Oh the joy you will know
Today, as we were trying to decide with the nanny which corner would be where Tin would have his time-outs since he has taken to hitting when he’s frustrated or tired, and taken to fits when he doesn’t get what he wants, we settled upon the corner of the bookcase. Might be good to be right there by all those writings about life’s ups and downs.
A friend sent a link to a book recently written by a father who had adopted his first child at 50 years of age and then his second five years later and he wrote about it. Here is an excerpt:
Baby, We Were Meant For Each Other: In Praise of Adoption: By Scott Simon
Adoption is a miracle. I don’t mean just that it’s amazing, terrific, and a wonderful thing to do. I mean that it is, as the dictionary says, “a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of divine agency.”
When we started down the road to adoption in earnest we read many books and most of them about transracial adoptions. A few we read were written from those who were adopted and there was some heavy stuff in them from now 40 year olds given a voice in their adoption and what it meant to them – for some it did not have good or warm fuzzy meaning, instead they felt ripped out of their culture and thrown into foreign territory (and they never quite got over it). We read a book by a Jewish woman who adopted an African American boy and the joy that permeated those pages made the book itself glow with warmth.
A friend adopted biracial children and told me he had read that the girls want to seek their roots when they get older and the boys are just mad, angry at having been abandoned.
I want you to know all of this would give the most steadfast pause but here is the truth of the matter as I see it. One day my little boy is going to want to know why the woman who gave birth to him could give him up if he is so special and for that my answer would most likely be, “You can’t know what that woman’s life was like until you’ve walked a mile in her shoes. It would be better to think that the woman who gave you life loved you enough to know you would have the life you deserved with parents who had the capacity and desire to raise you to be the man you are today.” And for that I am hoping he is grateful.
Because we sure are grateful for him, and just like my mother told me how she thanked god every day for me, even with having to find a corner where Tin can have a time-out being top of mind today, today is just another day that I thank god for him.