It has always been said that whilst you can choose your friends, you cannot choose your family.

To an extent this is true. After all one cannot choose ones parents or whether one has brothers or sisters nor can one choose if ones parents have siblings.

Whereas one can, of course, choose with whom one becomes friends. That is how my relationship with my beloved began: we met; we became friends; our friendship grew closer and more intimate, and one day we moved from being just friends to being friends and lovers.

And it was as lovers that we chose our family. The children, as I call them, 'the kids' is Jethro's more prosaic term: Abigail, Ziva, Timothy, Jimmy and Anthony, our children, our family.

In fact it is fair to say we were already a family before Jethro realized what I had recognized for over two decades: he loved me as more than just his closest friend. And when he did realize that fact, when he was prepared to admit it, his second question, which followed several very-pleasantly-spent hours after his first, was 'what shall we tell the kids'?

In the end we told them the truth. Why would we not? We are, after all, a team, we are family, we are loyal to one another. So we told them. I am still somewhat amused by the fact that the only thing that shocked them was that our 'more than just good friends' relationship was new; apparently they had believed us to have been lovers for many, many years.

Thus it was with this new found knowledge that our family ties grew tighter, and at the combined age of one hundred and eighteen, Jethro and I gained five fully grown children.

So you see, one can choose ones family.