My family.
Mom and Dad. Drew and Reagan—and the twin boys growing healthy and strong in her belly, the result of the embryos they adopted earlier this year. Cheyenne, Miguel, MJ, Rosie, Tally and Kai. My entire family—they’re all here. I can’t stop the beautiful ache that seizes my heart.
My hands come to my face. “W-what? How? I don’t understand.” I turn to Connor who looks guilty as sin.
“I have a plan,” he says.
The impatient eyes of the twenty people gathered across the room bear down as they wait for Connor to catch me up.
“You once told me that you didn’t want a big wedding. Just family, an impromptu ceremony and some burgers on the grill.”
Something soft and warm flickers to life inside me as our conversation at Drew’s rehearsal dinner unfolds like a worn, well-loved piece of paper in my memory.
“I can’t believe you remember that?”
He cocks his head, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “I remember it all.”
Andrea’s voice booms through the room, bored of my hushed conversation with her son. “We have a beach outside.”
“I grill a mean burger,” Patrick offers.
“Dibs on officiating.” That’s my brother.
“The girls and I took a cake-decorating class this summer. We’ll make a cake.” Everett’s wife, Emily, adds as she tugs her two daughters close, her youngest boy asleep on his dad’s shoulder beside them.
“Cheyenne and I can drive you inland tomorrow to shop for a dress,” Mom supplies, reaching for my birth mom’s hand at her side. The three of us share a smile over what was once not much more than a tiny flicker of hope I carried inside me that has turned into a reality none of us could have imagined—my adoptive mother and my biological mother becoming the best of friends.
Owen’s wife, Grace, chimes in next, their two-year-old son propped on her hip. “I don’t know anything about flowers, but how hard can it be. I’ll make a bouquet.”
“Rosie and I brought our guitars. We can do the music,” Miguel says with Rosie grinning sheepishly beside him. She’s thirteen now, but forever a daddy’s girl.
MJ throws his hat in the ring, hand raised like an obedient student, a true paradox with his massive fifteen-year-old frame that towers over Miguel. “I brought my video camera.”
One by one, every member of our respective families volunteers to take something on to help us pull off a beach wedding in three days.
When I think everyone’s finished, Reagan declares, “And I’ll make sure all these fools are doing what they’re supposed to do.”
“Oh, thank God,” I say, clutching my chest. Really, though—five months pregnant or not, she’ll keep this whole circus in line.
With a proud smile, she says, “I got you, babe.”
The next threedays are a blur. Everybody committed to their self-assigned tasks, all Connor and I have to worry about is what we’ll wear, our wedding bands, and a marriage license.
Saturday afternoon comes, sun high in the sky, air warm. We sit around a table with our families, eating burgers, hot dogs, potato salad, and chips. Me in my off-the-rack wedding dress made of simple white satin that grazes the floor and Connor in his khaki pants and white linen shirt, we share a piece of the perfectly imperfect two-tier cake made by Connor’s—our—nieces.
At his insistence that we leave for our honeymoon—the plans of which he won’t tell me—right after the sun goes down, we went unconventional with the order of festivities.
Thirty minutes before sunset, we toss our paper plates in the trash, and wipe cake frosting from each other’s faces before we all head down the stairs on the back of the house that lead to the beach. Bare feet in the sand, I hike up my dress as Connor takes my free hand and we run toward the shore.
MJ finds a picturesque spot near the surf where he deems the light is best for his video camera. Reagan barks out a few orders and within minutes our respective families are split into two sides, an aisle taking shape down the middle. Miguel and Rosie pluck out a classical melody on their guitars as Connor takes his position at the front and gives me a thumbs up. With a small cluster of white roses and ranunculus in hand, I loop my arm through my dad’s and let him lead me to the unadorned, makeshift altar of sand and surf.
People often say there’s the family you’re born into and the family you choose. But I think the purest mark of family are the people that choose you.
Twenty-five years ago, a man, a woman, and their six-year-old son flew across the country to bring me home because they’d already chosen me, sight unseen. Their home became my home. The home where they raised me and loved me as though it was their blood flowing through my veins.
The two teenagers who brought me into this world may not have had a say in where I ended up, but they’ve chosen me every day since by weaving me into the tapestry of the family they went on to build so that, if I ever found them, I would find a home with them too.
One family gave me life and the other helped me live it.
