WRF2 : We Are Family Too

I’m from a big family. It used to be just my parents and seven kids. But then about thirteen years ago we started fostering. So at one stage there were twelve in the family, then fourteen, then back down to ten.

It’s a moveable feast.

People say a family that prays together, stays together. For me it’s a family that eats together, stays together!

We have a huge kitchen table. At Christmas two years ago there were fifteen at the table and my mother said how lovely it was to have the whole family together! Around the table sat two polish smallies who were with us for two years. They introduced us to smoked sausage, zupa and pierogi (gorgeous dumplings with sweet or savoury filling). And we gave them Tom Ka Gai, a Thai chicken soup that my eldest sister Ettie loves to make. We absolutely adore them; they were completely part of the family and still are. We have built up a great relationship with their mother over the years and she sees us as part of her extended family; people she can call on when she needs a hand or a few days off. They’re my annoying little siblings and I’m their older sister who plaits their hair and makes biscuits with them.

One of my sisters is originally from Jamaica and is probably the reason we all eat plantain (a starchy banana type vegetable). She’s completely part of the family and even claims that she has inherited some of her personality traits from our Granddad!

Our parents have always lead by example and provide a loving and secure home for everyone that passes through the house. We all grew up naturally accepting that you can add to the family as you go along and it makes for a richer life for everyone.

Family is the people that you hang around with and love unconditionally. The people that you would do anything for, and they would do anything for you. The glue that holds the family together is love and maybe a good pot of Thai chicken soup.

- Lilly Higgins, Cork

Unsurprisingly this  Ballymaloe trained chef who also taught at Ballymaloe Cookery School, is an excellent and creative cook…

There are many different definitions available for the word family:

a social unit living together,
primary social group; parents and children,
a person having kinship with another or others

Family to me is much more the last of those three definitions.

I have kinship with my mother – because it is she who raised me.
I have kinship with my father – because he guided me when needed.
I have kinship with my brother and sisters – because without each other we wouldn’t be the people we are now.
I have kinship with my friends – because we love and support each other through difficult times.

Family is much more than people that share your genetic structure. In fact some people never meet their biological “family” some people are adopted, grow up in state care or are fostered. This doesn’t mean they don’t have a family.

I have a large family – a family that has been forged over time that consists of not only blood relations.

To me family is the people you share your life with.

- Ben Slimm, Kerry
Reproduced from is blog with permission.

My mammy said to me the morning after the coming out nightmare: “Ye are what ye are, son, and if no-one else likes it then f**k ‘em!” That’s what family means to me!! 

- James Doherty, Former President of the National Union of Journalists, UK and Ireland

Conor Pendergrast is a perfectly normal twenty-something with loving parents and a little brother. He also embodies not just the theme of “We Are Family Too” but a huge chunk of Dublin Pride’s spirit of the theme. Why? His parents names are Anne and Bernadette.

He kindly agreed to write about “What Family Means To Me” on his own blog. I’m only going to reproduce part of his “We Are Family Too” post here. I would encourage you to go directly to his blog post and read it. And read more about him and his family while you are there.

I guess it means love, security and warmth. It means having people around you. We’re a pretty close-knit family I reckon. Working together makes it difficult at times, but that’s pretty normal! Family to me means whatever we decide to make it. It doesn’t matter to me that people think my parents shouldn’t have children, or even that they shouldn’t have a legally recognised relationship. Try telling me that my mums don’t deserve recognition for staying together thirty years, for raising four cats, two dogs, a pony, a horse, countless chickens, rabbits, fish and two children. They’ve done a damn good job. They’ve provided for us for the last 24 years of my life and I know they’ll give me the support I need whenever I ask for it – and even when I don’t.

[...]

We aren’t perfect, but I’m pretty sure none of us care. We love each other and that’s far more important than any stepping-stone legislation, any discriminatory escape clause, any pompous self-serving religious and political figures, any idiot arguing from morals on an issue of rights.

We are family too – even if you don’t think we are.

Read the rest of Conor Pendergrast’s WRF2 article.

Last month my uncle died from cancer. He had been putting up the fight of his life for thirteen years. Over those years I only seen him a few times. He was a taxi driver, a huge family man, kind and an Elvis fan. Every time the future began to look bright again, the cancer came back stronger each time.

Over the past two years his condition went downhill and we didn’t know when but we knew the end was in sight. My family had always visited him and gave him the love and the support he needed when he was at his lowest points. What amazed me and what showed me what family really meant during the last weeks of my uncles life was how my mother and her brothers and sisters came together and helped each other through this difficult time. They were all up around his bedside everyday. They talked to him even though his sight, speech and mobility had gone. Sometimes if they were lucky he would show a sign that he was listening. The only things keeping my uncle alive were his hearing, his heart and his family.

My mother would come home for a rest and go straight back up to him. She told us how he was and how every night they were in his house the nurse would tell them to say their goodbyes, but he just wouldn’t let go.

What family means to me is being there for each other in the hardest of times, it means pulling together and facing what life throws at us, family means holding on until the very last second. My mother told us that they told him it was alright to let go, because they didn’t understand why my uncle held on for so long at the end. But i believe he held on until he knew that his brothers and sisters and his family would be alright as long as they had each other.

This Sunday my family are going to my uncles grave for his birthday. A dove will be released and balloons held by my uncles brothers and sisters will float gently up to the heavens with their love for him.

Family to me is this.

- Jen Gore,  Dublin

The nuclear family of the modern age is a media myth created by the American television comedy programmes of the 1950s and 1960s. The ‘happy family’ caricature was mother and father, son and daughter and Lassie the dog.

My parents came from Newry and Dundalk. I have four brothers and one sister. When I last counted I had more than 35 first cousins. Our home was in Dublin and so was the automatic port of call when aunts, uncles and cousins came to town.

My large extended family comes in all shapes and sizes, hairstyles, opinions, religious beliefs, occupations, sexual orientations, political passions, extraordinary obsessions, genders, ages, annoying habits and predictable behaviour. I am more than happy to be a member of it.

I believe that most, if not all families, are genetically programmed to love each other. That does not mean that we like each other! Liking one another’s company is an added bonus.

- Ruairi Quinn, TD