I've been thinking an awful lot about family these days. Let's take it from the top.

What started me thinking about all of this was a phone call my boyfriend received about a week ago. A very good friend of his, who moved out of province some years ago, was going to be back in town on the weekend, and he was invited to come out and see him and the family. So let's talk about Families #1 and #2, which we'll call, purely to avoid calling them by numbers, the Frankensteins and the Nightingales.

My boyfriend was born to the Frankenstein family. Mother, father, one older brother who died when he was eighteen, and a couple of sisters. I've met the one sister and her family (who won't be getting their own name - sorry) and they seem like good people. Strange, but then, almost nobody in this whole essay isn't going to be strange, and they're strange in the quirky, interesting way, rather than the they- were- so- quiet- who'da- thunk- they'd- be- axe- murderers way.

The real focus of the Frankensteins is the dad. Papa Frankenstein was highly abusive, and primarily towards my boyfriend. They never got along, and much of the reason for this was that my boyfriend absolutely refused to fall into line under Papa's tyranny.

I may have mentioned elsewhere on the site, my current boyfriend has something akin to a psi power: he can sense what other people are feeling. He's empathic, just like Deanna Troi. It makes him, among other things, an excellent and persuasive public speaker, because he knows exactly how much ice what he's saying is cutting with his audience, but at the same time it completely wears him out because he's trying to read that many people at once. It's not nearly as easy as Troi made it seem.

He developed this ability as a defense mechanism. It is strongest when it comes to his family, and was especially strong in his childhood home. He could stand in the doorway and read the house, picking out just where in the house absolutely everyone is, and what their state of mind is. In other words, he was finding out whether or not home was safe that day.

When his brother died, Papa got drunk and told my boyfriend that he wished he'd lost his other son instead. At his graduation, when my b/f was speaking to one of his female profs, Papa considerately offered to shoot his own wife, and do away with the prof's husband so that they could run away together. The last time my b/f saw his biological father, he was aiming a shotgun at him.

This brings us to the Nightingales, the significance of which name should be painfully obvious by now. One of my b/f's closest friends growing up was a Nightingale. Friend Nightingale's birthday lands on December 26, a fact which prevented him from ever having a birthday party until Boyfriend Frankenstein gave him one when he was sixteen. The Nightingales acted like a surrogate family for Boyfriend.

The Nightingales are also Mennonites. (This isn't a second last name; think of Mennonite as Canadian for Amish. It's not a perfect analogy, but close enough for us. They're progressive ones too, so chrome doesn't offend them and all that.) Mennonite families, as I had it explained to me tonight, are large. At a Christmas gathering, the entire extended family might be expected to gather in one place, say, sixty or so. Without having to bring in any out-of-towners. Marriages in this family have come close to being called off while the family tree is analysed after the bride and groom realized how much of their halves of the guest list overlapped.

Papa Nightingale expressed his disapproval over Boyfriend's opinion of his own father. Boyfriend said that he did not intend to go back to his own family, even after Papa Frankenstein tried to get Papa Nightingale to convince Boyfriend that this was the thing to do. Mennonites are big on family (obviously) and big on religion. Boyfriend refused, and Papa Nightingale was troubled.

Three months later, Papa Frankenstein succeeded in blowing up their house, with Mama Frank still inside. He failed in actually hurting or killing anyone though. The police officers who went to the scene made the mistake of giving Papa Frank a blood alcohol test. Despite the damage done, despite the attempted murder, despite the fact that it would give me a happy ending really early in this essay, no charges were laid. Papa Frank was too drunk to be legally responsible for his actions.

Papa Nightingale never put that kind of pressure on Boyfriend again. He might even have apologized.

Tomorrow, Boyfriend will be going out of town, back to where he grew up to visit the Nightingales. I was going to be going along.

I admit I was kind of excited. This sounded altogether like a different kind of family from the one I was used to. Other than talking about them in Strings Attached, I haven't mentioned my family much on this site. Let's call them the Smiths, just because for me personally, they don't have any stand-out qualities to caricature.

Mother, father, one younger brother. Mom's from the East and another big family. Dad's from rural Ontario. His father was an unpleasant person with a temper, though not as explosive as Papa Frankenstein's.

Mama and Papa Smith married relatively young. Both had low-paying jobs. Mama's been everything from a meat-cutter in a supermarket to a secretary to an optician's assistant. Papa was a splicer for the telephone company. He would be in the crew down the manhole repairing cable so that people could continue to make telephone calls.

Eventually, Papa Smith got so good at his job that they didn't want him to do it anymore. They promoted him to a managerial position in an office, instead of down a hole where he belonged.

This I say, not out of malice, but out of hindsight. Papa Smith is by no means a political animal, and he had just been put into a highly political job. His crews did their work and did it properly, which made those splicers look good. On the other hand, Papa Smith's co-workers were very good at being managers, which is not nearly the same thing, and Papa Smith refused to play the game the same way. This made the other managers look bad sometimes, and they didn't like Papa Smith much for putting them into that situation. Papa Smith hated his job.

He couldn't, on the other hand, say anything about hating his job at work, since the other managers could use this as leverage to get him fired, so he saved it up. That same temper that Grandpapa Smith had had been passed on for a generation, and now Papa Smith used it on his family. He came home, he drank a few beers, he smoked cigarettes, and he yelled.

Mama Smith, having come from a big family, wanted a large family of her own. She tried seven times to have children, and you remember how many brothers and sisters I have. The doctors had to eventually stop telling her to try, because the pain of the miscarriages and stillbirths, combined with the physical process of giving birth, would kill her eventually.

Mama Smith was very protective of us. The combination of losing so many children and, I think, wanting to give her children so much more than she had, drove her to do things that, again in hindsight, weren't necessarily the best for us. Mama and Papa always had a job, which neither of them ever seemed to like, and worked to buy a house that was too large for a family our size. Every Christmas, Mama would pressure me to give her a list of things to get me, and I always refused. I never wanted anything much that you could wrap and put under a tree.

Being youngest in a family of twelve or thirteen makes you tough. Not only do you have to deal with a dozen or so older siblings pushing you around, but you also have to live with the idea of getting by on very little, and making sacrifices.

When Papa would come home and yell, Mama knew what to do to keep him in line. She would sit in the kitchen with him, drink a few beers, smoke cigarettes, and yell back at him just as loud, and not let him get away with any shit.

My parents, knowing that a smoky kitchen was not the place for little kids, kept the two of us away from them when this happened. I spent most of my childhood by myself in my room, hiding out.

Mama and Papa never really knew what to do with me, even outside of Christmastime. Most of the things I liked to do involved playing with my brain. My father hated games. Both my parents were too tired, or too busy doing what they always did to try to engage me. Without my telling them what sort of things I wanted for presents, they had no clue.

I grew up mostly without a family. I look at my family tree, and wonder how I got there. I don't see myself in it anywhere. No similarities to any other relatives I know. I'm myself, and I've had to deal with that. The problem is my paranoid parents.

When I moved out west, I did it with two friends. Immediately after I graduated university, I told my parents of my intention to do this with them. I wanted to go out and get a job. My father refused. He forced me to work in the new family business and that was the end of it. During the next year, my friends finished their studies, and I realized I was gay. At the end of that year, my friends came for me.

My parents and I got into a big argument over it. You're not going, Mama and Papa Smith said. We have no money to give you for the trip. Whose fault is this, Pfantazm Smith points out. I told you this was coming and that I wanted to earn money. Instead I was given a job with no pay.

Mama and Papa Smith found some money anyway and I moved away. I did much better away from my parents, like most of the folks in this essay.

The friend I made online during that first time when I was new to Vancouver and couldn't find a job helped me a lot. I got to know her family a little. We'll call them the Americans.

Father, mother, no siblings. Obviously, I don't have nearly as many details about Lady American's family. They're similar to the Frankensteins on the surface. Papa American killed his father-in-law. He shot him in his store one night. Again, no charges are laid, not because he was drunk, but because he just got away with it. Everyone in the family knows the true story. Papa American is gone. Not dead, not in jail, not even completely out of contact. Just gone.

Lady American called me today, talking of shooting herself in the head. Mama American has medical problems. Her liver is about destroyed, she's stopped taking her medication, and she suffers from dementia as a result. Lady's life has been turned upside-down trying to keep Mama's life in order. Bills go unpaid. Her cats go unfed. People have to be hired to care for her since she lives in another state, and Mama American's family is another story again which fits well in this bunch, so there's really only Lady and Mr. Lady.

She advised me not to let my relationship with my family go, because this is the sort of trouble I could get into.

And yet, all through my life, I can't help but feel that I never had a relationship with the Smiths. They never really knew me. You can know more about me from reading this site than Mama and Papa.

And I doubt I will ever have the chance to have a second family like Boyfriend Frankenstein.

When Boyfriend got the call, I said, "You're going away on vacation without me," to tease him.

He said, "Not necessarily." And in the careful, non-committal manner we seem to have in speaking to each other, this was as much discussion of whether I was going and who wanted me to go as we had until the night before. Tonight, in fact.

Boyfriend worked today, a Saturday. He's a computer-type person, and a heavy deadline for the software he's helping to write is looming. Boyfriend has been working ten- and twelve-hour days for months while all of this planning and deadline-making and stalling has gone on. Most nights he comes home late, checks his e-mail, maybe even telecommutes to the office for an hour or three, and goes straight to bed. He's been achy and exhausted for months.

While he was gone, I got the call from Lady American, one from Mama Smith who was only just finding out about the e-mail I sent them a few weeks ago that day, and I asked Boyfriend why I was going to visit the Nightingales with him. You see, I thought he wanted me to go.

He thought I just wanted to go, but I pointed out that neither of us had said anything. It just seemed to be decided that we were going together.

He told me that he was choosy enough about his roommates that every one he'd ever had, had met the Nightingales.

They're Mennonites. They're religious. Boyfriend Frankenstein had seriously considered marrying Friend Nightingale's sister. No, he's not out to them, just as he's not out to anyone who isn't already gay, with the exception of Lady American, and our mutual organization, and one person in our building, and that's my fault. He doesn't plan to be out to them either. Ever. He says that to come out to them would be to disappoint them.

I'm not going anymore. I will not have my chance with a second large family the way Boyfriend Frankenstein did, at least not with the same one. Five dozen people may be gathering around Friend Nightingale tomorrow, and they may have room for Boyfriend, but it seems they don't have room for me.

I'm more than just a roommate. In that family, though, assuming they talk about me at all, that's all I'll be. I'm supposed to be building a small family with Boyfriend here, but instead of bringing us together, it's another way that Boyfriend seems to be putting distance between us.

So all the families in this essay come out as villains, at least in my view, even the angelic Nightingales. Does it seem fair to categorize them that way, when I'm refusing the chance to meet them and judge for myself? Maybe, but does it seem like I ever stood a chance with them in the first place? All day long, "Boyfriend" will be trivializing our relationship, and I would prefer not to be there to hear when it happens.

Boyfriend went to sleep tonight saying that he didn't know what he could do to make it better. I told him plainly: there's nothing. Just as it is with most families, you're stuck dealing with the people you get. You almost never get the opportunity to choose. All that can be done is to deal with the people you have to as best you can.

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