"Welcome To The Family"

A reader echoes what I discovered about the m-word:

I met my first partner on October 20th 1978 and met his relatives shortly after. 19 wonderful years later, after a short illness, he died.

I don't wear jewelry but he had worn the same chain round his neck since the day we met. Impulsively I decided to wear it in his honor. His mother saw it and awkwardly asked me to give it to her - "Because we want it to stay in the family". She said it thoughtlessly but without malice and, later that week, kindly returned it to me saying that "the family" wanted me to keep it.

Bear in mind that we saw one or more of his relatives at least once a week throughout our relationship and, on each of the the last ten years of his life, I'd served Christmas dinner for them all at our house.

Shortly after my first partner's death I met another wonderful guy. We have now been together for 11 years. During that time I've met all his relatives too - Mother, Brother, Sister, Sister-in-Law, Nieces - and we've also had many happy times together. We've vacationed at his brother's cabin, taken his sister on vacation several times and been to his mother's house countless times. Any time we stay over my partner and I sleep together in the same bed, as always.

Taking advantage of California's recent same-sex marriage ruling we "tied the knot" in San Francisco on August 25th. A simple ceremony which took maybe 10 minutes. We told everyone and, on the 17th of October, went to stay for a couple of days with his brother and wife. They very kindly put on a small "do" in honor of our wedding and, as we were leaving on Tuesday the 21st of October 2008 I heard these words for the first time in my life:

"Welcome to the family".

30 years (and a day) was a long time to wait but marriage was the only key to that door.