Accidental Family

I hope you won’t mind if I think of you as Mom and Dad even if I’m too shy to call you such. My dad’s been gone for a long time now and my mother, too, in other ways and for other reasons. I’ve been muddling since looking for something that feels like home and making quite a mess of it through a failed marriage to an unsavory sort and too many years spent dating man-children. In fairness, all I had to go on was what other people said family was; not anything I ever actually knew.

From the little bit that I can gather peering inward on conversations a home has warmth and you want to be there when you can. People hug you unprovoked never forgetting to say the “I love you”. On most days there is conversation and, with luck, some laughter too. And when you walk in the front door you can exhale the day and let yourself be seen. If there is any judgment at all it is the kind that says ‘this one is ours’ or ‘you are the greatest human ever’. It smells like rum cake, feels like a cashmere blanket around cold feet and buzzes with something that you can’t make or buy.

I didn’t arrive to you in the usual way; with a due date and head first. Rather, the man that I thought was going to be my home introduced me to our neighbor who loved me as a brother would. He was, in fact, your son.

When the world shut down unexpectedly and I was shut in with this same man who I now needed to leave, I would cook for both of them to keep them healthy and strong because that was the right thing to do. I took requests – like rocky mountain chili, blackened chicken fajitas or baby back ribs. It started with ding-dong dinner in Tupperware on your son’s porch and progressed to meals on the patio in the garden every night when the weather permitted.

In kind he helped me, just as you taught him, when I finally left for a gentler life. He set up my internet and TV, and confessed that he cried the morning my car was no longer in the driveway next door but also understood why that was the only choice. I cried that day, too, and then we drank red wine together.

When we all lost him in October – your son, my ‘brother’ – two others stepped in to take his place in our lives. They painted, and organized, and helped you with difficult things. They checked on me regularly as I regained my sense of self which had been shattered across the three years prior. They sat with me at times and listened. And yes, Mom and Dad, they made me do shots, too. That’s what older brothers do when their kid sisters’ heart has been broken.

You, are my makeshift parents where I had none.

They are now your sons and my brothers, too.

I have been searching for family my entire life not having the first idea that someday - through circumstances that none of us ever imagined or wanted - this accidental family would find me instead.