A rule that in this house, you are always allowed to cry, and always allowed to laugh too loud, and never, ever made to feel like a burden for existing.
Margaret checks in on us like the aunt the girls never had, and my mother’s friends rotate through with casseroles and bad jokes and stories about Laura that make the twins glow.
Denise, my mom’s oldest friend, taught me to braid properly, so the girls would stop going to school looking like they’d lost a fight with a hairbrush.
I signed the final adoption papers in the fall, in the same office where I’d once numbly signed the trust.
Margaret handed me the pen, and this time I wasn’t numb at all.
Lily and Maya are legally, permanently, unshakably mine now.
Not a burden I took on. A family I chose, and that chose me back.
We are not a conventional family.
