We choose our families. I believe that more deeply than ever.

My wife and I have chosen one another time, and time and time again. Through thick and through thin, up times and down times. It’s been conscientious and it has not been either easy or automatic.

My kids and I, also. We didn’t choose to be specifically who we are, they didn’t choose to be born. But staying in tight with one another is a choice and it’s one we keep making.

We don’t start out choosing our families of origin. But at some point we must begin choosing them.

I have not really asked my family about these essays, I have not really asked for advice or input from them on the content of these writings. But today at our shared table I did. As I cracked my brain open for family security I asked simply “what I should write”, and my wife said connectedness without performance. Right off the dome like that. She should write her own essays. I’d read them.

Connectedness without performance. A sense of belonging, (that card’s coming up), without expectation of reward or even always reciprocation.

I have talked about my family throughout these essays. I have talked about my brother whose love for the soil and the land make me love mine more. I choose him.

I have talked about my wife and kids. They’re everything to me. They’re my sun and my moon, and they rise on me daily, newly, brightly.

I have talked about my grandmother’s values and her biscuit bowl. I have talked about my nieces for and with whom I would walk to the end of the Earth. I have talked about my aunt, the chef, who never had children of her own but loved us eternally and even in death is knit tightly into the fabric of this family.

Something funny happened this week. My brother and his wonderful wife, who is a sister, (drop the in-law, if you please), to me, and their five beautiful daughters were in my home. It was not an event–it was a morsel. It was the stuff futures are built up upon. The pylons supporting our forever-structures.

My middle niece has eyes only for me at this time. She thinks of me. She made me a manatee, (one of my favorite animals), out of wire and yarn for Christmas. She didn’t show up with gifts for my wife, for my kids or for her grandparents. Just me. I am honored and love her so very much. We spent a good part of Christmas day drawing together with her new paper and pencils and I gave her two Blackwing Pearls for her collection.

When I saw her a few days after Christmas at my house she did something nobody’s done for me since I started my Values Deck adventure. She grabbed my deck and asked if she could do my values.

I think I mentioned at some point that though I’ve thumbed through the deck countless times on countless mornings, I have never been presented with the deck and property done the exercise since my day in therapy so long ago. She grabbed hold of my hand and the deck and presented each card to me in turn, reading them aloud.

It was a beautiful expression of love for me. She knows how much this means to me and she wants to be a part of it. We are choosing each other.

I have talked about my parents. I have probably hurt their feelings at some point in this project and for that I’m sorry. They’re imperfect people who have done imperfect things, and some of them have affected me negatively. This is normal. I know because I talk to other people and I now have an adult child of my own; I am no different than my parents. I am not better or worse, and besides, they have done so many wonderful things as well. They made me who I am and I am grateful.

We have to choose our parents, too. Once we become adults we have to choose them. Even if we stay connected, there’s a certain level of relationship that just won’t happen on its own.

One person I have not mentioned is my sister. I have one. Not a lot of people in my life know about her.

She is far away from me. I believe she is physically far from me–living in another state and another state of mind. She is insecure in our family and has chosen to withdraw for her own sense of self preservation.

I am bereft. There is a piece of me that will always roam a stretch of wilderness longing for her. But I am not angry at her for withdrawing. I understand some of the reasons and I think there’s probably a lot more that I don’t understand.

I think about her nearly every day, and there’s an element of family security that is dashed because of the great weight of knowledge that this estrangement brings—I say it again, we must choose our families. And sometimes we don’t choose the ones we’re biologically connected to. And sometimes that hurts.

My sister is quite savvy–I have not blocked her on my social media apps, nor have I changed my telephone number in the last twenty-five years. I email her on an old email address periodically, when something big happens in my life. I assume she reads my words but I do not know. I wish to be a person with whom she might feel secure one day, if ever she wanted to. It’s entirely possible that she’s reading these words now.

Nevertheless, I am overwhelmingly blessed in my life with relationships. The people I’ve married, the nieces who adore me, my children to whom I’m so devoted. And my closest circle of friends who care for me.

And I am compelled to learn from their example. To be a better friend, a better husband and dad and uncle. To foster and be ready to expend father, uncle, friend energy for anyone who might need it. Any time they might need it. That requires me to be deeply and firmly rooted in family. In community.

On my little Values Tree our roots are the representation of our Values. They’re fed by the rain and the sun and they’re informed by the mycorrhizae of community.

Mycorrhizae are symbiotic partnerships between fungal networks and plants’ root systems that benefit both organisms. In fact they blur the lines between organisms. They allow plants to share water and nutrients and even information. One tree can talk to another. Mycorrhizae make this community possible. It’s such a very beautiful thing!

Family security is really just connectedness without performance. It’s connectedness for the sake of itself and I am insurmountably endowed with a deep sense of security in my relationships. I am glad. I am satisfied.

And I feel the missing mycorrhizae of my sister acutely.

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