Household Grows by Leaps and Bounds as 8 Orphans Join Mix

When the day arrived, Rose Malavolti came to court surrounded by children. They were there to take her name. She was there to seal the promise she had made to their dying mother.

The girls wore shiny Mary Jane shoes, the boys navy blue blazers. They giggled, they peeked into a new video camera, they nudged one another as they waited on the long bench.

Rose wiped dirt smudges from their cheeks. Her husband, Al, whispered to the little ones. Then they led the eight brothers and sisters into Room 216 to meet the judge.

Nine months had passed since the Malavoltis, already the parents of four, had opened their home and hearts to eight more. Now the last adoptions were about to be completed.

The children scrambled to seats in the jury box as attorneys questioned the couple: Was their home large enough? Would they be able to provide for them? Were they sure, truly sure, they wanted to go through with their plan?

Yes, yes, of course, yes. Rose and Al Malavolti had decided all this last January when they traveled to a hospital room in Laredo, Texas, to meet the children’s mother, Blanca Enriquez, who was dying of stomach cancer.

Blanca’s last wish had been that her children grow up together. Rose and Al, strangers to her, had vowed they would.

And when a sobbing Blanca asked just one question--”Will you love my children?”--Rose and Al, with tears in their eyes, promised they would.

They have kept their word.

These months have been chaotic at times, and how could they not be, coordinating 12 baths or showers a day, cooking for 12, carpooling to four schools, then collapsing in bed at night, only to start all over hours later.

But on this gusty November day, Rose and Al came to ask a judge to declare them family, though it was clear to them they already were.

“Decisions are commitments of the heart,” Rose said with a calm smile. “No court can tell the heart what to say.”

The judge granted the couple’s petition to adopt the six youngest children--the older two had already completed the process--and all eight took the Malavolti name.

“Thank you!” the children, ages 2 to 17, chanted in unison, their high-pitched chorus echoing into the hallway.

“You have my prayers,” the judge told the couple.

“We need them,” Rose replied softly. “We need them.”

*

There are no parenting manuals, no how-to videos to guide Rose and Al in building their new family.

In the world of TV sitcoms, instant families are predictable: Mom and Dad dispense wise and witty advice, sibling spats are good-natured and every problem is solved with a smile in a half-hour.

Reality, of course, is a lot messier. Rose and Al know that. So do their two biological children still at home, who now have a new set of siblings sharing their rooms, their lives--and their parents.

Sometimes it all seems a bit overwhelming. Rose knows that too.

“I think it’s truly a mixture of absolute joy of being a parent and days when you feel like you’ve been through Dante’s Inferno,” she says, her words muffled by the squeals of children running through the living room.

Rose, 44, and Al, 47, had been trying to adopt for years, but nothing could have prepared them for those first months.

Their new kids, who had scraped by with their mother on welfare, were way behind in school. Most had never seen a dentist. The oldest, Eli, 17, hadn’t owned glasses in almost eight years, and could hardly see. John Paul, 5, couldn’t identify his nose or knees.

Tutors, dentists and doctors volunteered their services, but Rose and Al needed more. So they came up with a master plan for everyday life: They staggered bedtimes and bathing times by age, scheduled some grocery shopping for after 9 p.m., gave up hobbies, postponed household chores.

Thirty loads of laundry a week. Five hours of homework each night. Then, in the morning, a dozen wake-up calls, teeth-brushings, cereal and everyone--including Mom and Dad--is out the door by 7:40 a.m.

That’s the easy part.

The hard part? The emotional crises Rose and Al faced instilling their values and expectations into children starting over with new parents in a new home in a new city.

Nowhere has that adjustment been tougher than with Eli (pronounced El-ee).

For weeks, the 17-year-old wouldn’t eat with the family. He ran up a $330 phone bill calling friends and relatives in Texas. He chafed at being told he couldn’t watch slasher movies on TV.

By summer, though, he had settled in, and after a family gathering for Rose’s sister’s wedding, he quietly confided to Rose, “This is the first day I have not felt any pain.”

He joined his school’s football team, earned Bs and Cs--”no small feat,” Rose proudly tells him--and made friends. But the turmoil has not subsided and Eli has twice threatened to run away.

One confrontation took place when Rose was driving him to confirmation classes.

“I’ll never be your son,” Rose says Eli told her. “You’ll never love me.”

“I stopped the car in the middle of the street,” she recalls in a dramatic whisper, “swung my legs around and said, ‘You are my son. . . . I love you! This is a commitment I have made. You have my time, my energy, every part of my being.’ ”

The transition also has been rocky for Catherine, who at 14 had been a substitute mother during Blanca’s dying days. She has learned that it’s no longer her job to calm her crying baby sisters or discipline her younger siblings.

In becoming a child again, she has had to learn, too, how to accept parents.

For months, Catherine shied away from embracing Rose and Al, though she often asked to be hugged. The day she took their name, she wrapped her arms around both of them.

The six youngest children have settled in more easily: They had no problem calling Rose and Al “Mom” and “Dad,” saying, “I love you,” or seeking them out to dry their tears.

*

In just nine months, Rose and Al already have a mental montage of Kodak moments: Chopping down their own Christmas tree. Singing in church together. Camping, watching sunsets and sea gulls in the Michigan dunes. Hearing a tap at their bedroom door at 3 a.m., then seeing Teresa, 2, and Jackie, 4, standing there, hand in hand, waving silently. Watching John Paul, 5, learn the alphabet.

Rose, an educator for 21 years, has worked hard, too, to boost the children’s skills. During the summer, she tutored them with an Amish phonics and reading program.

*

Not all their lessons have come from books. Some have been about right and wrong.

Luke, 8, has heard his share of those lectures. Rose and Al knew he would be a handful early on when a police cruiser rolled up to the door. Yep, the little boy confessed with a gleam in his eye, he had called 911, just to be sure the emergency service worked.

Or consider a recent 24 hours in his young life, as Rose details it with mock exasperation: two demerits and a detention at school, forgetting his book bag, cutting his turtleneck shirt with scissors.

Rose, who teaches religion at Boylan Catholic High School, and Al, a former teacher who now is an engineer at Sundstrand Corp., are wise in the ways of children. Married for 24 years, they have taught hundreds over the years, welcomed troubled teens into their home, been foster parents and guided their own four.

But eight extra kids in one swoop? Marathon parenting among mountains of cereal boxes, through one crisis after another, from soothing a bee sting to calming a child after a nightmare?

Folks still ask the couple how--and why--they did it, but they’ve had no regrets since the day they met Blanca and her children.

Rose and Al were already trying to adopt three Mexican siblings when they heard from their translator about Blanca’s plea to keep her family intact after her death.

A meeting was arranged in Texas. Within two days, papers were signed, lives were changed. And Blanca, who was just 38, died knowing her eight youngest children would be together.

Blanca’s oldest, Erica, 20, was already married with a baby, living in Wisconsin. Her brothers and sisters occasionally see her.

There has been no word from two fathers who are known; they didn’t respond to notifications of the adoption hearing.

As that day drew near, Rose and Al made one request of the children: Choose middle names. They gave them books about saints for inspiration.

But most of the kids wanted new first names too. So welcome Teresa, 2; Jackie, 4; John Paul, 5; Luke, 8; Ann, 9; Elizabeth, 10; Catherine, 14; and Eli, 17.

Luke, by the way, was Edgar before, but now shares his name with his celluloid hero, Luke Skywalker of “Star Wars.”

Rose chose Teresa’s name, after a favorite saint.

The eight new family members have four other siblings, the Malavoltis’ biological children. Noah, 22, and Aaron, 19, do not live at home, but Rachel, 17, does, and she rises early each morning to dress her baby sisters.

*

Then there’s Gabriel, 9, who probably has sacrificed most in this family merger. There are no more nights alone with Mom and Dad, no three-way card games. He now has two roommates.

When Rose began noticing months ago that Gabriel was moping, they went out one Saturday for a mother-son breakfast, and, with uncanny maturity, he assessed the situation.

He cocked his mop-top head, clasped his hands on the restaurant table and somberly told his mother: “This is a wonderful, honorable thing . . . but it would have been better if you had waited until I was older and more mature. I could have adjusted better.”

Yes, Gabriel can seem wise beyond his years, but sometimes a boy is still a boy. And this boy’s one Christmas wish was to have his own room--just like before.

It didn’t happen, but Rose takes heart in many ‘miracles,’ as she calls the offerings that have poured in: An Arkansas family sends its monthly tithe to them. A couple delivered an 80-pound box of detergent. And there was the stocky truck driver who dropped off clothes and toys, then mumbled shyly that he was an orphan from Laredo.

Money is tight, but everything has come together, just as Al predicted that first Sunday in March when they attended church, everyone on their best behavior.

Then and there, he told Rose things would be fine.

“It’s been work,” he says, “but it has worked. It really has.”

*

Nearly a year has passed since Blanca’s children stood at her grave.

But she remains part of their lives.

One day, Rose recalls, she was driving Jackie in the car and as they passed a cemetery, the 4-year-old said: “My mom there.” Rose was amazed. She turned to her new daughter and said: “Your mom died and went to heaven, but God loved you so much he gave you a second mother.”

Then there was the day Luke was misbehaving and knew he was about to be punished.

“I want my real mother,” he whined.

Rose saw it as an Oscar-caliber performance. She responded in kind.

She reminded him how Blanca had defied doctors’ expectations, enduring unendurable pain until God answered her prayers for a family for her children.

“Your mom’s praying her socks off in heaven that this will work out,” she said. “If your mother could grab an angel, lightning bolts would be flashing around your feet!”

By then, the children had gathered around laughing.

*

There are somber moments too. On Sundays, Rose and Al get out notebook paper and everyone takes turns naming things they are thankful for--chicken noodle soup, ice cream, brothers and sisters.

Then comes the prayer list. Names come and go, but there’s one constant: Blanca’s soul.

Rose and Al say Blanca is never far from their minds, nor is that January day when she wrapped her frail fingers in theirs, asking them to do nothing but love her children.

“It’s not something you easily forget,” Al says. “We’re so much a part of her dying. . . . It was a tremendous trust. It was a tremendous gift. It’s like living up to Blanca’s expectations.”

Rose agrees.

“I know Blanca’s praying for us,” she says. “She wants her children to grow in grace and wisdom. Surely she knows we’re trying as hard as we can. I believe she’s rooting for us.”

Funds can be donated to the Malavolti family, care of Members Alliance Credit Union, 2550 South Alpine Road, Rockford, Ill. 61108-7890.