Family and Fambly

A few random thoughts, as I am too weary to think coherently and use good transitions and all...

The St. Philip's Pastoral Care team provided lunch for our family prior to daddy's funeral yesterday. When they asked for a head count, I think they were expecting us to say something like 12, which would have been daddy's four children, our spouses, and our kids. Maybe even another half dozen to include daddy's sister and the folks who came up from Georgia... Instead, we told them something like 35, because it's hard to tell where to draw the line when you talk about family.

See, we have always had a big FAMILY - plenty of Harts and Hewetts out there - but we have also always had an even bigger FAMBLY - you know, the people who are not genetically yours but who belong at your Sunday dinner table and who live in your hearts in the same way (or a more favorable way) than lots of the people with whom you share blood. So when the time came to welcome the mourning family, we knew that included our FAMBLY, too.

My momma's uncles are just as much my daddy's brothers as his own brothers were. Our friends the Reiberts have known and loved us and been part of us for 30 years. Monty Ashby has been a better friend to my daddy than most people will ever have. These and so many who have gone before them are people who my family call fambly - the ones God chose for you but didn't put on your family tree so that you would be all the more grateful for having found them.

I think about "Aunt" Geneva and "Uncle" Tom Floyd and how much they were fambly to my momma and to us kids. So many St. Philippians raised us as part of that fambly. There were folks like the Hugheses and the Mills/Dions whose friendships were like fambly, even though they faded over time. But even family is like that - important for a season, then not as much...
but always part of your experience.

As I go through this adult-ish life, I find myself putting as much time and energy into fambly-building as into family relationships, but I think that's okay. I know that friendships wax and wane with proximity, purpose, and commitment, but I am fascinated by the prospect that each new friend could become fambly for my kids, my husband, and me. In another 30 years, I wonder which relationships I have today will have become permanent fambly for us all. After reconnecting with my cousin and his kids this weekend, I feel like they'll be part of a relationship we want to foster for a while - kids need cousins!! People whose phone numbers are in my cell phone or in my brain - those are fambly.

And most likely, if you're reading this, you're my fambly, too.

Anyone know which comedian(s) have done bits about fambly? I want ot say Jerry Clower did, back in the day... probably the redneck guy or the cable guy...

Anyway...