Family Love Is a Different Kind

My grandparents were already at the table, waiting with varying levels of patience for the evening to begin. The youngest ones were running with excitement through the living room and out the back door into the yard, then back in again. My cousins and siblings were chatting in clusters, wine glasses in their hands, teasing in the way only people who've known each other their whole lives can do. That's the thing about families. I mean, i loved my friends and had holiday traditions to look forward to with them too, but family love is of a different sort, deep and abiding, unmoved by the years.