I became a mom overnight to my two blind nieces after my sister died. A year later, I walked into my living room and found their long-absent father sitting on my couch, calmly announcing he was there to take them back. I’m 34F, in the U.S., and up until last year, my life was pretty basic.
Paralegal job. Tiny apartment. Coffee with my best friend Jenna on Saturdays.
Then my older sister Erin died in a car accident on her way home from work. One second, she was texting me a dumb meme, the next I was in a hospital hallway hearing a doctor say, “We did everything we could.”
Erin had two daughters. Maya, 8, and Lily, 6.
Both legally blind since birth. We lived two hours apart, so I didn’t see them often, but I knew their voices. I knew Lily’s giggle and the way Maya asked questions like a tiny lawyer.
At the funeral, they stood by the casket holding Erin’s scarf, fingers twisted in the fabric. When I said, “Hey, it’s Auntie,” they both turned toward my voice at the same time. “Auntie?” Maya whispered.
“Is Mom really gone?”
“Yeah, baby,” I said. “She is.”
Their dad, Derek, didn’t show. That didn’t surprise me.
He’d been out of the picture for years. Erin used to say, “He’s just DNA on a birth certificate,” and change the subject. Later, a social worker pulled me aside.
Ms. Ramirez. Calm, tired eyes, folder in hand.
“We need to talk about placement,” she said. “Derek signed away his parental rights three years ago. There’s no other family listed.
Would you be willing to take the girls?”
I looked at Maya and Lily on a folding chair, ankles touching, shoulders touching, like they were afraid someone might separate them if they didn’t hold on. “Yes,” I said, before my brain could scream about money, space, or how unprepared I was. That’s how I went from single to instant mom.
People think blindness is just the inability to see. In reality, it means you need a system for everything. How many steps from the couch to the bathroom.
Where every chair leg is. What the fridge sounds like at night. When to say, “I’m coming in,” so you don’t scare them.
The first week, Lily smacked her knee on the coffee table and sobbed. “I hate this house,” she cried. “Everything hurts me.”
“I hated it when I moved in, too,” I said, sitting on the floor with her.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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