My Dad’s best friend of many, many years has come to visit us with his family today. And the first thing I noticed is how it did not feel like we had guests over, even for a second. It didn’t feel like someone outside of our immediate family had come home. It is so easy to mingle with their daughter, whom I’ve met a grand total of three times. And at a glance, you’d think my Dad and his best friends are brothers related by blood; what with their similar mannerisms, the way they carry themselves, their shared sense of humor, their values, and so many other things that I cannot even begin to list down.
Isn’t that exactly what the found family trope is all about?
And for a moment, as I stood there at the doorway to our balcony, where everyone sat in an assortment of mismatched chairs, sipping on their cups of tea, it just dawned on me how nice it is to have people over who feel like they’ve been family for so long, even if we’re not related by blood. Even if we’ve only met them three times in person. Because it doesn’t matter. Because I know that my Dad and Uncle have been friends for as long as I can remember.
This got me thinking. Who exactly shortened the saying “Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb” down to “Blood is thicker than water”? Because the meaning has drastically changed. The original saying was supposed to say that found family is sometimes far superior to actual family. But it has somehow been watered down to saying that actual family stands above everything. I disagree.
Not to be that person, but I have felt more at ease with some of our family’s close friends instead of some of our extended family. Because the amount of support that we’ve been shown by our found family is so much more than what some of our actual family has shown us.
It’s funny how we always seem to gravitate towards people who feel like they’re our person. I always think about what sort of butterfly effect might have brought about us meeting our found family in our lives. I wonder why these people immediately felt like home when so many others never have. It’s one of the greatest things one can experience in their lives. I’ve always loved reading the found family trope in books, or watching it happen on the series I watch. But I have no way to explain just how I’d missed making this observation in my real life, so far.
It’s the smallest things that make one grateful for having discovered their found families. A moment where everyone is laughing around the dinner table. A warm hug when they walk in through the door for the first time in years. Hours and hours of exchanging life updates, even when one is tired and close to falling asleep.
It’s the indication that this found family means so much to us that we feel safe enough to share our most vulnerable secrets and moments with them. It’s the feeling of safety that comes from that little voice in your head that asks you to not reveal too much about yourself to people because their vibes seem off, never showing up. That’s pretty much what found family is all about.
I’ve always found myself dearly wishing that my best friend was my real sister instead. But if I think about it well enough, she is my sister in all ways that actually matter. I’ve never felt as though I am anywhere but home whenever I’ve visited her; whether it was at her family’s home, or her in-laws’ home, or even her home. I’ve never felt like am outsider there. And similarly, she has never been an outsider whenever she has visited us. My entire family adores her, and my Mom already considers my best friend her other daughter.
It doesn’t even stop there. Every time I visit my hometown, I am blown away by the number of people who drop by our home there, even if it’s only for a couple of minutes, just because they heard we’re in town for a few days. It’s the sense of community. It’s such a happy and warm little feeling to know that all our neighbours there treat us like family. Which, we are in a way, I guess. No matter how much we’ve grown up, the neighbours still treat my brother and I as they did when we were children. Maybe that’s a kind of found family in itself. Even if it was forged.
There have been times when I’ve had to take a minute to think about how lucky we are to have our found family around. For someone who loves reading about the trope, you’d be surprised how little I actually think about mine. It’s not as though I don’t let people know how much I appreciate them. I do. But it’s a whole other thing to actually sit with that thought and let yourself ruminate on how lucky you’ve been in life to actually have found your family in people who would have virtually been strangers if they didn’t somehow stumble into your lives on a random Tuesday.
It’s just moments like this that hit you out of the blue that make you appreciate how beautiful it is to have a found family to celebrate the little moments in life with. Maybe, just for once, we should appreciate the found family trope in our real lives instead of the one we find in books. Not that the one in books is bad or anything, but it’s just really nice to take stock of people in your lives who make it worth living.
What a truly amazing thing it is!
Cheerio! Xx
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Yours truly,
The Shubhster.
~Featured Image by Kyan Tijhuis on Unsplash
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