Choosing our Family

Last week, we welcomed our oldest daughter, Steffi, back home for a visit. We hadn’t seen her in 11 years, since we attended her wedding in Munich, Germany. She hadn’t lived with us for 28 years.

Steffi in front of the Belle Writers Studio

I should explain that Steffi is not our biological daughter. Technically, she was our exchange daughter and lived with us for a year in 1990-91.

During that year and the years that followed, Steffi and our other daughter, Meg-Ann became so much more than what the term “exchange daughter” implies.

There is long history of welcoming foreign students into our family. Our first experience was the year my parents moved from the little bungalow to Wilson House (described in my book, “Living Large in Our Little House”).

While reading the paper one morning, I read about Angela and others needing a home. Angela was from Australia and that captured my imagination.

I begged my parents to allow Angela to live with us and share my big new bedroom. She was one of the best things that happened to our family.

When Dale and I finally bought our first home, I knew I wanted an exchange student to live with us. I was volunteering for the program by that time and Steffi caught my eye. We pulled her from the planned destination of Iowa and the rest, as they say, is history.

Since that time, Steffi and her biological mother, have both visited us several times in Kansas City. This was Steffi’s second visit to Our Little House. We haven’t had the opportunity to physically reunite with Meg-Ann, who lived with us two years after Steffi and is from Australia, but we’ve also maintained close ties with her as well.

It’s the closeness that made me long ago drop the “exchange” part of what they are to us. When we welcomed them into our home and into our lives, it was not just for a year, but for life.

They became our family.

Steffi has a daughter, husband and successful career. But when she came “home” last week, we all fell into our roles so easily – so naturally– once again, it was as if she’d never left.

There was no distance as the term “exchange daughter” implies. We have always been “Mom and Dad” to both Steffi and Meg-Ann, and to us, they have always been simply, our daughters.

Their daughters now call us grandma and grandpa (and Meg-Ann’s daughter even has nicknames for us, Grandpa Pizza and Grandma Harry!) and we couldn’t be happier.

There’s a saying that you cannot choose your family, but we definitely chose ours.

“Family” not only is not bound by those with blood ties, but can transcend borders and continents as well. As an aside, Angela, my sister from so long ago, once worked with Meg-Ann at the same company in Australia.

She also met Steffi when she visited us in Kansas City and attended her 10-year high school reunion and has since met up with Steffi and her daughter once during a visit to Germany. One big, international family!

This time of the year is about family and spending time with them. We’re so grateful we got to spend 5 days with some of ours; we hope you get to do the same.

Will you get to spend time with family this holiday season? Tell us about it by hitting the comment icon to the top right of this post.