If I have to define family, I am pretty sure that I can't use the traditional definition.
I have me and my kids. The three of us are for sure the strongest bond of family in each of our respective lives. We have rules. We have expectations. We have love. We also have all the funny shit that only families will have, like being naked for breakfast, stealing each other's socks, and laughing hysterically at farts during the intense part of a movie we are cuddled on the couch together to watch. We have discussions, situational learning and teaching, and a whole lot of growing up. We play. We sing. We cry.
We also have other people in our family. Yes, we count their dad. At least we try to. Every other weekend. And when something is left in his car. We count grandparents. At least we try to. Once a week or so. Or when we need a walk and some cookies. We count friends. At least we try to. As often as possible, because really, they are our family of choice, even when we only see them once a month, for breakfast, at an awful restaurant, halfway between houses, because we just had to see each other. Or dropping everything we had planned so that we could go swimming instead. Not a bad trade off on most days. Family is like that.
We are connecting to other people through Social Justice Causes. No, my kids don't actually call them Social Justice Causes. They think of it as just the right thing to do (and a damn lot of fun) when we volunteer to clean up the beach, or go to a dance party in support of Marriage Equality, or write letters through Amnesty International to help free a prisoner of conscience. Yeah, building world family, too.
So when this morning I received an email, asking that I support the use of a "Stop and Discuss" form (I wrote about "fix it" tickets in my blog titles "All things can be fixed with duct tape") that my ex wants to use with the kids in his home (on those "every other weekend"s previously mentioned) I was actually amused by the list of family he has for the kids. Seems there is him, his wife, my children, her three adult children, and the the household pets, including a turtle, who qualify as family. Not his wife's children's father. Not the roommates that also live in the house. Not the grandparents, not the aunties, not the friends. The pets. Not me.
My children had already told me about this new form, the reworked fix-it ticket, and the whole "family" expectation. I asked them about it, and how they felt. The answer was predictable: they were pretty much ignoring it since the whole idea was, in their minds, stupid. I asked them why they thought it was stupid. And again, the answer was predictable: families don't work like that.
I explored it more with them as we drove home. I learned they like our little family of three. We have rules. We have expectations. We have love. We are funny. We play. We sing. We cry. We talk about stuff immediately. We respect boundaries. We say we are sorry. We mean it when we do. We don't do it again. We have a lot of growing up to do, and damn, we are having fun in the process. And family, well, giving each other "tickets" and "forms" was just not how we roll, and would not be used with those that we love in our real world.
I have now labeled the email, and pulled it into my "I'll get right on that" file. And while I did a "I-need-some-validation-as-an-awesome-mom-and-beautiful-kick-ass-damn-right-I-am-a-member-of-my-children's-family-fuck-the-turtle-you-can-go-to-hell" moments for about five seconds when I first read the thing, I am over it, and know that I will not be using the form, any other stupid tricks to get respectful behavior out of my kids. I don't need to, because they already are. REAL family is like that.
