It was bound to happen eventually. It’s time to introduce my large, eclectic, loosely connected, disgustingly close, gloriously different family.

This is PRIDE MONTH so it’s only fitting that I do a rainbow family org chart.

I struggled with the colors but otherwise everything is pretty straight forward. Let’s walk through it, shall we? Left to right. And be ready for a lot of begatting.

Mike married Linda. They knew each other all through school in Louisiana, and moved to Texas and begat Traci who begat grandson Noah. She is a marketing executive in Dallas, and lives very near me. Noah just graduated from high school in Dallas and is heading off to LSU for school.

Mike married Cindy. Mike, a graphic designer and marketing guy, owned an advertising agency and I went to work for him during college. After he and Linda divorced and I wriggled free of my first marriage, we dated and married and begat Adam and Molly. Adam is a marketing executive (see the pattern here?) in Dallas and Washington DC. His partner of 11 years is Corey, a real estate finance executive, also in Dallas. Molly, an executive in talent acquisition and org design, is married to Beau, who is in the music industry. They begat granddaughters Lyla, 10 and Wren, 8. They live very close to me in Lake Highlands.

Meanwhile . .

Scott married Robin. Scott was a deejay in Denton, going to North Texas, where he met and married Robin, a music therapist. They begat Erin (who is the same age as Molly) and Sarah, the baby of the family. Erin, the communications director for two hospitals in Oregon, is married to Kate, a paramedic and COVID team leader. Kate’s son, Oliver, 8, is my newest grandson. Sarah is the executive director of a non-profit here in Dallas.

Cindy married Scott. More divorces ensued (because this is what our generation did.) I met Scott at church. By the time we were married, we were too old for begatting, so we settled into combining three families into one.

This is, of course, the most simplified of all retellings. There were disasters, and victories, arguments, laughter, celebrations and moments where we thought our hearts would break. But love is powerful and I’m here to tell you that it’s the only thing (okay, also patience, compassion, acceptance, cooperation, forgiveness, sacrifice, yeah, yeah, yeah) but at the core is this powerful love we share.

And, in case you’re wondering about the Pride Month connection. You may be able to tell from the rundown that I have two gay kids. We are fiercely protective of them and their significant others. I don’t need a special month to recognize them or celebrate them, we celebrate everyone constantly. But I’ll take it to shine a light on the hardships many kids still go through.

The picture at top is of our family at Scott’s funeral. In August we will celebrate 30 years since Scott and I joined our families, but I have to go back to 1976, when I became mom to 6-year-old Traci. That’s 46 years of sharing lives and loving each other.

Mike and I have stayed friends all these years, and in a striking coincidence, his partner Bonnie was a friend of Robin and went to school with Linda. Robin was one of the dearest friends I have ever known. She was at our house the morning she died in 2003. When Traci’s mom, Linda, passed away in 2019, my kids and I, including Sarah, set up the food for the reception afterward as our gift to Traci. And there we all were in Linda’s home, celebrating her life: Mike and Bonnie, Traci, Noah, Linda’s son Shawn and his family, her sister Margaret and her family, me, and all my children. The extended family we’ve become, where boundaries of steps and bios and halves are blurred into oblivion.

I can’t imagine doing family any other way.