Category: Family
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Just Adopt!
“I’ve always wanted to adopt,” says my friend, a faraway look in her eyes as if there exists an alternate universe she is privy to that lets her play out her fantasies. My immediate response is indignation. “You have no clue what it is like,” I want to shout. Instead I nod my head and…
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Same, But Different
“I want to color my hair blue too!” My youngest, all of six years, holds my hand and swings as she walks. One of her older sisters walks a little ahead of us. We are on our daily evening stroll around our development. The sun has not yet set, bathing us all in a golden…
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My Motherhood, Explained
I notice the family at the table we cross to get to ours. I notice them because they turn in unison looking us up and down, right to left and back. I notice them as they try to reconcile the story of us, the story of me. I hold her eyes, just a smidge before…
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Hands of Fate
I stepped off the plane into the chill, dry air of New Mexico, eight hours after we left that morning. Even as my husband and I made our way to baggage claim, my eyes scanned through the unread text messages and email messages from Amy. “Call me.” The message was cryptic and I felt a…
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My Shadow
She follows me from the first walk to the last, watching, learning, absorbing. On my youngest, the child I did not write down, and what it means to be seen by her.
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Feeling Seen
I see the photo on my Pattu’s Instagram story first. It catches me by surprise. I am at the window holding Felix our puppy, watching the birds and the bees flitting about. Felix had been cranky. I was holding him the way I would a fussy baby. Rocking imperceptibly, every part of me focused on…
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Three Different Mothers
Three daughters posted Mother’s Day tributes online — a scrapbook, a photo grid, a music video. Each one a different mother. An essay on being seen.
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Through the Door
My daughter was in the shower. The sentence that arrived before I was fully awake was: this is my child, but I don’t know her. A reflective essay on the week my daughters began to feel like strangers, and what my own mother said when I asked her the same question.
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Bringing Home Felix
“Felix, come here. Come here baby…” Pattu’s high pitched baby talk sounds so good to me. Ammu is walking around with the twelve week old puppy draped over her shoulders the way one carries a human baby. Saathi is on the mattress in the dark, patting Felix through the bars of his crate late at…
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Musings On Love
The doorbell rings. I realize with a start that I forgot to open the garage door for the kids. I make coffee while my girls wash up and sit for coffee and snacks. I cut myself a slice of cake and as an afterthought, break off a piece of the yezhu suthu murruku from my…