The Human Family. It’s a good phrase, reminding us not only that we come from the same beginning and are headed toward the same conclusion but that in the meantime our lives are elaborately and inescapably linked. …
It’s not so much that things happen in a family as it is that family is the things that happen in it. The family is continually becoming what becomes of it. …
It is within the fragile yet formidable walls of your own family that you learn, or do not learn, what the phrase Human Family means.
Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark
This is where my A-to-Z fell apart. I had planned to use a Buechner quote and make a tiny collage — about 2×2 inches. I totally misjudged how hard it would be to make those little collages every day. It was on this day — Family — when I struggled the most.
How do you fit a family into 2×2 inches? My immediate family is large: 8 children, 6 spouses/significant others, 5 grandchildren (one more on the way). I have three living siblings. Then, there are aunts and uncles and cousins. There are also friends who are as close as family. There are co-workers with whom I spend more time than anyone else so they might as well be family.
“The family is continually becoming what becomes of it…” My immediate family is in flux, with big changes at its core. It hurts to think about them.
But I do. I do think about them and the people deeply affected by it all.
That 2×2 can’t hold the bigness of it.
I think I’ll stick with words from here on out.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 
Family can not be minimized. If anything, they are larger than life.
I couldn’t do a birthday collage for one of my relatives in a 2×2 format.
We all have blood family, found family and chosen family. No matter the origins, we are linked in past, present and future!