The Importance of Family

Everyone knows that your family feeds you and clothes you, but they are so much more than that. A family is an amazing thing, it’s not only the people that are related to you by blood, but people who love and care for you. Anyone can be in your family; there is no limitation to it. The only requirement is that you both have to love and care for each other.  I have a great example of this because I have a best friend whose name is Cortney and her mother is also best friends with my mom. We are always together and I call Cortney parents my aunt and uncle. People are always asking me “wait, are you guys cousins?” most of the time I just say yes because it is way easier than explaining the whole story. But that is what makes us a family because they were always there for my family and me and so I will always be there for them when they need me.  Disney taught me that “Ohana means family and family means no one gets left behind”.  Families don’t have to be perfect, trust me I know, I’m pretty sure I have the craziest family in the world and I’m not even kidding. But it’s okay because all families are different and that’s what makes being in a family so special because it is literally the “label” of your life. But if your family has decided to take different roads sometimes that “label” that other people give you isn’t the one that you want.

In the essay Stone Soup by Barbra Kingsolver she knows exactly how some labels affect people. In her essay she states, “My daughter tells me the only time she’s uncomfortable about being the child of divorced parents is when her friends say they feel sorry for her” (Kingsolver, paragraph 17).  The daughter feels this way because she doesn’t see what’s wrong with divorce because she is living it and is just fine, but other people who don’t know what divorce is really like, they make it out to be this horrible thing and they feel bad for the child and judge the parents for putting their child through “such a horrible thing”. Because in reality divorce doesn’t have to be that bad in the essay the authors states that her daughter see benefits cause she knows, “Our house is in the country and we have a dog, but she can go to her dads neighborhood for the urban thrills of a pool and sidewalks for roller skating. What’s more, she has three sets of grandparents!” (Kingsolver, paragraph 17). The daughter is proud of her family because she gets to see so many different places and experience different things so there is nothing bad about divorce to her. People only judge divorce because they don’t understand it “Everybody else, for havens sake, should stop throwing stones.” (Kingsolver, paragraph 15).

In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith the Nolan defiantly do not have a normal family. They are poor and Johnny drinks a lot and eventually dies because of it. Although Johnny drinks he is still part of the family and they still are accepting of him this shows in the book when it says,  “Francie was proud of her father, she wrapped up his ironed apron carefully in a clean piece of paper, saved for that purpose; She walked with him to the trolley car. Women smiled at him until they noticed the little girl clinging to his hand, Johnny looked like a devil-may-care Irish boy instead of the husband of a scrub woman and the father of two children who are always hungry.” ( Smith 38). This is what a family really is because Francie knows that many people know Johnny is a drunk but she looks past that to the person that he really is and she loves him.  When Johnny dies Katie had to take on both roles of mother and father she loves her children the same but she has to work extra hard to provide for the children now one night when she is putting them to bed she tells them that she is their mother and father now and it says

"She held the children close to her and kissed them goodnight"(Smith 299). She didn’t only hold them close cause they needed it, but she needed it too and they were going to go through all of the tragedies together because they were a family.