Eileen Goudge

Families are like quilts

The families we make for ourselves are like quilts fashioned from the various pieces of our lives. The older I get, the more I realize the importance of my “adopted” family members. The friends I’ve known for so long we count the years in multiples of the age we were when we met. The neighbor boy who used to taunt me when we walked home from school each day but who I now think of as my other brother. The woman I met at a writers conference years ago, when we were both young moms struggling to make a name for ourselves as writers, who became one of my closest friends. No, we’re not related by blood. Something even better: choice. We choose to be in each other’s lives. And that, as it turns out, is the strongest of all bonds.

I have two godsons, Jason and Ethan, who I think of as my second family. I was reminded of this the other day when my husband and I took the youngest, Ethan, out to lunch to celebrate his college graduation. Ethan reminded me that I was the one who taught him how to drive (when he was eight, sitting on my lap at the wheel while we drove at a speed of five miles per hour down a deserted country road), how to navigate the New York City subway system, and how to hail a cab. I reminded him that I was the one who delivered him into the arms of the mohel at his bris, who gave him his first cake batter bowl to lick, and who sat up with him the time he woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. Then we smiled while my husband took pictures.

This is the family I created, not the one I was born into or gave birth to. The family I sometimes enjoy more than my real one, because it doesn’t come with a load of baggage for going on those endless guilt trips families are known for. It’s fashioned out of love, not obligation, out of scraps I might have come by accidentally but that are stitched together by design. It’s my finest creation.

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Fabulous post. I oft...

Comment from: Petula (Guest)

Fabulous post. I often think that "adopted" family members understand the meaning of unconditional better than those family members who one is joined to by blood. I love how you and your godson shared the memories.

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