What Is It About Family?

Of all the relationships that we have, I don't think there are any that run deeper than family. There is just something about your family (wife, children, parents, siblings, etc) that is different from everyone else. Take, for example, the brickbaby. He is a very affable guy, willing and wanting to make friends with practically anyone. Since moving to the DC area a few months back, he's made some good friends at church that he gets to see, usually, once a week. But those friends are not family. When he saw his grandparents for the first time in over a month, he was very excited. He knew something was different about them. They weren't just ordinary friends. (The same thing happened a little over a month ago when he saw them for the first time since Christmas.) It's almost like he knows that the blood that flows in his veins also courses through theirs.

What causes this difference? Are there subtle ways that family treat each other that differ from the way friends act? Are there subconscious and/or body-language differences that clue us in? Or is it more mystical than that? Do we just know? And how are these bonds broken, as we all know they can be? Whatever it is, I like it. To know that they are out there, your family, is a comforting thought. As long as they are there, there is some kind of cosmic string binding you to someone in this mad, mad, mad, mad world.