Seattle to Mozambique

The reason that I am in NY for a week is that my sister-cousin (no I don't mean this in an Appalachian sort of way...she's more like a sister than a cousin is what this is meant to say), her husband and my three year-old niece live in NY.

Three years ago, I was lucky enough to be there for my niece’s birth. I snuggled her soon after and spent a month in a cramped one-bedroom Manhattan apartment helping my cousin feed, burp, and change her. I felt quite close to my tiny niece.

Then I left. I went back to Seattle and had to be satisfied with occasional quick visits, pictures and stories and short phone conversations in which she invariably thought I was my sister. I was therefore scared to find out if she would remember and recognize me when I got in to Manhattan. Unfortunately she was asleep in the bedroom. I visited with my sister-cousin for a while and then quietly lay down on the air mattress beside Isabel's bed.

I woke up to find a little girl (she had still been a baby last time I saw her) staring at me from her bed with her thumb shoved firmly in her mouth. I was worried that she would be frightened by some stranger sleeping on the floor next to her so I quietly said "Isabel do you remember me?" She nodded and blinked her big eyes and continued to stare. "Isabel do you know who I am?" She nodded again. "Isabel do you want to give me a hug?" Then my beautiful little niece nodded vigorously and climbed down, ran to my bed lay her head on my chest and fell asleep again. We have been inseparable ever since.