Family is a difficult notion to define, because it means something different to each person who considers it. For many people, the people that make up their family are strictly blood relatives, people to whom they are directly related. Others hold a broader sense of family and include people to whom they are not directly related and may include people that they hold in high esteem or confide in. This second sense of family could be exemplified by the relationships within Forrest Gump. Forrest’s only blood related family in the film in his mother, and at the end, his son. But it is clear throughout the film that he considers certain people an integral part of his personal family: Bubba, Lt. Dan, and Jenny long before they get married. In my opinion, family is defined by those individuals that you are closest to, in whatever way, and made up of the little things. For example, in the poster above, each statement is a small part of what my family is to me. We have crazy moments, funny moments, tender moments, but most importantly, moments that not only define us as a family, but as individuals as well. There is much to be learned from family environments, and the most important lessons are different for everyone.
My family has been through difficult times: my father died when I was fifteen, we have lost aunts and uncles and grandparents. One of the most important life lessons that I have learned from my family is the importance of the legacy each person leaves behind, and that the best legacy to be remembered by is laughter. The suddeness of my father's death prevented us from immediately remembering him with laughter, but today, my family chooses to remember him fondly by very specific moments. When he and my mother were first married they went camping for a weekend on Catalina Island. There are wild buffalo there and one approached my parents' campsite. My father, always curious, approached the animal slowly, and when he was about ten feet away he shouted back to my mom, "Do buffalo charge?" Her only response was "We're about to find out!" I can not speak for the nature of all wild bufflao, but luckily this one did not.
Similarly, we enjoy remembering my grandfather through laughter. My grandfather was a farmer, and he loved every moment of it. One story that we love to tell as we feel reminescent took place when he was out tractoring. A part broke, I do not remember what it was from, and he quickly jumped out of the tractor, grabed a welder and began reparing the broken part quickly...on top of an empty gas can. My uncle, who was about twelve at the time, was in the farmhouse when he heard an explosion. He ran toward the tractor, positive he was going to find Grandpa dead. Instead, Grandpa was sitting on the ground several feet from where the gas can was, banging one side of his head yelling at Uncle Gene, "Huh? What? Huh? I can't hear you!" In typical Grandpa fashion, he resumed tractoring moments later.
My family chooses to use these stories to remember the people we love. In a way, these precious memories have become tropes represeting the them. The words of the stories are no longer important for their literal meaning but because of the way they represent the people in them. Laughter heals, laughter brings people together, and laughter creates some of the best moments in our lives.
