Never Alone

I was five years old, sitting in kindergarten waiting for my mother to arrive at my year-end program. When I caught sight of her walking in with my 3 younger siblings, I glowed. I’m sure they kept her busy during the program, but I was content to see her there, smiling at me whenever I looked her way.

In a big family you’re never alone.

A decade later I was trundling to the mall with my family. There were eight kids now. Strangers stopped my folks in the parking lot. “Are they all yours? They’re so well-behaved!” My parents glowed. I glowered, thinking longingly of my best friend’s ‘perfect’ family of two children. I swore I’d never have more than four.

In a big family you’re never alone.

Two months after my 19th birthday, I walked down the aisle in my mother’s wedding dress behind five bridesmaids, including two of my sisters. Our wedding was the first of this next generation on both sides of our huge family and we were the center of a mob of well-wishers.

In a big family you’re never alone.

A year and a half later, three months before I graduated from college, our first daughter was born. I went back to school twelve days later. That first morning, trying to get her fed and changed and fed and changed, and my leaky self dressed and redressed, all on a deadline, it seemed too hard. I burst into tears and called my mother. She arrived in 10 minutes and got us out the door on time. Three months later I graduated from nursing school.

In a big family you’re never alone.

When my daughter was 6 months old, my sister called with words that branded themselves forever on my brain. “Daddy was working on the car, and it fell on him, and he died.” In a throat-clutching barefoot fog, I put my baby in her car seat and drove across town to be with my mother. I was stunned to see the world still humming heartlessly along. I was 21. My youngest sister was 6. There were 6 children between us. We sat stunned in my mother’s house as the doorbell rang, and trays of food filled our kitchen and wads of Kleenex clumped in our damp fists. That night some of us slept in our mother’s bed, and others slept together in a tent in the yard. People wondered how my mother would get along. She said through tears, chin stubbornly up, “I couldn’t do it without them.”

In a big family you’re never alone.

A decade later, heart changed by motherhood, I flew with my husband to Korea to adopt a 4 month old baby boy, our fifth child. When we walked off that airplane after 5 days in a foreign country, we were joyously greeted by three dozen of our nearest and dearest. We would repeat that airport scene four more times, eventually becoming parents to ten children.

In a big family you’re never alone.

Two springs ago my grandfather began to slip from this earth. His six children made difficult decisions in sotto-voice group discussions. In his last drifting-away hours, we all rotated quietly through his room, singing and holding his hand and stroking his hair and whispering love in his ear. Just after sunrise he went home to heaven, trailed at the funeral by balloons released by his many great-grandchildren into the clear blue sky.

In a big family you’re never alone.

This spring my daughter walked across the stage at her high school graduation, cheered on by the loudest fan club in the auditorium, a raucous group of friends, parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

In a big family, praise God, you’re never alone.

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Mary writes at Owlhaven and at her Ethiopia Adoption Blog.