There are three tomboys growing up in our family, brothers. So this friendly company behaves very actively and coherently, sometimes causing me and my husband a lot of problems.
The problems, for the most part, arise after our trio’s endless experiments. We have secured everything we could, but the boys still manage to mess around, then check the tightness of Dad’s machine backpack (60 liters), and the mass of water spread over the apartment (and the ceiling of the neighbors below), then run the rocket on a liquid propellant from soda and vinegar, then wonder why the lamps at 12 volts are not shining brighter when plugged into a socket, and just burn out. This list of surprises can go on for a long time, but I still love my boys very much. I do, and I really want a baby daughter.
My girlfriends and just acquaintances, as if on purpose, almost all gave birth to girls, I’m with the little girls with pleasure, often working as a nanny, if moms need somewhere to go or solve the family business. As a rule, when saying goodbye, I jokingly ask them to give me this little sweet girl, the moms laugh, hug their gold, and they answer: “No, no, this is my girl! I’m not giving her away to anyone!”
And so, one of these moms comes to me. I looked after her Monica two or three times a week. The woman was divorced, but she wasn’t giving up on herself, trying to make a life for herself. Lately she had been importing, and was actively corresponding on the Internet about marriage.
The woman came that time with her daughter and, instead of leaving Monica as usual for three or four hours, asked her to play with my sons (they got along well). The girl’s mother looked somehow mysterious and embarrassed at the same time. We sat down in the kitchen for a cup of coffee, and suddenly she blurted out:
– Look, Monica loves you so much, take her for yourself!
I almost dropped the distillery with hot coffee from surprise.
– What do you mean “take it away”? Are you out of your mind?
– Yes, I am… I found a man who lives in America, wants to marry me, but won’t agree to Monica moving in with him…
– What do you mean, he won’t agree? So he likes you and doesn’t care about your daughter?
– Well, you know, they have different principles, and you always asked for Monica…
– It was all a joke, don’t you understand?
– I have no one else to turn to, and I don’t really want to give my daughter to an orphanage.
This “don’t really want” (in other words, I’ll give her away if you don’t agree, but without much desire), turned everything upside down in my head. I realized that I had already made up my mind, even without talking to my husband beforehand. And he, I’m sure, reacted the same way. Still not giving up, I tried to convince the girl’s mother not to get too hot, to think about it, to find herself another “life partner,” but she was unwavering and determined to move in with her John (as I called the American asshole to myself). As compensation, she offered to move into her two-story house, so as not to squeeze into an apartment with four children. She was even willing to formalize everything – both the abandonment of her daughter and the transfer of real estate.
To say that I was shocked – nothing to say. She told me something else about the money she would be sending for Monica, but I didn’t listen to her, digesting the avalanche of information that had been dumped on my head. As I saw them off, I hugged the girl, and she suddenly asked, as if I could sense things to come:
– Why don’t you ask mom to give me?
I almost cried, pressed her to me, and barely managed to squeeze out:
– I asked, do you want to live with us?
– Yes, you have fun.
In the evening there was a conversation with my husband, he, as I suspected, was in agreement, but this turn, like me, shocked him.
Now we are dealing with the formalities, and there are quite a few to go through, and getting ready to move into the house. The boys, when I told them that Monica would be their little sister, were puzzled at first, but then they started jumping up and down with excitement and shouting that they would have the best sister in the world, and that they wouldn’t let anyone hurt her.
