family

Family. We all belong somewhere.

In my library years I heard thousands of stories about families: parents with Alzheimer's, grandparents who became caretakers of their grandchildren, estranged siblings, families who rented fire halls for their holiday gatherings and cooked/danced/sang their way into the night , deaths, illnesses, abuse (yes, one chic woman had escaped from a locked house and came to the library), divorce, graduations, marriage, birth - all of life's roller-coaster moments. As surely as they trusted me to choose their next book they shared their joys and sorrows. I was honored to partake in a much larger family.

But, narrowing it down, if you belong to a small group that when you get together you touch warm buttons of remembrance that can produce chuckles or tears, and you realize you share a nest of habits, a banquet of stories, a tic of reactions that are unique to only your family - you are indeed blessed!

I am one of five now, as our parents have passed away and the jigsaw pieces of our lives still fit snugly and happily as the times in snowstorms when we gathered around the kitchen table, honoring the unexpected time of play that fallen from the sky.