The Miracle of Family Reborn

The Boston Herald

She will arrive sometime today, having packed up the van with food and gifts and clothing for a couple of days, having strapped five kids - ages 11, 10, 7, 3 and 7 months - into a vehicle with no radio for a three-hour drive. She will pull into the driveway and the children will spill out, the oldest helping the youngest, and they will all be smiling, and she will say that the ride wasn't bad, even if she has sat in traffic for hours.

I count my blessings that she is part of my life, for she is the answer to a wish I made a million years ago.

I used to wish all the time - on every first star, on dandelions gone to seed, on the bones of turkeys, on birthday candles, every time I went into a new church (you got three wishes there). I wanted only one thing: I wanted a sister, like Rosemary had or Janet Butler or Ann Marie Tantillo. I wanted my family to be like everybody else’s.

My mother kept getting pregnant and having miscarriages, but I just kept right on wishing. I believed, and so did she, that someday we would both get what we wanted. I gave up wishing on stars and wishbones when I grew old enough to understand that some things are impossible. I no longer spoke the words aloud - I wish I had a sister - but I never stopped thinking them. I thought them every time I'd visit my aunt and see the way her five daughters got along. I thought them every time Rosemary became an aunt.I thought them when I had children of my own and saw how they loved each other.

Now Jeannie is here, filling the space that has always been waiting for her.

The first time she came to visit with her husband and children, I didn't suspect that she was the result of blowing on dandelion seeds. They drove from New York, where they live on a small farm, to visit my mother-in-law, Jeannie's aunt. My mother-in-law asked us to visit, too. She wanted us all together - my almost grown kids, Jeannie's then three small kids, two fathers, two mothers, one grandmother.

It was a nice fit, even then. We liked each other. We liked each other's children. We got along. We hated to see the day end. When it was time for them to go, we kissed and hugged and talked about how nice it was that we were family. 

Family - the word that connoted other people's big tribes - was what we had become. 

We got together as often as we could after that because Jeannie loved the idea of family, too. But as often as we could wasn't nearly enough. Like real family we had to be satisfied with phone conversations instead of visits. Like real family, we had to be content with seeing each other a few times a year and on holidays.

I don't know at what point the miracle happened, when I became aware that she was the one for whom I'd been wishing all my life. Maybe it was last December when she found out that she and her husband, Sal, had to work on Christmas day. She didn't cry or complain. She simply asked if the girls could spend the holiday with us. She'd drive them up on Christmas eve, if I wanted them.

If I wanted them? Jessica, Tabitha, Xena and Shiloh bring Christmas into our lives every day of the year. Of course I wanted them. I couldn't wait.

At the last minute, Jeannie's supervisor said she'd work for her, so she got to spend Christmas with us, too, and stay until late on Christmas day. Maybe it was then that I knew, when she drove away and left the girls behind with me.

Maybe it didn't happen until a few months later when she phoned and asked if I wanted to be with her when she gave birth to her son? Sal would watch the children. Would I stay with her and see this child be born?

Family. This is mine. Sal, Jeannie, the girls and now Ewen, born last May. Sal has to work again this year, so it'll be just Jeannie and the kids again, arriving in hours, changing for church, eating dinner, hanging their stockings by the fireplace, leaving cookies for Santa, listening for the sound of his sleigh, running down the stairs in the morning, opening presents.

I used to hear the sounds of family in other people's houses. "Who's that?" I would ask.

"It's my sister and her kids," Janet and Rosemary and Ann Marie would answer. 

Now these sounds are in my house. They make me believe in miracles. They make me want to start wishing on stars