On a lovely Sunday evening dinner up the hill in Wendell after we were treated to some very delicious asopao de pollo or sopon which is a Puerto Rican chicken soup, I finally was able to experience something truly lovely that has been four years in the making.
And I almost missed it!
I was talking with Miguel about something as Miss Ashley was corralling JoJo (her child) and Eddie (her much bigger child!) to get ready to head back to their house.
JoJo just celebrated his fourth birthday a week or so prior but I’ve known that delightful young man pretty much since he was born.
Given the intensive programme of becoming Boricua-adjacent I’ve been on for these many years, he’s had plenty of times to see me at his various birthday parties or when he comes to his grandparent’s home for parties or dinners or just general mischief making of the very best sort.
One of my favourite memories of him was at one of the parties where I was happily sat on the couch observing the festivities when he crawled into my lap and curled up and went to sleep as everyone else was having at dinner.
You would have had to work at getting me off of Cloud 9 of awesome feelings…there he was being all adorable and trusting and settling right down to sleep.
It rather reminded me of when my kids were much more conveniently sized!
But even though he’d see me from time to time, young ones do have a tendency to be shy at times and I figured he’d come around in his own time and in his own way.
And that time was last Sunday when out of the blue he called me “tio” (uncle) for the first time as he was getting ready to leave.
Words cannot adequately describe just how big a deal that is and how humbling.
There’s a fondness and familiarity in that honourific that says that I’m not merely older but that in his world, I’m family.
I can only hope that I live up to his expectations with honour and dignity.
There is the family we are born to and there is the family that chooses us and to Hungarians there really isn’t much difference between them, not for all the money in the Two Worlds.
We may not share the bonds of blood but in my opinion, these wonderful people who have taken in a stray Hungarian to be one of their own have forged a greater bond of the heart…el corazón!