A post for the second challenge of the Urban Exposure Project with United Way Calgary. Learn more here.
Challenge #2 – On Family
This first picture is of a rose that I brought back from Ontario with me after my grandmother’s funeral a couple of years ago. My grandma was a gardener, and for her eulogy I wrote a poem about how a garden is reflective of our journeys in life, including those we share with our family. I am not biologically related to this side of my family (more on that below) but she was the only grandma I will ever know, and I will always cherish my memories of her. Obviously I played with this picture in Photoshop, and now cannot find the original – oops!
This second photo is of my ‘brother’ James and his son – we were rafting the Athabasca River last summer. Like my dad, James has cystic fibrosis. Also like my dad, James and his wife chose to have children using an anonymous sperm donor. I did not find out that my dad is not biologically my father until I was 22 – this totally shook up my world, and was a very difficult thing to come to terms with for a huge variety of reasons. Just a few months after I found out this information about my own family, I met James and his. The first time we sat down and had a conversation I was bawling my eyes out – the pain was so new still that I had a difficult time even thinking about it, let alone discussing it. My relationship with James and his family has evolved, and we have become and continue to be valuable resources and friends – well, more like family. The bonds of blood may be strong, but sometimes I think that the bonds of this shared experience and circumstance can be even stronger.
My final picture is of sushi – weird, right? Well, up in Jasper there is a tiny sushi restaurant run by an amazing sushi chef, Mr. Oka. To make a long story short, this place has transitioned form being a restaurant, to a ‘happy place’ to a family for me. We have a close knit group that we all refer to as our ‘sushi family’ – these are people that I know I can always count on, who will be there for me through anything, and who I will always have a place with. The 7 of us are planning a trip to Japan together next year, when we will visit Oka-San’s hometown and meet his extended family. I don’t know that I have ever been so excited for a trip!
This is fairly long – I guess I like words as much as photos most of the time! To sum up in one quick phrase: family is what you make it.
