Letters from Rona

For more than three decades now, I've been welcoming nieces and nephews to my world. They all arrived in the conventional way, so I thought I knew the drill. Congratulate the parents-to-be. Admire the first baby photos, which capture the unformed, who-am-I look of every baby in the world. Send a doll-size outfit bedecked with toy trains or floppy animals. At barbecues and Christmas dinners, watch this rough sketch of a person acquire the defining talents, passions and aversions that eventually add up to someone I'm delighted to count as family.

This time last year, my husband and I had 10 nieces and nephews---a full complement, we assumed. With our respective siblings well past 50, we'd begun buying onesies for the next generation. Then a couple of months ago, my sister Joyce adopted the two lively and loveable girls you see with me here at the beach in Point Reyes, California---effervescent Birtukan (left), who's just started kindergarten, and watchful Almaz, in grade four. Their exact ages are a mystery, along with their birthdays. In their native land, Ethiopia, such details tend to go unrecorded. What I knew right away, with disarming force, was that these two sisters from the other side of the world---born in a mud-floored hut, raised until now in an orphanage---had already claimed their place in my life just by being their resilient and endearing selves.

I can only guess how it feels to leave your country, your culture and your language at an age when many children (for instance, the one I used to be) get seriously fussed about leaving their blankie at Grandma's. Years will pass before Almaz and Birtukan can tell me that story. Right now they have other things to chatter about: Charlie Chaplin. Disney princesses. Purple nail polish with sparkles. Actually, what they do is crow, echoing and interrupting each other and sometimes bursting into song. On the drive back home from the beach, they treated us to "O Come All Ye Faithful" in Amharic, an exuberant rendition of "Doe a deer" from The Sound of Music (they're besotted with the movie) and one of those incessant, nerve-testing chants that only a kid could love. Theirs was "Where's my home?" and it had the ring of celebration. For the home they meant was clearly Joyce's, where they sleep head to foot in one narrow bed.

When I first learned that Joyce would be adopting these girls, I was less than wildly enthused. She had the sisterly wisdom to share this news by e-mail, so she didn't hear me shriek, "Oh, my god!" I thought of all the dire diseases that can fell people our age. I pictured her fighting the curfew war in her late 60s. Was she nuts?

My quibbles were those of a woman who wanted only one child, who's relieved to be free of hands-on parenting and who's in no rush to host her cuddly year-old grandson for a sleepover. I will never fully understand my sister's choice to resume active mothering after raising three grownups who would make any parent proud. But I'm glad she made the choice she did. Because now my husband and I get to enjoy these children who are well and truly wonderful in the deepest sense of the word. They fill me with wonder at this thing called a family and how gracefully it can expand to challenge restrictive notions of blood-based kinship.

That first day we spent with our new nieces, Almaz asked, "How do you like my English?" Way better than my Amharic, I said. Birtukan brought me the Sound of Music DVD, pointed to Julie Andrews' picture and chirped, "You!"  I've never seen myself as an Andrews double, or even much of a fan, but the moment just felt right. We had already played many rounds of "I spy with my little eye." and their zest for this new game had left my ears ringing. My husband had taught them rummy, letting each girl win a game. I was glad to be their Aunt Rona. And their Julie Andrews too, if it pleases them. One thing to remember, kids: I'm a perfectly terrible singer.

Click here to read about bridging a divide in my biological family. 

Posted by Rona April 29, 2010 @ 12:57 PM. File in Family ties

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