Definition

It's funny to me how even the word "definition" can be hard to define.

There's the definition of body - like the way Lifetime John's biceps make me swoon, or how Trainer Chuck looks in clothes, or Donna's quads ripple through her yoga pants. I'm starting to get my own definition, in my calves and shoulders. It's nice. It's hard work. It's worth it.

But that's not really the type of definition on my mind today. No, today I'm thinking about the vast array of people I love, and how together we seem to be masters of defying definition. We weave in and out of our roles as effortlessly as the snow falls on a cold February night.

It can be difficult, sometimes, not to want to put us in a box and label us for the world to see, but that usually doesn't work. Not when you're mothered by your high school friend, kissing your devastatingly handsome best friend in the back seat of a gold Taurus on a long ago Mother's Day (much to the chagrin of the driver,) sharing secrets with BioSis, gathering in a Michigan kitchen to make magic and dinner with the other side of your heart, or reaching back in time to reclaim a friendship that should have been forgotten in another century.

We simply won't be defined, which explains why I have fake stepbrothers and a sister who married my brother and mothers who are younger than I and an evil stepmother who is everything but evil and a CharlieDad and a Real Dad and sisters who are neither fake nor step and friends whose brains are as beautiful as their physical presence and family to the North-and-Southwest and an Italian mama and a Jewish grandma and nieces and nephews who hold my heart and a mother-in-law I refuse to call "ex."

It's who I am. It's who we are.

No matter how you define it.