One Mother Among Others

A couple of days ago I wrote a post in which I said that if you ask me how many kids I have I give different answers. One answer, "Four or five, depending up whether you count my nephew...," is officially off the list. Henceforth the answer is some contexts is necessarily "two" but in all others it is "five."

Just to be clear, this has nothing to do with Evan's real, natural, legal, biological mother who diapered him, fed him, and raised him for most of his childhood. She could not always take care of him, but she is a good mother and I am in not in the least interested in replacing her.

It's not a competition, or if it was, I would lose, and that is okay.

Still, I am ditching the distinction between him and the other boys. In my world I shall no longer refer to and think of Andrew, Brian, Carl, and David as "sons" and Evan as "nephew." Nope. They all are getting stuck into one pidgeon hole.

Why, do you ask?

I suppose I could talk about our relationship, what expectations we had, or didn't when he moved in and how things have grown, about how close I feel to him. I could, but that would not get to the point. Something happened today.

Roland and I went somewhere to do something for him and I was greeted with these words, "Hi! Evan said his parents were coming. That's you right?"

And I said, "Yes. That's us."

And I don't lie.