 |
| Daniel & Yosef, Addis Ababa, December 06 |
Yosef and Daniel Gizaw, brothers of about 10 and 13, arrived in Atlanta this past Sunday, June 10. My husband Don Samuel flew to Addis to file the I-600 and to bring them home. Of course now I get to say: "Of our nine children, you delivered two."
I've known the boys for years, as they lived at Mrs. Haregewoin's house; in fact, the boys' photos are in my book. At the time we prepared it for publication, I did not know they were going to be my sons. It took our son Lee, then 18, living in Addis last spring and visiting Haregewoin's every day, to fall in love with them & phone us often to say, "Please, we have to adopt them." Lee, who spent the past year in Israel, flew to Addis last week to join his dad in bringing home the new brothers.
Daniel is tall and very thin and gangly. All the clothes I had for him reached only his ankles and his wrists. "Nice," he said, so earnestly. "Nice, I like."
"No," we all said, "too small, too short."
"No," he insisted. "NICE."
I swept new pants from the racks of Target yesterday, handed them over, shooed him into the bathroom to change. He emerged shyly, in pants that actually covered his ankles. "Too big?" he asked.
He is cautious, quiet, and watchful like a young deer, as if he's about to dart away. Mostly he's watchful over Yosef, for whom he assumed chief responsibility after their mother died four years ago (their father had died a couple of years earlier.) They have the happiest memories of their parents, their house, their animals in Woliso, but they have been sad a long time. Daniel, I think, will always be acutely, in some way, Ethiopian; clearly he stared down the long road to nowhere, to lousy education and joblessness and hunger. Yet he seems to have protected Yosef, who gleams with pure joy and love of life. Donny had emailed me from Addis: "Daniel chuckles over Yosef like an amused grandfather."
He also emailed, from Addis last week: "Last night we went to the Italian restaurant near the Yilma Hotel. On the way back on the pitch black 'street' (i.e., dirt and rock road), we bought a very heavy six-pack of water. Yosef lamented (sarcastically) that he was not very strong, and couldn't possibly take his turn carrying it. At that moment, he fell into a pot-hole up to his waist and Daniel said, "And not very smart either."
Yosef is like a young seal, with a smooth shining face and smile, packing incredible speed and agility in a small package. He is a comedian. This we knew. "When Yosef speaks, everyone around him, even adults, laugh," Lee had told us last year.
Today is Helen's 11th birthday (she arrived in the US five years ago); we had a tremendous birthday party yesterday afternoon and evening. It started, really, at 3:00, when she got home with three girlfriends from art camp; and all afternoon more & more friends arrived, boys and girls, black and white Americans, one other Ethiopian girl. Since Yosef, on paper, turned 10 recently, Helen shared her party. We had two cakes with soccer decorations, and Helen's friends brought gifts for Yosef, too. A rented moonwalk was pumped up in our driveway; and Seth, 22, a recent graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, headed for the NYU Steinhardt School of Music this fall, spent HOURS standing at the kitchen sink filling up water balloons and storing them in laundry baskets. I'd gathered probably 18 water guns; and a knock-down drag-out water-gun water-balloon fight began that lasted for HOURS. Water smashed against the windows and front glass door of the house; the floors turned to pools; the back porch ran with gullies. I ran about taking pictures and throwing down towels until a blast of water hit my head or back and sent me running for cover, huddled over the camera. I made phone calls in search of more water balloons and mothers arrived with bags of them. Seth and Lee, 19, were in the thick of it, as were a few little kids who'd lingered long past the dropping-off hour. Neighbors stood in their yards and watched. "Why," I wondered, "did I spend a hundred dollars on the moonwalk when this much fun can be had with balloons?" Late in the day, I noticed children running through the house from the kitchen with cooking pots filled with water, which they dumped off the deck onto the heads of water-ballooners in the thick of battle. THAT I had to put a stop to, for purposes of water conservation. "See?" I told visiting mothers. "I have standards."
 |
| water battles on the deck |
 |
| water fight |
 |
| Daniel in the livingroom |
We've had many grand water battles over the years, but this may have topped them all. I got blurred glimpses of Yosef and Daniel running past, armed to the teeth with balloons and water-guns. I saw them playing wild soccer inside the moonwalk. I saw them jumping on the trampoline in a tangle of kids. I saw a six-year-old girl threatening a pack of older kids with her plump water-filled pink balloon and warning, in a high but firm little voice: "I am NOT afraid to use this."
Later HORDES of dripping kids piled into the kitchen for the cakes, and sang first to Helen, then to Yosef. Yosef followed Helen's lead in blowing out the candles. When one remained lit, he plucked it from the cake, held it to his lips, and gave it a delicate puff. But my favorite scene of the day was the look on Daniel's face as the mob of children sang Happy Birthday to Yosef. Such a kind, poignant, open look, such bewildered happiness. "YOUR birthday NEXT month," I told him, but he waved that away. THIS, he showed me, was all he really wanted.
So now I must go pack, and bend a hundred times to pick up balloon fragments sprinkling front yard back yard deck porch driveway and sidewalk as if from a ticker-tape parade.
 |
| Fisseha uses hose |
 |
| Lily hiding |
 |
| Helen & guests |
 |
| Daniel & Yosef in the front yard |
 |
| Lee hiding |
 |
| Helen |
 |
| Yosef |
