I’ve been struggling the past few months with how I have “nothing but a big mess” to show for my love of and loyalty to ideals, including those of chosen and given family. “Family” has been a weird, amorphous word for me in adulthood but the idea of it kept me alive through life’s metaphorical fires.
In 2024, I planned to visit my aunt and some friends in Los Angeles and to reconnect with my mother’s “family.” Unfortunately, very little of what I held in my idealistic little heart that year went as intended, this trip included. Under usual circumstances trips can rescheduled, but not this one. Right now, I have family in California who helped me fight my personal fires like my aunt. She lost her entire house this week. I also have family with whom I have no bond who are waiting to see if anything remains of their homes once the flames subside, like my mother’s half-sister.
The weird thing is, that though my relationships to these people are so vastly different to the point that I question the use of the word “relationship,” I still care and have concern for all of them. I’ve been limiting social media and the news recently for my health. But out of this concern, I sought out the first-person points-of-view from folks walking the scorched earth, like that of my mother’s half-sister.
Seeing establishments through her sister’s eyes in which I had visualized making amends with and getting to know my mother’s family reduced to ashes in the palm of my hand is surreal. I remember being ten years old and standing in front of my mother’s father’s house in the twilight with my mom and brother. I also remember our grandfather ignoring his then-teenaged daughter’s question of why my younger brother kept calling her “Aunt” despite my brother strongly resembling him, and his daughter and my mother having similar faces. Seeing the house again, now surrounded in smoke and flame is disorienting and visually reminiscent of the shadowiness I felt while watching my mother and her father converse when I was ten.
I can only begin to imagine the deep sense of loss of losing a literal home in such a way but everytime I read a caption remarking about being an “only child,” I remember my mother’s own devastation. Devastation I internalized as a child by being “good” even as I regularly overheard my parents’ rows that filled the whole house with the news that I was an unwanted accident. The devastation that criticized and mocked whenever I mentioned the friends who love me wholly for who I am. The devastation that ridiculed and mocked every part of my existence as an adult, especially the parts I had formed in hopes of being a good daughter. The devastation of realizing that your definition of “family” is meaningless.
Literal horrors pan across the shiny, screens of my devices and juxtapose with texts acknowledging that everyone is safe and I catch glimpses of my own, pained reflection; there’s so much pain in the world. I have nothing “political” to say about why a beautiful town was permitted to burn off the map; it is of no benefit to me and has already been said many times in different ways across contexts. But it boggles my mind that a place celebrated nationally for being idyllicly pleasant and which I had envisioned myself revisiting is now char, not unlike my idealization of “family.” Yet I feel inspired within me a deep sense of gratitude.
I am in a good headspace, a better headspace than I have been in the past few years. Though the world is at a completely precedented point of Acceleration, and there is just as much uncertainty as there is progress, I cannot help but be somewhat idealistic. Families as biological units are how humanity survives, but our Humanity thrives on how we define “family” for our selves. As I watch for updates and news amidst the clips of ashen homes and neighborhoods, I continue to sift through the ashes my life and of outdated definitions I inherited in search for my own. I hope for everyone to define and redefine “family” for themselves, and to do so in whole authenticity. Family is how our Humanity thrives.
