"True leaders gone, of land and people/we choose no kin but adopted strangers/the family weakens by the length we travel...all of us with wings!" - Jane's Addiction, Three Days
I am no one's mother, no one's blood sister, and often have felt like no one's daughter. Being no one's mother is a conscious choice that I made, but the other two are simply circumstances of fate. But I am not without family. In addition to genetic family on my Dad's side that I am friendly with but not especially close to in a daily way, and my mother's relatives, whom I would have trouble recognizing on the street, I have my 'chosen family,' a network of friends that are so much more than that word can convey.
My grandmother and her daughter, my aunt, have sometimes had difficulty understanding my devotion and loyalty to my 'friends.' I think it's something very difficult to understand unless you grew up unconventionally or were by nature an outsider (gay, 'artistic,' rebellious, or somehow otherwise not like the rest of them) inside one's own gene pool. When one comes up this way, is exiled by one's family, or for whatever reason finds oneself outside the bosom of one's biological clan, one cobbles together a family unit out of what one has: friends, lovers, housemates, extended groups of social contacts of all kinds.
I have no brother, but my best friend and I are closer than many, if not most, brothers and sisters that I know. We squabble like siblings but would take a bullet for one another. I would give my life to save his, and he would do the same, I know. His mother has become my mother, through time, love, and withstanding life's tragedies together. I worry about his little brother like he was my own. And then there are others: friends who go back thirty years, or only seven. Or just a few. Some go, most stay, but there is a connection and depth of devotion that goes so far beyond the word 'friends' that the term is laughable. I learned Kurt Vonnegut's term karass from watching My So-Called Life back in 1994: loosely defined as a group of people somehow connected for the purpose of doing God's work, it comes the closest to capturing the essence of these interconnections.
There are many reasons biological families fall apart: distance comes to mind (the family weakens/by the lengths we travel...). Fueled by the influence of the automobile and fossil fuel on mobility, coupled with the American concept of Manifest Destiny and continual expansion, we are a nation of immigrants, not just from other countries, but from east to west, south to north, and every which way. Ideology. Religion. Our American adherence to 'rugged individuality,' in which the family takes second rung to our own personal agendas sometimes splits what we think of as traditional family units into disaparate, discrete entities. However, humans are nothing if not tribal, and I find that even if we exile ourselves from our families or origin, nearly all of us, in one way or another, are seeking unification with others in some form of familial structure.
Because I have no brothers or sisters, my friend Natasha's baby girl, Sydney, made me 'Auntie Soul' for the first time in my life, at 28. I took this title seriously, not just as a cutesy moniker, and have grown ever more serious about it as Sydney has grown from the infant asleep in my arms backstage at the Paradise Lounge while Mixmaster Mike rocked the mic into the willowy teenager with feet bigger than mine who now sends me essays via email and texts me with regularity.
Other little girls have followed Sydney and made me an Auntie: Savannah, sharp as a tack (like her mother), now ten, whom I promised I would raise should anything happen to her mom, my homegirl from growing up in Berkeley. Azara, the wild-eyed Indian doll born to my close friend Leila, now almost old enough to read. Lyra, the longed-for hippie baby of my North Coast farmer friends, who tried for years to have her. And most recently, Ellery Cleone, born two weeks ago to my 'brother' Choppy, another only child who found a 'sister' in a one-time stranger. Sydney, Savannah, Azara, Lyra, Ellery: daughters of my chosen family, future women who made me understand the joy of wild little girls, little ladies who made me someone's spiritual guardian and caretaker, whether close or far. I won't send my genes out into the world, but if there is anything resembling immortality for us sad little humans who naturally crave it, I hope that my influence on these girls will be mine.
I can't imagine who I would be without these individuals: people who know all about you and like you anyway. People who don't have to be your family, by virtue of blood of marriage, but are because you've both chosen to share your time in this plane together, to show up for one's highs and lows, rituals and undoings. We seek their acceptance, accept their criticism, criticize their bullshit, in one beautiful interwoven, neverending knot. All of us, with wings.
I am no one's mother, no one's blood sister, and often have felt like no one's daughter. Being no one's mother is a conscious choice that I made, but the other two are simply circumstances of fate. But I am not without family. In addition to genetic family on my Dad's side that I am friendly with but not especially close to in a daily way, and my mother's relatives, whom I would have trouble recognizing on the street, I have my 'chosen family,' a network of friends that are so much more than that word can convey. My grandmother and her daughter, my aunt, have sometimes had difficulty understanding my devotion and loyalty to my 'friends.' I think it's something very difficult to understand unless you grew up unconventionally or were by nature an outsider (gay, 'artistic,' rebellious, or somehow otherwise not like the rest of them) inside one's own gene pool. When one comes up this way, is exiled by one's family, or for whatever reason finds oneself outside the bosom of one's biological clan, one cobbles together a family unit out of what one has: friends, lovers, housemates, extended groups of social contacts of all kinds.
I have no brother, but my best friend and I are closer than many, if not most, brothers and sisters that I know. We squabble like siblings but would take a bullet for one another. I would give my life to save his, and he would do the same, I know. His mother has become my mother, through time, love, and withstanding life's tragedies together. I worry about his little brother like he was my own. And then there are others: friends who go back thirty years, or only seven. Or just a few. Some go, most stay, but there is a connection and depth of devotion that goes so far beyond the word 'friends' that the term is laughable. I learned Kurt Vonnegut's term karass from watching My So-Called Life back in 1994: loosely defined as a group of people somehow connected for the purpose of doing God's work, it comes the closest to capturing the essence of these interconnections.
There are many reasons biological families fall apart: distance comes to mind (the family weakens/by the lengths we travel...). Fueled by the influence of the automobile and fossil fuel on mobility, coupled with the American concept of Manifest Destiny and continual expansion, we are a nation of immigrants, not just from other countries, but from east to west, south to north, and every which way. Ideology. Religion. Our American adherence to 'rugged individuality,' in which the family takes second rung to our own personal agendas sometimes splits what we think of as traditional family units into disaparate, discrete entities. However, humans are nothing if not tribal, and I find that even if we exile ourselves from our families or origin, nearly all of us, in one way or another, are seeking unification with others in some form of familial structure.
Because I have no brothers or sisters, my friend Natasha's baby girl, Sydney, made me 'Auntie Soul' for the first time in my life, at 28. I took this title seriously, not just as a cutesy moniker, and have grown ever more serious about it as Sydney has grown from the infant asleep in my arms backstage at the Paradise Lounge while Mixmaster Mike rocked the mic into the willowy teenager with feet bigger than mine who now sends me essays via email and texts me with regularity.
Other little girls have followed Sydney and made me an Auntie: Savannah, sharp as a tack (like her mother), now ten, whom I promised I would raise should anything happen to her mom, my homegirl from growing up in Berkeley. Azara, the wild-eyed Indian doll born to my close friend Leila, now almost old enough to read. Lyra, the longed-for hippie baby of my North Coast farmer friends, who tried for years to have her. And most recently, Ellery Cleone, born two weeks ago to my 'brother' Choppy, another only child who found a 'sister' in a one-time stranger. Sydney, Savannah, Azara, Lyra, Ellery: daughters of my chosen family, future women who made me understand the joy of wild little girls, little ladies who made me someone's spiritual guardian and caretaker, whether close or far. I won't send my genes out into the world, but if there is anything resembling immortality for us sad little humans who naturally crave it, I hope that my influence on these girls will be mine.
I can't imagine who I would be without these individuals: people who know all about you and like you anyway. People who don't have to be your family, by virtue of blood of marriage, but are because you've both chosen to share your time in this plane together, to show up for one's highs and lows, rituals and undoings. We seek their acceptance, accept their criticism, criticize their bullshit, in one beautiful interwoven, neverending knot. All of us, with wings.
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