The metaphor I have for my family is that a daydreaming but curious child brought back from a field trip a basket with objects that had struck its fancy: a rock, a chunk of bark, a beetle, a marble, a bottle cap, and a lizard. The child's mother said, "Why, they're a family!" And so we were.
I've divided the story of family and me into three more or less contiguous narratives that you can find in the table of contents to the left: Currently, Growing Up, and Historically. It probably helps if you read them in that order, but each can stand alone, I think.