I’ve recently had my daughter and her five children move in with us while her husband returns to El Salvador to work on his residency papers. For the last seven years they have lived a mile from us, so my grandchildren are completely comfortable here. Several of my older sons have moved out, now in their late teens and early twenties, and a friend from church sent a crew to renovate an upstairs area that now holds my daughter plus her 12, 10, 8, and 3 year olds and their new baby.

Fortunately her kids didn’t have to change schools or bus routes, their family is intact, and their father has prepared them for over a year that this was coming.

But in many ways this rips the scabs off of my other children’s hearts. In their minds run thoughts of, “If this could happen to them, might it happen to us again?”

My children hate change, any change is frightening, and this particular change seems so unfair. My son-in-law, although illegal, has worked hard for his family these last fourteen years, supporting them all nicely. He left El Salvador during the 1980s when he was being drafted at gunpoint as a teen into an army then fighting a civil war.

My daughter, his wife, is an emotionally strong woman. She’s the only child I have that I’ve never clashed with, never disagreed with, nor had any trouble with in the short amount of time she lived with us, arriving as a pregnant teenager back then. She was sweet and scared, spoke no English, and had been horribly mistreated all her life.

We all immediately adored her. The entire family embraced her and emotionally supported her as she married this man and has stayed married to him all these years.

Now we are again supporting her, knowing she’s heartbroken over their enforced separation, but she’s holding it together stoically as she always does, putting on a brave face for her children.

This will be a tough time for them and I’m glad we can help. It’ll also be tough on the rest of my children who still struggle with their loss and abandonment issues. But they too are enjoying this opportunity to help others.

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