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Quote by Allene vanOirschot

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Daddy's Little Girl: A Father's Prayer

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Allene vanOirschot

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“A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It’s a terribly vulnerable survival unit. I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family. They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty or how handsome it was. Wouldn’t you have loved to be that baby?”

FamilySurvivalBabiesNigeriaExtended FamilyFamily Unit
Book:A Man Without a Country
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“On November 26, 2003, nine months after my mother died, you gave birth to Max, a little boy with an American name, a little boy I didn’t think we could handle and had said maybe we should consider not having, a little boy who looked up at me with almond eyes, who smiled my smile. Max was a surprise. Nearly nine years after our youngest daughter had been born, long after we said we were done having children, long after I had tried my hand at being a father to a son and was beginning to feel I had failed, out of the blue, cloudless sky a little boy traveled into our life on the wings of my mother’s death. In 2003, I realized I had never written you a love song.”

LovePoetryFamilyMemoirHmong
Book:The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father
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