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Question: What is family?
Dictionary: a set of relations, esp. parents and children.

You're bound to them by blood. Which, you know, gives you that much more in common. Diseases, genetics, hair, and eye color. It's like they're a part of your blueprint. If something's wrong with you, you can usually trace it back to them. But, even though you're stuck with them, at the same time, they're also stuck with you. So that's why they always get the front rows at christenings and funerals. Because they're the ones that are there, you know, from the beginning to the end. Like it or not.

Family isn't something that's suppose to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They're born, they die. It's always evolving, turning into something else. Even a picture of a family was only the true representation for that one day. By the next, something had probably changed. It had to.

Family photo. You ran your finger slowly across the faces on the photo, identifying each one. All those names, strung together like beads on a chain. Coming together, splitting apart, but still and always, a family.

Big family.There are times you've wished otherwise, if only because the more people you have, the more likely someone won't get along with someone else. The potential for conflict is always there. This happens in small families, too, though. Sometimes, a family is so big, and everyone always has an opinion, whether you want to hear it or not. You'd never done anything all on your own before, without their help or input. It's liberating.

Not speaking. Family means the silent treatment. At any given moment, someone is always not speaking to someone else. Passive- aggressive people. Silence is our weapon of choice. This is sad. Well, maybe so. But it certainly cuts down the phone bill. Silence is golden. And common.
What makes you give up the silent treatment? When do you decide to talk again? When someone else does something worse. Then you need people on your side, so you make up with one person, just as you're getting pissed off at another. It's an endless cycle. Coming after, falling apart.

Comfort? History? The beginning of life? Communication is crucial. Family is, like the wellspring of human energy. The place where all life begins.

Of course you would assume our definitions would be similar, since we had come from the same place. But this wasn't actually true. We all have one idea of what the color blue is, but pressed to describe it is specifically, there are so many ways: the ocean, lapis lazuli, the sky, someone's eyes. Our definitions were as different as we were ourselves.

Then. Now. Always.