There are moments, particularly in crisis, when complexity in one’s family can feel like a curse. I see now, however, that the complexity in mine is also the very thing that makes it special.

“Beautiful” as the song goes, “In it’s own way.”

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my siblings — as is — different as all get out.

I didn’t always appreciate our differences. In fact, in my twenties, as our mother lay dying, I wrote in a journal, “Sometimes I think when all of this is over, I’m going to wash my hands of the whole thing and leave for good.” That “thing” I was referring to was actually family. By “leave” I meant not seeing them much, if ever.

I loved my family deeply, but somehow I’d always felt apart rather than “a part of.” I wasn’t sure where I was going but I was fairly sure that wherever it was — I was going solo. That family couldn’t go with.

Tragically, as it turned out, the lead players in our family were the ones who left. A little over a year after mother died, my father did too, of a heart attack. It felt like a bomb went off. Four siblings ran for cover in as many different directions.

My sister married and moved to Colorado. One brother married and moved to my father’s farm, south of Dallas. I divorced and ran from a farm to Houston. My oldest brother never really came back out. He’d hidden best of all, like a tick, in the deep woods of East Texas.

As terrible as these losses were, I realized later that our parents leaving had left us gifts. Stuff like self-reliance, resourcefulness, none of which I had, mind you, but things that eventually, I discovered in myself. Like suddenly seeing a small key in a picture puzzle.

They left greater gifts … four siblings … a school, so to speak, without a flag. It would take us awhile to make one — to figure out what we were most about. What kind of family, if any, we were going to be.

With parents out of the picture, the picture not only changed, I started seeing things that, somehow, I hadn’t seen before. I saw my siblings as separate individuals. Choosing to be with them (on a holiday or otherwise) a choice. The power OF choice. In everything we do, even feel. That making choices (however small) were, in fact, huge acts.

It would be years before my siblings gathered again. When we did, we didn’t say much. Like turtles basking on a log, we were satisfied just to sit close. Feel what kinfolk feel again.

It would be longer still before we would want to gather for Thanksgiving, which this year, three of us are doing for the first time since 1981.

Beyond my siblings and me, our family is clannish. As families go, nothing unusual. They live in close proximity to one another, as well in their beliefs and daily lives; in the way the world comes to them. Nothing bad about this — for them.

Within our four, however, there might BE a world ... in all its complex glory. Seasons, if you will, coming full circle ... making a moon.

From within our complicated, scattered, often messed up spheres, our school of four eventually found our flag. Understanding. Maybe two. Compassion. Through deaths and divorces, disease and dis-ease, differences of all kinds, we might have even raised them a notch.

I was right in thinking that where I was going, my family couldn’t follow. But I took with me, more of them than I realized. While in many ways we still live worlds apart, my siblings live around me now in a new way, spiritually. We hold each other in a special place with kindness and great compassion. We found what family means, to us. For this, I am most thankful.

Mama described us best, one week before she died …“We’re just a big pot of vegetable soup.”