Families are assembled in two ways and one
of those is by birth. The other way is by adding
to our family those people who come into our
lives and naturally seem to belong with
us. Both my mother and father helped me to
understand the idea of adopting others into
our lives. My mother unofficially adopted
Elizabeth Schnell as a sister. My mother and
Elizabeth met when Elizabeth brought her
children to the physician’s office in Dayton,
Ohio, where my mother worked as a nurse.
My mother eventually added to her sense of
family by unofficially adopting our neighbor,
Terry Miller, as a father. Patricia Goodman,
who worked with my mother, in essence
became a daughter, and David Morgan who
was a member of my Boy Scout troop came to
be considered a son. My father’s mother,
Pearle Payne Hurst, came to consider her
tenant Mehdi Shirazi as a son, and his
eventual sons were like grandchildren for
Pearle. When my father worked in South
Vietnam he adopted Kohana, whose last name
I do not remember, as if she were a daughter. I