The Inception of a Family

This past weekend, Adam and I celebrated our five year wedding anniversary. Five years of marital bliss. In celebration, we took out some of our mementos from when we were dating. It started me thinking about the path a relationship takes to get to marriage. You start off at a point where you are hoping that one of you reaches out, makes the phone call, sets the date. And somewhere years later you stop having the nervous feelings of “will he/she kiss me,” and become a family. What an interesting phenomenon. When I think of the day I met Adam or our first few dates, it’s almost humorous to think that’s where we started and here’s where we are. In 11 years; we dated, married and had two kids. At what point did we cross the threshold of being a family? I never really thought about the people in my family that married into my family as less family. But they too started at a place where they once were uncomfortable with their significant other and now are family to each other. Clearly we became more of a family once we procreated but I also remember feeling familial when we got married. I don’t think it started there though, I think somewhere in our courtship we crossed that barrier to family (going to each other’s holidays, sharing our lives with each other, etc). So what defines a family? I was never nervous about marrying Adam, mostly just happy that now the rest of the world would validate us as a committed couple. So does marriage make you a family? People have children without being married, are they any less of a family? It seems absolutely ironic that people would start at one place (will he/she call me? Will he/she kiss me) and then end up becoming family members. Until you find a significant other your family is defined by blood or marriage by blood. And then one day you fall in love with someone and they become family. I don’t think Adam and I celebrated the beginning of our family June 12, 2008 when Drew was born, I’m not sure we celebrated the beginning of our family August 21, 2005 when we got married but I’m pretty positive we didn’t celebrate the beginning of our family June 1999 either. August 21, 2010 we celebrated the anniversary of our wedding which was just one fun party.