Family Not of Blood

There are poems in these sections that explicitly talk about family relations with parents, children, siblings, etc. but there are also many that do not make any reference to specific family relations. At first I was ready to ignore those and focus on the others but a few of them felt very powerful and still connected to the idea of family and so I started to think about the fluidity and personal nature of the definition of family. The western ideal of family that's shoved down our throats is the whole - 2 parents (one male, one female), 2.5 kids, a dog and a picket fence. But then I thought about the confluences between family and racial identity, placing that in the context of colonialism and the disruption of a traditional family support system. And when I say traditional I'm not referring to the western idea listed above but to whatever family dynamic was the structure for that particular culture and to focus in even more for that particular family. The acts of violence and oppression that accompany colonialism lead to loss of beloved family members through death; separation through slavery and indenture; and criminalizing acts of celebration that reinforce the bonds of the oppressed culture. So what does family start to mean when family can be taken away at a moments notice?

I think it leads to a more flexible definition of family, one which includes many people not at all related by blood. And it's an ideal that still continues today in many forms, personally growing up I had plenty of uncles, aunts, cousins and even a sister that I had absolutely no blood relation to. Sometimes they were people that had grown up with my mother and their children or people I met on my own and formed a connection with. And I know plenty of folks who have "play"cousins so I've always thought of family in terms of emotional connection as opposed to a commonality on the genetic level. This more diffuse idea of family can allow for a larger support system with more diversity for reliance in times of problems, one that can survive the removal of members of that system more easily because there are still plenty of people to rely on still around.

Anyway, one of the poems that triggered all of this was Richard Blanco's "What Is Not Mine". There are levels of separation in the poem itself, a separation from where the narrator was, what is his; a temporary separation from the person who leaves the note; a possibly more permanent one between the two coming; a separation between the narrator and the space he occupies with mounting levels of discomfort. The narrator, the poem, begins to feel adrift, without anchor or tether, without a support system. Something chased him from his home and to this other place where he's found refuge for two days but now he awakes to find the support gone. The language of the note left to him, in fact the first four lines hint at a strong between the narrator and the person at whose place he's staying.

I wake to find you've left, and left a note: Please
wait for me, I'll be right back scribbled over the seal
of an envelope with your key, just in case I want
to leave your home that I've borrowed two days.

The isolation of the Please points to the importance of that word, severed from the rest of the note makes it seem like a plea that trails off into oblivion before to poem returns with the rest of the note that now seems more casual because of that very disconnect. The note calls for a continuation of whatever intimacy/connection the two of them have formed, an invitation for more support if necessary. The fact that the note is scribbled on a envelope that contains the key to the place where they've been holed up speaks to a knowledge of the narrator. The writer of the note is asking (pleading?) for the narrator to stay but with the key to the place the writer admits that they know that the narrator will not stay, will not choose to wait, will instead return to whatever he was running from in the first place. But a key isn't generally required to leave someone's house, most of the time there's a way to secure at least one lock behind yourself without any key. So the key means more than knowledge it's also an invitation to return, an acknowledgment that the support, the consoling, the comfort that was sought in this space is still available. At any time the narrator may choose to return to seek this place again.

For me those four lines form the core of the poem and really connect to a more complex idea of family, one where what is exchanged in the relationship is more important than any connection on a genetic level.

-Naamen