Day 26: Love is a Family

Take a glance into my mother's kitchen this Thanksgiving and you might be surprised at what you see. There is my sister, an urban twenty-something who smokes and wears ridiculously high spiky red heels. In the house. She's very cool and I always feel a bit mousy beside her. My mother is a fifty-something who radiates a sort of organic glow that probably comes from her standard diet of salad and green tea with lemon. Next to her is my father, a small man with spectacles and a beard. A man who I always remember as taller, most likely because he is clearly the center of us all and his wisdom is not easily forgotten. Nate and Aimee are scattered between their three little ones- like beams in an solid home. They center their girls, giving shape and values to their family. And then there's Rich and I- he watches more than speaks, both of us feeling a bit soft around the edges but inspired by these people who gather from different sides of the State to be together for 24 hours. There's a sadness too, my older brother and his young family are four timezones and more miles away than I'd like to picture. We wonder out loud at how he's doing and wish for him to come home soon.

Love is a family. And I hope this year that you have family around you- people who bring up all the embarrassing thing you did when you were 12. People who notice every pound you've lost and none of the ones you've gained. I hope you have people who will crowd around you at a dinner table and scoop food onto your plate, whether you want it or not. Because it's the love of a family that demonstrates for us an unconditional love.

So when my four year old niece turns to me as we're walking down the stairs and says I love you, I understand the gift of being loved not for who I am or what I am, but because I am. It's Day 26 and today I say that I will love my husband not for the kind things he does for me, or the way he makes me feel. I will love him because he is. He is here and he is mine. And together we make our own family.