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By Root 443 0

but under the circumstances, there was no assumption of responsibility for the lives of the boys as there was with Jennifer’s parents. Other relatives of mine would also drop by periodically, my closest aunt and uncle, Esther and Bernie, the most often, and they were also the most help next to Jennifer’s parents. After my father died, my mom would come by for very short visits — she would stay longer if other family members were there, for dinner, say — sometimes only for ten minutes, “to see how the boys were doing.” She could not stay away, but she also made it clear that she did not feel comfortable in our home, as though it were an imposition.

We went through enough diapers to warrant our own landfill. There were regular sorties for diapers, formula, and, when they had outgrown the need for formula, juice. We spent many Friday and Saturday nights over the next two years shopping. In fact, shopping pretty much came to define the way we spent our weekends. One evening at the market when I was buying juice and diapers, as I stood in front of the cashier, I started laughing out loud. The checkout girl looked at me, puzzled. “In one end and out the other,” I explained. She did not see the humor in this.

Seeing newborn twins, total strangers wondered regularly about the birthing experience; time and time again, their temerity in asking personal questions amazed us. It was never easy explaining to people we did not know and would never see again what it was like to be the parents of twins when they would not have had any reason to suspect that we were not the birth parents. For example, because Jennifer is so petite, it was not unusual for another mother to comment, “But you’re so small! Was it hard having twins?” “No,” Jennifer would answer. “It wasn’t.” People we had never met before asked Jennifer how she had lost the weight so quickly. “It wasn’t really a problem for me,” she would respond serenely. We decided very early on that it was no business of strangers that the boys were adopted; that was something they could tell people if they wanted to. Initially, I had felt some urge to tell people, which I now think represented some attempt to distance myself from fatherhood. But as time passed, and the overwhelming experience proved to be one of joy and marvel at the bounty with which we had been blessed, my reluctance, born of the fear of failure, faded. The very labor of nurturing paid immeasurable dividends, and after several months, after my head had stopped whirling at what had happened and I had accepted it as part of my life, I became their father, and all our lives were joined. There was nothing to distinguish me from them.

Watching their personalities emerge was a constantly rewarding experience. They were home for only a few weeks before they earned nicknames. Noah became “the Professor” because he was so contemplative. He seemed constantly to look at things as though he were trying to figure out what they were, what they were supposed to do, and how they went about doing exactly whatever it was they were supposed to accomplish. Dan was nicknamed “Jarhead” because of his bald, round dome and absolute determination, his commanding sense of bravado.

The first time I heard the boys giggling uncontrollably, I sensed that it was a sound I had never heard before or made. As it turned out, everything about the way the boys grew up would be different from my own childhood experiences.

When I was three years old, my sister, Susie, died of leukemia. She was two years older than me, three years younger than my brother. I have only two memories of her.

One is of our father holding her in his arms in the alley behind our house, on a block of semidetached houses in West Philadelphia. It is a hot summer day, and our dad is using a handkerchief to shoo away a yellow jacket that has been buzzing around Susie and frightening her. She is crying, and he is speaking soothingly to her. Since in reality he proved to be powerless to protect her, I guess that it is understandable why I hold on to this.

Susie is not present in the