Connection keeps this blended family together

THE PARENTS: Najah Edmondson, 40, and Brandon Edmondson, 41, of West Oak Lane

THE KIDS: Braylon Danyell, 15; Jalen Samuel-Bernard, 10; Brent Danyell, 10; Brooke Danyelle, 4; Bernard Henry, born Nov. 14, 2020

FAMILY NAMES: In this blended family, “Ms. Najah” and “Mr. Brandon” are the terms of choice for the kids’ non-biological parent. But Brooke coined her own moniker; she calls Najah “Boops.”

It wasn’t the perfect moment, but it was the right one.

Brandon had thought about proposing while he and Najah were in Florida, a work trip on which he planned to tag along. But the night before they left, while they were watching television and Najah was eating chicken, he had the urge to ask.

They’d talked and even joked about marriage — ”You’re wasting my youth,” — Najah sometimes teased. Still, she recalls feeling surprised at Brandon’s impulsive Saturday night proposal.

For him, marriage was a certainty that took root the day they met at a mutual friend’s birthday party in January 2016. Najah recalls being the only woman at the hangout: football on TV, her hair in a no-fuss bun, dressed in “random Sunday jeans.”

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Brandon remembers it differently. “I had this overwhelming feeling that I needed to know her, to know who she was, to be close to her.” He reached out on Facebook; the two began texting, then talking by phone.

“The conversation never got stale,” Najah says. “It was seamless. It was easy. I wasn’t nervous.”

At the time, she was a single mother with a 5-year-old son and felt wary of dating someone with children. Brandon had two boys, and his soon-to-be-ex was pregnant. But parenthood turned out to be a bond. “I could ask him questions, get his opinion on certain things about raising a boy,” Najah says. “He understood.”

They waited a few months to introduce the kids to one another; if they didn’t get along, that would be a deal-breaker. But a playdate at Brandon’s house went smoothly; after an awkward 30 minutes, the boys settled happily into playing video games. Brent and Jalen discovered they were the same age, born just three days apart at Abington Hospital.

“With the kids getting along, that provided some relief that we could move forward with everything,” Brandon says. “For me, there was no other decision to make: This is the person I’m going to be with.”

In February 2018, Brandon and the kids — he shares custody with his ex — moved into Najah’s West Oak Lane home. That was an adjustment for everyone, especially for Najah, whose rigorous housekeeping standards — chairs need to be pushed in all the way, labels on jars should face out, lights off when you leave a room — suddenly became harder to maintain.

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Still, she loved the hubbub, the conversation, the delight of cooking in large portions for grateful eaters. “I always wanted a large family,” she says.

At their 2019 wedding — they opted for a long engagement so they could save money for the occasion — Brooke was the flower girl, Brent and Jalen were ring bearers, and Braylon read from Corinthians, along with Najah’s niece.

A dedication table paid homage to Brandon’s mother, who died in 2005: booklets of poems she’d written, along with candles. The groomsmen wore lapel pins with her photograph on them. “I wanted to make sure that Brandon’s family was represented,” Najah says. “That people who needed to be remembered were remembered.”

Between them, they had four children. Najah said she’d like to have one more.

“I was surprised that she would want to have another kid,” Brandon says, “but I was fine with it. I started babysitting my nieces and nephews when I was 12. I’m uncomfortable when there aren’t kids around.”

Sometime before Valentine’s Day, Najah stopped taking birth control pills. And by early March, Brandon was squinting at the pregnancy test she was about to toss in the trash. “There’s a faint line there,” he insisted.

The following week, the world shut down due to COVID-19. “It was such a weird time,” Brandon recalls. At first, he felt dismissive of the virus; then the NBA canceled its season and the kids’ schools pivoted to virtual instruction.

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In addition to her own job in marketing, Najah became the on-site teacher, unearthing old workbooks for Brent and Braylon, urging the kids to go outside for “recess,” creating her own curriculum when the schools failed to deliver.

Physically, her pregnancy was smooth. The emotional ride was rougher, complicated by grief over her father’s death from pancreatic cancer in early 2020. They talked about naming the baby after her father, though Brandon worried that the name would continue to stir up Najah’s sorrow.

Her plan for the birth was to labor naturally and breastfeed afterward. A week before her due date, her water broke at midnight. By the time the couple drove to Abington Hospital, Najah was already 6 centimeters dilated.

COVID changed the whole birth experience: Najah wore a mask during labor, even through the 20 minutes of pushing it took to bring their son into the world. Afterward, the baby remained in the room for postnatal testing. They settled on the name Bernard.

Parenthood, too, feels different this time around. Unlike his older siblings, who all went to day care as babies, Bernard is home with both parents full-time. “I have a little bit more patience at this point,” Najah says. “But it’s different, having a child at 29 versus 39. My knees hurt. I’m tired.”

She and Brandon talk to the boys about the harsh realities of life, including how to act if they’re ever stopped by a police officer. “We tell them: Just make it home,” Brandon says.

Home is where Brent insists that everyone in the family say good morning and good night to the baby every day. Home is where they gather each evening for an abundant meal, where Braylon is sure to pose a question like, “If you had a coupon that gave you 80% off everything, what would you buy?”

It’s the family Najah fantasized about: chaotic, connected. “I make it a point to have everyone eat dinner at the same time, every night, at the table. It’s our way of finding out what everyone’s doing.”