Family Ties

It's 7:45pm and I am getting ready to go to bed. I am totally exhausted after a week of CJ reverting back to his newborn days when he has to eat every one and a half to two hours the entire night. Since he usually takes a morning nap, I would usually nap with him in this case, but my sisters have been going through a very difficult situation with their mom in Honduras so I have been spending all day at Mom's house with them, just trying to be supportive and show them how much I love them. Mom often says that emotional exhaustion is worse than actual physical exhaustion, and right now I have both. I'm going on very little real sleep and some pretty heavy emotional stuff with my sisters, Deysi, Saray and Marcela. I cannot imagine, though, the extent of their exhaustion, since it is their mother that is about to undergo a serious and difficult surgery thousands of miles away. My emotions are for their sake. I hate to see them going through such a hard time and to see the pain in their faces makes me want to cry myself. Mom said in her blog that times like this really help us to re-learn the meaning of family. She's right. Many people ask if we remain close after we grow up (as if adoption bonds terminate at age eighteen). I think that if people could see us in a situation like this they would see the utter love we have for one another. No, it's not my biological mother who had a stroke, but it is my sisters' mother, and that's enough for me to drop what I'm doing and make sure they know I'm here for them. Yes, we stay close even though we're grown up. We are a family and family ties are forever binding, through good and bad, happy and sad.