Family
has an ancient connotation, a biblical interpretation, and a literal
application. The word itself is from the Latin familia, meaning household, which itself came from famulus, meaning ‘servant.’ There is
also the historical biblical interpretation, which says that marriage is the
lynchpin of the family unit. From Genesis 2:24, which is,
"For this reason a man will leave his father
and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh," we
get the modern social construct. The personal family is today best described as
Marilynn Robinson puts it in her book The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern
Thought: a collection of people with shared “habits, tastes, stories,
customs, [and] memories.” Well more than a framework for boring and technical
scientific definitions of relationships between members of a species, family is
also a way humans identify themselves -- by blood or by choice. Emotionally defined,
family is perhaps the yearning in every person to belong to a strong and protective
group one feels an obligation or loyalty to, a unit that can provide strength
in numbers and shelter or comfort from a sometimes cruel world. Of course,
families have their own brand of cruelty, and no family is exempt from this
rule.
With
the ancient definition, the overtone is clear: family is something owned (an
object), or someone possessed by the House – these would be the women and their
children, seized in conquest and forced into familial relationships for the
sake of a nobler lineage or a wealthier family’s profit. Where family was once
an identity given to someone when they were purchased by nobility or born into
a specific bloodline, family in today’s more inclusive society is as much about
association as it is about blood. This hidden history of the word is not often
brought up or discussed, and of course not. It would decimate the moral judgment
of those who hold the literal biblical belief described next.
Many
believe America is a Christian Nation, but the Bible can be a confusing mess
when defining family for those who attempt to literally follow the book. If family is the producer of morals and values,
and marriage is the foundation of family, honest accounting means admitting
that the definition of marriage has changed numerous times throughout the Bible.
From polygamy as the standard in Deuteronomy 21:15 to God sanctioned-rape in Judges
21:10-24---. Expansion of family is the way of accounting for the history of
man. Family is hard to characterize with consistency when using the biblical
framework. The definition as according to civil law must, to be consistent with
history, continue to expand.
Another
incongruous example, relating more to my literal experience, is where the Bible,
in Romans 8:15, tells me to “Be not afraid, for it is a spirit of adoption [I]
have received.” In my life this bell
rang more like a warning than an invitation – in hindsight – because a verse
from Deuteronomy 23:2 which I also read, says “A bastard shall not be entered into
heaven even until the tenth generation.” I am confused. How can I or my children and their children
ever receive salvation? If America is a Christian Nation, and if the
Constitution is truly Biblically based and therefore written and maintained in
accordance with the accepted Christian familial structure, then there can be no
true belief -- just a coerced ‘faith’ – and no real place within society for me
and every other bastard-child.
Another
misconception is that there was ever a perfect time for families. To use a
typical white American’s view of the 1950’s, that decade was the idyllic time.
But, says researcher, author and Professor Stephanie Coontz, “…rates of unwed
childbearing tripled between 1940 and 1958, but most Americans didn't notice
because unwed mothers generally left town, gave their babies up for adoption
and returned home as if nothing had happened.” There is no ‘moral best’ available in the
family structure; there has never been a generation where the family was the
exclusive generator of proper values.
My
personal story about family is not easy to digest, and most of it does not fit
here. However, a brief overview is necessary to understand my perspective on
the subject. At first, my only family was my fifteen year old mother. Having
run away from home at twelve to escape a sexually aggressive father, her life
quickly degraded into hard drugs and prostitution. This was how she met my ‘father,’ and became
pregnant at fourteen. I never have known
this person whose DNA is carried on in my body. I have no clue who or what he is. Family, for me, is incomplete.
Until
I was three years old, this teenage girl was all I really understood as
family. Yet she was the family who
sexually abused me, who zipped me up in her backpack and left me on the bed in
her hotel room while she went in search of tricks and/or drugs for hours or
days at a time. She threw me at walls,
sold my companionship for extra cash.
Not long after that age, I ended up entirely
dependent on the State and the generous taxpayers of California for my survival.
Child Protective Services did finally step in, and my family for a time was the
State-run orphanage. Not to burrow into hyperbole, but if there had been no
state interference I likely would have died before age five.
I
was adopted by an affluent family at three and a half. By this family I was consistently
portrayed and treated as an angry and argumentative child looking for confrontation,
a feral kid with no control over his emotions, rather than as the confused and
inquisitive bright child with adult sensitivities about sexual activities that
I was. Since the separation in my teenage years, when I was again returned to
the custody of the state, there has been no contact. Well, that’s not exactly
true.
I
called my mom once when I was almost twenty-one. She asked who I was. I said “Jason.”
She said, “Jason who?” “Your son.” “I don’t have a son.” I probably should have
hung up then, but I stayed on the phone hoping she would acknowledge the
eternal bond. I still sting every time a
memory pops up (a lot) or a conversation with friends turns towards family
affairs. When U2’s One is on at the
supermarket or some other innocuous place, I get all weepy, because the last portion
of lyric reminds me that we are all family. I include this last chunk because
in its entirety we see described the tension between unconditional and
conditional love in a family setting:
Did
I ask too much?/More than a lot./You gave me nothing/ Now it's all I got./We're
one/but we're not the same/Well we/Hurt each other then we do it again/You say/Love
is a temple/Love a higher law/Love is a temple/Love the higher law/You ask me
to enter/then you make me crawl/And I can't be holding on/To what you got/When
all you got is hurt./One love/One blood/One life/You got to do what you should./One
life/With each other/Sisters/Brothers/One life, but we're not the same/We get
to carry each other/Carry each other…
It really is a privilege,
I have learned, both to be carried and to have someone to carry when they need
it.
Family
is something I have now that, even as a young man, I never thought I could have
again. I think often about the fortunate life I have led, how happy I am to
love and be loved. How set apart I am
from others who have been through similar horrific abuse, to have survived all
of this. I thrive and feel grateful for
my life despite what I’ve been through. I’m lucky, I know, and not just to live to
tell the tale, but to be encircled by inexhaustibly amazing people. I belong to a family now, having surrounded
myself with those who can stand my decline, those who do not pity me or take
advantage of my vulnerabilities. These are people who know my sweet and gentle
nature and believe it still exists though all they hear, night and day, is my
bitching. This is the family that will
mourn my passing, that will monitor my attitudes, and remind me that I appreciate a good debate
but loathe a faulty argument, calling me on my bullshit when I try to sell it. This family will see the joy I take from parenting
my not-yet-three year old girl. This is
an amazing, smart, beautiful, and hope-filled child who will never have to know
the horror or betrayal of my own childhood.
I
know I have blood brothers somewhere, maybe sisters too. I know my birth mother is still alive. She
lives somewhere near me, even. I have
struggled, holding her address in my hands, with whether or not to attempt contact. I doubt it would be a good idea. Any reward of reconciliation must be balanced with
the knowledge that my entire family – my family as we have chosen each other --
would also reap the consequences of my illogical inner need to somehow
outwardly forgive the unforgivable.
Family
for me has never been what it is for the people around me, the not so close and
the close friends. I have watched their
moms and dads die, their brothers get married, their sisters divorced, I have lost
contact with countless caring women and as many generous men that I counted as
my close friends. That has always been my family, until I found my wife. Now, there are two lives to intertwine, and a
third to lead. We may not live up to someone else’s definition—we surely are
not slaves to one another—but we are happy to have each other.
From
slave to marriage and children, to units sharing emotional bonds, the word
family has evolved and expanded in definition. Humans don’t need to bind themselves for profit
or to please He Who Judges—but we are connected, connected by identity and
common longing to trust and unconditionally love without fear of betrayal. This is impossible to expect from the family
of man. We all want our Pops to have
been perfect or our family history to not include the pedophile uncle. But families
do, and keeping these secrets is unhealthy. Slave. Family meant slave.
