of who is family, and that needs not be limited by who lives with us or who is related to us.

Even the most independent people have an instinctual need to draw a circle around themselves, to feel a part of some kind of family. Sometimes, we separate from those who were once considered family, whether through the tides of fate - death or distance - or else deliberately ending a bond we deem unhealthy. When we find ourselves alone, we may reach out to create a new family through friends, clubs, church or work. For the more solitary, we find kinship in hobbies or interests, knowing, for example, "I am a stamp collector" or "I am an Elvis fan." The label is an instant family.

Then, there are those, blessed with connections to relatives they love, who continue to reach out and recognize the unrelated family in their lives. I am fortunate to have had many mothers in my life, many fathers, brothers and sisters, even children with whom I share not one drop of blood. Nothing matters but the love and connection that's shared. That is what makes family.

So, it always surprises me when others treat a bond of blood or law as better than one of love and choice. Unmarried partnership and adoption seem to get second prize. Many reluctantly choose adoption only if unable to conceive their own child. The devotion of a couple living together for 30 years is somehow paler than if they had a contract tying them together. These ideas baffle me.

When my husband and I married ten years ago, it wasn't because we wanted to become a family; It was because we already were one. The ceremony was just a formal recognition and celebration of the bond that love had created between us and with our children.

The choice makes the family.

The participants make the choice, and no outside agency should have the power to approve or deny that choice.

Yet, there are hate groups, many of them surprisingly church-associated, who want to deny same-sex couples the right to the kind of recognition and celebration my family enjoyed. They think that by doing so or preventing such couples from adopting, that they will control what kinds of families can exist. I'm sure they've convinced themselves there is a good reason, but in families, just as in crayon art, all that really matters is the spirit behind it. If there is Love, there is Family. You may as well recognize it.

I suppose the larger point I'm trying to make is that we should embrace all families for the positive thing that they are, traditional or non-standard, our own or others. We all have different pictures hanging on the fridge, and an open heart adds new smiles to the ones we've already drawn. Draw the circle around yourself, but keep the barriers permeable. Love will add to your family regardless of blood or law. Better still, when you draw your family, draw the eddies on a pond - a series of successively larger circles, moving out to include all those worthy of love.

Everybody.

Out to the edges of the pond.

I hope you have lots of blue crayons.