Trees and Thickets
I was thinking about family trees just now. I often refer to ours as the family thicket, rather than a tree.
When I stop to think about it, it seems to me that we are not trees of families standing in some metaphorical forest, each unique unto itself. No, we are more akin to Brer Rabbit's Briar Patch. We are thickly interwoven ... into other trees, communities, extended "adopted" families made up of chosen in-laws from separations, divorces, deaths, lifelong friends, combined families. All the variations of what constitutes "family" among humans today.
Even families marrying families. We have several instances of sisters of one family marrying brothers of another. Even, in one case, of a daughter marrying the brother of her mother's second husband.
There is a family story that one of the reasons my parents decided to leave Kansas was the realization that I was related to 29 of the 30 children in my second grade class. Last year, I learned from my research that the 30th child, who happened to be the son of my father's best buddy, was also related to me ... through his father's family. There had been intermarriage before either family moved into Kansas.
Eerie, ain't it?