Jane Christensen, OWP 1998

 

My Daughter Alex

Our family had been talking about hosting a foreign exchange student, and I guess talking about that is like talking about having a baby. All of a sudden you've very little choice -- they're on their way. Christina Maria Alexandra ............was arriving from Sweden in five days. Many children are born with little notice and often in a state of emergency. This was Alex. She'd been promised to another family in a nearby town, but I guess they had second thoughts. Alex was going to be homeless. We were asked to fill in temporarily as her host family for about a month; thus she became a part of our family. My 12-year-old son, Beau, wasn't too crazy about the idea of sharing the bathroom with another sister, but our 15-year-old daughter,Kitty, was thrilled.

The phone call from Alex before she arrived was a very pleasant surprise. Her English was easy to understand, and she seemed very excited to be coming to live with us. When we went to pick her up at the airport, I held tightly to the poorly Xeroxed picture of my new 18-year-old daughter. Alex had no idea what we looked like. Since I'm Japanese, this is about as close as I was going to get to having a blond, blue-eyed daughter. Though my husband, Steve, is fair-haired and blue-eyed, our two children have dark features.

We got acquainted Alex very quickly and fell in love with her. She was perfect for our family. She wanted to eat light and healthy, exercise often, go to movies, help with housework, cook for us and sleep a lot. Within two weeks we knew we wanted to keep her for the entire year, though I still had many worries. Would Kitty adjust to sharing a room? Would Steve and Beau stop running around the house in their underwear? What would this do to our budget? How would we find the time in our very busy schedule to take her around to see the sights? Would I get stressed out?

As with most family challenges, I found that things just work out. We learned from each other and grew closer with each passing day. I'll never forget how she'd keep constant vigilance over the sink. Dirty dishes weren't allowed to sit there for even ten minutes when it was her week to "man the dishwasher." We rolled with laughter when Steve nicknamed her "The Dish Nazi." Alex also managed to shame Kitty into keeping her bedroom neat. I've never seen Kitty's room stay so clean for so long before. The two girls would talk and laugh long into the night. This was special for them because neither has a sister, just brothers. I have fond memories of talking to my sister like that and later to my roommate in college.

Beau and Steve loved to tease her. She knew her way around brothers, since she has three, but she didn't know what to do with Steve, since her own father is very much the opposite. Eventually, she could razz those guys just as easily as anyone. I hope her family doesn't hate us after they get to see the new side of Alex and her "sarcastic wit."

Then there was the day she saw her first hummingbird. She was hopping around with excitement. You'd have thought a UFO had landed in our backyard! For her graduation gift, Steve found a necklace with a locket decorated with a hummingbird made of Black Hills Gold. Hummingbirds will forever remind me of Alex.

For me, I will cherish the mother-daughter talks we had about marriage, independence and the male species. She made me explain how I knew who to marry and what makes a good marriage and why I felt it was important to go to college. It forced me to really look at my life and be thankful for all that I had. Since she was 18 and had been making adult-type decisions about her life since she was 16, it gave me the chance to practice having an adult friend in a daughter.

There's an emptiness in our house now that she's back in Sweden. It's sometimes hard to see, but all of us know it's there. It's Alex's way of reminding to us respect, love, and accept each other. She did that for us. That's just part of the reason we'll always love her and be thankful that she adopted us.

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