My date with a Gangster

His arms are black with tattoos. His walk, cocky. His smile, charismatic. He walks and the crowd parts. Like oil on water, like the split in a garbage bag...he walks and the people notice.

I sit with him, interested. I hear his story about a family gone wrong. Abuse, children hurt. I see the hurt in his eyes. I know his story is real.

I have the same questions that most have. "Why?" is a big one.

He says simply, "because it was a family. A big dangerous family but someone has your back. Always there to protect you."

And I nod in understanding. I've made my own deals with families like that. The protection may be there but the cost is quite high. One's independence, one's integrity. Indeed, one's identity. This gangster and I are not so different.

We each yearn for community. For approval that is like crack to an addict. It drives us, haunts us, makes us do stuff we don't really want to do.

Family. What is it exactly?

Recently, my husband and kids made a decision. For most of our lives we have shuttled off to "church" where we sit without each other, sometimes studying a bible, sometimes singing, but rarely connecting with each other -- and usually not with others, either. Like an illusion, this practice has become synonomous with what we settle for for a "family experience".

I'm not getting any younger. My kids are continuing their chosen paths...soon they will be out the door, into their own lives. When exactly is this "family thing" suppose to happen?

We have chosen to spend those times now with my husband's father. The patriarch of our family, gentle, kind and worth knowing. We don't crack a lot of bibles. We don't even pray. We tour the garden, talk, just be together.

This community -- this family -- is what is important. It cannot be imitated. It cannot be bottled. It is what we have -- the good, the bad, the worts. And it is worth keeping working on.

I watch as my friend leaves the table, people stopping as he cuts across the street. He is making his own exit from a family that has hurt him deeply.

I hope that I have the same courage.