My husband, Don Samuel, and I have seven children: Molly, 25; Seth, 22; Lee, 18; Lily, 14; Fisseha, 12; Jesse, 11; and Helen Samuel, 10. Four by birth, three by adoption: Jesse came at age four from Bulgaria, Helen at age five from Ethiopia, and Fisseha two years ago at age ten from Ethiopia.
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| summer 2006 |
Two children ago, in 2001, I wrote a cover article for the New York Times Magazine about enormous families.
I felt strangely interested in "mega-families," families with 18, 20, 24 children, usually a mix of biological and adopted offspring.
I wrote:
"I wanted to interview mothers of dozens because, the older I get, the more I feel weirdly inclined that way myself. "Since when did you become the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe?" snapped a friend when I confided that we were thinking of adopting again, of adding a sixth child to our four by birth and one by way of Bulgaria. Even our fourth baby, nine years ago, provoked expressions of surprise from our family. When we adopted a fifth child, flabbergasted friends chalked it up to a mostly charitable impulse. But now, whispers of a sixth threatened to place me, in their minds, among the greats: the DeBolt family, Ethel Kennedy, Mia Farrow, Bobbi McCaughey, the von Trapp family singers and perhaps even Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, gave birth to 69 children in 18th-century Russia."
This past spring, Lee, 18, having graduated early from high school, flew to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for three months, to volunteer in several orphanages, including the foster home of Haregewoin Teferra, the subject of my new book.
Lee fell in love with many, many children in the course of his time in Addis: boys, girls, sibling groups, HIV-negative children, HIV-positive children. But the two he began lobbying seriously about were a pair of brothers, Daniel and Yosef Gizaw. They have waited for a family the longest of all the children at Haregewoin's foster home. As boys of 10 and 12, their chances of being adopted are minuscule.
"You have to adopt these guys," he began to tell us in emails and phone calls.
"THey'd be perfect for our family," he pleaded.
"I feel like they're my brothers already."
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| Yosef, Daniel & Lee, May 2006, Addis Ababa |
We relayed this campaign to our children still living at home and to those far-away: Seth Samuel at the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio and Molly Samuel, working for ForestEthics, in San Francisco.
"How old are they?" asked Seth.
"Ten and twelve," I said.
"We have those ages already," observed Seth.
"Uh oh, wait," emailed Seth the next day. "I used to be the fastest in our family. Since Fisseha came, I'm the second-fastest. If we bring over two more Ethiopian boys, I'll be fourth and fourth doesn't medal."
"No," emailed Lee from Ethiopia. "I'm faster than you; you're already in third place; if we bring over even one more Ethiopian boy, you'll be in fourth place so we might as well bring these brothers."
I presented this debate question at dinner to the four children at home.
"No, Seth is THE fastest!" everyone yelled. Even Fisseha agreed.
I sent these results by email to our far-flung youth, Molly, Seth, and Lee, and now Molly emailed back, rather plaintively: "Aren't I good at anything?"
I presented THIS topic to those at home the following night and a lively discussion ensued. "She plays that big... that big... that big violin," offered Fisseha.
"An upright bass," I said. "OK, that's true. Anyone else?"
"She's the best reader," said Jesse.
But Helen carried the day with her nomination of Molly's niche: "She has the cutest car."
My husband, Don Samuel, and I meanwhile had crossed from "How could we possibly do this?" to "We can do this" in the course of a day. We were in complete agreement. Though it looked absurd from the vantage point of our handsome, tree-lined Atlanta neighborhood and our community of friends with reasonable numbers of children like one or two, from the perspective of Daniel and Yosef in Ethiopia, we knew we could make room.
Lee offered not to go away to college next year if we brought home the boys. He was planning to spend a "gap year" in Israel starting this fall and offered to waive that.
"No, we're the parents," we said. "We'll be adopting them, not you."
Somehow it was settled.
Fisseha, who is a one-man Outward Bound Experience (having lived for most of his childhood as a goat-herd in Ethiopia), went out to the driveway, selected and peeled a branch of wood, took a magnifying glass, and burned — with the sun's rays — the updated roster:
Molly Seth Lee Lily Fisseha Jesse Helen Daniel Yosef Mom Dad
(This post first appeared at www.PowellsBooks.blog during my stint as guest blogger)
