Family

​This may seem like I am telling porky’s, but it is true.  I am not getting any younger.  Yes I know it is unbelievable that I am not in my prime, but I am getting long in the tooth.  Not like a Sabre-toothed tiger.  That would definitely be a porky.  But you know, getting on, advanced in years, older and wiser.  Well maybe that is a porky, but I am working on the wiser.
I considered that because often when one gets to my age, parents are gone.  In our family, there are three brothers left, giving it their best shot. I am the youngest and I am over 60.  I know that is inconceivable, but it is true.  Dad lived to a ripe old age.  He gave up reading the obituaries, as there was no one left.
I was asking myself, “who is my family?” as a result of a song that played on my shuffle play list.    No one can ever take the place of flesh and blood and I would not have it any other way.
I like what I read recently.  A guy felt a particular night was bliss.  It was not like there was any great achievement happening, but the kids were content doing what they were doing at home, as was the wife.  They were all together and when the time came, enjoying each other’s company.  I have taken to some of the things George Bernard Shaw has said.  “A happy family is but an earlier heaven.”
Not all have a happy family life.  My parents divorced when I was a teenager, yet I reckon I had it better than many, in that they remained friends.  Parents that remained together and close would have been a great teaching aid for me.  But alas, twas not to be.
It amazes me but sometimes other people can be more like family than family.  I hear of it so often that a family member has a totally different perspective than the siblings.  It is like chalk and cheese.  Yet others, who are unrelated by birth, see the world in a very similar way.  Ideally all family members are on the same page, but more and more it seems that is the exception rather than the rule.
Yet I am glad there are people like family.  It would be a lonely place if I had to face life alone.  A friend can be closer than a brother.  Thankfully I have brothers that are …well….brothers.  I also have friends that are like brothers and sisters and sometimes even like a mother.  Mother’s love and instruct.  Or as George Eliot said (who was actually a woman whose pen name was George – understandable considering the times she lived (1819-1880), “Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.”
I reckon there is family out there.  People that can be like family – brothers, sisters, mothers.  I need to be looking for them though.  Often it seems I don’t have something because I am not looking for it.  When Merril and I purchased her Rav 4 we were suddenly seeing Rav 4’s everywhere.  Until then we had not noticed them.
Families though can be a bit like they say.  “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”  Despite that, I want to live with them.