Bana's house

When I had started searching for Kassiah’s dayhome, one of my main questions was ‘will you be the only one taking care of my child?’ (with the hope that the answer would be ‘yes’).  As a parent who happens to be a social worker, my biggest fear about dayhomes is that it involves my child receiving care ‘behind closed doors’ and one of the risks is that there could be friends or family members in the home who I wouldn’t want around my child.  Sure enough, when I first met Shabana (or “Bana” as the kids affectionately call her), she initially laughed when I asked if her family helps with the dayhome, explaining that her husband works full-time and her kids are young adults who have busy lives of their own.  At that time, the answer came as quite a relief to me, since I didn’t know much about them and was happy to leave it at that.  However, as the months have passed, Bana and I have both proved ourselves wrong!

At first, I noticed that Bana’s husband seemed to get pretty excited if he made it home from work before Kassiah had left – offering her a gentle wave and sometimes an Indian sweet or a cookie in exchange for a smile.  Some days when I rang the doorbell expecting to see Bana, her daughter Sarah would emerge instead with Kassiah happily in her arms.  Bana assured me that Kassiah and Sarah were becoming ‘best friends’.  I thought that was pretty sweet, but can’t say I was too surprised since I like to think our ‘Chubz’ is ridiculously cute and Sarah seems drawn to kids.  But the next step did surprise me a bit: eventually even Bana’s grown son, Bilal, became one of Kassiah’s many ‘best-friends’.  Bilal has been home a lot lately, and I think all of his time around Kassiah has made him quite fond of her…and vice versa.  And lastly – Bana’s sister has been in town for a couple of months…and sure enough…guess who became Kassiah’s latest ‘best-friend’?  She loves our little Kassiah so very much that she even sewed her a beautiful dress for her Christmas gift.  It's a beautiful pink and white lace dress with each detail sewn in with the same love that the family gives our little Kassiah each day.

It really seems too good to be true, that Bana’s dayhome happens to literally be ‘around the corner’ from us.  And to top it all off, Bana is not only from Karachi, Pakistan – where Ivan’s and my parents grew up…but even from the same ‘Hussain-D’Silva town’.  This means that Kassiah gets to enjoy the luxury of some Pakistani cooking sometimes – like ‘Kichari’ (dal & rice) for lunch with a doggy bag saved for dinner…or homemade paratha for breakfast.  And yet another reason why I love Bana’s dayhome is that, unlike most dayhomes, she is not filled to the brim with kids.  Regulated dayhomes are allowed 6 full-time kids total and Bana currently has 2 part-time girls and 2 part-time boys in addition to Kassiah.  Thursdays are her ‘full-house’ days when all the kids are there…but otherwise she usually has three, which makes it more manageable for her, and more suitable for an affectionate baby like Kassiah who loves her time with Bana.  On Wednesdays – Kassiah even gets VIP treatment from Bana and the whole family since she is the only one there!  I once called to let Bana know Kassiah was sick on a Wednesday, thinking she would be relieved for a rare, but well-deserved, day off – but she actually sounded disappointed like she and her family were going to miss her : )

I must say that this process of having Kassiah truly become part of Bana’s family has been a wonderfully pleasant surprise.  Ivan and I don’t have to deal with the additional stress of having to worry what Kassiah’s days are like – since we are sure they are filled with love and good care.  When I give Bana’s family some small Christmas gifts as a thank you for everything they do, I’ll also share a copy of this blog so they know just how much we appreciate what they do for Kassiah each day.  And I have a feeling that even when Kassiah outgrows her dayhome and transitions into school in a few years, we will still make the short trip around the corner to visit her second family!