Blog #6 My Community

In the year 2002 my life changed forever. That was the year I left bachelorhood and became a member of the Robinson Family Community. The Caruthers family was a loose collection of wildly different children my 2 parents adopted. When we grew up, we left, and when no one else was left, Mom and her husband moved to Arizona.
The Robinson family is very strange. When I first met Rebecca’s parents, their standard of acceptance was listening to her Father recite “The Butthole Poem”. The rules are really simple, even though I fought them at first. Everything belongs to the family, especially the grandchildren, and Grandpa is the head of the family, even when he is doing everything Grandma tells him too. My house belonged to them, and if they fixed a sink, then they could use the garage to paint their truck. Boy did I fight this! It seemed intrusive and manipulative and I even went so far as to call the police on my father in law when he knocked on the door, demanding his possessions. Oops, did I leave out the part where I gave his wife a stern lecture about interfering in our affairs, kicking her out of my house. Oh, and how could I forget that my second son was just born and we had to move the next day and I had just “fired” my help.
Well, things settled down and I realized that these people, whether I liked it or not, were my family and, more than that, they were my community. My wife calls her mother 2 and 3 times a day and her sisters at least once a day. And everyone is made aware of what everyone else is doing, their struggles, their joys, what their kids are up to. And every year, there is a birthday party for every member of the family. So, I am a Robinson now. I have listened very carefully to my father in law as he explains that, as the paternal figure, he takes on the responsibility of watching over the family, in prayer and in actions, like fixing cars and garbage disposals. And when he is over, fixing our station wagon, in the rain and the cold, I am out helping him, listening to his stories, his sermons, and his advice a little part of the little boy inside of me is happy again. I realize that these are the values I have wanted all my life, a close family, one that looks out for eachother.
Oh, did I mention he “knighted” me at my wedding?