Chosen Family Theme Analysis

We sit together outside the Fosters Freeze at a sea-green, metal picnic table.

All four of us.

When he started driving a cab, it was only supposed to be a temporary job.

And now years had passed.

Ordinarily he would have looked to see if anyone was entering the intersection.

But not today.

Not now.

Pattie saw grief.

Her eyes focused on a version of her own young self, and so many other children in Vietnam who grew up without parents, some abandoned because of their ethnicity, others because of tragedy.

And her arms reached out wide.

Decisions are made.

I will officially be turned over to my old family friends: the Nguyens.

Temporarily. Just for now.

Is there anything anymore but Now? There was Then. But that world was blown up in an intersection.

I watch in horror.

I know for a fact that the latex lumps will end up tangled in electrical wires.

They will find their way into rivers and streams, and even travel for miles out into oceans, where they will choke fish and endanger marine mammals.

But I cannot find my voice to do anything about these future calamities, because it is someone’s idea of inspirational to release the bobbing weapons.

They don’t know that what I hear is hurtful. Because even as they complain about bad men or lazy kids, the pain for me is seeing how they are so connected.

To one another.

And to their families.

And to the world.

Standing over the skylight, I see that three glass pieces have caught the sun. They send small spots of color down into the room below.

I glance over at Quang-ha. He sees it too. I say:

“It’s like a stained-glass window.”

Mai kicked the acorn and it flew across the sidewalk out onto the street. She watched as a passing car ran right over the still-green nut.

Mai moved to the curb to get a better look.

The acorn hadn’t flattened. It rested on its side in the middle of the road, unharmed.

“Spicy food gives me indigestion.”

He has two dozen packets of sunflower seeds spread out on the counter.

I could grow a field of sunflowers.

And that money would pay for all the college classes he ever wanted to take.

He had not made a single attempt to rescue him.

Dell stared into the eyes of the frightened feline, and something clicked.

He had to take more responsibility for his actions.

He’d start with the cat.

But the important thing is that for today, they are granted, jointly, the guardianship, which is on track to not be temporary, of a person named Willow Chance.

That’s now legal.

I get up and pick a spot off to the side where I know there might be space for something of size to grow. I punch my finger into the dirt to make a small hole, and I drop in the brown nut.

I return to the stairs, and as I sit here in a slice of winter sunlight, two small birds find their way down to the honeysuckle planted next to the bamboo.

They speak to me, not in words, but in action.

They tell me that life goes on.