Family expansion

Family. We think we know what it means. Often, we conjure heterosexual couples with children. Sometimes, in our scope are grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Maybe we include distant cousins, ancestors, villages, the old world.

If we are gay, we may include lovers, ex-lovers and friends as family. We may do this if we have be rejected by our own families; we may do this as well as even if we are well loved by our own families.

If we partner with or marry someone, our family expands to include the beloved's family. We are suddenly "related" to people not of our choosing who we may or may not like. But, who are now family.

My family is meeting with another family from my kids' sperm donor this weekend. Our definition of family will expand. My kids will have another half-sibling. This child has a name and mom and a life all their own. Now, our lives will converge willy-or-nilly. This is good.

The nice things about meeting the sperm-donor families is that we find we like the other families well. We find we have much in common and might have been friends without the biological bonds of our kids.

In a way, sperm donor related families are like families in a shot-gun wedding: it is strange to wake up and find you are "related" to people you do not know and had no idea you'd ever know. I think it's better because in a round-about way we have chosen each other because we all chose the same man who would give our kids half their genes.