My New Sister

Posted on April 10, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi

If y’all don’t mind, I’d like to take a moment to introduce you to Andrea Perez, who is today officially my new sister: My mother got the go-ahead to formally adopt Andrea today, and as you might imagine, we’re all very excited about it. It’s a little weird to be getting a new sister at this late date, but on the other hand, it’s also pretty cool. And a lot less weird than it would be if, say, my mom had actually gestated a new kid at age 54. I hear that’s possible these days, but it has so many layers of I don’t want to think about it attached to it, it’s hard to know where to begin. So let’s not. Adoption. It’s a good thing.

Also, now I’m officially a middle child, and I just can’t wait to try out all those “middle child” developmental issues I’ve heard so much about, from books and articles and, lest we forget, Jan Brady. The good news here is that it seems highly unlikely I’ll have very many sibling issues with Andrea, being that she’s nine and I’m about to be 34; and anyway, if I did, it’d look pretty bad on me, wouldn’t it.

This was a fairly difficult adoption process, in part because Andrea is a Mexican citizen and my Mom is a US citizen, living in Mexico (she runs a children’s home there, as part of her religious calling — yes, yes, I know, what happened to me. It’s a long story), so there were a lot hoops to jump through before it finally happened. Nevertheless, mom persevered and here we all are, formally expanding the family by one.

So congratulate me, damn you! I have a new sister. And that’s just neat.