I’ve been thinking, lately, about the nature of family, you know, the shared warmth of common beginnings, but also the dissonance of having come to know, or supposed, an identity inconsistent with one’s upbringing and parental values. The realization that family will probably, we being adults and all, be well in the background of one’s life, nevertheless exist as emotional support; a safety net of sorts one can always cast when burdens become particularly heavy is reassuring if only in the abstract.

Family is the true protection against solitary oblivion; a respite before our final demise and our re absorption into the mother of us all.