Last week, I had the pleasure of hosting my parents and sister in Paris. Amongst the long list of tourist attractions and miles that we walked over eight short days, the most interesting of the bunch was certainly the reunion with my distant French relatives.
Family is an interesting concept to me because you can fiercely define it in so many different ways. Some people say that family is through blood, but then others feel closer to those with whom they are not biologically linked.
Over the course of my time in Paris, I have come to consider my host family as a true family in its own right: we may not share the same genetics or sometimes even the same language, but we care for one another and we feel comfortable. What more do you need?
Some say that my passion for the French language and culture is derived from my family history: my great-grandfather and namesake Maurice was French and a Parisian in the twentieth century. Not much is known about my family's connection to France, except that we have two living relatives in the heart of Paris. My parents arrival gave me the courage to finally reach out and to establish a relation with them.
As soon as we stepped through the door, we felt the overwhelming power of the bond of family, as if they had been waiting there for us this whole time. We spent the entire day catching up on everyone's lives and recounting stories from pasts that I was not even apart of. With every tale, we added a new family member to the table, and soon the room grew larger and larger.
The funny thing about the whole interaction was that my relation to them is so distant that I cannot even pinpoint what I would call them. The niece and nephew of my great-grandfather, we do not share any similarity in last name or even immediate family members. My mother saw them for the first time in forty years, and everyone else met them for the very first time.
But that didn't matter, just as it should be.
Something that I truly believe and that has become so evident to me is that the only thing left standing after the end of the day is family. I also believe that this "famille" is completely subjective and in alignment to who you feel as though you can open up to the most and who is there to protect and comfort you when nobody else will. Familial love is universal and transcendent across cultures, something that I have found comfort in living with a different family so many miles from my own. However, just as my host family does not have to be temporary, the borders of unconditional love do not dare have a limit: it moves through generations, language barriers, and time.
Biological or not, or even barely biological, the force of la famille can be the most powerful force in the world, the thing that connects cultures with no connection and creates conversations between people who cannot share any words.