[MorganGrayson]

I've read the "family" stories with a serious, and meloncholy, sense of recognition and identification. I've lost most familial contact, not through any anger or incident, but by lack of interest. I live in Southern California and the rest of my family lives back east. Apparently, the use of a postage stamp, a telephone, or an e-mail service is too much effort for these people. (Oddly, my in-laws rock in this area. I exchange both e-mail and snail mail with my mother-in-law, a gentle eccentric who even appreciates the "music" in e-cards.)

I've found as I get older a universal truth: genetics does not a family make. You create your own family as you get older and you are the Lion at the Gate: only letting in those "new family members" who will be there for you in tragedy as well as triumph. My "son" is neither biologically related nor legally adopted. He's my son because I said so. He says so, too. (He went to high school with my youngest daughter, who brought the abused kid home one day. His mother kept the support check. We kept the kid.)

I no longer care that my sister doesn't have the time or inclination to write me. I'm too busy answering letters from my friends.