The Arrival of an Alien: Learning to Love the Family You Hate (398 hits)
As a boy, I never believed in those big-headed aliens portrayed in cartoons and movies. Even though I thought Santa Claus real, and I couldn’t wait for my guy to slide down the chimney, I felt Martians were fiction dreamed up by some drunk with a pen. But then, on a warm afternoon, when I was four years old, my parents brought one of those wild things home.
At age three, Andre stood in our house wearing a blue shirt and holding a little yellow suitcase. Obviously, he wasn’t a being from another planet, but the kid was alien to me. I thought him to be small and weird. When I spoke, he’d tuck in his arms and look at the floor like a Jesus himself lying was down there.
For months my folks had battled the courts to adopt Andre. According to the social worker, there was evidence that he was being abused, and my parents felt like the system wasn’t moving fast enough to get him out. But finally the papers were signed. And the alien, the one like those I’d seen in the movies, became part of our family.
