D suggested “my chosen daughter” --I asked what she is then and she said, 'the one you got!" with a big smile.
D1, D2, S1, S2--what to call one of those "forever ours" kids that just ended up joining our family?
Funny how this goes; I am labelled “my second Mom” by several young adults. Some have a wonderful “first” moms and for one I am the most mom-like figure in their life. I love them all and call them by their names. We think of them and some dear friends as “family by choice”.
DDF- Dear daughter’s Friend.,DSF- Dear Son’s Friend
D’s BFF
My kids called them the “other sibling units”
My family housed a student with the Experiment In International Living for six weeks. At the end, he left . . . then came back three months later, when I was 12 and he 15, and lived in our house for seven years, finishing high school at the school where my mother taught and then going to a nearby public university as a commuter. He married one of my second cousins.
I am never sure what to call him. I usually say “my sort-of brother.” For a while, he was completely identified with my family – his college diploma has my last name on it. But over time he drifted back into a closer relationship with his birth family. His younger brother came and lived with us for college, too, but that was always a close friend relationship, not nearly so sibling-like, and he returned to his country soon after college. Their oldest sister’s husband got a PhD at a different university about 100 miles away, and then had a diplomatic posting within driving distance for a number of years. They made a concerted effort (which we supported) to reel my “brother” back into a relationship with his parents and other siblings. (He was always close to the youngest brother who lived with us after he did.)
His wife, my cousin, drove something of a wedge between us and him. She didn’t like putting out any energy to maintain the relationship – our kids were close in age, my family lived a 90 minute drive from them for over 20 years, and in all that time they visited us once. (We visited them for an afternoon 8-9 times, and also made trips to see their children perform on stage.) They visited my parents every couple of years, sometimes at the same time we did, but my cousin feuded with my mother, so that got strained. their kids definitely felt close to my parents.
My sort-of brother died in 2007, and my parents died a few years ago. I feel reasonably close to two of his children (now 30 and 27), but barely know the third. The two older ones call or e-mail me periodically. My relationship with them is nowhere near as close as my relationship with my “real” nieces and nephew, though.