(it was my birthday)

The real surprise at my birthday party was who came.

My wife had orchestrated it. I knew there was a party. But I didn’t know who she had invited.

Was I surprised?

Blown away.

People flew in from the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, and the South. Some I see only every year or two. Others I see all the time, they practically live in my zip code.

During the party, I looked around my kitchen and counted 23 people.*

Each one was someone I love. And, apparently, who loves me.

Of the 23 people in that kitchen, only one was related to me biologically. Add my wife and daughter-in-law, and only three were family by biology or law.

The other 20 had become family another way.

Standing there, listening to these incredible people talk and laugh, I realized:

Biology gives us relatives.

Life gives us family.

Usually, they arrive by accident. Seldom by intention.

Maybe that explains why we return to stories about strangers who become indispensable to one another.

Fiction calls it the found family trope.

Embarrassingly, zombie apocalypse movies may give us the clearest picture.

The world ends. Zombies everywhere. The survivors are thrown together. Somebody has a truck. Somebody can shoot. Somebody does something stupid (always).

Before long, they would die for one another. If they survive, they do it together.

Found family. I love that about my life (minus the zombies).

More respectable examples are everywhere. In A Man Called Ove, irritating neighbors become family. In The Lord of the Rings, the people beside you on the journey become as important as anyone waiting at home.

Maybe these stories stay with us because we want to believe family can be found as well as inherited.

But standing in my kitchen, I realized I’d been thinking about found family from only one side.

Who are my people?

Where do I belong?

Who will show up for me?

It’s all me and my. Which, if I’m honest, is usually where I start.

But there is another question.

Who thinks of me as their family?

Found families form in dorm rooms, apartments, offices, and neighborhoods. Around shared interests. Sometimes, against all odds, at church. Nobody announces what’s happening. 

There’s no ceremony. No secret handshake.

Someone shows up when you need them. They stay through something difficult. You begin depending on them differently.

Somewhere along the way, without anyone announcing it, friendship turns into family.

Then one day, you realize they think of you as family, too.

Someone depends on you differently now.

Your presence carries weight.

As does your absence.

You want to remain in their life, so you show up.

Because it matters to them that you are there.

And that matters to you.

This is where found family becomes more than a comforting trope.

Belonging gives us something, but it also asks something of us.

It asks us to notice who may be counting on us.

Maybe found family is not only about knowing who you would call.

It’s knowing who might call you. And that you’ll answer: No. Matter. What.

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