blood is thicker than water

Do you think we look alike?

I want to say something to everyone today.

DNA dosen't mean crap.

And I have a little story to illustrate my point.

Some years ago, even before The Boy was born, The Sugar Daddy and I were starting to consider adoption.  And I was down with it. Except. 

Except I was sad that my children wouldn't look like me.

One day I was home alone thinking about this and feeling a little upset, shuffling around the house in my pajamas.  I went to get a cheese stick out of the refrigerator.  At the time we had the kind of fridge that you can hang stuff on with magnets and we had the whole front covered with photos and what not.

So I was getting this cheese stick and one photo in particular caught my eye.  It was a photo of my younger brother, The Rooster.

Now, The Rooster and I, well, we don't look a thing alike.  We share the same DNA, but you'd never know it.

Matter of fact, I don't look a whole lot like any of my siblings.  We are a strange family that way.  Do I love them less?  

So I saw this photo and I was struck by the fact that DNA doesn't mean crap.  It may get you your grandmother's nose, and a kidney if you need it, but it doesn't make you family.

A body is made of cells.  Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.  It's all just matter.  Crap, if you will.

People tell me my babies look like me.  I think people want my babies to look like me.  I don't know why. Maybe it's some underlying way of reassuring themselves that these children were meant for our family.  That the universe got it right.

I get that.

But let me ask you this.  I have a friend who's father was a serial murder.  She is a beautiful, amazing person. Did the universe get that wrong?

Blood is thicker than water, but blood is just blood.  

Just sayin'

the big bother

2006

Birdie is walking around the furniture. She is tittering this way and that and falling quite a bit. I love to watch her fat little legs as she maneuvers around. The concentration on her face.


I'm trying to soak it all in. I'm trying not to forget.


Not so long ago it was the boy I was watching. I miss my baby boy. He is long gone and in his place I find a wise crackin' string bean. Every ounce of babyness was gone in a wink of the eye. Poof!


He yells at his sister when she slobbers on his toys.


He whines when she jabbers so loud he can't hear the television.


He is repulsed by her stinky diapers.


But he loves her and it is magic to me to see the two of them together. As far as Birdie is concerned, Thom can do no wrong and the closer she can be to him the better. I was never one to worry about loving a second child like I did my first. What I didn't anticipate though, is how much my love for my son grows when I watch him love his sister.