Foster Care

My Aunt Chrissie has become my foster mom while my parents are in the Holy Land. If someone had told me when I was 10 years old that my aunt with the crazy red hair who chants in her living room and cusses at sweet Mimi would take on the role of my mother, even if only for a 10 day period, I probably would have rolled my eyes and said "whatever". But she is doing an incredible job of making me feel loved and cared for just like a mom does.

Chrissie has called me two days in a row, which I don't think has ever happened before. Today she left a message saying that she knew Josie was at school and I was at home with Owen but she was just checking in. I had no idea that she even knew Josie went to school on Tuesdays. Yesterday, she checked to make sure that Owen's leg was OK. My own mom doesn't even know that Owen limped for 24 hours because he jumped off the couch onto a hot wheel. Chrissie is turning out to be a great foster mom.

Chrissie is my mom's cousin, although I have always called her my aunt. I can honestly say that she is the most interesting person I knew growing up. She was so different than everyone, especially my mom who seemed so ordinary. Chrissie is anything but ordinary.

One of my earliest memories of Chrissie was when she took me to Shakers for dinner. Chrissie, who is outgoing and fun, looked at me from across the faux wood table with her head titled slightly and a confused look on her face. She was used to going out with Carrie who rivaled Chrissie in the outgoing and fun department. "You never smile!" She said breaking the silence. "What's wrong?"

I sat there in the crescent booth and thought for a minute about whether there was something wrong. Nothing seemed particularly wrong. "Chrissie. I smile when I have something to smile about. If there is nothing wrong, then I look like this," I said pointing to my stoic, emotionless face.

All during dinner I tried to think of something we could talk about. Finally, I said, "Where did your red hair come from?"

"What?" Chrissie screamed. All night she had been waiting for me to say something, and this is what I picked to say. She was shocked. "What do you mean?"

Before asking, I spent twenty minutes going through mental images of all the family members I could remember. I didn't like to ask dumb questions. But I was confident no one else in our family had red hair.

"No one else has red hair," I said hoping to get to the juicy story of Chrissie's adoption.

"I get it from a BOTTLE," Chrissie said and laughed and laughed. I had no idea what she meant or why she was laughing. What kind of drink gave you red hair? Maybe she just didn't want to talk about her adoption. I could understand. For a long time, until my nose exploded on my face and became a mirror image of my father's, I thought maybe I was adopted too.

Chrissie and I finished the rest of our meal in silence that evening. I realized that night that even though we didn't really understand each other, it didn't matter, because we were family. I loved my red haired Buddhist aunt and she loved her blase, introspective niece.

In the last twenty years, nothing, not who we are or the love that we share, has changed all that much. We just have a lot more to talk about, especially while my mom is rubbing elbows with Clem in the Holy Land.