‘Will You Love My Children?’ As A Mother Lies Dying, She Makes The Hardest Decision She’s Ever Made - To Allow Strangers To Adopt Her 8 Children.

When the moment came, Rose Malavolti crouched beside the dying woman, clutched the woman’s wrist, searched her eyes and waited for the words, mother to mother.

They were strangers, these two women. They had never shared a meal, never seen each other outside the crowded hospital room, never even spoken to one another in the same language. They had met just one day earlier when Rose flew to Laredo, Texas, from her Illinois home.

Now, it was time for the question.

Blanca Enriquez was propped up in her bed, her face weary, her bony frame weakened by cancer.

In her final months, she had made a request - actually, it was more of a plea. She wanted her eight children to remain together after her death. And here were Rose Malavolti and her husband, Al, who had come more than 1,000 miles, eager to adopt them.

But first, the dying mother, just 38 years old, had to know one thing. She asked the question in Spanish, her voice breaking:

“Will you love my children?”

She wanted her youngest eight children to grow up together, to share their lives as one family, from 19-month-old Kenya to 17-year-old Eric.

It was a mother’s wish, confided to another mother, who set out to make it happen.

The Malavolti’s heard of Blanca through their efforts to adopt three Mexican siblings. They hired Margaret Teran to translate and help with the documents and Teran’s son happened to be a friend of Blanca’s.

During one of their phone conversations Margaret Teran asked Rose to pray for Blanca’s children, who soon would be motherless.

“We’ll take them,” Rose replied.

” ‘I said, ‘You haven’t even spoken to your husband!”’ Mrs. Teran recalls.

“She said, “From the time my husband and I got married, God has been preparing us just for this.’ “

In January, the Malavoltis, accompanied by their two youngest children, arrived in Laredo to meet Blanca’s three sons and six daughters, including 19-year-old Erica, a new mother herself, who had temporarily left her husband behind in Wisconsin to help out.

The couple was immediately touched by what they witnessed that first day.

They saw Edgar, 7, impish with his gap-toothed smile, scurry to pick up smaller siblings who had tumbled down the stairs. They saw Juan Pablo, 5, unwrap a lollipop but hand it over to a sister who enviously eyed it. And they saw Jacqueline, 3, tenderly pat the back of little Kenya as she cried.

Blanca Enriquez was an illegal alien who had no money or job, but she had a legacy: her children. And with so little, she had done so much to instill in them love for one another.

“They were normal, healthy, happy kids. I knew what would happen in that situation if they had to split up,” Al says. “I knew how much more we had to offer them than that.”

But blood ties stirred some powerful emotions the next day.

Some of Blanca’s brothers and sisters wanted the children to remain in Texas, though no one could afford to care for the entire brood.

Anna Laura Cavazos Ramirez, an attorney who provided legal help, sat in Blanca’s hospital room for four hours as the dying woman argued - in person and by phone - with her oldest son, who couldn’t decide about the move, and with her siblings and in-laws.

“She kept saying, ‘These are my children. This is my decision. You are not going to provide for them the life I’d like them to have,’ ” Cavazos Ramirez remembers. “She was crying through the whole thing. I had to step out. It was just the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Finally, with Blanca unwavering, her family agreed.

Then Cavazos Ramirez presented Blanca papers to relinquish custody of her children, carefully explaining the documents, word by word. The exhausted mother listened, closing her eyes occasionally but, as each line was read, she acknowledged that, yes, she understood.

By then, 17 people - family, friends, hospital workers and the Malavoltis - had packed the room. All were in tears, including the notary public.

With pen in hand, Blanca paused to ask a question.

A nervous Teran translated for the Malavoltis, eager to capture every nuance of a moment that signaled the end of one family and the beginning of another.

“Vas a querer a mis hijos?” Blanca asked. Teran repeated in English: “Will you love my children?”

“They’re all I’ve ever had in my life,” she said. “They’re all that matters to me.”

“I bent down and held her hand,” Rose recalls. “I said, ‘All children are precious in God’s eyes and we will do our best to love them. Children are precious to us as well.’ “

Then, sobbing, Blanca scrawled her signature.

She died a month later, on Feb. 12.

One month after that, Mrs. Cavazos Ramirez went to court, seeking permission for the Malavoltis to take the children to Illinois, pending formal adoption. A judge visited with the children and Wendy, asked the attorney questions, then gave his approval.

On the children’s last day in Texas, Wendy asked to visit her mother’s grave. There, she grabbed a clump of dirt with a pebble in it and stuffed it in her pocket.

“The little ones really didn’t understand,” Esther says. “The older ones, they looked relieved. It was like, ‘OK, mom. We’re doing what you said you want us to do.’ They didn’t cry. There was a smile behind the sadness. It was like, ‘This is for you.’ “

In this far northern Illinois city, a quaint Dutch colonial sign at the end of a cul-de-sac announces the frame house Al Malavolti built himself.

It’s an inviting place: A white swing sways on the front porch, a stuffed bear reading a magazine rocks on a hallway chair, and a trampoline sits out back.

The Malavoltis have the old-shoe comfort of a couple who soon will celebrate their 24th anniversary: They quote each other, they know each other’s foibles, they tickle each other’s funny bones.

At 46, Al, an engineer, is soft-spoken and wiry with an unflappable demeanor, an easy smile that widens beneath aviator eyeglasses and a flannel-shirted, outdoorsy look that befits a man with a forestry degree and a carpenter’s skills.

At 43, Rose, with her pixie cut and tiny pearl earrings, is sentimental but self-deprecating, a born storyteller who does some public speaking about faith, and animatedly quotes everyone from Albert Schweitzer to Mother Teresa to her children, tossing out adages that seem destined to be needlepointed.

“When you’re green, you grow. When you’re ripe, you rot,” says Rose, who makes it clear which category is for her.

“There are people who think we’re crazy and they jokingly say it, but halfheartedly mean it,” Al says. “People can’t see how we do it.”

It just takes a lot of patience, you see.

The freshly minted family sits in two full church pews, consumes up to 12 gallons of milk and washes 36 loads of laundry a week, and travels in a 15-seater 1981 Ford van bought from a church at almost a giveaway price.

They’ve received many donations, too: a hot-water heater from Al’s boss at Sundstrand Corp., a washer and dryer from a neighbor, two freezers, even a side of beef. One adoptive mother with 10 kids sent a $165 check along with some advice: “The one thing I learned with children is pray, pray, pray.”

She also offered a household hint: “Buy paper plates and cups. It will keep you sane.”

In the meantime, the new members of this ready-made family continue to adjust. In Texas, Wendy would awake at 5 a.m., check the weather reports and make sure her brothers and sisters were dressed properly. Here, Rose gently told her, she could stop being a mother - and start being a 14-year-old.

Every Sunday night, this new family has a prayer service where they talk about what they are grateful for. And always, every Sunday, without fail, they say a prayer for Blanca, who loved her children enough to entrust them to two big-hearted strangers.