My children are grown and have started their own little dynasties – some far and some not so far away. My marriage is the second time around and so another layer has been added to the mix. Now in addition to my three sons, I have a step daughter and her father has acquired three sons. There are other layers of family by way of my sister and her offspring. Her marriage, also being the second time around, there are cousins and step cousins and the relationships I could never figure out, except that it seemed downright hostile to be a cousin twice removed.

Of course there are the grandchildren, a blessing if you can see them at certain stated intervals because Bubbe maisse to the contrary, chasing a three year old is quite literally a pain in the neck and in the back and places you never paid attention to before and which didn’t hurt so much when their parents were that same age. Family is unavoidable and sometimes a very good thing if you accept that most are dysfunctional in some guise or other and secondly, never forget that the Waltons were a writer’s creation and didn’t need to be grounded in reality.

Definitions of family vary as to ties, rights and responsibilities but all seem to agree as to the existence of some sort of bond. For instance, a friend once questioned why she wasn’t being invited to some affair her nephew and his wife were having. She was told that only the immediate family was being invited. Foolish me, she thought, for thinking that a sister is about as immediate as you can get. Philosophically, “So what am I, chopped liver?” A philosophical state of mind helps greatly towards remaining a family member in good standing.

As my father often said, you can choose your friends but not your family, and so I have some friends who are – in my head, at least – my family. I love them dearly and I believe they reciprocate my feelings and the fact that we don’t share some ancestor’s nose or jutting chin in no way impacts the relationship. In fact, it probably makes it stronger because we never have to play the blame card. In the mob movies you never do anything to hurt the family - the family is sacred both in offense and in defense, but off the screen many of us view our friends through the same protective lens.

There are those among you who will read this next part and kind of coo with understanding and others who will cluck their tongues at such silliness. My other family members all have four legs, lots of body hair and so many loving kisses that I have become quite spoiled. When I lose a member of this family I am filled with a pain that seems to never go away and please don’t ever let me hear those words but she or he is only a dog or a cat. What’s more, when these family members experience a loss within the ranks, they too, experience pain. I remember when our Cairn Terrier, Sammy, passed from this earth, Lulu, our Yorkie, sat by the door for a week, waiting for her to come home and on the occasions when she could be persuaded to abandon her post, she kept vigil in the hallway and made little crying sounds.

Family can be what we want. We can regard all of mankind as our extended family and we can learn to feel the pain of others. I believe a good word for that is empathy, and we can consider ourselves most fortunate if we have that quality, and truly bereft if we do not. The ability to walk in another’s shoes without actually walking in those shoes can be found in the greatest among us as well as the most humble. How differently we might treat one another if we truly believed that we all are – to a degree- family.