Delilah . - Arms Full of Love: Inspiring True Stories that Celebrate the Gift of Family

Perhaps the greatest social service
that can be rendered by anybody in this country
and to mankind is to bring up a family.

George Bernard Shaw

E very week on my radio show, I get multiple requests for the bouncy little tune We Are Family, recorded by Sister Sledge in 1979. That song has been played at just about every wedding and bat mitzvah Ive ever attended, and I chose it myself as the theme song for my shows Friday Nite Girls Club. That this song remains in such demand three decades after its first appearance says something about how powerfully the concept of family resonates in the human heart.

Family I cant think of any word more emotionally charged. For many of us, it is the sweetest of words; for others, the most painful. Having family makes us feel connected, reassured, secure. As members of a family, we feel that we belong, that we are loved, that we have a safe harboror not. Family members are the people we trust to have our back and to be there for us. When they dont meet our high standards, we tend to judge them more harshly than we do friends or acquaintancesafter all, theyre family. Theres a Spanish proverb that says, An ounce of blood is worth a pound of friendship. In English, the expression Blood is thicker than water expresses the same concept.

My best friend (and the producer of my show), Janey, thrills to the term family. Her four sisters and one brother are her closest friends and they communicate daily. Her father, Bud, was a surrogate father to me at a time when I was badly in need of one. Bud was one of my all-time heroes. As he lay dying, his thoughts were focused on his kids. I love you all so much, he told Janey. I feel like the luckiest man in the world. My kids are so good to me. Janey has the family that all of us long for. But this kind of family is all too rare, as evidenced by the tragically high rate of divorce in this country.

I didnt come from a family like Janeys. Of course I loved themthey were my family, and I have many wonderful memories that I treasure, but also some very hurtful ones. I spent my teenage years wrestling to break free of my family bonds. In my twenties, I sought therapy to rid myself of what I now see as dysfunctional family baggage, and my thirties were spent saying goodbye to most of my familygrandparents and parents who were gone too soon. But my forties were a time of realizing how much family matters, and of appreciating all Ive been blessed with in the way of family. (Ive even come to realize that fun is part of the word dysfunctional and to acknowledge that my mom put the emphasis on fun in our dysfunctional clan.) My family of origin, my children, my extended family and the families of people I love are all paramount in my thoughts as I go through each day.

I grew up in Reedsport, Oregon, on the coast, the second of four kids and the oldest of two girls. My mothers family had a farm with an orchard and a huge garden, and from my green-thumbed Grandma Mac I learned a lot about gardening, which remains one of my great passions to this day. My dads family were also gardeners. They fished and dug clams and my grandpa Luke was a master woodworker who fashioned bowls, platters and candleholders out of myrtle wood.

From both sets of grandparents I learned that family love is often displayed in tangible giftsgood things to eat, to wear, to enjoy. Grandma Macs homemade yeast rolls made my mouth water, and Grandma Lukes hand-crocheted sweaters, hats and bedspreads were wrapped up in love and given to her grandkids as holiday gifts. Grandpa Luke was a man of few words. I dont remember him talking much, but I sure remember the smoked salmon he would bring to our house and the hours he spent walking the beach with us kids, searching for Japanese glass floats or digging up fresh razor clams.