We headed south to Ocracoke Island yesterday to visit with two families that are friends of ours. The word “friends” is an understatement – they are part of our extended family. We have five other couples that we have intertwined our families with – and spend a great bit of time with either as a whole or with the women, the men, or just the kids. The women are my daughter’s “other mothers” – met through girls scouts, school, and the neighborhood. Our lives have been part of each other’s lives ever since. One of the couples moved to Pennsylvania two years ago, but remain an integral part of our circle. The men all get together to fish once each year in the Chesapeake Bay; the women have an “off-site” get together, usually at the beach. The women and boys even took a road trip to PA for last New Years Eve since it was their PA friend’s birthday and a great excuse for the boys to visit their friend and missing comrade.

At dinner last evening, we were sitting on the porch of their Ocracoke rental. We were talking about being family – all of us together. It is a chosen family, rather than a birth family. None of us are close to all members of our birth families – we don’t even live close to many of them. Our group knows that these friends are the ones that we can call, without reservation, to help in any crisis. It’s a great support structure that we have built, and is one that will truly last a lifetime. In most cases, it took a while for everyone to gain the trust in each other, to understand how much they can count on each other. That trust is now in place and won’t easily be broken. These friends are the reason we won’t likely leave the area – they would be the one thing that we simply couldn’t replace.