Family is more than blood...

Howdy y’all,

I have been sitting on this post for a full week now. I won’t lie, this is going to be one of my more serious posts (by “serious” I mean that I try to refrain from making any dick jokes...), so I apologize in advance if I bring anyone down with this one. On May 21^st it would have been my late grandmother’s 98^th birthday. Because my Ma worked so much while I was growing up, I spent a large amount of my time at my grandparents. As a result, I became very close to both of my grandparents, but especially my Grandma. She taught me so much, but probably the greatest lesson she ever taught me was that “family is more than blood”.

Yes...that is the little Fat-dad himself.

 As an example, my grandma was known simply as “Goose” to the majority of my friends and at the very least, was known as “Grandma” to about a solid 1/3 of my hometown. She really drove that point home when my cousin married a woman that had a child from a previous relationship. My grandma was asked, “How are you liking the new step-great grand baby?”. She was quite obviously angry and responded with, “She is my great granddaughter! She will call me great grandma!” She just never saw the point in making the distinction. If you were family, you were family. And family had a very loose definition. She had once given me some advice that I even used in my wedding speech, “Treat your friends like they’re family and always love your family. You will never go wrong”. It stuck with me. Always.

I have always been blessed with great friends. And now my daughter will be blessed with great family based of my Grandma’s definition of the word. Elizabeth will have so many aunts and uncles that she won’t even know what to do with herself. I feel quite comforted in the fact that if anything happens to my wife or I, that my daughter will be surrounded by people that would do anything for her. When I had announced that we were pregnant, many of my guy friends kind of assumed that the party was over. Now they are all so jazzed that they are Uncles that I can’t keep them away from my house!  I seriously almost makes me cry just thinking about it.

When I was a kid I had an Uncle Dave. I am a little proud and a little ashamed to admit that I was almost a teenager before I realized that Uncle Dave had absolutely no blood relation to me. I was probably 12 years old before I put 2 and 2 together and realized that Uncle Dave was, in reality, one of Dad’s old drinking buddies. After my Dad left, Dave stuck around. He would stop over all the time and check in on me, he tried getting me in to model trains, he would check up on Ma, to the point that I had literally no idea that he wasn’t blood family. Between the words of advice from Grandma and the actions of Uncle Dave, I quickly learned that there truly is more to family that genetics.

I never had a Norman Rockwell version of a family growing up, but I have come very close with my wife’s family. A mom, a dad, 3 kids, and now 3 children-in-law and 3 grand-kids.  I was so excited to be a legit uncle when my first niece was born. My goodness! I truly can’t even put it in to words. In my life I have been quite blessed to be considered Uncle Brian to many of my friends’ kids. I have also had the honor of being a Godfather to my cousin’s son, and one of my best friends’ daughter. My wife and I are legal guardians to 3 kids in the event anything happens to the parents (Every time they go on vacation my wife and I pray and sacrifice a virgin so that nothing happens to the parents. We love those kids, but I couldn’t imagine multiplying my simple little family overnight!) But there was just something about becoming a “legit uncle”, which was a thought that I slapped myself for, because even though I am not blood to most of the kids that I am an uncle to they are still loved like they are blood.

One change that I have actually been trying to make since becoming a father is that I am trying to let go of my anger. For years and years I was angry at my father for leaving. I don’t want to get into the whole back story, but I was simply put…angry. I wasn’t able to wrap my mind around it growing up. I was even going to get a tattoo when Elizabeth was born that said “It doesn’t matter who your father was, all that matters is the father you are going to be” in Mando’a. But while going through the pregnancy, I actually started speaking to my father again. Long story short there, even though things are still in a weird place, I am learning to give up my anger about the situation for the sake of my daughter. Things are still moving slowly and I have a lot of work to do on my end. I spent the better part of 3 decades destroying bridges and I now I am slowly trying to rebuild them. But the amazing part is that even though I have spent so much time destroying these bridges, people are inherently good and are willing to give me that second chance. I just don’t want to have my daughter pay for any of my sins I guess. I have since changed my mind and will be getting a tattoo that says “Buir” which is simply “Parent” in Mando’a.

Although I was terrified of how becoming a father would change me, I will say that making me let go of my anger has been an awesome change that was also long overdue. Since the death of my grandmother and then the death of my Ma, I had been moving further and further away from my side of the family. I had my reasons for it at the time and I will even go so far as to say that due to where I was emotionally at the time, it was for the best, but I am very glad that my daughter has made me open my eyes. Family, whether it is blood or not, is important. So here is my cheers for all of you (you know who you are) that are my family! Prost!