My family

I spent the entire afternoon today with my nephew and niece. My nephew is the most fearless and playful child I have ever come across, and, he is a comedian. At two and a half years old, he donned his painting smock, pulled a pair of diapers over his head and started playing his colourful toy saxophone.

A, my beautiful little baby. My niece at a week old is the spitting image of my dad and his mother. My sister-in-law today said that Lillian's eyes are grey and that she would love for them to stay that way. I don't think she knows that my grandmother's eyes were grey, I don't think she realises that her daughter is the mirror image of me when i was a baby. It is an odd thing indeed to hold a tiny being in your arms that is a replica of you yet not of you, an image of a loved one that you will never see again. Such a conflict of emotions, such pain yet joy. God does indeed work in strange ways.

Jonathan held his cup today, handed it to me and said it was leaking. I took it from him and sure enough it was. And then I realise that he said leaking. Two and a half years old, where the heck did he hear about leaking, and knowing what it meant.

These are my brother's children, I love them so. If I love my nephew and niece this way, what does it feel like to love one's child? Since I held my brother's daughter in my arms a week ago, I have been plagued with memories of my childhood, of my brothers, of trying my darndess to be their champion. I wonder if they remember the times I put them first because I was so worried that something would happen to them and that I wouldn't be there to protect them. Ah, my brothers, they are both grown men, but I still see them as my little brothers. And still see us playing hide and seek, walking home together after school, and sitting around my mom as she read to us from the big book of fairy tales.

Our family is not the same because my dad is gone. But it has grown, for we are now plus three, one sister-in-law and two beautiful children. If only my dad was here.