I am awakening from a night’s sleep in a tent with two 7-year-old boys. I am old and sore. They are young and exploding with energy, though for the moment they lie still inside their sleeping bags.

Thank God for small gifts.

This whole camp thing was Marion’s idea. She borrowed it from a friend who had all the grandkids over for a week of fun and games and frolicking. Her friend has maybe 14 grandkids and ever since cousin camp, she just sits in a chair with a blanket over her lap. She stares out the window all day long, blowing spit bubbles and mumbling something about “those darn kids.”

After one night, I am wondering what this week will hold. My ears are still ringing from the screams of a rowdy game of BINGO. Lord, what have we done?

In less than two weeks, Marion and I will have been together for a year. It’s hard to believe. We have done a couple of things to bring our two families together, but the process is slow and at times awkward. What seems natural and easy for the two of us is complex and tricky for everyone else.

That is, for our grown children.

And I can’t blame them. Mine lost their mama and hers lost their daddy. This new guy hanging out with mama and this crazy woman hanging out with papa is weird. There have been some tough conversations. I have gotten the stink eye from hers and she has gotten the eyeroll from mine.

Just cause the two of us have found happiness doesn’t guarantee a fairytale ending for everyone.

But time heals. Trust grows. Arms open up. You can’t fake it. You can’t force it. All you can do is give it a chance and wait to see how things change.

The interesting thing, from the very start, is that the grandkids operate on an entirely different level than all of us adults. God gives them minds and hearts capable of ignoring the awkward dynamics of who we are and whether or not we fit together.

Mine and hers. They’re not trying to figure out what happened and why are we “in this” situation. They’re just running like wild Indians through the yard, chasing lightning bugs and hollering “tag, you’re it.”

They are not cousins. Not by blood. I get that. But there is a special relationship because of the two of us. No matter how messy life gets and no matter how much our paths are altered by death and grief and loss, family can be found about anywhere if you look with the right heart.

For over 40 years, Beth talked about her cousins out in Oklahoma. I’ve been out there to see them. They look like cousins. They act like cousins. They stand by each other like cousins. They keep up with each other like cousins. They have a history of stories to tell like cousins.

But the truth be told, they’re not directly blood related.

I won’t drag out all the details, but Beth’s granddaddy (like I am to Zelda) went out to the plains of east Oklahoma in the 1930’s after his wife died. He met a woman who already had kids from another time in life. I think she was married and divorced a couple of times. Then they married and had one son.

Out of that there were a bunch of steps and halves and have-nots that came to be thought of as one big family. And from that crew and the ones who married up in the next generation came a whole passel of kids who thought of themselves as cousins.

You can’t put ‘em all in one family tree, but enough of the branches overlap that commonality became more important the blood. Beth never felt the need to explain much. We talked about the story, but never to justify the relationship.

They were her cousins. End of story.

I guess family is who you decide is family, really. The ones you choose to love. The people you embrace. The ones you get to know like a sister or brother. The kiddos who look up to you. The grown children whom you begin to see differently because you care about them.

Marion and I have agreed on a lot of things from the get-go. I am not Mike, and she is not Beth. I will never be “Dad” to her kids. I would never pretend to fill that role or assume it as my place. She will not be “Mama” to my kids or Nana to my grandkids. There was only one and she can’t be replaced.

But that doesn’t keep us from loving each other like family. It doesn’t keep us from building the ties that create a new story that includes us all.

Marion’s daughter is bringing another new baby into the family come September. I know she’s not mine, but it sure feels like this is not just another baby. If there is any joy in the arrival of another “Laster/Koehl” child, there’s a twinge of it in my own heart, too.

Family shares life, no matter how it feels and how it comes at you. Sometimes you choose it, and sometimes it chooses you. What you do with it can be as defining as about anything you’ll ever experience.

Life is short enough as it is. You never know when someone you love is going to die and leave this world. And when you find someone else with whom God gives you the chance to dance, you better listen to the music.

I wish you could have seen the BINGO game last night. I was doubtful the kids would like it. Bingo is for geriatric parties at the old folk’s home. No way these kids were gonna get into the spin of the caged wheel with little balls inside.

Wrong!

Everyone is sitting at the kitchen island. Caleb on my far left. Then Everett, then Zelda, and Dorothy at the end. They each have two Bingo cards. I am the caller.

“N43.”

I had to help Dorothy catch on to the idea, but once she got it, she got it.

There was so much enthusiasm for number calling that the ceiling fan in the kitchen began to wobble from the effect of sound waves pouring from small mouths at decibels designed to crack armor plated steel.

“G64.”

“I’ve got it.”

“I need two more to Bingo.”

“Please, please, please. I need B9.”

My mind goes back to our own kitchen table when our kids were small. Card games that got crazy. Board games that got out of hand. Shouting. Laughter. Throwing kitchen utensils.

This is like that. This is what family does.

There’s only one problem for this old man.

It’s 5:30am and I have to get up and do it all over again.