Yesterday’s morose post brought up an interesting comment from my dear friend Jefffro:

We create our own families sometimes. I know that having living relatives does not always equal having the support of those people.

He goes on to say some lovely things about me and about the friendship between us, which I value as much as he.

The post itself was a little half-baked; it was started a couple weeks ago when I was feeling overwhelmed by all the minutiae and majoriae seeming to dominate my life. I rolled it out yesterday without really editing it or going into the detail I liked.

The reason I invoked my “traditional” family (some of whom I actually love and would seek out even without the blood link), is that a lot of stuff on my mind involved family issues. The care of, and decisions about, my Elderly Relative is the huge one. The home in which I live is owned by my family, so anything wrong with the house feels like a family issue, too. I also suffer when my sister Ann is out of cell range and gallivanting around on a fantastic six-week summer road trip, ahem.

The rest? Garden-variety mental-aches and pains. the crap that comes with the adulthood thing.

Not that I don’t feel like an Orphan in the Storm sometimes; but I also fully, firmly, totally believe that one is capable of (and should) create a network of non-traditional family. I don’t know what I would’ve done without my (caution: 1990s alert!) tribe. I love my tribe!

By the way, run don’t walk to Jefffro’s blog and check out his project, in which he is reminiscing about his entire life, year by year!