The Ties That Bind Us

Since they’ve returned home (only once my sister managed to pry my newborn niece away from me), I’ve been thinking a lot about my family. Nearly ten years since I originally left home and I’m still not used to being away from them. Do other people who have moved away from home struggle with the same problems? Over the years I’ve met plenty of people who claim not to be particularly close to their families…and it’s a concept I just can’t fathom.

I’m beyond fortunate to come from a large family rooted in strong ties. The kind of family where every holiday, no matter how small, finds us gathered at Grandma’s. The kind of family that all come together to celebrate every wedding, birth, loss, or triumph. The kind of family that always stand by one another. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because our family was born and raised in the south, where family comes before everything else. But mostly, I believe our family is special.

Because our family is tied together by bonds stronger than blood.

Because two people chose to open their home, and their hearts, to kids that needed them.

Because of my grandparents.

In 1964, my mother was born into another family. She was the youngest of four girls. There isn’t a lot that I know of my mother’s birth parents, one of them I never met. When she was three, my mother’s birth father was killed when a car he was working on fell on top of him. The next few years were a struggle as a woman found herself the sole provider for four young girls. Finally, she made the decision that would affect not only the lives of my mama and her sisters, but all of our lives. And my mama and aunts entered foster care.

At this time there was a couple that owned a tobacco farm and had two daughters of their own. They had already been acting as foster parents for a little while, caring for many children who would eventually move on to permanent homes or return to their birth families. One evening they received a phone call from social services. A temporary placement was needed for four girls, aged 7 to sixteen. The social worker asked the wife if they would be willing to take in one or two of the girls until they could find another situation. After discussing it with her husband the wife told the social worker that no, they wouldn’t take one or two of them, they wanted to take them all.

That couple was my grandparents. And as you can probably guess, taking in my mama and her sisters was anything but temporary.

Officially, they never adopted any of them. As was the case with two brothers that they also fostered. And, eventually, two of my aunts did reconnect with their birth mother. But that one phone call, and that one decision, was the start of my big, crazy, loving family. My mama became the baby of a family with five sisters and two brothers and two parents that loved her unconditionally.

I don’t remember how young I was when I first learned any of this…too young to actually remember. None of it was ever a secret, it was just the facts. This is how our family came to be. But as I’ve gotten older it’s a story I’ve come to treasure more and more, like a beloved fairytale where everyone lives happily ever after.

Our family has grown by leaps and bounds over the years. There have been marriages, births…and deaths.

There’s a song, “Small Town Southern Man” by Alan Jackson, that has always reminded me of my granddaddy. And one line of the song goes, “He said his greatest contribution is the ones you leave behind.” And my granddaddy left behind a family built from his and my grandma’s overwhelming love for a bunch of kids that needed a roof over their heads. They built a family tied together by bonds stronger than DNA, genetics, blood…whatever you want to call it.

We’re a family tied together by the love they taught us.