9

Included

I feel included today. It was probably an accident but I’ll take it.

I was indulging my boys in some extra TV time this morning as we just spent eight days without it (camping). As per usual, we were watching Nogging. Along comes a Laurie Berkner song, one I (shockingly) hadn’t heard before. I can’t quote it word for word as it made me cry, immediately, and I lost some of the words through my sniffling. But the song, entitled “My Family,” is my new favorite song.

The gist is this:

If you’re in my heart, you’re in my family.

Apparently it was made especially for Noggin and is not on any CD nor is it available for download on iTunes. It’s not even on Noggin’s site. I get really aggravated when technology fails me. I’d love to have this song in my home as it is what we are all about as an open adoption family.

Society doesn’t want to talk about my family, the unique span of now three households (four if Lincoln would ever step up to the plate). More if you count grandparents but let’s just leave it at three for the time being. We’ve got a birth mother, an adoptive mother, a stepfather (to-be, shortly!), an adoptive father, a bonus dad, (half)-brothers, brothers… I’m kind of lost right now but you get the point. Society wants to place us all in our separate houses in which we live and those individual breakdowns are what family is supposed to be.

But it’s not.

We break down the walls of houses and laugh at distance. We are a family across the miles. We may not talk every single day. (I don’t even talk to my own mother every single day. That might drive me insane as much as I love her.) I don’t turn to D to ask permission for things I do in this household just as she is not expected to do likewise with her household. But we’re connected. We’re family. We’re just the way that we are.

And so, a big, squishy hug to Noggin for making me feel included, even if it was an accident, for the first time in the history of discussions, songs and what not on the topic of family. But, really, someone needs to get a copy of this song to my house. Yesterday.