The united state of US

I don't know how rare it is for someone to feel like he or she was never considered part of her birth family - the longer I am on this planet, the more I discover my experiences aren't all that unique - but it was certainly my experience.  

How much did/do my surviving siblings feel or felt part of our genetic unit?  Am utterly clueless.  But at least they shared years & years of common memories, be they good, bad or indifferent.
Not me.  By the time I hit 5th grade, they'd all graduated from high school.  

I was never part of them, of a larger us that is the experience of so many families.  

"Oh, how sad,"  friends say.  I don't experience it that way.  Well, not once I moved past figuratively & literally banging my head against the wall in futile attempt after futile attempt to  find common ground, to make connection, with people who had no sense of either, at least not  with me.  

Instead, those friends should say, "How interesting."  Because it is.  And astonishingly impersonal.  It's not that my sibs are unfeeling or awful or mean - it's just not in their make up.  

Instead, those friends should ask, "What did you get out of your experience?"  So much!!

Chief among my blessings is the universal sense of US that's solely due to not having the core "us" so many of my friends enjoyed, even with all the gnarly family issues that usually arise.  While I many not be connected to individuals, to surviving brothers & sister, they are part of the bigger connection I feel, the connection to EVERYONE & EVERYTHING.  The universe is my family.  It's not just that all sentient creatures seem somehow connected to my life force, so does the stunning dogwood, that beautiful out cropping of rock, that bend of the river.  It's all part of my US.  Being connected to everyone & everything means that I am naturally connected to my surviving sibs, too, and to their kids & to their kids.  

Another blessing is learning when it makes sense to just let go, without judgement.  Look at the relationships you're working to "fix" in your life.  Is it truly fixable?  A lot aren't.  Over the years, I've come to compare striving mightily to "mend" my own family relations to someone who's spent decades trying to restore a beloved family clock, finally taking it to a master clockmaker, who realizes there is a missing part.  No matter how hard I tried, it wasn't going to be whole.  How I wish I could convey that hard-won lesson to others, but it seems each of us has to come to it on our own.  

I don't have a grand fambily or even a not-so-grand family, but I have everything that breaths & that takes my breath away.  Pretty cool.