Goggy Coffee

BIG News Around Here

2011-04-01T11:29:00.004-05:00

I am now the proud Daddy of FOUR children!

Our daughter was born Sunday at 36 weeks gestation, her birthmom picked us out of 6 profiles the next morning, and she came home Wednesday!

Introducing...

Jasmine Faith

March 27, 2011

5 lbs. 15 oz. 18 inches

You can see more pictures and read about our whirlwind 48 hours to bringing our daughter home, at my wife's blog: http://www.adoptioncreatesfamilies.blogspot.com/ We are all so very happy to have our family completed by this wonderful surprise!

The Lucky Ones

2011-03-18T05:44:00.002-05:00

When attending social events with strangers or casual acquaintances, Laurie and I are often asked for intimate details about our children’s adoption stories. We’re reluctant to share such details, not because we’re private people (readers of our blogs, testify!) but because we view these details as the children’s stories. In other words, since it’s not our story to tell, we don’t tell it.

Through experience, Laurie and I’ve found a comfortable middle ground where we share our journey through fostering and adopting, thus limiting as much background of their birth families as possible. Nevertheless, what little we share includes some unpleasant facts, as a certain amount of grief, loss, and trauma accompanies every foster or adoption story. These unpleasant facts inevitably inspire the listeners to respond, “Those children are so lucky to have you.”

While I’m fine with saying “Thank you” and hoping to move on to a new topic as soon as possible, Laurie takes every opportunity to educate people. “We feel we’re lucky to have them,” she says. Then our audience nods their head, as if we gave them the response they expected. It feels to me like the entire conversation was part of a prearranged script, with Laurie and I reading the roles of “Saint” and our audience reading the role of “Inspired Listener.”

It’s an awkward statement – one that would seem ridiculous if the roles were reversed. Were a biological parent to be going on about their child’s grades or soccer team, it would never occur to us to say, “Your kids are lucky to have been born to you.” Furthermore, calling our kids lucky might seem more genuine to me if it came from an informed and credible source. At a recent parent/teacher conference, Isaac’s kindergarten teacher told Laurie, “Isaac really lucky to have you guys for parents. I can tell you guys are really involved with him.” Since she’s intimately acquainted with Isaac on a daily basis, her compliment was sincere.

But strangers have no idea if the kids are lucky to have us for parents or if we’re lucky to have them for children. It might not feel so forced from strangers if I agreed that the children were lucky to have us. The last time we acted out the screenplay was at a dinner party a few weeks ago. We were late getting out of the house, and in the car on the way to the babysitter’s house the kids were especially rowdy. The catalyst involved a toy laptop designed for children younger than our oldest, older than the youngest, and for boys the same as age as our daughter. Long story short, each of them was claiming the toy.

After what seemed like an eternity of arguing, crying, and bad attitudes, and several warnings and threats from their mother and me, I commandeered the toy and announced, “That’s it! If I hear anyone else say another word, or if anyone even looks at their brother or sister, they’re gonna be sorry.” There was a sad silence that lasted almost two minutes before one of them started fussing about something else. To avoid another outburst, I kept my mouth shut.

Later at the party, we met an older couple and started talking about the kids. Laurie whipped out the little photo album she keeps in her purse and gave the couple a short history of the last few years. Each time she turned a page, the wife touched her cheek and said, “Oh they’re precious!” Then she put her hand on Laurie’s knee and said, “They’re so lucky to have you guys as parents.” Laurie had been going on and on about the kids for at least ten minutes, so anyone listening could tell how proud we were of our kids. However, I couldn’t stop thinking about the incident back in the van.

Announcing that the children were forbidden from speaking to each other was the kind of statement an evil supervillain announces right before he casts the hero into a pool of angry sharks, but not something a grateful father says to the children he loves. After the party, we picked up the kids and on the way home, Isaac said, “Dad, you can let Vivi or J play with the laptop.” He handed Vivi the toy and she responded, “Thank you, Isaac. Look, Dad, I play so nice.” Then J said, “Fifi (Vivi), I play next my turn, please?”

Were I a suspicious father, I would have wondered if the kids had planned this conversation with the sole intention of making me feel like a heel. It just seemed too much – the kindness, the politeness. Where was this coming from? I gave Laurie a “What the?” look, and she smiled and hugged my arm. “They’re good kids,” she said. And I had no choice but to admit that I’m lucky to have such good kids.

This story is also posted at www.wearegoodkin.com.

Token Diversity Family

2011-02-22T18:22:00.002-06:00

Shortly after Isaac came home, a friend – a white friend – said to us, “This is great! Our child doesn’t have any black friends.” Immediately, the phrase ‘token black child’ rang in my ears. I was struck by visions of social events in which people fixated on what made our family stand out. As a multiracial family, Laurie and I both recognize that we stand out. In almost any crowd, we are treated like a novelty.

We know that as the parents of these kids we have signed up for a lifetime of explaining and educating people, and we try to approach new people with optimism, and hope they will use discretion and tact when asking questions or making comments. We’ve learned that inappropriate questions and comments typically catch us off guard because they can come at anytime and from anyone – strangers in the grocery store, acquaintances, and friends and family with whom we thought we’d be safe.

We recognize the importance of giving people the benefit of the doubt but only up to a certain point. Often times, the oddest comments have come from people who seemed uncomfortable and didn’t know what to say. When someone at work found out I adopted my son, he offered that his Japanese teacher had adopted a newborn but the birth father was contesting the adoption. I failed to see the relevance, so all I could think of to respond was “Okay.”

To be honest, I had a really hard time in the beginning with all the blatant staring and attention. I had to remind myself that if I saw a white man chasing a small black child through a crowded restaurant who was crying and screaming “I want my Mommy!” I’d stare too. But as his parent, the staring made me want to claim him all the more. “I love you, Son” or “Hold Daddy’s hand,” I’d announce. My wife and I don’t suffer the same kind of inappropriate conversations. My lot is to endure blunt questions like “Why did you adopt? Do you shoot blanks, or something?” and “Is your wife barren?” A lady once asked me, “Do you wear boxers or briefs? I’ve heard briefs can really mess up your count.”

Meanwhile Laurie gets asked, “How much did it cost?” and “What if their ‘real’ mother comes back for them?” Then, after she discretely avoids answering the questions, someone says, “I’d love to adopt. I don’t think I can handle another pregnancy.” Then Laurie gets to listen as the group discusses baby showers, breast feeding, and many other aspects of parenting we’ve yet to experience.

While Laurie and I prefer to be accepted as normal parents, as time has passed, we’ve accepted the attention that comes with having such an interesting family. At parties, hosts who know our kids nonchalantly introduce us, adding, “They have the cutest family,” ultimately forcing us to whip out pictures of the kids. For a while, it felt like we were being labeled; the couple who just got back from a trip, the couple who sells real estate together, and us, the couple who adopted. Inevitably, we became the center of attention, and I felt the eyes of the entire room on us as we talked about the same mundane things everyone else’s kids do.

Just a few weeks ago, Laurie and I attended a wedding shower where we knew only the groom and his immediate family. The mother has known Laurie for years and took great pride in introducing us to the other guests. “Come on, Laurie,” she said to a group of couples, “I know you keep a little photo album in your purse. Let’s see those little darlings.” It’s hard to feign modesty when you keep a small photo album handy for just such an occasion. But the guests genuinely perked up with interest: “Oh. My. Gosh.” “Aren’t they precious?” “You all are just a bunch of saints. Saint Billy and Saint Laurie.”

It might have been too over the top, but this was nothing we haven’t heard before, even the “Saint” part. Years ago, we might have felt awkward pretending to be humble. We’d feebly thank them, but we usually made them feel embarrassed rather than encouraging. But I’d like to think we’ve grown past that, to a point where I can humbly accept their adulations, where I can reach out and hold Laurie’s hand, put my other hand on my heart, nod my head, and say, “You’re right. We are terrific people.”

Pulling Back in Open Adoption

2011-02-07T19:44:00.004-06:00

A few years ago, Laurie and I met a couple who said that they had “adopted” their birthmother when they adopted their child. She had become a member of their family, spending the night on holidays, even baby-sitting the child.

In foster-parent training, Laurie and I learned that, when you adopt from foster care, birth families rarely maintain an open relationship. When preparing to adopt our second child, as a newborn, our agency taught us about the benefits of contact to everyone involved.

When we met M, we loved her immediately. She relaxed us with her sense of humor, and thrilled us when she told us that the baby in her tummy was ours. “I want you to be in the delivery room with her when she’s born,” she said to us. “I want her Mom and Dad to name her.”

Our relationship blossomed over the first year. After we brought Vivi home, we met with M every few months. In between visits, we exchanged phone calls, e-mails, and texts. We even spoke in training sessions together, to couples interested in adoption. Our agency told us that hearing our story alongside M’s gave new families a good perspective on open adoption.

Then, some time after Vivi’s second birthday, that relationship changed. As M became comfortable with us during our visits, she began to make more personal remarks, including some that contradicted what she had told us earlier about her pregnancy. Eventually, Laurie called our agency to explain the situation, and we had to involve our lawyer to confirm that the adoption was unassailable.

While our worst fears of something disrupting our family settled down, our hurt at M’s actions took a while to process. We never considered ending the relationship—M is our daughter’s birthmother, and, because of that, she is our family, too—but we decided we needed to pull back a little. The summer passed, and we remained out of contact with M.

One night Laurie was on the computer when she received an instant message from M. It read, “I’m so sorry for everything that happened.” Laurie responded that we were hurt by the events that had transpired, and that we had needed some time to work through it. M's response was quick, “Well, I hope you all have a good life. Take care.”

We sensed that M was reacting this way to keep herself at a distance, should we decide to break off contact, so we quickly explained that, while we were disappointed, she was not going to get rid of us that easily. She was family. M said she couldn’t believe that we still wanted to maintain a relationship. Her family had been telling her that one day we would stop all correspondence, and she thought this was it.

The next time we met, we told M that family members have fights and disagreements, but that doesn’t mean they never speak to each other again. These days, we visit less frequently, but continue to send photos almost monthly. Through this experience, Laurie and I learned that an open adoption is an evolving relationship, requiring patience, love, acceptance, boundaries, and communication.

When I think about the couple who “adopted” their birthmother, I wonder whether we missed an opportunity. They said they thought they would receive one addition to the family but, to their delight, they got a second. I don’t see M that way. Laurie and I hoped for a child, and we got one, with Vivi. The bonus is that we have one more person in our life who cares deeply about her.

This article can also be read at http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/.

Call Him Mommy

2011-02-07T19:35:00.004-06:00

Once Isaac reached three years old, I suddenly became aware of my language and temper. I remember vividly the day he said his first curse word. I was sitting on the couch watching the news while Isaac played at my feet and Laurie prepared dinner. She called out from the kitchen, “Honey, we don’t have enough potatoes for everyone.”

Isaac looked at me and said, “Dammit, we need to get some more.”

Laurie leaned her head around the corner, and we shared a look that said, “Did I hear that correctly? Did he just say that?” She came into the living room and kneeled on the floor beside him. “Isaac, what did you say?”

He responded, “We need to get some more.”

“No, but what did you say before that?”

He said nothing, just gave her a confused look. We waited for him to come up with an answer, but he clearly had no idea what he said.

“Do you think he really said it?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Do you?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe he said, ‘Dang it.’ We say that all the time.”

Laurie rolled her eyes. “You know he didn’t say ‘Dang it.’ You say the other thing sometimes.”

“No I don’t.”

“You don’t say it all the time. But I’ve heard you say it once or twice.”

Isaac chimed in. “Are you guys fighting?” His voice was stern and authoritative—a dead-on impersonation of his mother and me.

“No, Isaac,” his mother and I said in unison.

We waited until after we put him to bed to continue the conversation. Laurie told me I needed to watch what I said around him. I said I’d already tried my hardest to phase out everything but “shoot” and “fiddlesticks” but sometimes those just didn’t do the job. I suggested he might have heard it anywhere—my parents, someone in Bible study, that kid at the playground with the Marilyn Manson T-shirt. I reminded her that he had recently learned how to operate the remote control. “Maybe he changed the channel when we weren’t in the room and heard it then.” Laurie didn’t buy any of it.

I couldn’t help but feel a little on the spot. We didn’t discuss any of the ways she was a bad influence on him. I didn’t mention his whining, crying, or constant compulsion to ask me for money. A few weeks passed before a better option would occur to me. Isaac was eating his breakfast as I was leaving for work. As his mother called to him from the next room to drink his milk, I kissed his forehead and said goodbye. He said, “Bye, Dammy. Love you.”

I turned around and asked, “What was that?”

“Oh. I mean, bye Daddy.”

I considered calling to his mother who was in the bedroom folding clothes. I wanted to tell her what he said—that the morphing of our two names sounded both humorous and blasphemous. But I thought twice about telling her. I imagined her saying, “You still need to watch what you say.”

At that point in both his and his little sister’s verbal development, I was used to being called Mommy. I tried not to let it hurt my feelings. As a stay-at-home mom, Laurie got significantly more face time with them. But at times it really bothered me. It seems like anytime I was nice or treated them in a nurturing way, they addressed me as “Mommy.” Then, one day Laurie called me at work and said, “Your son cracks me up. I just got on his case for something and he called me Daddy.”

I told her I didn’t understand.

“He was sassing me and I told him, ‘You do not talk to your mother like that. Do you understand me?’ and he said, ‘Yes, Daddy.’ Isn’t that funny?”

I thought about it for a second. When I’m nice to him, he calls me Mommy and when his mother disciplines him, he calls her Daddy. Great.

His verbal skills skyrocketed and for a while he consistently called his mom and me Dammy or Moddy. Vivi is now three and has inherited this morph. She’s so used to my leaving for work that whenever Laurie leaves the house, Vivi says, “Bye, Daddy.” While her mom is out shopping, I make dinner and, as I rush back and forth from the kitchen to the table, Vivi says, “Thank you, Mommy.”

This article can also be read at Wearegoodkin.com.

New Kin

2011-02-07T19:34:00.003-06:00

In foster care training, we learned foster kids have a history with missing pieces, that there can be large parts of their past that are either traumatic or completely forgotten by the kids. So when our oldest son, Isaac, came to us at sixteen months old, Laurie and I were prepared to know nothing about his story.

For a while, we mourned missing Isaac’s first year, hearing his first word and watching his first steps. Then our curiosity shifted and we wanted to provide him some background for his own sake. In our foster and adoptive parents’ playgroups and support groups, parents shared stories about their children asking about their birthparents.

Some kids grieved the loss of their former family while other children couldn’t have cared less. Laurie and I knew that a relationship with Isaac’s birth family was unrealistic. But we wished we had some pictures or maybe even a letter or a card—something that would make them real people to us rather than simply names on the pages of official court documents.

Nevertheless, Laurie and I made our peace with the mystery of Isaac’s birth family. We adopted him just after his second birthday, and his baby sister, Vivianna, was born four months later. As we developed an open adoption with Vivi’s birthmother, Laurie and I prepared ourselves for any potential questions or grief Isaac might have watching his sister look at pictures, read cards, and even play with birthday and Christmas presents from her birth family. We expected this to one day bother Isaac, but we did not expect the phone call we got from his former CPS worker in July this past year, informing us that Isaac has a younger brother who just entered foster care. “We want to place him with you as a kinship placement,” the caseworker said.

Laurie called me at work to tell me. “I told her I’d have to talk to you,” she said. It took me less than two seconds to say absolutely. “I told the caseworker you’d immediately say yes,” she said. “But can you believe it? Isaac has a little brother!” Laurie called the caseworker back and learned that J had been in foster care for just over a week and that he and his birthmother had already had one visitation meeting. Moreover, the caseworker had supervised the meeting and took pictures of J and the birthmother he shared with Isaac.

When I got home that night, I sat at the computer and watched the slideshow with Laurie sitting next to me. I saw little two-year-old J playing a toy piano in baggy blue clothes. His skin complexion and forehead matched Isaac. “That’s him?” I said to Laurie. She nodded. I clicked on the next picture and saw a woman feeding him out of a fast food bag. “That’s her?” I said to Laurie. She nodded. A few weeks later, Isaac’s little brother came to our home.

Although his first two-and-a-half years were a mystery, J adapted to our home quickly, and Isaac and Vivi accepted their new roles as older siblings. Laurie and I couldn’t have been happier to welcome him into our home. It thrilled us that he got to share memories with us like Isaac’s first day of kindergarten and Isaac’s sixth birthday. Then, J’s caseworker informed us that two of our boys’ older cousins had entered foster care. When CPS decided the cousins – a teen boy and a preteen boy—would remain in foster care and not return to their family, they told their caseworker they wanted the chance to tell J goodbye. Laurie and I told our caseworker we had a better idea. The two caseworkers set up a meeting at the CPS office, and we got to meet the cousins.

During most of the visit, Isaac played swords with the preteen and the teen tended to J, wiping his nose, feeding him the cookies we brought, and instructing us on J’s likes and dislikes. Everyone got along great, so we invited the boys to Thanksgiving dinner. Isaac and I picked up the boys around lunchtime and we spent the afternoon eating snacks, watching parades and football on TV, and playing kickball outside. Both cousins took three helpings at dinner, and slept soundly in our boys’ bunk beds. Just before we left the next morning, they asked if they could come visit us every weekend.

A few weeks later, Isaac and I picked the cousins up again for the weekend to celebrate Christmas. That Friday night, we gave them gifts and stockings, took them to a light show, and came home for cookies and hot chocolate. Saturday, we took them out for pizza, and Sunday, they came with us to church. Everywhere we went, the younger cousin played with Isaac while the older played with J and told us stories of about their birth family.

Laurie and I are thrilled at all the memories we’ve been able to share with our new family. Annual activities like watching football on Thanksgiving and driving around the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights are now more significant because we’ve done them with members of our boys’ birth family. We’d spent years praying for photos or a letter, but we didn’t expect we’d get a new extended family.

This article can also be read at wearegoodkin.com.

Card Stock

2011-02-07T19:28:00.001-06:00

Last Valentine’s Day, I was shopping in the card section at Walmart a few days before the 14th. I must have looked at thirty cards; according to many reliable sources, I am picky. It’s a label I’m willing to embrace if it means I’m the type of guy who wants to pick a card that says just the right thing and doesn't cost nine dollars. When did greeting cards become so expensive?

I imagined giving Laurie’s reaction when I gave her something more practical, like a five-dollar box of chocolates with “Love You, Sweetie,” written with a sharpie all over the shrink-wrap. I’d say, “I thought you’d prefer the money spent on sweets.” She’d put her arms around me and kiss me. “You’re the smartest husband in the world,” she’d say. Do I know my wife or what?

As I walked up and down the crowded card section, I noticed that I was surrounded by women. This is a sharp contrast from my shopping experience last year, when I worked a late shift the day before Valentine's. I stopped at Walmart on my way home sometime after midnight, and was surprised to see the card section was full of guys, each of whom held a bouquet of flowers and nervously paced the sparse card selection. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who waited until the last minute.

I saw guys in ties and guys in coveralls. Regardless of class or race, we formed a band of brothers, each of us haunted by the Ghost of Forgotten Valentine’s Past. However, this year, I was an entire week early. This, to me, explained all the women in the card section. As I was looking through the "to her from him" cards, I noticed how so many of cards are apologetic: “I know I don’t tell you often enough…” “I don’t know how I got to be so lucky…” “Sorry this is late…” “For the woman I don’t deserve…” “You’re always so patient with me…” And I couldn’t help but feel a little offended.

Now that I’ve been married long enough to no longer be considered a newlywed, I figure I now have enough credibility to resent the image of husbands that sitcoms portray, specifically that men are bumbling, insensitive idiots? Sure I feel as lucky as the next guy to have a terrific wife, but I don’t feel the need to apologize for anything. Laurie knows how much I love her. Then again, there was that incident the previous week about the chocolates.

Laurie had returned home from grocery shopping at Walmart. She walked in the door, came over to me, and kissed me on the cheek. “I saw the box of chocolates I want you get me for Valentine’s Day,” she sang. “Well, if you were already there, then why didn’t you just buy the stupid things yourself?” A split second before she started crying, I asked myself, “Did you just say that?” It sounded a lot funnier in my mind. And yet I heard the words said in a voice that sounded a lot like mine.

We finished putting the groceries away in silence. Then she retired to our bedroom while I spent the rest of the evening sitting on the couch, half-concentrating on whatever was on TV, and trying to think of a way to justify what I said. But I couldn’t, at least not without feeling like a bumbling, insensitive idiot. I tried to think of how to make it up to her. She’s so good at showing me how much I mean to her. She tells me she loves me with little gifts and little gestures and spending all day cleaning the house because she wants me to come home to a nice house.

I tell her I love her when I pay the utilities bill. Why can't I be creative like her? And now I couldn’t even buy her the box of chocolates because now they’re tainted. Oh God! I thought. Why am I such an idiot! It was sometime the next day that I found myself at Walmart where I made my way straight line to the card section. I weaved in and out of the women perusing the cards they would buy their husbands, along with dainty little treats. I felt their eyes on me and wondered if they thought I was really sensitive, the kind of guy who always remembers to tell his wife how special she is. And for a moment, I allowed myself the fantasy.

That’s right, Ladies, I’m buying my wife’s Valentine’s card a week early because that’s just the kind of guy I am. Then I tried not to be too noticeable when I started looking through the “I’m sorry” cards.

First Attempt at Fertility

2010-12-07T06:05:00.003-06:00

Note: this article is about our first test at a fertility clinic. I've made every attempt to make this as discrete as possible. But as those who have struggled with infertility will tell you, discretion isn't always possible.

Laurie, and I started trying to get pregnant a month before our first wedding anniversary, and, about a year later, we started looking for help. Laurie had dreamed her whole life of becoming a mother. She got her first babysitting gig when she was eleven – the type of parents who would hire a preteen to babysit is a mystery to me – and she even went to college to study child development. When we met, she had already received her bachelor’s degree and was a nanny for a two-year-old boy. By the time we married, bought our first house, and were ready to build our family, the boy had started kindergarten and Laurie was working in a candle shop.

We had no idea how to get started with infertility treatments, so we asked our gynecologist who recommended the most recognized and expensive clinic in town. She told me they’d probably start by taking my sperm count, and I asked how were they going to do that. She stared at me blankly for a moment before she said, “They’re going to analyze your semen.” And I was about to ask again how they were going to do that when Laurie touched my arm.

When I called the clinic and asked for an appointment, the receptionist asked, “For what purpose are you making an appointment?” I had no idea what to say and I panicked for a moment, wishing I had prepared something discrete to say. The lady on the phone must have had experience with embarrassed men and bailed me out. “Do you need a count?” she asked. And I quietly said yes.

I arrived at the clinic early for my appointment and sat in my truck for a few minutes psyching up my courage to go in. I tried to prepare something to say to the front desk. Was it like a bank? “I’m here to make a deposit?”

When I finally went in, I told the lady at the front desk that I had an appointment. She pointed to the electronic screen on the counter, which directed me to sign my name. After I signed in, my name and info immediately disappeared. I thought, “This is innovative. In case my mother or a busload of nuns or any other symbol of purity comes in after me, they won’t see my name and ask me what I was doing there.”

I sat down across from a sad-looking couple; the man was reading a sport magazine, and the woman’s head lay on his shoulder. She had a look of utter despair on her face. Normally, I would break the awkward ice with a joke, but something told me that asking the couple, “So what are you here for?” wouldn’t inspire a genial response.

A nurse called my name and led me to a private room in which a small cup sat on a cabinet. She told me I could leave the specimen in the room when I was finished. Then she shut the door and I sat in the room, staring at the lock on the door. I got up, checked the lock, and sat back down – I did this three or four times. Then I looked up to make sure there wasn’t any recording equipment mounted to the ceiling. There was a cabinet beside me with some drawers, and I wondered if there were men’s magazines in there, but I didn’t look. I heard telephones ringing and voices outside. Why hadn’t they soundproofed the room? I got up and turned off the light switch, thinking this might provide me some illusion of privacy. But the darkness only amplified the ringing phones and voices. An inch of light glowed from the bottom of the door, so I crouched down to make sure anyone who just happened to put their cheek to the floor wouldn’t recognize my shoes.

As I sat in the room, flipping the light switch on and off and delaying the inevitable, I remembered that our gynecologist told us to start with a sperm count because it was the easiest and least invasive test we’d take. While I worried that my count might be too low, I also worried that if it was fine that the next few tests would all involve Laurie and be much more painful and intense. I thought about the sad wife I saw in the waiting room and wondered what kinds of procedures she had already endured. Months later, after I got to know couples who had struggled for years with infertility, I would recognize couples like them as common, in which the wife’s dreams of becoming a mother had been annihilated by years of unfulfilled promises from doctors and the husbands walked around in a confused daze wondering what had happened to the woman he’d married and the happy marriage they’d once had.

When I exited the room, I looked back at the cup sitting on the cabinet and felt relieved that I didn’t have to carry it around the office and hand it to the lady at the front desk. I walked down the long hall, turned a corner, and approached the front desk where a new receptionist sat. I thought, “This lady has no idea who I am and what I’m here for.” I worried I’d have to explain, but I first assumed she knew the situation. So I cleared my throat and asked, “Anything else?”

The receptionist said, “No, thank you. We’ll call you in a few days with the results.”

On the drive home, I wondered if people could tell that I’d just undergone a sperm test. It was as if I’d crossed a threshold in which I stood on one side and the rest of the normal, fertile world stood on the other. This became a harsher reality when my count came back normal and the clinic invited Laurie to return for a series of treatments including regular blood tests and sonograms. They injected dye into her and prescribed daily doses of golf-ball-size pills. And when I refused to give her shots of hormones into her stomach, she injected them herself. After a very painful, expensive, and unsuccessful IUI, we quit infertility treatments and began the process of becoming foster parents.

Earlybird

2010-11-13T13:36:00.003-06:00

A few days before Halloween, Laurie called me at work and told me she had just finished Christmas shopping for the kids. “Target had a Barbie car on clearance. Toys r Us was having a sale and let me use a coupon.” She paused a moment to catch her breath. “And Kohls was having a one-day-only sale Black Friday sale.”

As a single income family of five (seven if you add the dogs), Laurie and I have to follow a strict budget. A few years ago, we had some financial struggles and had to make some harsh decisions. We cut up our credit cards and have been cash only ever since. I got a second job and Laurie looked for ways to save. Since then, our roles have been simple: I earn the money and she spends it.

Laurie started by clipping coupons from the Sunday newspaper, but her skills at stretching a dollar have grown dramatically. She bought a subscription for a Sunday paper, clipped every week, and learned which groceries stores accepted double and triple coupons and which had the best sales. Sometimes, her shopping trips took hours because she visited several stores. “This store has the best produce but this one has better prices on toiletries,” she told me when she came home and handed me a fistful of receipts. “Look how much I saved.” I saw at the first store she spent $100 and saved $60, and at the second store she spent $80 and saved $40.

“How did you do this?” I asked her as I unpacked three bottles of shampoo, two boxes of garbage bags, and too many cans of vegetables and soups to count. She explained how she got most of these for free or for less than fifty cents, but I didn’t understand a word of it. “It’s not like these things ever go bad,” she said. I agreed, and found a few extra dollars in the budget for ways to increase our pantry storage.

Then she started building relationships with the employees working the cash register. She befriended a young cashier at a local pizza buffet, who always accepted double coupons, which allowed the five of us to eat for $10. Laurie learned to look for the teenagers. “Older employees will read the coupon and call over a manager to approve it. Then the people in line behind me glare at me. But teenagers don’t usually question coupons.” She reads the small print and double checks the receipts when she comes home to make sure they rang her up correctly. She’s learned how to diplomatically defend her coupons to the salespeople and managers, whom I’ve witnessed double take the receipts they hand to her.

She also became a master at planning the children’s wardrobe. Coupons would come in the mail or the newspaper, and she sets them aside and regularly checks websites for ads and sales. Then, when her favorite stores advertise a sale, she comes to me for a little extra cash. I used to freak out when she told me she needed a hundred dollars, but experience has taught me what she can do with what is actually a pretty small amount. In April, she’ll take the money and buy the children’s entire winter wardrobe for the following year. Then in October she buys shorts, tank tops, and swim suits, and spends all winter telling me how she can’t wait to dress the kids in their new summer outfits. She buys clothes that are one or two sizes too big, explains that they’ll grow into them, and shows me the red tags proving she bought a shirt for $2 and jeans for $3.

She’s also learned to shop off-season. The day after a holiday, I set aside a few bucks for her to buy decorations, costumes, wrapping paper, etc. She buys Valentines cards in March, and Thanksgiving décor in December, and spends all spring telling me how she can’t wait to use her new gravy boat.

We learned from numerous financial advisors the importance of planning in advance for special events we know are coming up, like vacations, back-to-school clothes and school supplies, and Christmas. We started planning this holiday season last January when we reviewed last year’s budget and made adjustments. We allotted $400 for the three kids (five if you add the dogs), which I gave Laurie in cash a few days before Halloween. In one afternoon, she spent most of the money and called me to tell me how excited she was about the deals she found.

“I may need a little extra money because I bought more than I meant to, and I still have a few things I need to get.” I told her I could move a little money around in a few days, and she said, “That’s okay. I'll wait until I get some coupons in the mail. Then I’ll check the websites and let you know what I need.”

I told her I was proud of her for doing such a good job. Then I told her I had to get back to work. I hung up the phone and sat down at my desk, excited that since she had done her job it was now time to do mine.

Epilogue: Laurie wanted me to call this story "Doorbuster," but it seems wrong for a husband to write an article about his wife with this title. It seems to refer to size of her butt rather than her shopping savvy. What do you think?

Racism is Alive and Well and Living on the Blogs

2010-11-07T11:59:00.006-06:00

My wife recently caused a storm on her blog when she wrote about a minor incident involving our son, Isaac, being called a “monkey boy” by some of his friends at school. The kids were far too young to understand they’d done something racially charged; in fact the incident seemed playful in nature rather than name-calling. Nevertheless, Laurie wrote about it on her blog and, as with any discussion involving race, the responses ran black and white, from absolute support and gratitude to outrage.

Coincidentally, another mother who had adopted a boy from Ethiopia a few weeks earlier had posted pictures of her son in a monkey costume for Halloween the same day Laurie published her post and started a similar controversy. Some of her readers, one of whom identified themselves as black, commented that they thought the costume was offensive while others supported her costume and rebuked those who were offended. The dialogue between bloggers frustrated and disheartened the mother and she wrote that she was considering taking down the blog.

I’ve had a blog for several years now and have had to confront a false sense of anonymity the Internet gives people. Many readers and writers feel free to write what they don’t have the courage to say in person. From the comfort of their computer, they can tell the black community to get over slavery, that whites have no privileges over anyone else, and that it is “reverse racism” when a black person is offended.

Bloggers need to realize that if your blog is a forum for your opinion, then it is a forum for the opinions of your readers as well. If you want to express yourself without dealing with opposing opinions, I suggest you start a new blog and make sure not to tell anyone else in the world about it.

So to the adoptive mother, let me encourage you to continue blogging. You are now a multiracial family and need to prepare yourself for a lifetime of discussions on race. White people, for the most part, don’t need to discuss race on a regular basis. In fact, discussing it seems to unnecessarily make a big deal about it. One reader posted on Laurie’s blog, “If we continue to teach children that ‘monkey’ is a derogatory term, then we’ll never get beyond it.” Ultimately, the comment implies that if we ignore racism, it will go away on its own. Laurie has been receiving racist comments from an anonymous reader. So is the writer’s advice to us to get over it and stop being so sensitive, or to ignore it and hope it goes away on its own, or is it reverse racism for us to address it?

You’re probably shocked to have to defend your family to strangers. But your blog can be a terrific place to connect with like-minded parents who know exactly what you are going through. If you encounter racism and negativity regarding your blog posts, then you’re going to get them at the grocery store, at church, and everywhere else you go. Laurie and I found the first few months with Isaac the hardest – both with our family and total strangers. We struggled to adapt to staring and inappropriate comments and questions. From other adopted families, we learned gracious and humorous ways to respond, and we’re much more prepared to defend our family. These connections were possible because we put ourselves out there, as did the families that saw our family and reached out to us.

While our parental instincts tell us to protect our children, we simply can’t protect them from everything. Laurie and I are committed to protecting our kids as best we can as well as mourning with them when we failed. Your son will not be able to run from his black skin, and the best thing you can do for him to model how to stand up for yourself.

One reader commented to Laurie, “You are arrogant to believe that what you say to a teacher or to other children is making a difference.” Maybe I am arrogant, but the alternative of remaining silent is too cowardly for me. If my kids grow up too proud of their race as opposed to too timid, I can live with that.

The Staffing

2010-10-01T06:14:00.003-05:00

A month after J came home, we received an official letter in the mail addressed to any parties with an interest in the child. We were invited to attend a staffing at the Department of Family and Protective Services – a meeting to discuss the future placement of J.

“So this is when they decide who gets custody of J?” I asked Laurie.

“No, its too soon,” she said. “More than likely they’ll proceed with reunification because they’re legally required to give the birth mom a chance to work her service plan. Then they’ll reconvene in a few months to reevaluate.”

Laurie and I arrived at the CPS building a few minutes early and had the front desk page J’s caseworker. While we waited, we reminisced about our first foster child who we brought to this office for visitations with her birth mother. We said goodbye to her in the parking lot when we dropped her off for her weekly visit, knowing afterward that her caseworker would drive her to a distant relative. I remembered wondering what she would be thinking after her visit when we weren’t there to pick her up.

J’s case worker, Jen, came to the front office and led us through a series of halls with small visitation rooms with donated toys and cartoon murals, past a set of doors with a sign reading “No Children Beyond This Point,” into a room with fold-out tables arranged to look like a conference room. Several people were already seated with notepads and file folders ready. No one introduced themselves to us or asked who we were. Jen, who was also Isaac’s caseworker three years ago when he was a foster child, is petite, soft-spoken, and awkward. Her demeanor seems better suited for work in a library rather than with troubled children. I hoped she might introduce us to the group, but when she sat down without saying anything, I waited until someone acknowledged us.

I’m not sure who initiated the conversation. More than likely, someone mentioned J and Laurie jumped in. She rarely needs an invitation to show off our kids. We might be in a meeting with adoptive families or at the grocery store with total stranger and, within seconds, she whips out the little photo album she keeps in her purse and passes it around. Ordinarily, I’m amused that she is so proud of them, but here it seemed unprofessional. These were hardened caseworkers who didn’t seem interested that he liked playing in the pool or that our dogs loved him for his many odors.

Finally, a woman sitting across from us said, “Well, let’s get started. Why don’t we go around the room and introduce ourselves and what our role is with the child.” Jen started, followed by her supervisor, a lawyer representing CPS, a lawyer representing J’s attorney ad litem, someone representing CASA, their supervisor, someone representing kinship placements, their supervisor, and an attorney representing kinship. The facilitator asked Jen how J came into foster care. Jen nervously cleared her throat, picked up her file folder, and pretended to look through it. She spoke for less than a minute and said “um” no less than ten times. At first, I thought she was being discrete, but when she didn’t even know if the bio mom was working her service plan, I worried that Jen had no idea what was going on. While she went to a lot of trouble to locate Laurie and me to place J with us, she also allowed Isaac to wallow in a neglectful foster home when he was a baby. Now, J’s fate as our legal child rested in her hands. With the exception of the birth mom Isaac and J share, I’ve never had more conflicting feelings toward another human being.

At first, I felt intimidated by everyone’s credentials. But after two minutes of discussion about the case, I realized Laurie and I were clearly the most informed people in the room. The group took twenty minutes before they got caught up on facts Laurie and I knew off the top of our heads.

I entered the meeting knowing that CPS is required by law to give the bio mom a chance to work her plan, regardless of her past. So I was not disappointed when they concluded by giving her the chance for reunification. After years of foster parenting, I’ve learned that CPS typically talks more about the rights of bio parents and less about the long-term well being of the child, although they claim the two are synonymous.

Jen walked us back through the maze to the front entrance. She and Laurie talked about J’s next visitation with his bio mom, but I was too distracted. While I may have been a little embarrassed when Laurie passed around the photo album before the meeting, I now worried I’d missed the chance to represent J. The group of caseworkers had been in meetings for hours and we were one of the last of the day. To them, J was another name on the page and I had failed to bring him to life. I wished I’d made a scene. “I want to be his Daddy. I’ll do whatever it takes.” I wished I’d shown them pictures of J on my phone eating watermelon and reading books. For that matter, I wished I’d have brought a slideshow, a PowerPoint presentation, or the frigging laptop, which has over two hundred pictures devoted just to his first week with us. “Here’s J playing with Oscar in our playroom. Here’s another one of him playing with Oscar in our bedroom. Here’s one of him playing with Oscar and Lucy. Here’s one with him, Oscar, Lucy and Vivi playing in the playroom. Here’s one with them in the back yard.”

In my head, I know this wouldn’t have made a difference. While these antics make good prime time drama, real life doesn’t work that way. Several in the group had used the word “reunification” with a wink and a nod, and someone even said, “We all know where this case is heading,” meaning that termination was inevitable. So until then, the fate of our family rests there.

The Good Fight

2010-09-22T22:54:00.004-05:00

When I became a foster parent, I had no idea how the role would affect me. Of course, I understood how radically my lifestyle would change, but I was not prepared for how radically I myself would change.

As a young adult, I never felt comfortable with confrontation. The notion of getting into an argument intimidated me. When I first got promoted to a supervisor position, I had to deal with employee performance issues like dress code and time and attendance. When I had to coach someone’s performance, I worried for days about the conversation, planning how I should phrase my words and preparing for retaliation. Maybe I worried I’d lose the argument or that the employee wouldn’t like me anymore, but I had a job to do and, through practice and some feeble trial-and-error, I improved and learned not to let their reaction bother me.

Nearly a decade has passed since I received my first taste of responsibility as a young adult. Since then, my wife, Laurie, and I have fostered five children, all under the age of three, and adopted two – one from foster care and one from a private agency. Currently, we are a kinship placement for our oldest son’s biological brother, a two-year-old boy we call J.

J came to us with multiple medical issues; the most serious concern was his need for oral surgery. A week after he came home, Laurie booked an appointment with a reputable pediatric dentist who accepted Medicaid (a battle itself). The dentist found eight cavities and recommended the only oral surgeon in town who accepted Medicaid. Unfortunately, this surgeon worked on children once a month and was booked until the following month.

During the month we waited for his surgery, J had three head colds. Laurie took him to the doctor three times and each time the doctor sent her away with a prescription for over-the-counter medication. J’s third cold came the weekend before his surgery and Laurie and I worried that if he were placed on an antibiotic his surgery would be postponed.

Our fears came true when Laurie took him in first thing Monday morning. The doctor diagnosed J with strep throat and said that his surgery would have to be postponed. Laurie called me at work and broke down crying. Had she been in good health herself, she might not have fallen apart, but she was on her way to her doctor who would diagnose her with strep throat as well.

I took a half sick day, rushed home, and booked an appointment for my three-year-old daughter, Vivianna, to see her pediatrician since she’d had a runny nose for a couple days. While I was gone, Laurie called the oral surgeon to cancel Thursday’s surgery. The office informed her the surgeon was booked the following month and that we’d have to wait two months. When Laurie called me with the news, I lost my temper.

I called J’s pediatrician’s office and told the receptionist that if J had been put on antibiotics the two earlier times we’d brought him in, then he wouldn’t have gotten strep, given it to his mother, I wouldn’t have had to take a sick day, and J’s surgery wouldn’t have to be postponed. The receptionist transferred me to the doctor’s assistant who asked me to repeat the entire story. I repeated everything at a higher volume and added, “This is your office’s fault and you need to make it right.” It was a pathetic bluff; this wasn't a restaurant that had messed up our meal and could comp the ticket. Nevertheless, it surprised me when she said I could bring him back in for a penicillin shot.

“You want me to bring him back today?” I asked.

The assistant said, “As long as he doesn’t have a reaction to the shot he can still have the surgery.”
I was more angry than relieved. “Why didn’t you give him the shot earlier in the day when he was in?” I asked.

She offered no explanation. She only said, “I’ll have to check with the doctor to make sure we can fit you in today.”

By now, it was after three o’clock in the afternoon and I started to worry about rush hour traffic and what we were going to do about dinner. At 3:30pm, the assistant called and said I could bring him in. I drove J myself and we were in and out in thirty minutes. He had no reaction to the penicillin and, three days later, had the surgery and came out fine.

I don’t like that I got as frustrated as I did with the pediatrician’s office. Yet, I don’t understand why i had to get so upset to get results from them. Had I not yelled at the assistant, she would not have offered the penicillin shot and J’s surgery would be postponed two months.

I have to remind myself that although the doctor’s office takes Medicaid, it is still a business and the staff will not lose any sleep if my son cries and points at his teeth when he chews food. Laurie and I alone are emotionally invested in the well being of this child. Like my role as a supervisor, I consider my role of a father as doing what I have to do because it’s my job, regardless of how comfortable I am. I don’t consider myself I fighter; rather I’m an advocate willing to do whatever it takes to ensure my children are taken care of.

My Dog is my Hero

2010-09-22T22:01:00.002-05:00

Three years after I received an acceptance letter from a little publishing agency, the anthology My Dog is my Hero has just been released. My story, "Our First Child," is on page 147. Most of my earliest attempts at writing now make my stomach churn, so I give props to the editors for making the article as good as it is - and it's really not bad. Here's a sample:

Shortly after Lucy came home, a debate arose between my wife and me over how she would refer to us. While Laurie already saw herself as the matriarch of the household, I had always felt weird about people who didn’t have children but referred to themselves as "mom" and "dad" to their pets. We mulled it over for several days until she finally said, “What about when we have kids? We can’t have the kids call us mom and dad and the dog call us by our first name.” Although, I couldn’t imagine the dog ‘calling’ us anything, eventually I gave in. So we became Mom and Dad.

Lucy was the first child Laurie would play dress up with on holidays. For her first Halloween, she bought Lucy’s costume in the middle of September. By October, Lucy had outgrown it. Laurie shopped unsuccessfully at multiple stores looking for a bigger size. When she couldn’t find it, she switched costumes. I’d come home from work to the dog in a loose-fitting pirate costume one day and a tight Superwoman costume the next. By the 31st, my wife had purchased and returned four costumes.

She repeated the same process the following month as the weather got colder and Lucy “needed” a winter coat and Santa hat for the Christmas family portrait. “Look at your daughter, Honey,” Laurie said as she attempted to position the dog in front of the fireplace. “Isn’t she adorable next to her stocking? Is Santa going to bring Mommy’s little doggie a present?” Lucy gave me my first Father’s Day as a Dad. Laurie woke me up that morning with breakfast in bed, a present, and two cards – one from her and one from the dog.

A Second Chance for a Background

2010-09-04T14:01:00.003-05:00

When Isaac came home as a sixteen-month-old foster child, Laurie, and I quickly had to accept that whatever happened prior to him coming to us would remain a mystery. Although we closely examined every court document and affidavit we received, we only learned names of his birthmother and his biological siblings and some of their mistakes.

At first, we wanted to know Isaac’s history in order to better parent him and explain some of his behavior. But we made do with the resources we had. We read books on toddler adoption, got involved with other foster and adoptive parents, and sought advice from doctors, play therapists, and behavioral specialists. After only a few months in our home, Isaac quickly bonded with us and caught up on his development.

Then our curiosity shifted and we wanted to provide him some background for his own sake. In our foster and adoptive parents’ playgroups and support groups, parents shared stories about their children asking about their birthparents. Some kids grieved the loss of their former family while other children couldn’t have cared less. Laurie and I knew that a relationship with Isaac’s birth family was unrealistic. But we wished we had some pictures or maybe even a letter or a card – something that would make them real people rather than simply names on pages of official court documents.

Nevertheless, Laurie and I made our peace with the mystery of Isaac’s birth family. We adopted him just after his second birthday and his baby sister, Vivianna, was born four months later. As we developed an open adoption with Vivi’s birthmother, Laurie and I prepared ourselves for any potential questions or grief Isaac might have watching his sister look at pictures, read cards, and even play with birthday and Christmas presents from her birth family. We expected this to one day bother Isaac. But what we did not expect was the phone call we got from his former CPS worker on a warm morning in June of this year, informing us that Isaac has a younger brother who had just entered foster care.

“We want to place him with you as a kinship placement,” the caseworker said.

Laurie called me at work to tell me. “I told her I’d have to talk to you,” she told me.

It took me less than two seconds to say absolutely. “I told the caseworker you’d immediately say yes,” she said. “But can you believe it? Isaac has a little brother!”

Laurie called the caseworker back and learned that J had been in foster care for just over a week and that he and his birthmother had already had one visitation meeting. Moreover, the caseworker had supervised the meeting and took pictures of J and the birthmother he shared with Isaac.

When I got home that night, I sat at the computer and watched the slideshow with Laurie sitting next to me. I saw little two-year-old J playing a toy piano in baggy blue clothes. His skin complexion and forehead matched Isaac. “That’s him?” I said to Laurie. She nodded.

I clicked on the next picture and saw a woman feeding him out of a fast food bag. “That’s her?” I said to Laurie. She nodded.

The next few weeks crawled by. J’s team of caseworkers required a home study on us before he could be placed with us, which took two additional weeks to approve. Finally, six weeks after entering foster care, the caseworker brought Isaac’s two-year-old brother to our home.

Friends donated a bunk bed for the boys to share, which they loved almost immediately. In fact, I had to forbid use of the ladder within five minutes of assembling it.

J adapted to our routine quickly. He ate nearly everything we put on his plate and slept soundly. He had a limited vocabulary, which developed quickly under the influence of an older brother and sister. Both Isaac and Vivi accepted him immediately, with Vivi telling everyone within earshot, “He baby brudder.” She followed him around the house all day asking him, “You come play in my room?” At three years old, she’s only nine months older than he and they make a great pair. She suggested her favorite games – princess dolls and makeup – and he complied unconditionally.

Meanwhile, Isaac accepted his role as the protective big brother. He worked diligently to teach J the word “gentle.” From the other side of the house, we heard Isaac shout, “No, J. Gentle with the dogs” or “gentle with Vivi’s hair.” Then, as Vivi rushed to tattle on him, Isaac shouted, “No, Vivi. Don’t tell Mom and Dad.” We thought it’s sweet that Isaac didn’t want him to get in trouble.

People often asked us whether we’re going to adopt J. When we said we hope so, their follow-up question was, “Aren’t you afraid of the effect it might have on the kids if he leaves?”

It’s a legitimate question, one their mother and I took very seriously. Ultimately, even if we knew he wouldn’t stay with us permanently, we still never could have turned him away. He is our family too. If he leaves, we’ll be devastated and mourn losing him and what could have been. Then, once time has passed, we’ll look back on the time we spent with J and the pictures we have of Isaac’s birthmother and brother and find comfort that at least we have that.

On the other hand, if we do get to adopt him, then one day Laurie and I will have a great story to tell. We’ll share with the boys that we were told their birthmother was thrilled when she found out they had been united.

J came home almost a month ago. So we have no idea what’s going to happen to him in the long term. But we’re grateful for the memories we got to build with J in our lives, moments like Isaac’s first day of kindergarten with us, Isaac’s sixth birthday. We had spent years praying for a letter or a photo from his birth family. We didn’t expect we’d get another son.

Dear Readers

2010-08-06T20:54:00.003-05:00

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a few weeks. As many of you know, Laurie and I became foster parents to Isaac's biological brother, J. For those of you who don't know, Laurie and I became foster parents to Isaac's biological brother, J.

He's been home for a little over a week now and has been getting better everyday. We're thrilled that he's home and are thankful for everyday he's here. At this time, we have no idea whether or not we will have the opportunity to adopt him (but we sure hope so).

Having a third child has been a real trip. Isaac and Vivi love having a little brother. And having a little one again has given Laurie a great purpose. "Remember how I sometimes wish we could have Isaac as a little two-year-old back?" she says. Frankly I don't spend much time reminiscing about diapers and car seats and "Daddy said don't touch that!" But Laurie does, and now she has her toddler again.

Seriously, two-year-olds are so much fun. He gets so excited about everything. A new toy, a slice of watermelon, everything he sees is as if for the first time. "See!" he shouts at everything. "You see!" His voice is high-pitched and insistent. Even after I acknowledge him, "Yes, I see. Your ice cream has sprinkles," he insists, "You see!"

Got a meeting with CPS this Tuesday - a formality really. But there's a chance we could meet the birthmom Isaac and J share. Oh, man, what a trip that would be. Check y'all later.

Oh, Laurie is much better about updating her blog than I am. Check it out.

Misadventure #4 - Favorite Words

2010-07-28T13:26:00.001-05:00

As siblings go, Isaac and Vivi are pretty typical in that they disagree all the time. Which songs to listen to in the car. Whose side of the couch is whose. At times, their disagreements make the walls vibrate. However, they agree on having the same two favorite words – “Mama” and “Daddy”. As in:

“Mama, can I have a snack?”

“Daddy, can I have a cup?”

“Mama, can we have pizza?”

“Daddy, can we watch a show?”

“Mama, when’s Daddy coming home?”

“Daddy, where are we going?”

“Mama, where’s Daddy?”

“Daddy, where Mama?”

“Mama, um…Mama…Mama, um, when…um…can I have a snack?”

They’ve become masters of addressing us. They practice their art like I used to practice chords and scales. They understand that true proficiency comes from diligence and repetition. And their mother and I are about to welcome a third child, possibly a fourth. Sheesh!

Tomorrow is a big day!

2010-07-27T17:36:00.001-05:00

Our kids will be welcoming a little brother home in a most unexpected way!

Misadventure #3 – The Mission

2010-07-07T06:17:00.002-05:00

When Laurie and I were in college, our church’s college ministry used to take service trips during semester breaks. They were called short-term mission trips and we had to raise the money to go ourselves. On a practical level, we had to raise support because our college ministry was large and could not pay for several hundred collegiates to travel state-to-state. But on a spiritual level, support raising was a terrific way to prepare our hearts to serve.

Many of us worried that we wouldn’t be able to raise the full amount, which sometimes got up to several thousand dollars. On the verge of giving up, we’d ask, “If we can’t raise all of it, does that mean we can’t go?” Then a mysterious donor would anonymously send the church a check on our behalf or a distant relative would call the church and offer to finance the whole team. We might have felt a little jealous of our wealthier friends whose parents paid for their entire trip while we had to organize carwashes and garage sales. But ultimately, those who didn’t have to raise support missed out on an experience we got to partake in – the very tangible feeling of God working on our behalf.

Nevertheless, I rejected the idea of support raising to pay our adoption expenses. With Isaac and Vivi’s adoption, I could afford to think this because we really didn’t need a lot of money upfront. Since Isaac was in foster care, our only adoption fee was the court cost at finalization and CPS took care of it for us at the courthouse. With Vivi, we had the money upfront, so we could afford to pay it out-of-pocket and wait for reimbursement checks from my company and Uncle Sam in our tax return.

However, this time around, we don’t have any alternative. I suppose it’s the cost of raising two kids while Laurie stays home to raise them that accounts for why we have no money. I might feel jealous of families who have $20,000 burning a hole in their savings accounts, waiting for their next adoption, until I consider how much we’ve paid in credit card debts since Vivi came home, which is more than enough to pay for most adoptions out-of-pocket. At times, this depresses me. Then I remind myself that this must be part of God’s plan. If you ask me, it’s a pretty weird plan – made all the weirder last week when our savings account got obliterated by our agency’s home study and a new A/C compressor for Laurie’s van.

It’s easy to pray things like, “Not my will, but Yours, Lord,” and “I trust You will provide everything I need, but not everything I want.” But on a more practical level, I wish I could trust God and have enough money to not have to nickel-and-dime every visit to a pizza buffet. As it is, Laurie and I have placed our trust that God will provide the funds for us to bring our next child home. My struggle now is not to fret, but to enjoy the very tangible feeling of God working on our behalf.

Misadventure #2 - Smells Like Home

2010-07-01T06:24:00.006-05:00

As anyone who’s gone through the adoption process will tell you, the day of your home study is the cleanest your house will ever look. It reminds me of Laurie’s and my engagement, when people told us, “The day of your wedding is the best you’ll ever look.” At the time, I think they were encouraging us that the stressful preparation of the wedding was worth it or they were getting us revved up for the honeymoon night. But now, seven years later, I can’t think of any thought more macabre…

Anyway, where was I? Right, our home study. Laurie spent the days leading up to Cathy’s visit cleaning the house. She paced herself, spreading out the deep cleaning into one or two difficult tasks per day. So when the big day rolled around, there was nothing left to do except keep the kids from trashing it, which is more difficult than it sounds. I’d see a toy somewhere on the ground that hadn’t been there a minute earlier and jump on the kids’ cases like they’d pulled up the carpet. “Mom did not pick up and organize your toys in the playroom, then steam vacuum the floor, then pour scented powder over the carpet and vacuum again just so you can leave your Batmobile lying in the middle of it.” Even when we parked them in front of the TV, they still managed make random little messes throughout the house.

Finally, Laurie set the kids’ breakfast on the table and they started eating while I ran from room to room picking up all the toys they’d dropped on the floor. As I sat down and poured a bowl of cereal, one of the kids let out a fierce fart. Laurie and I laughed as both kids blamed the other. “Vivi needs to say excuse me.” “No, Isaac, you Stinky Pete.”

Coincidentally, right about this time, Laurie opened the back door to let the dogs in. After shutting the door, she scrunched her nose and said, “Why does it smell like diarrhea in here? One of the dogs must have stepped in poop!”

I sniffed the air but didn’t smell what she smelled. “I’m sure it was just the kids,” I said, returning to my breakfast.

Then she pinched her nose. “No, Honey, I really think it is one of the dogs.”

I sniffed the air again and immediately knew she was right. I turned around and called Lucy to me. She put her head down, which is her way of communicating, “I have committed a great sin.” I called her to me again and she slowly approached. I looked down and saw that her black hair was covered with a pale brown substance. “Ugh! She rolled on it!” I shouted.

“Lucy!” Laurie shouted. “I just cleaned the bathrooms.”

In the days leading up to the home study, I daydreamed countless worst-case-scenarios like the cost has now tripled or the house explodes. Never did I fear that the bigger and smarter of my two dogs would roll in feces thirty minutes before the caseworker shows up.

Our previous homes had two bathrooms, each with a shower/tub combo. But our current house is older than both Laurie and me, and the back bathroom is a shower-only. Which means I bathe the dogs in the same bathroom the kids and guests use.

I scrubbed and dried Lucy, but the hard part was masking the lingering smell of a condemned kennel, which, although the entire incident took all of half a minute, seemed to completely void all the work Laurie had done all week. So while I sanitized the bathroom, Laurie scurried throughout the house, lighting candles and dousing each room in deodorizer spray.

Cathy finally arrived and we showed her around the house. Normally when we give guests the grand tour, they make comments like, “What a lovely house” or “It’s so clean and spacious.” For those brief moments, I see my house through their eyes and allow myself to believe, as they must, that our home is always this clean. This feeling is quickly followed by a slight twinge of guilt and want to admit that our home rarely looks this good. Now, I could barely contain my conscience. With each of Cathy’s compliments, I bit my tongue harder, certain that our secret would eventually be discovered.

Nevertheless, the home study went off without a hitch. I worried one of the kids might blurt out what Lucy had done. But even when Cathy asked the kids if they liked the dogs, they said nothing of the incident. To this day, I don’t think Cathy noticed that the house had even a faint smell of wet dog. Either she did and was gracious not to say anything. Or she didn’t notice and never knew, at least until she reads this.

Misadventure #1 - "Bad Blood"

2010-06-27T11:23:00.002-05:00

Laurie and I were going down the checklist of paperwork that has to be completed prior to the home study and we got to the part where we have to undergo a physical and have our doctor submit a health report. We’ve moved twice since Vivi’s birth but have yet to find a new doctor. Typically, Laurie leaves things like this to me, which is why she drives an hour and a half to her doctor and why I haven’t been checked out in over three years. But since this stood between us and the next step in the process, Laurie hopped online, found the closest doctor, and booked an appointment for both us – mine the next day and hers the following week.

In hindsight, I’m glad she booked mine as quickly as she did as it gave me less time to fret and worry. I don’t like going to the doctor. In fact, hate is too strong a word, so I’ll say I experience great feats of anxiety toward anything medical - doctor's offices, hospitals, even the first aid kit in our bathroom has a smell that reminds me of pain and suffering. I’ll spend the days leading up to an appointment worrying where I’m going to get poked and prodded. But since Laurie called me at work to tell me about my appointment, I didn’t start worrying until after the nurse led me to a private room, asked me some questions, said, “The doctor will be with you in a moment,” and left me alone with my thoughts.

The doctor’s office ran like clockwork. I never waited for more than a few minutes for anyone or anything. Everyone in the office behaved professionally, especially the doctor, who, even when I had to turn my head and cough, had a very discreet bedside manner. Thus, it shocked me when he called the next day and made one of the most inappropriate jokes I’ve ever heard.

One of the forms I filled out while at the office was a release for the doctor to post the results of my bloodwork on their website. I mentioned this to Laurie. So when the doctor himself called the house the next day, she panicked and called me at work. “I’ve never had the doctor himself call. Why would he call if everything was fine?”
I told her I didn’t know but that I would call him and let her know. The doctor and I played phone tag for a couple of hours, hours Laurie spent calling and texting me, “What did he say?”

Ultimately, the doctor left a voice mail on my cell phone directing me how to check my results on the website. Everything turned out fine and I called Laurie. Only a minute after I hung up with her, the doctor called my cell. “We have the results from your bloodwork,” he said, “And I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

I paused, wondering if they had made a mistake and posted someone else’s results online. Then the doctor said, “I’m just kidding. Everything’s fine.”

I thought about all the times I’d told that joke. I forgot to buy you a birthday present. I ate all the ice cream. For the most part, the joke might have been highly annoying, but it was harmless, certainly never told under the context that someone's very life might hinge on it. I might have been angry had it not been the exact joke I would have told had I become a doctor, which is why I never became a doctor...well, that among other reasons.

Looking back on the doctor’s phone call, I wish I’d though fast enough to turn the joke back on him. I could have faked a heart attack or gone off about how devastated my wife and kids would be. "Oh God, I just don't think they can take anymore bad news this year." Anything would have been better than responding, “You’re funny,” and then calling Laurie and telling her that I’d find my own doctor next year.

Misadventures of Our Third Adoption

2010-06-27T11:10:00.003-05:00

This past May, Laurie and I began adopting our third child. Thus, we began the process of paperwork, profile, home study, approval, waiting, decorating, waiting, pretending not to think about, selection, waiting, match meeting, waiting, birth, placement, coming home, waiting, and finalization.

Since this is our third time around, Laurie and I would like to consider ourselves seasoned veterans. However, from the moment we printed the application form our agency’s website, the mischief began. Stay tuned as I post our journey toward Number Three…

Families Like Us in Adoptive Families Magazine

2010-06-25T17:49:00.006-05:00

Check out the August 2010 issue of Adoptive Families Magazine. On page 26 is my article, Families Like Us. Here's the link to the AF website. Or you can read my original.

Adopting Again

2010-06-21T09:10:00.002-05:00

We are very excited to have begun the process to adopt our 3rd child.

We had our homestudy last week and now anticipate approval by the end of June.

At that time, we will be ready to have our profile shown.

You can follow along with our journey on my wife's blog:

www.adoptioncreatesfamilies.blogspot.com

Private Disappointments

2010-04-18T10:41:00.003-05:00

Being a member of the adoption community often means we tend to draw the attention of couples struggling to get pregnant. The tears they shed are the same ones Laurie and I endured years ago while undergoing fertility treatments. I’ve come to think of it as the type of bond soldiers in war form while sharing foxholes, one that other people wouldn’t understand unless they have been in the trenches too. Friends we haven’t talked to in years may spend months trying to conceive, and then all of a sudden they’re interested in intimate details of Isaac and Vivi’s birth story. How much did it cost? What kind of relationship do you have with the birth parents? Laurie and I don’t like to broadcast our children’s lives to just anyone, but these people are hungry for the quickest directions that will bring them a baby. Sometimes these couples go on to foster or adopt (even from our agency), but more often than not, a few months pass and the couple “magically” turns up pregnant.

This is what happened to friends of ours a few years ago. After two years of trying to conceive, and a few weeks of communicating with us about adoption, they announced their pregnancy in a mass email, saying, “God heard our prayers.” We didn’t hear much from them after that.

While we understood pregnancy kept them busy, Laurie and I couldn’t help but feel hurt that our connection became hypothetical. We had shared intimate details of our lives to people that no longer related to us and we couldn’t help feeling stupid.

Over the years, similar circumstances have come up and Laurie and I have learned to balance sharing elements of our story that are relevant and impactful without being too personal. But what still hurts is their announcement: God heard our prayers. I couldn’t help but silently ask if that meant that God did not hear ours.

It’s a dangerous theological question, one I know the couple did not intend in their announcement. But nevertheless, it suggests a lack of understanding I think is common, even sometimes within our own families.

For a year or so now, Laurie and I have wanted to adopt a third time. However, financial difficulties have hindered this from happening. This has not stopped our adoption agency from contacting us with potential placements. There are times when small agencies like ours only have a dozen or so families in waiting, most of whom want a Caucasian child. So, because we’re open to African American children, that means that when we see them on our caller ID, we take a deep breath, stare at the blinking light on our answering machine, and ask each other, “Do you want to push the play button or do you want me to do it?”

Two months ago, I came home from work and found Laurie standing in our kitchen beaming and holding a sign reading, “It’s a boy!” The agency had a mother-to-be who said she might want to place and the agency wanted to show our profile to her. It was the closest thing to the “I’m pregnant!” conversation we’d ever come, and it’s to my shame that I retreated to our study, where I pulled up our laptop, opened our online bank account, and tried to figure out how to come up with $20,000. I emerged a little while later and found Laurie on our bed, sad. I apologized and although she said it was okay, she cried out, “Other wives get to surprise their husbands by telling them they’re going to have a baby. Why haven’t we ever gotten to do that?”

I told her I wondered if those dads got excited or did what I did and panicked about money.

“But you know those home videos we’ve all seen where wives surprise their parents and in-laws on Christmas morning with sonogram pictures wrapped in a pretty package? I had a really good one planned for your mom.”

I rubbed her knee, unable to reconcile my emotions. I wondered if couples with multiple children and multiple credit cards went through this? If they got pregnant a third time, would their parents tell them they were irresponsible? Or would they rally around them? “We’re just thrilled to have another member of the family. We’re so happy for you guys. Don’t you worry about money. We’re going to be here every step of the way to help you with whatever you need.” Maybe I watched too many Lifetime movies.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t shake the need to justify adopting another child while in debt. While I felt confident that we could raise the money to pay for the adoption, we still had the daily food, clothing, and diapers to worry about. Even when the agency called to tell us the mother-to-be had decided to parent, I think it was these issues that truly disappointed us.

Ultimately, the only thing Laurie and I have to justify is what God is calling us to do. Our job is to trust that His blessings will come if we are patient and discerning enough to recognize them if they aren’t what we expected. And if we ever question His blessings and how long they can take, I feel better when I remember all the ways in the past that He has answered our prayers- most importantly the very blessings that sleep down the hall, one in baseball sheets and the other in pink flowers.

Day Two

2010-04-10T21:45:00.006-05:00

7am - Wakey wakey.

705am - I get a cup of coffee and turn TV on.

710am - Mom calls to see how everything's going, reminds me to make Vivi's hair look good.

8am - Breakfast. Kids eat all their French toast sticks, fruit cups, and milk. Isaac asks for hamburger.

830am - No time for baths. We have to get ready for ballet. Everyone gets dressed and I attempt Vivi's hair. The result is a sin against nature.

915-945am - Dance class. I'm the only dad among mothers and their daughters with pretty hair. I swear I can hear the angels in heaven weeping. I'm looking forward to taking the kids to Grandma's at 11am for lunch so I can prepare my guitar lessons for the day.

10am - Grandma wants kids for the night but can't feed them lunch. I hurry home to make hotdogs. While the kids eat, I'm unable to find suitcases or plastic grocery bags. So I put Vivi's clothes in her school backpack and Isaac's in one of Laurie's retired purses. Then I make another attempt on Vivi's hair. And somehow, it actually looks worse than before.

1115am - Running late for guitar lessons, I call Grandpa and tell him to meet me in the driveway. We scurry to make video on the way out the door.

5pm - Bacheloring it. Dinner consists of leftover cheese ravioli, jalapeno potato chips, and a bottle of Blue Moon. I miss Laurie.

505pm - Aftertaste from dinner is vile. I make a French Press of some Brazilian coffee. Somehow, my breath is worse.

510pm - Been home for ten minutes and the silence throughout the house is deafening. I miss the kids.

10pm - I've watched Meet the Parents, half of Death to Smoochy, and Hitchcock's Notorious. Now, do I finish Smoochy or move on to The Hustler, Rocky, or Platoon? Why can't I sleep when Laurie's out of the house?

The Momless Journals - Day One

2010-04-09T19:22:00.002-05:00

Laurie went out of town this weekend for a women's retreat. It's the longest she's ever been away from the kids since they came home. In other words, it's the longest period of time I've been alone the kids since they came home. I figure enough interesting stuff is going to happen that I'll have lots of blogworthy material.

Friday

315pm - Mom says goodbye while kids are watching television. Thus, the kids handle her departure well.

4pm - TV is off. Kids play outside.

405pm - Kids get into mischief outside. I threaten they either play nice or go to bed for the night.

405-5pm - Kids play nice.

5-630pm - Gattitown. I start with a salad for the three of us. Both kids eat all their salad. I get us pizza and both kids eat like three pieces of pizza. Vivi is funny, each time I get up to go to the buffet she follows me. Then we played games and both kids did great. They rode a pirate ship together and took turns on arcade games. Then we had dessert and Icees. Isaac ate cherry cobbler, a piece of chocolate pizza, apple pie pizza, and cinnamon pizza. When Vivi started crying that her Icee was all gone, Isaac gave her his. I try not to start weeping in middle of crowded dinner rush.

645pm - On the way home, Vivi vehemently protests "I'm not ti-hi-hi-yer-her-her-her-herd."

7pm - Back home, both kids wired from dinner. Play in playroom.

705pm - Playroom time doesn't go well. Vivi goes to bed. Mentions wanting Mommy for the first time.

710-8pm - Isaac, still wired from either his third or fourth helping of dessert, spins in circles on the playroom floor while singing, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."

8pm - Isaac to bed. Daddy blogs.

"Miss you, Honey!"

A View of the Garden

2010-03-20T10:25:00.002-05:00

The problem with living with other human beings has been debated by theologians and philosophers for millennia. Many believe God’s great mistake was his giving free will to people, specifically to the person sharing your refrigerator and bathroom. It’s their God-given right to decide not to do things exactly the way you want them to. At least these are the complaints I regularly heard from my college friends about their roommates. In college, everyone has roommates. And everyone I knew had roommates who used up all their ketchup and shampoo and parked in the wrong part of the driveway. I considered my three roommates and wondered, “Am I missing something?”

In truth, my roommates and I were the envy of our circle of friends, males and females alike. George, Adam, Yoshi, and I lived in a house on Gardenview Street for two years while studying jazz at the University of North Texas. Even then, we knew we were different. Perhaps it was our mutual interest in music, or how spiritually in tune we were, or how seriously we took our relationship as roommates. In truth, it was all of these things.

From the first day we moved in, we set ground rules. To avoid fighting over food, we created a food pot, or what we called “the wallet.” Each of us put in something like $20 every week, agreeing that everything in the pantry and fridge was everyone’s. Also, we’d use The Wallet money for dinners together. On weekends, our schedules drove us in different directions. But during the week, each of us picked a night to cook and we ate together.

We were as close as brothers, maybe because there were so few like-minded guys around. We’d see each other in the morning and pray for each other’s day, then return home that evening for dinner, and spend the evening talking or jamming. While everyone else in the Dallas area ate, slept, and breathed the Cowboys and Mavericks, we read books on church history and argued over who was the better drummer for Miles Davis in the 1960’s.

“I like Tony Williams.”

“Are you kidding? Tony Williams is so overrated. Jimmy Cobb is better.”

“Did I ever tell you guys about the time I played with Jimmy Cobb.”

Collective groan – “Yes.”

We expanded our evening routine only once, when one of us discovered a Celestial Seasoning-brand tea called Sleepytime.

Every few months we shifted rooms, usually because one or more of us needed a break from someone else. Adam was the resident northerner and I remember our time sharing a room included epic battles over the air conditioner. George may have been the lightest sleeper in history. Excluded middle-of-the-night activities included breathing too hard, shifting too much, and, on the occasions that I brought a midnight snack back to bed, chewing too loudly. And Yoshi preferred a room to himself where he could teach himself first century Greek and Hebrew in peace.

After a while, I think we all started to feel the urge to move on. To me, we looked less like a group of guys and more like my grandmother’s bridge club. I think it was the tea that was a bit too much for me. This is probably why out of the four of us I was the first to get a serious girlfriend. And when the end of our lease coincided with the opportunity to move into a duplex next door to my future wife, we all moved out and found other roommates.

Within just a couple of years, I was the only one left in Texas. We’ve each kept in touch through emails and phone calls. Then a few weeks ago, Yoshi contacted me to let me know he was coming to Denton for a few days. He hadn’t been to Texas in over six years, the amount of time it takes the average Asian to purge their body of southern food. So he surprised me when he suggested we eat at Cracker Barrel.

After breakfast, we drove by our old house on Gardenview. To our sadness, the years had been unkind to the entire neighborhood. Wilted trees were surrounded by neglected lawns, and sun damage had faded the color from most the houses. We pulled up our former driveway, and the first thing I noticed was an eviction notice hanging from a bedroom window that had once been mine and then Adam and Yoshi’s. Around the side of the house, the garage door had caved in. This was the garage where I spent almost an entire summer after the boys kicked me out of the house for practicing Eric Johnson’s Cliffs of Dover over and over.

It was sad to see our old home in such a shambles. Moreover, it was sadder to end our little reunion on a note like this. Kids and career have a way of clouding the past (as well as the present) and I hadn’t thought much about those two years for a while and it grieved me that to this day I haven’t been that close with any other guys since. Never again would someone call me a pathetic white boy for liking the music of Dave Brubeck. Never again would any man fold my laundry because they were looking for something to do until their casserole was ready.

Then later that day, I heard an NPR story about a book called The Yugo: The Worst Car in History. The story confirmed what I always suspected: that the value of the car doubled when you filled it with gas. It also said there were less than a thousand Yugos still on the road today. And I recalled Adam’s legendary voyage from Vancouver to Texas in his rust-colored Yugo. Somehow he had packed all of his belongings, including an upright bass, into this four-speed little thing and made the two-day trip. “It might not have taken two whole days, but the top speed is only 55 mph,” he told us. Even more remarkable was that this was his vehicle for the two years we lived together. Whenever we could, George, Yoshi, and I volunteered to drive. But inevitably, one of us would be low on gas, or maybe we just wanted some attention, and we all wound up cramming into the Yugo like a circus clown car.

“Can you turn the air conditioner on?” I asked the first time I rode shotgun.

“There isn’t any A/C,” he said.

“It’s broken?”

“No, there’s isn’t any. Yugo’s don’t come with A/C.”

“You drove halfway across the continent without air conditioning?”

“Well, in Canada we don’t need it. The summers aren’t that hot.”

Then we pulled into the school parking lot. “Where’s the door handle?” I asked.

“You have to roll down the window and open it from the outside,” Adam said.

Hindsight has a way of making the past either worse or better than it really was. At the time I moved out of the Gardenview house, I probably was ready for a change. But my memories of the two years I lived with George, Yoshi, and Adam recall that they were two of the best years of my life, just a notch below my marriage. The last of us will get married this summer. And while the rest of us have wives and daughters, I am the first in the house to gain a son. It is something I pray for the boys, especially when great moments of bonding occur between Isaac and me.

Just the other day, we were riding in my truck and a Van Halen song came on. “Dad,” Isaac said, “I hear the guitar.”

“That’s right,” I told him. “That’s Eddie Van Halen.”

“Eddie Vanillem?”

“Yeah, he’s one of the best guitar players of the eighties.”

Isaac took a little car and started racing it up and the down his leg. "Okay."

“But we like Randy Rhodes and Slash better,” I said.

“Oh." He examined his car for a moment. "What’s a Slash?”

And I sighed, considering all the wisdom I have yet to impart on the next generation of men.

Girly-Girly Turns Three

2010-03-12T20:29:00.016-06:00

Since Daddy's pretty little girly turns three this Sunday, I wrote something a little special just for her.

See the Booty

Before Isaac learned to talk, he and I developed our own language, one that was more physical than verbal.

"Ungh” meant, “Get off.”

“Hiya” meant, “I’m going to clobber you now.”

“Ouch” and “Waaaah!” meant basically the same thing: “I’m in excruciating pain but please don’t tell mom.”

Although he and I had no problems understanding each other, most of the women in our family didn’t seem to get it. I remember visiting Laurie’s parents house and she’d lean over and whisper, “Don’t you think you’re playing a little rough with him?” When she said this, I was dangling him upside down from one of his ankles while he laughed and screamed at the top of his lungs, “PUT! ME! DOWN!”

While I agreed that sometimes our rough housing might have gotten a little out of hand, I took great pride that I had found a way to bond with my son, regardless of how rough it was. Having not been around little kids too much up until that point, I didn’t really know how else to relate. Thus, when we got the news that we’d be getting a baby girl, I had no choice but to reevaluate my approach.

While I worried about fathering a female, Laurie embraced mothering a female with gusto. Once the nuetral colored nursery was accented in pink, she moved on to blankets and burp cloths and finally her appearance. Like most men, I figured this meant clothing. But oh no, I underestimated The Hair. While Isaac could get his head shaved and be good to go for half a year, Vivi’s mane would occupy great quantities of our daily schedule. There were parts to perfect and bows to misplace. Laurie’s entire reputation as a mother rested solely on her ability to make Vivi’s hair look pretty. “Why don’t you just put a hat on her? We’re already late,” I said.

“You don’t understand,” Laurie said. Then her bottom lip started to quiver.

I might be agitated that Vivi’s hair took so long or that a small stain on her shirt meant we had to turn around, go back home, and get a back-up outfit. But then we’d arrive somewhere and women and men alike would stop us. “Oh. My. God. Look at this pretty little thing.”

“Yep, she’s Daddy’s little princess,” I’d say.

The first few years of Vivi’s life, our relationship was fairly one-sided. She’d cry and I’d bring her whatever it was she wanted. At times, her crying was ear-piercingly, crack-the-windshields loud. But as she grew from an infant to a toddler, her little fits became adorable. Her favorite move was to turn her head from you and say, “Humph.” Sometimes she followed that up by folding her arms. It was precious. Then she started talking and overnight became incredibly, almost painfully precious.

“Daddy loves you.”

“Wah yew too, Dee-ad.”

“Night-night.”

“Nigh-nigh.”

Bedtime could last anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour and consisted mostly of kisses to her forehead, cheeks, hands, fingers, toes, and feet. Then I’d start again from the top.

I’m not sure when it happened exactly, but sometime around the age of two she became a girly-girl. I think it started when she developed her first crush on Mickey Mouse. From there, she moved on through the catalog of Disney Princes. Ultimately, she idolized every single major and minor female character: Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, Tinker bell, Jasmine, and “Ariel-mermaid!” She knew them all in a matter of a few weeks. The funny thing was that she had seen none of the movies.

That Christmas, her mother, grandmothers, aunts, and great aunts teamed up and gave her the Barbie-doll version of every single, Disney princess. Then, as an added bonus, they gave her a trunk filled a dress-up outfit for every single, Disney princess. Christmas morning, we watched as she opened one of the dolls and shrieked with delight. “Wow! Snow Night!” Then, forty-five seconds later, “Wow! Cindowedda!”

“Didn’t anyone get her something she can wear in public?” I asked.

We brought the dresses home where the thirty-minute-kissy-kissy-bedtime routine became the thirty-minute play-with-dresses-and-dolls routine. We’d tuck her in around 730pm. At nine, we’d still hear her shuffling around in her room. At ten, we’d go check on her to find her passed out in the middle of the floor with the wings of her Tinker bell outfit poking her in the ribs.

I might have found all the pink, girly stuff overwhelming at first. But then her mother started painting her fingernails and toenails, and how could I not find this adorable? She comes pitter-pattering down the hallway and jumps into my arms. “Oh, you’re so pretty,” I tell her.

"I pity.”

“Yes, Daddy’s little Pretty-pretty.”

She does a little jig in my arms. “Pity-pity.”

“Are you a little Girly-girly?”

“Grr-Grr!”

“Are you wearing a pretty dress?”

“Yesssssssss.”

“What dress is this?”

“See-the-booty.”

“Oh, Sleeping Beauty.” I pick up her hand and examine her fingers. “Did Mommy paint your nails?”

“Uh huh. Is pink.”

“Is pink your favorite color?”

“Yessssssss. One’s gone.”

“One of you’re fingernail paints is gone? Oh, no. What happened to your fingernail paint?”

“I ate it.”

It makes my teeth hurt how sweet she is.

If I was nervous about fathering a girl at first, Vivi has completely calmed those fears. I worried I might not know how to relate to her, but honestly, I love all this girly stuff. I love taking her to ballet classes. I love watching her dance around in a Cinderella dress only to change thirty minutes later into Belle. And if I ever get nervous about getting too much into the girly stuff, I can always play with the boy. He’s five now and one of the most advanced speakers I’ve ever seen, but we still have a language that consists of grunts and single-syllable sounds. I grit my teeth, step one foot to the side like a sumo wrestler, and say, “Aaah!” and he knows exactly what I’m talking about.

Happy Birthday, Pretty Girl!

Together in the Corner

2010-03-11T20:46:00.002-06:00

One of the core phrases my company loves to throw around is “Dealing with Ambiguity.” It’s a competency that comes up in every performance review, regardless of which position. I remember when I was promoted to manager and I spent a month with a training manager. She told me, “It’s not possible for me to prepare you for every situation you might encounter as a manager. That where your ability to deal with ambiguity is key to your success.” Her words rang in my ears the other day when I stepped off the floor to use the bathroom and one of my employees knocked on the door. “I need your keys,” a voice said from the other side of the door. And despite my years of managerial experience, I found myself stumbling to know what to do.

On any other day, I might have figured something out. The problem was that I was already off my game that day. Just two hours earlier, I had had a run-in with my new supervisor – my seventh in four years. I’d worked for this new one for all of a week when she wrote me up for failure to execute a promotion.

She told me, “I popped into your store last week on the first day of the promo and observed that some of your employees hadn’t been trained on the new products. And I need you to know that that’s not okay.”
Her tone was soft and she nodded her head a lot. It reminded me of a preschool teacher rebuking a child for not eating their lunch nice.

“Why weren’t all of your employees trained on the new products?” she asked.

I hated to sound like I was giving excuses, but the explanation I gave her earlier that morning on the phone (“my son had to have surgery”) hadn’t changed. Of course there was more to the story than that, but at the time I was too overwhelmed by the absurdity of our conversation.

“I hear you saying your son was in surgery,” she said. “I’m interested in what plans you have to ensure the next promotion is fully executed.”

In my mind, I said, “The first thing I’ll do is make sure my son doesn’t need any further medical procedures.” But I worried this would only antagonize her. She was already employing a script that seemed more like couples therapy than corporate-speak. Besides, we were still in the first impressions stage of our professional relationship. Ultimately, I responded with some mindless drivel about accountability and root-cause analysis.

“What do you think would be some of the benefits to your entire team being fully trained?” she asked.

It was a series of those managerial questions they teach you to say when you’re in training for how to have a coaching conversation. It’s supposed to put the listener in a place where they are verbalizing they’re own action plan. The only problem is that for a wise ass like me, it’s hard to answer questions like this without living up to my reputation. They’d all be set up for success. Each of them would have the potential to operate on a level to achieve optimal store results.

At some point, she whipped out written documentation for the promo training. I remember saying that docking me seemed harsh and she reiterated, “it’s not okay that members on your team weren’t trained.” She said more but at that point I had tuned her out, my mind reeling at the severity of the entire incident.

I ran the conversation over and over in my mind as I pulled into the parking lot of Isaac’s school. He was standing next to one of his teachers and waved his cast-covered hand at me when he saw my truck. Oh, good, I thought, he’s had a good day at school. I need some good news.

Over of the past few months, I’ve memorized the facial expressions of his teachers. The slightest change in their smile instantly alerts me whether Isaac had a good day or not. This past week, the head teacher’s smile had been dropping a quarter inch per day. Today, as she opened the passenger door of my truck, she was noticeably bothered.

“Hi, bubs,” I said.

He looked down and softly said, “Hi.”

I looked up at his teacher. “How did everything go today?”

She gave me a small smile and sighed. “Well, he’s had better days.”

At times, Laurie and I have wondered if his teachers are too nice to him – that maybe they overlook some of his behavior because they like him so much. But having already had a pretty crummy day, I appreciated her grace and diplomacy.

“What happened?” I asked her.

“I’ll let him tell you.” She patted him on his knee. “Bye, Isaac. See you tomorrow.”

He looked at his lap and in the same quiet voice said, “See you tomorrow.”

She shut the door and we drove off.

After a minute of sitting in silence, I finally asked, “So what happened today, Bubs.”

“Nothing.”

“Let me see your folder.”

He took his yellow folder from his backpack and I did my best to read it while driving down the freeway. Isaac was playing rough with other boys. He raised his voice when teacher asked him to calm down.

“Isaac William,” I said, “What is this about sassing your teachers?”

“Dad,” he said, “the other boys were playing rough too.”

“I don’t care about that. What about the sassing? Haven’t we talked about that everyday this week?”

“But one of the other boys threw a toy…”

“I want to know why you sassed your teachers.”

“Dad, I tried to tell the teachers but they kept telling me to be quiet.”

“Then why didn’t you listen to them and stop talking?”

“Because they were being mean to me.”

“No, they were trying to get you to calm down.”

“They wouldn’t let me talk.”

“Maybe if you had tried to tell them in a nice voice…”

“Dad, I won’t sass them anymore. I’m going to work really hard tomorrow.”

“You said the exact same thing yesterday. I’m tired of hearing promises.”

“Okay. It won’t happen tomorrow. I’m going to work really really really really really really really… ”

“That’s enough,” I said.

Isaac propped his elbow on the door, laid his head on his fist, and gave a frustrated sigh. I knew that sigh and couldn’t help but feel like a heel. While it was true that sassing his teachers is unacceptable, in my heart I knew he was sorry and genuinely didn’t mean to. I wanted to believe he’d work on it. But I also knew that the next day we’d have the same conversation.
As we drove home in silence, the events of our day played in our heads, both of us trying to reconcile how our day had taken such a dump. We seemed to be trapped in a misunderstanding that wasn’t entirely our fault. We tried to make our cases known and only dug ourselves deeper into the hole. Each of us had been told, “Enough with the excuses. You need to show results.”

I suddenly felt sorry for Isaac. Not as much for getting into trouble, but more because even his own dad didn’t have his back. Sure he can’t be allowed to talk back to his teachers, but he also doesn’t have the arsenal to disagree with an adult, especially a teacher. Furthermore, he’s too young to know yet how to tell a convincing lie when backed into a corner.

“Dad?”

“What?”

“Do we have to tell mom about my day?”

I hadn’t thought about his mother. At some point, she’d have to know about our days. And she wouldn’t be happy with either of us. I figured I had a better chance of getting out of the hot seat if I took care of Isaac so she wouldn’t have to.

“Yeah, Bubs. We’re gonna have to tell mom.”

He gave another melodramatic sigh. “All right.”

“But you know what?” I added. “What do you think you could next time if you have to tell the teacher something important but she’s talking?”

“I could raise my hand.”

“That’s good. Should you interrupt?”

“Nope. I should wait until she’s done talking.”

“Good job.”

“Dad, can we go get ice cream?”

I couldn’t believe it. The absolute nerve this boy had made me burst out laughing.

“What, Dad? What’s so funny?”

“You,” I said.

He gave me a big toothy smile.

“Okay, let’s go get ice cream. But don’t tell mom because she’ll be mad we got ice cream without her.”

“No, Dad, we can’t do that. That’s lying.”

I leaned over and kissed his head. “Good job, Bubs.”

We finished our cones as we pulled into the driveway. Just before we walked in the door, I thought about how much easier kids have it than adults. They get in and out of trouble so easily while we struggle and toil just for an inch. Then I remembered distinctly being a kid and thinking how much easier kids have it than adults. Either way, that one Bible verse is right. “Man is meant for trouble.”

Card Stock

2010-02-13T21:29:00.007-06:00

I was in the card section at Walmart a few days before Valentine’s Day, looking for a card for Laurie. And I must have looked at thirty cards. According to many reliable sources, I am picky. It’s a label I’m willing to embrace if it means I’m the type of guy who wants to pick a card that says just the right thing and doesn't cost nine dollars.

When did greeting cards become so expensive? I wondered. I imagined giving Laurie a five-dollar box of chocolates and writing, “Love You, Sweetie,” in sharpie all over the shrink-wrap. I’d say, “I thought you’d prefer the money spent on sweets.” She’d put her arms around me and kiss me. “You’re the smartest husband in the world,” she’d say. Do I know my wife or what?

So as I’m walking up and down the crowded card section, I notice that I’m surrounded by women. This is a sharp contrast from my shopping experience last year. I got off work late after a closing shift – this was on February 13th. It’s after midnight, and still the card section was full of guys, each of whom had a bouquet of roses and was frantically searching through the sparse card selection. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who waited until the last minute. I saw guys in ties and guys in coveralls. Regardless of class or race, we formed a band of brothers, each of us united by their nightmares haunted by the Ghost of Forgotten Valentine’s Past.

However, this year, I was an entire week early. This, to me, explained all the women in the card section. As I’m looking through the "to her from him" cards, I noticed how so many of cards are apologetic:

“I know I don’t tell you often enough…”
“I don’t know how I got to be so lucky…”
“Sorry this is late…”
“For the woman I don’t deserve…”
“You’re always so patient with me…”

And I couldn’t help but feel a little offended. I mean, are all guys bumbling, forgetful tools? Sure I feel as lucky as the next guy, but I don’t feel the need to apologize for anything. I tell Laurie plenty of times how much I appreciate her.

Then again, there was that incident last week about the chocolates. Laurie had returned home from grocery shopping at Walmart. She walked in the door, came over to me, and kissed me on the cheek. “I got four bottles of shampoo for free,” she told me, waving the receipt at me. I wondered whether I should ask how she did it or what we needed four bottle of shampoo for. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to understand either of her answers.

“Honey,” she sang, “look at the receipt. I spent $120 and saved $80 in coupons. And I saw the box of chocolates I want you get me for Valentine’s Day.”

“Well, if you were already there, then why didn’t you just buy the things yourself?”

A split second before she started crying, I asked myself, “Did you just say that?” It sounded a lot funnier in my mind. And yet I heard the words said in a voice that sounded a lot like mine.

We finished putting the groceries away in silence. Then she retired to our bedroom while I spent the rest of the evening sitting on the couch, half-concentrating on whatever was on TV, and trying to think of a way to justify what I said. But I couldn’t, at least not without feeling like an even bigger tool.

I tried to think of how to make it up to her. She’s so good at showing me how much I mean to her. She tells me she loves with little gifts, and little gestures, and spending all day cleaning the house because she wants me to come home to a nice house. I tell her I love her when I pay the utilities bill. Why can't I be creative like her? And now I couldn’t even buy her the box of chocolates because now they’re tainted. Oh God! I thought. Why am I such a tool!

It was sometime the next day that I found myself at Walmart where I made my way straight to the card section. I weaved in and out of the women perusing the cards they would buy their husbands, along with dainty little treats. I felt their eyes on me and wondered if they thought I was really thoughtful, the kind of guy who always remembers to tell his wife how special she is. And for a moment, I allowed myself the fantasy. That’s right, Ladies. Yes, I’m buying my wife’s Valentine’s card a week early because that’s just the kind of guy I am. Then I tried not to be too noticeable when I started looking through the “I’m sorry” cards.

National Sanctity of Human Life

2010-01-24T19:58:00.005-06:00

Considering Sanctity of Human Life Day is typically in late January, I thought I'd post something a little different. Enjoy.

-Goggy

Choice of the Future

A month before Marc’s eighteenth birthday his parents gave him the bad news. They called him into the family room and sat him down in Father’s favorite chair across from them. “Son,” Mom began, “ Ever since we found out I was pregnant with you, your father and I hoped we’d be good parents. If not good, then at least decent enough – better than most of the low-lifes we meet at the many fundraisers we attend and contribute to.

“However, on the eve of you becoming a legal adult, your father and I have had to face a harsh reality – that we aren’t ready to be parents. So, we’ve decided that we’re going to have to have an abortion.”

Marc squinted his eyes. Then he shifted in the chair. “I don’t understand. What do you mean you’re going to have an abortion? Are you pregnant?”

“Oh heavens no!” Mother laughed. Marc thought she laughed a bit too loudly. “No, Son, we’re aborting you.”

Marc held up his hands. “Wait a minute. I don’t understand. You can’t abort me. I’m seventeen.”

“Right, Son. That’s why now is our last chance. Once you turn eighteen it won’t be legal.”

“What do you mean it’s legal?” Marc’s voice started to rise a bit.

Dad chimed in. “Well, Son, you didn’t think we were going to take you to one of those back woods clinics, did you?”

Mother laughed again. “That just wouldn’t be safe, now would it?” she said. “For God’s sake, Marc, we’ve got a little more money than that.”

Marc turned to his dad. “How can you let this happen?”

“Well, Son, it’s your mother’s body. It’s her choice.”

“But it isn’t her body!” Marc shouted. “It’s my body!”

“Now, Son,” Mother said, “there’s no need to get hysterical, these procedures are done all the time. We have the right to choose.”

Marc rubbed his forehead. “This can’t be happening. This can’t…How…How is this possible? How is this legal?”

His father adjusted his bifocals. “It became legal a decade or so ago when Congress signed that bill legalizing any abortions prior to the seventy-fifth trimester. Don’t you remember seeing all those teenagers marching around Washington with those Right to Life t-shirts? There were all those posters of older teens with the slogan “I just turned eighteen. I’m so glad my mom chose life” and “It’s a collegiate, not a choice.”

Marc looked down and examined his folded hands in his lap. “What have I done to deserve this?”

“Son,” Dad said, “‘deserve’ has nothing to do with it.”

“That’s right,” Mom said. “We just have to think about our future. There’s so much more we want to accomplish – hobbies, vacations, your father’s going to get Lasik, and I'm considering going back for his doctorate.”

“But I won’t interfere with any of that. You could send me away to boarding school like Todd.”
Mom and Dad gave each other an embarrassing glance. Then, Mom patted Dad’s knee. “Go ahead. You can tell him,” she said.

Dad took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Marc,” he finally said, “we didn’t send Todd to boarding school.”

“What? You told me you sent him to a boarding school where they don’t allow phones or letters…oh God.” Marc covered his face with his hands. “How could you do that to him?”

“Now don’t take it so bad,” Dad said. “It’s a medical fact that the procedure doesn’t hurt before the 75th trimester. Humans are really no more than a mass of cells. Besides, we took the money we would spend on your college and remodeled the upstairs.”

“Speaking of the doctor,” Mom chimed in, “we’d better get going. The doctor is expecting us in an hour. Did you remember to stop by the ATM?”

“Yes, I remembered,” Dad said. “Well, son, don’t worry about your things. You won’t be needing anything.”

Negligent Father Forgets Veggies at Dinner, Children's Future Ruined

2010-01-23T19:27:00.004-06:00

Local father, Mr. Goggy Coffee, admitted last night that, despite being told multiple times to remember the green beans, he simply forgot. Authorities arrived to find the children, Isaac, 5, and Vivianna, 2, finishing plates of Boca burgers, pickle slices, and cups of fruit cocktail.

"I put the can and the can opener right next to the microwave," wife, Laurie, told authorities. “I just went out to dinner with a friend. I was wrong thinking I'd be able to leave them alone with him for an evening. But by the time I got home it was too late. The Dallas Cowboys had already called, declining to send recruiters to Isaac's upcoming flag football game. And the New York City Ballet is on caller ID but I can't bring myself to even listen to the answering machine.”

Although Mr. Goggy has been unavailable for comment, witnesses state he was hysterical, claiming he'd seek professional help, marriage counseling, anything. “I always knew it would come to this,” stated his mother-in-law. “He forgot to brush the kids' teeth before bedtime a few months ago. There's no telling what he's capable of next.”

Mr. Goggy's mother has issued the following statement: “It is true that my son called me that night. He was frantic. 'What do I do? Isaac's on the toilet and he can't poop. Vivi's bouncing on our bed trying to eat a bag of unopened Skittles.'It's sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son, but he should be shot for what he's done.”

The children, as well as Mrs. Goggy, were examined by paramedics and were released with only minor emotional damage.

Dedicated to Laurie...sorry, Honey, it won't happen again.

Top Ten

2009-12-30T15:17:00.003-06:00

Ordinarily, I reserve my blog purely for stories, essays, articles, and various other forms of mischief. But I received a bulk email from Adoptive Families Magazine today which included their Top Ten most popular website hits for 2009. I was totally shocked to read that my articles held the number two and three spot.

Now those of my readers who know me in person understand that, under any other circumstances, I am way too humble to toot my own horn like this. In fact, many of you constantly tell me how humble I am and, frankly, it's getting out of hand. Nevertheless, I couldn't resist posting this. Thanks for reading and thank you AF Magazine!

Mistaken Identity

2009-12-16T09:48:00.006-06:00

Isaac has a knack for making friends. Regardless of where we take him – a park, playground, pool – he’ll find the child (usually a boy) closest to his size, walk right up to them, and say, “Hi. Mine Isaac (as in ‘My name is Isaac’). Wanna play?” That’s all it takes before both kids take off like rockets. On a good day, Isaac will find someone on the quiet side. But usually he chooses the kid who is making the biggest spectacle of himself, which is what happened the last time I took him to a playground at the mall.

It was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, so the playground wasn’t crowded when we arrived. The only adults there were a woman on her cell phone and another woman reading a magazine. I sat in a remote section of the playground and didn’t pay much attention to any of the kids until, after playing all of one minute, Isaac approached me and said, “Daddy, one of those kids pushed me.”

“Which one?”

“That one. In the orange shirt.”

The child Isaac pointed to was no bigger than he. Since he wasn’t crying, I didn’t make a big deal out of it. “All right, if he’s not going to play nice, then go play somewhere else.”

“What if he pushes me again?”

“I’ll keep my eye on him.”

Isaac seemed pleased and went off in the opposite direction of the kid in the orange shirt. For a minute or so, I watched the child, waiting to see if either of the women was going to do anything about him. But he never approached either of them. What I did see was him yell, push, and hit another child who was noticeably smaller than he. The woman on the cell phone saw it too and rushed to scoop up the baby. “That’s it!” she shouted, grabbing her purse.

Good for you, Lady. I thought. I don’t blame you for leaving. But she didn’t leave. Rather, she stormed over to me, her crying baby in one hand and her cell phone in the other.

“Excuse me, Sir,” she huffed. “I just think you should know that your child pushed my child.” A little frustration was to be expected, but this lady’s tone hinted she was ready for a fight and it caught me so off guard that it took me a moment to realize she thought the rough kid was mine. “That’s not my son,” I said, pointing to Isaac who was still playing on the opposite side of the playground. “That’s my son.”

She looked over and did a double take. “Oh,” she said. Then she paused for a moment, trying to regain her bearings. All she came up with was “Well, never mind.” Then she stormed off.

I sat stunned for a moment. Did that just happen? I wondered. The other parent, the one reading the magazine, made eye contact with me. We seemed to be thinking the same thing. Where are this child parents?

The playground started getting more crowded and, as the orange-shirt kid got louder and rougher, I decided to take Isaac home. On the way, I went over the situation in my mind, trying to make up my mind about whether I was more annoyed that she assumed my son was Caucasian or that she assumed my son was an aggressive brat. Still, it was a legitimate assumption nonetheless. regardless of the fact that the child looked nothing like me. I had assumed the child was hers and he didn’t look anything like her either.

Yet, her reaction to the truth still amused me. I couldn't help think back to the first few months we were a multiracial family. Back then, a situation like that would have depressed me for days. I would have spent days wrestling with questions like, "Why does the world have such trouble recognizing him as my son?" Then I would have struggled with when I would ever get comfortable. I'd like to think that I've become more accepting of peoples' mistakes. But in truth, I think I've become more cruel.

For example, there was the time Laurie and I were at the checkout counter at Target and the cashier looked at Isaac and asked us, "Is he your son?" Without thinking much of it, I said yes. Then she squinted her eyes and said, "So y'all gave birth to him?" I thought for a moment, struggling with two distinct options: a) graciously inform her that we adopted him, or b) simply say yes and watch her drown in the awkward silence. I chose the latter and reveled in the fact that if at least someone in the family can be nice to total strangers, regardless of how idiotic their behavior might be.

Call Him Mom

2009-11-27T15:16:00.003-06:00

I remember vividly the day Isaac said his first curse word. It was a dark, November evening. A cold northern wind had blown in earlier that day and seemed to foreshadow the evil that would descend upon our humble, pious family. I sat on the couch watching the news. Isaac was playing with toys on the living room floor. Laurie was in the kitchen preparing dinner when she said, “Honey, we don’t have enough potatoes for everyone.”

I took a moment to think of solution and Isaac chimed in, “Dammit, we need to get some more.”

His mother and I shared a look, which telepathically said, “Did I hear that correctly? Did he just say that?” I sat on the couch, waiting for his mother to say something, hoping she would know the best way to handle it. But she said nothing. We were both too stunned to speak, too shocked to know what to do. We both looked at our little two-year-old innocently playing with his little toys and mourned the loss of his childhood.

Finally, she came into the living room and kneeled on the floor beside him. “Isaac, what did you say?”

He responded matter-of-fact, “We need to get some more.”

“No, but what did you say before that?”

He said nothing, just gave her a confused look. We waited for him to come up with an answer, but he clearly had no idea what he said.

He continued playing with his toys, oblivious that he had done or said anything wrong.

“Do you think he really said it?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Do you?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe he said, ‘Dang it.’ We say that all the time.”

Laurie rolled her eyes. “You know he didn’t say ‘Dang it.’ You say the other thing sometimes.”

“I do not.”

“You don’t say it all the time. But I’ve heard you say it once or twice.”

Isaac chimed in. “Are you guys fighting?” He pointed his finger at us. His voice was stern and authoritative. It was a dead-on impersonation of his mother and me.

“No, Isaac,” his mother and I said in unison.

Later that night, after we’d put him to bed, Laurie and I discussed it further. She told me I needed to watch what I said around him. I said I’d already tried my hardest to phase out everything but ‘shoot’ and ‘fiddlesticks’ and that sometimes those just didn’t do the job. I suggested he might have heard it from anyone – my parents, someone in Bible study, that kid at the playground with the Marilyn Manson t-shirt. I reminded her that he had recently learned how to operate the remote control. “Maybe he changed the channel when we weren’t in the room and heard it then.” But I she didn’t buy any of it.

I couldn’t help but feel a little on the spot. We didn’t discuss any of the ways she was a bad influence on him. I didn’t mention his whining, crying, or constant compulsion to ask me for money. Laurie seemed raw enough about what he said and it didn’t seem like the right time to bring any of those up.

It would be weeks later that a better option would occur to me. I was halfway out the door on my way to work when Isaac said, “Bye, Dammy. Love you.”

I turned around and saw him playing with his racecars, unaware of his mistake. “What was that?” I asked.

“Oh. I mean, bye Daddy.”

I considered calling to his mother who was in the bedroom folding clothes. I wanted to tell her what he said – that the morphing of our two names sounded at the same time hilarious and blasphemous. But I thought twice about telling her. I imagined her saying, “You still need to watch what you say.”

At that point in his verbal development, I was used to being called Mommy. I tried not to let it hurt my feelings. As a stay-at-home mom, Laurie got significantly more face time with him. But at times it really bothered me. It seemed like anytime I was nice or treated him in a nurturing way, he would call me Mommy. Then, one day Laurie called me at work and said, “Your son cracks me up. I just got on his case for something and he called me Daddy.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was sassing me and I told him, ‘You do no talk to your mother like that. Do you understand me?’ and he said, ‘Yes, Daddy.’ Isn’t that funny?”

I thought about it for a second. When I’m nice to him, he calls me Mommy. And when his mother disciplines him, he calls her Daddy. Great.

His verbal skills skyrocketed from the typical, three-year-old stammer to a very articulate four-year-old. He now consistently calls his mom and me Dammy or Moddy. Vivi is almost three and has inherited this morph. She’s so used to me leaving for work that whenever Laurie leaves she says, “Bye, Daddy.” While mom is out shopping, I make dinner and, as I pace back and forth from the kitchen to the table, Vivi says, “Thank you, Mommy.”

I say, “I’m not Mommy.”

“Oh. Thank you, Dad.”

“It’s okay. Eat your carrots.”

“Yes, Dad.” She picks up her fork and immediately takes big bite.

“Good job, Girlie. Do you want your milk cup?”

“Yes. Thank you, Mommy.”

I rub my forehead and sigh. “I’m not Mommy.”

“Oh. Thank you, Dad.”

The Search for Meaning

2009-11-13T21:41:00.008-06:00

It's late and I'm sitting on my couch watching Christmas programs on TV. I'm wired because I just got home from working the closing shift, which is difficult because it takes me forever to calm down. The last couple of hours were spent rushing around and getting everything clean and stocked for the morning crew. Then, five minutes before we locked the doors, a customer came in and spent over a hundred dollars.

I just got home and I'm hungry and sweaty, despite the freezing cold. I ate the only thing we had in the pantry - off-brand Ramen noodles (has it really come to this?). Now my stomach hurts too bad to go to sleep. So I'm stuck looking for something on that will take my mind off the holidays long enough to put me to sleep. But I've been flipping the channels for twenty minutes without any success and I'm starting to lose it.

It's my own fault for having such a bad attitude during the holidays. No one forced me into a career in retail. I have no one to blame but myself for choosing a profession where I get to listen to Burl Ives and Eartha Kitt ten hours a day. I'm supposed to thank my company for waiting until the day after Thanksgiving to play Christmas music. But by the end of the first week of December, I'm ready to take some box cutters and go to work on the overhead speakers.

These days, when I stagger in from work and Laurie asks about my day, I tell her I spent all day listening to requests like, "I need ten $5 gift cards and five $10 gift cards." She tries her best to listen and sympathize. Then, ten minutes later she asks to take her shopping and wonders why I don't want to go.

I ask myself why I do it, why I work in retail, and I remember I stumbled into it the same way most people do - I wasn't good at anything else. This is why I have so little money, why I'm sitting in a bathrobe rather than turning up the heat, and why I'm watching local channels rather than cable.

It's also my own fault for looking for something upbeat on television. What was I expecting? Sympathy? I might have gotten that a few days earlier when A Charlie Brown Christmas came on. Charlie Brown asked if there was anyone who could tell him the true meaning of Christmas and now I can't get that line out of my head. The idea that I'm not alone in being a little down doesn't comfort me. Rather, it occurs to me that the show originally broadcast fifty years ago and nothing has changed.

I made the mistake of telling Laurie this. She called me a Scrooge and I thought about the countless remakes of A Christmas Carol. Lately, whether it's the version starring Fred Flinstone of Star Trek's Jean-Luc Picard, I'm getting more and more put off by the story's climax. The old curmudgeon runs amuck throughout the city buying things for the people who were nice to him an hour ago and I can't help but wonder what this has to do with the birth of Jesus.

Now, It's a Wonderful Life is on. I don't mind the film without commercials, which clocks in at just over two hours. But the network television version begins at 7pm and concludes just before sunrise. At eight o'clock, George finally meets Mary. At nine, George is slapping around his drunken uncle. At ten, he's in a bar praying and getting punched in the face. By eleven, he's finally jumping off the bridge. At this point, I'm so despondent that I find myself wishing Clarence would mind his own business and let George drown so I can go to bed.

At some point, I again ask myself what this has to do with Christmas. The film is about Jimmy Stewart's downward spiral and subsequent realization that his life really is significant. The message is good enough despite the fact that his decline takes up over ninety percent of the film. But that's not what bothers me. I just don't see what it has to do with the baby Jesus. Rather, the climax of the film happens to occur on December 24th.

A commercial comes on and I try to will myself to turn the stupid television off. But instead, I huddle under a blanket and watch a furniture commercial. One-weekend-only sale with no payments until after the new year!!! The announcer's voice is deep and enthusiastic, and it inspires me to look at my couch. I see the hole Lucy clawed into. There are the white stains that are either Isaac's drool or mucus. There's the yellow mark Vivi made with the marker that was supposed to be washable.

I reconsider Laurie's and my commitment to a debt-free Christmas. I think, Why did I agree to that? Then I remember the three credit cards we're already paying off - some of which are my ghosts of Christmas past. Laurie probably won't go for a fourth unless it's for the kids.

Finally, I'm fed up with the commercials and grab the remote. Rather than turn it off, I click around and find another movie that takes place at Christmastime, Die Hard. This is the edited-for-network television version where Bruce Willis jumps off the Nakatomi building after overdubbing to himself, "John, how the 'heck' did you get into this 'crap?'"

In light of the holiday season, I reconsider the plot. A foreigner comes to town. Sure, not everyone would consider a New York cop in Los Angeles a foreigner. But still, he sacrifices his won life to save a bunch of upper-middle class Americans from the forces of evil, or rather from the people who want the money of the upper-middle class Americans. This, I thought, is the true meaning of Christmas.

With my head straight and my heart warmed, I turn off the television, stand up and stretch, and put my slippers on. Then I head for the bedroom, feeling refreshed and armed with enough rage to get me through tomorrow's ten percent off sale at the store.

A Smaller Version of A Smaller Version of Me

2009-09-07T14:22:00.006-05:00

My article, A Smaller Version of Me, has been published in this month's issue of Adoptive Families Magazine. Here's a link to their website if you want to read their version. Or if you want to read mine, here you go.

Families Like Us

2009-08-27T18:32:00.010-05:00

Laurie and I aren’t always in the mood to share our family’s story. At any given time, strangers approach and say, “Are they yours?” or “Did you adopt them?” It always surprises me how these questions arise after the stranger has heard one of the kids refer to us as Mom and Dad. “Really?” I want to ask. “Seriously? How is it you are able to manage other abstract concepts like operating a motor vehicle?”

When we first became a multiracial family, we took the stranger’s questions as an opportunity to educate them. Everyone who approached us got a good earful of the awful plight of children in foster care and the need for people to adopt outside their race. The listeners politely nodded their heads and stared at their watch with great purpose while we nattered on for a few minutes. Laurie and I had stupidly assumed the best in people and quickly learned that people were usually more nosy than genuinely interested in our story.

A breath of fresh air came when we heard another adoptive family tell their story to a group of us. “You don’t owe the world an explanation about your family," they said. "It’s your story and it isn’t their business.” Laurie and I breathed a sigh of relief. We found freedom from wasting our time and exhausting the listeners. Our new approach to “Are they yours?” became a simple yes and we left it at that.

It was during this period when Laurie and the kids were eating at Chick-fil-a, that mecca of minivans and soccer moms, and a woman approached them and asked, “Are they yours?” Laurie later told me she silently huffed and thought, “I just want to go out to lunch with my kids in peace.” But she feigned patience and said yes.

The lady smiled. “Because my two sons were adopted. They’re African-American too.”

“Oh?” Laurie said, stumbling to perk up.

The woman continued. “My husband and I head an adoptive ministry at our church which is mostly Caucasian parents who have adopted African-American children. We’d love to invite you.”

“That’s great,” Laurie said, still trying to gather her wits.

Our first event with “Families Like Us” was a unique experience. We walked into a large classroom and were immediately greeted by Jena, the lady Laurie had met at Chick-Fil-A, and her husband, Brian. As they introduced us to the other families, we immediately felt a sense of familiarity. Over the years, Laurie and I have taken the kids to numerous events with adoptive families of color. Never before had we seen such a large group of families that looked exactly like us.

After the kids played for a while, the parents were directed to drop their kids off at nursery where they had pizza waiting for them. Once we came back to the classroom, an adult adoptee and her parents told their story while we ate a potluck dinner.

Each event differed from the previous one. One day was nothing more than playtime for the kids while the parents visited. Sometimes, families told their stories. Others, professionals from adoption agencies came to talk about how to coach our kids through elementary school or talking to our kids about race and giving them a positive sense of racial identity.

Over the next few months, we got to know the parents and their kids at the events. There was an immediate bond unlike anything we’d had with any other group. Mothers could finally talk about their struggles to moisturize their sons’ skin and keep up with their daughters’ braids with other equally clueless mothers. Fathers could talk about disciplining their kids in public with other fathers who felt the same judgmental eyes on them as well.

In any group of children, our son, Isaac, typically stands out not just because of his color, but because he is clearly the loudest and wildest. However, surrounded by hoards of loud, hyperactive black boys, he blended right in.

The biggest trip was watching the biological, Caucasian children interact with their siblings of color. Anywhere else, they would have blended right in. But here they stood out as the minority while their siblings blended in. It was like looking into an alternative universe.

Laurie and I decided a long time ago that surrounding our children with other children that looked like them was important. Once we got involved with Families Like Us, we learned the importance of surrounding ourselves with families that don’t look like each other.

I thought back to the previous January when we took the kids to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Parade. Laurie and I assumed we might be two of only a few Caucasians attending the celebration. So it alarmed me when we walked up and down the streets of downtown Dallas without seeing a single white person. I might have been self-conscious had people stared at us, but no one did. We set down our chairs on the sidewalk and our neighbors smiled and initiated conversations with us, not once asking “Are they yours?” Some kids even asked Isaac to play. The feeling of acceptance lasted until we noticed swarms of families that all matched one another. My mind flashed forward to the day that Isaac notices that even African American families resemble each other. “Why don’t we know any other families whose kids don’t look like their parents?” I imagined him asking.

It would be months later when Laurie met Jena at Chick-fil-a and our family got hooked up with a whole group of mixed-race families. Since then, I’m constantly on the lookout; restaurants, libraries, malls. I’m seeking out hyper, multiracial kids and their weary, guarded parents. “Hi,” I’ll say. “Are those your kids?” After a brief bout of huffing and rolling of the eyes, they’ll say yes and wait to see exactly what kind of nosy adoption question I ask. That’s when I’ll move in for the kill.

Love is a Verb

2009-06-28T14:55:00.009-05:00

A few weeks ago, a piece I wrote called "Trials and Errors" was published in the anthology Love is a Verb. This piece is special to me because it's about infertility and, to date, I have yet to read any good works on this topic from the perspective of the husband. Most of the men I've met in support groups don't have a clue what's going on with their wives. They wonder what happened to the woman they married and how their lives got to this point.

Here is an excerpt from the piece:

About a year into the treatments, my wife and I were invited to a marriage retreat. We would be sharing the intensive counseling experience with two other couples. Our first assignment was to each create a Life Map of our experiences leading up to the present. Then, the next morning, we had to present the Life Maps to the group. When my wife’s turn came, she shared her story growing up and how she and I had first met and fell in love. When we got to the part about our current relationship, she shared about our struggles with infertility and, as usual, began sobbing. The leader asked if I had been there for her in her grief. As I sat back and waited for her to proclaim my sensitivity to the group, I heard her say no.

“When have I not been there for you?” I asked.

“Lots of times.”

“Like when?”

“Do you remember a month ago when I couldn’t sleep? I had been crying for several hours and you just laid there and pretended to sleep. Then when I tried to wake you up so you would talk to me, you huffed and said, ‘This again?’ Then you kicked the sheets off the bed and stormed out.”

I sat back stunned. “I did that?”

I tried to remember the incident. If she said it happened it must have. I was certainly concerned that I was capable of treating my wife with such brutal impatience. But what concerned me more than anything was that I had absolutely no recollection of this incident. I racked my brain trying to remember when I had been insensitive toward her grief. I recalled evenings I had been watching TV or working on the computer when she wandered in and asked, “Whatcha doing?”

“Busy.”

“Do you want to do something together?”

This question had always irked me. It implied I never spent any time with her. Also it irked me that I felt trapped by the possible responses. If I said yes, I’d just be spending time with her out of pity. I’d be distracted by what I really wanted to be doing, I’d resent her for taking me away from it, and I’d do a terrible job of hiding it. If I said no, I’d feel selfish for not wanting to spend time with her. One night I finally got tired of it and said, “You’ve really got to get a hobby.” Now I realize the message I had sent. Your pain, your misery, and your identity crisis are a nuisance. You’ve got to get over this and move on for my sake and get a life. Was this the husband I had become?

The piece doesn't end here (I don't want you to think I'm a complete tool). But you'll have to buy the book to see how I became the calm, sensitive, understanding husband I am now. And for my immediate family reading this, the publisher didn't send me any free copies, so you're on your own.

Enemy of the Peace

2009-06-01T19:38:00.006-05:00

Taking my kids out in public is always a gamble. There’s really no way to predict their behavior. They may have been angels the entire day, but as soon as we step foot in the grocery store it starts: “Isaac, come back here.”

“Vivi, put that down.”

"Don't touch that."

“Hold my hand nice.”

“I told you to come back here!”

If their mother and I are together, we each take a child and we seem to manage. But the last time I took both the kids for an errand by myself, I lost it. It started when Isaac attempted to serenade the entire Super Wal-Mart to the theme song of Veggie Tales. I tried to ignore it and discreetly shush him and focus on the list Laurie had given me. But every time I left the cart unattended for more than a second, Vivi wiggled out of her seatbelt and stood up in the shopping cart. After this had happened no less than ten times, I’d had enough.

“Vivi, siddown! And Isaac, HUSH! You don’t scream that loud at home.” This was a lie, but I felt the eyes of the other shoppers on me and said it anyway, loudly hoping as many people as possible heard me.

“But Dad, I always sing loud.”

“No you don’t.” Of course, he does. But it was all I could do to regain my reputation to a bunch of strangers.

“That’s how they always act in public,” Laurie told me once we got home. “Wherever we go they tag-team me. It’s either one or the other driving me crazy. One of them runs off and as soon as I catch them the other one’s getting into something.”

I thought about all the times I’d come from work and asked her what she did with the kids that day. “We just stayed home.” I felt I understood why she doesn’t take the kids out very much. I don’t think it’s that she doesn’t want to go out. Nor is it that the kids act badly all the time. Even if they’re in good moods, they’re energy is exhausting and I can see her weighing the questionable value of getting the heck out of the house versus rolling the dice that the kids won’t annihilate everything they see.

I got to view this from a different perspective the other day when Isaac and I spent some time together just the two of us at a used bookstore. We’d already visited my section and were now in the kids’ section, which is our usual system at the bookstore. The kids’ section is a large corner in the back and is decorated with bright colors, cartoon posters, and a big carpet made to look like a maze. I’ve learned the hard way that if we visit the kids’ section before we go to my section, he’ll pitch a fit when we leave. Then, while I’m looking at my books, he’ll drive me crazy whining, “Dad, these books are boring.” However, if I look at my books first, then I’ll take him to his section if he is patient and calm. It’s not a bad system as long as I overlook him climbing up the shelves, rolling around on the ground, and pretty everything else he does while we’re in my section.

On this particular day, he’d behaved pretty okay while we were in my section. In other words, he’d run the step stool into only two other customers. We moved onto the kids’ section and I was standing by the entrance reading a book when a young boy, maybe seven or eight years old, brushed past me. If he bumped me it was only slightly, barely enough for me to look up to see if I was blocking the entrance. I looked back down at my book without giving him another thought when a woman rushed up to me and said, “I’m so sorry.” I looked around, unsure that she was talking to me. “Please excuse my son. He’s autistic.”

I was about to tell her he hadn’t even touched me, but her bluntness caught me off guard and all I could get out was, “Um, it’s okay. I hadn’t even noticed…” but she’d already moved on.

“Randall, come back here. Please be careful not to bump into people.”

I silently begged the mother, Please don’t make him apologize to me. Had he head-butted me or slapped the book out of my hand, I would have understood her need to apologize. But as it was, she had nothing to explain. And I worried that I wouldn’t be able to convey this to her.

I watched her lead the boy around the corner and out of my sight. Before the incident with Randall and his mother, I had been ready to leave. I was about to give Isaac a two-minute warning when his mother had approached me. Now I worried I might hurt the mother’s feelings if I left now. I stumbled to think of something casual to say, something that would reassure her that her son hadn't done anything inappropriate, but she walked away too quickly, like she was trying to escape something. Finally, it got to a point when saying something would have elevated the awkwardness. It would have been overcompensating, which is exactly what she had done when she apologized.

I wondered what kind of conduct her son must have had in the past to make her so apologetic, so ready to jump in and explain to total strangers why her son’s behavior stood out so much. I imagined her going home to her husband. “How was the bookstore?” he’d ask.

“Awful, like it always is. Randall bumped into this guy.”

“Did he bump into the guy hard?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you say something to the guy?”

“I tried to apologize but he just stood there and didn’t say anything.”

I wanted to say something to her. I wanted to explain that, on behalf of strangers everywhere, that Randall is free to lightly brush past us. He can even read books and walk the carpet-maze with our children. We’re not judging you as a mother. We’re sure you’re a great mom and that you’re doing the best you can.

After staring blankly at the same sentence in my book for close to five minutes, I finally told Isaac, “Put your book back on the shelf, please. It’s time to go.”

“Okay, Dad,” he said calmly, and did what I told him.

What do you mean ‘okay?’ I thought. Aren’t you going to ask me to buy it? Or at least argue with me or whine or something? As we walked through the parking lot, I couldn’t resist kissing Isaac on top of his head. “I’m proud of you, Bubs.”

“I’m proud of you too, Dad.” I’m not sure he understood what he said. More than likely, he was just mimicking me. But in my world, where parenting is difficult and I judge myself too harshly, I allowed myself this one little indulgence that as a parent I’ve got my act together.

Mother of the Year

2009-05-09T18:45:00.005-05:00

A family member sent this to us, so I can't take credit for it. Nonetheless, it may be one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Happy Mother's Day, Sweetie!!

A Word from the Sponsor

2009-04-22T11:13:00.006-05:00

We were at Family Night at the zoo when I saw all these signs saying, “Adopt a white crocodile.” I thought it had to be a joke or a gimmick – that is until I saw a sign that said, “Only $15!” I imagined a large metal animal crate, like the ones selling puppies in grocery store parking lots on weekends except with little baby crocs. Some dude in an undershirt would introduce me to “Snappy,” the runt of the litter and I worried how I would graciously decline. “I’m sorry,” I say. “But I already have a Gila monster at home. I just couldn’t.”

We came up to the reptile house and upon entering I saw a group of twenty families lined up at a table which was covered with little plastic white crocodile toys and a big sign advertising White Crocodile Adoption.

I turned to Laurie and asked, “Do you know what this is all about?”

“Yeah, you pay $15 for a little toy and the money goes to feeding the crocodiles.”

“So you’re not adopting anything. You’re sponsoring the crocs.”

“Exactly.”

As she said this, I watched a preschool age girl approach the table and ask, “Can I adopt a crocodile?” Her voice was soft and meek and broke my heart. Surrounded by dozens of families, I wondered how many of these children had misunderstood the signs as I had and thought they’d get to carry their new pet home that very evening. I wanted to chew the lady at the table out. What’s wrong with you people? Why can’t you just say ‘Feed the white croc?’ I might not have had a problem if the child got to watch the crocodile eat what they had donated. But walking away with little more than a happy meal toy seemed to be the last word in false advertising.

Once I got over my indignation for the disappointed children, I thought about the misuse of the word adoption. Most books I’ve read on adoption warned me of what would become my life-long battle for political correctness and proper adoption language. As soon as I got certified as a foster parent, I began noticing signs for “Adopt-a-highway,” “adopt-a-location,” and even “adopt-a-book.”

It’s not that I have a problem with the word being used on animals that are taken in for life. When Laurie and I fostered dogs for the Humane Society, we did everything a foster parent does. We fed them, took care of medical issues, and loved them as they adapted to their new home. In every way we welcomed them into our family and our daily routine.

But I don’t see how the word applies to donating money to a temporary cause and having someone else do all the work. I can’t imagine coming home from a hard day’s work and spending quality time with my stretch of Interstate 35. I’m certainly not putting any pictures of my “adopted” library book’s first day at school on my desk. And I’m for sure not going to hug and kiss any tree before tucking it in at night.

The problem is that Laurie and I never see these situations coming so we’re rarely prepared. They always come from out of nowhere from people we thought knew better. Last Christmas, the director of our children’s preschool sent home a letter saying each class had adopted a foster child for Christmas. “Shall I assume they mean they’ll be providing gifts for a child in foster care?” I asked Laurie “That’s what it means,” she said. This may have been another example of the type of thing that irked me for a few minutes and then rolled off my back. But the director should know better as she has fostered countless newborns, infants, and toddlers.

After we sold our house, Laurie and I interviewed for a position with an apartment ministry to residents of various complexes. Our interview with Lisa, a bubbly area director, went great until she suggested we solicit our family and friends to adopt us. “This means they’ll commit to your team while you work sending money to us monthly in support of you,” she explained.

“So they’ll be supporting our team financially,” I said.

“Well, sure.”

“Is the term you use for this program “adopting a team?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t want to come across argumentative, so I waited until the end of the interview and asked, “Do you mind if we use the word sponsor rather than adopt?”

“That should be okay. Why do you ask?”

“We adopted our kids and we feel that the term would be offensive to the meaning of the word ‘adopt.’”

Lisa nodded but said nothing. After a few awkward seconds, she offered each of us a handshake and said, “I’ll get back to you soon.” A few days passed before she called us back to offer us a position. I took the phone call, which was probably a good thing since Laurie wouldn’t have reacted too well when Lisa told me, “I do have one concern. The conversation at the end of the interview raised some concerns for me that you won’t be fully on board with our program.”

“Is your problem the way we brought it up or that we brought it up at all?”

“More that it was brought up at all. My sister adopted her daughter and I don’t see a problem in the use of that term.”

She obviously felt like she and I were on the same team, and I struggled to find a diplomatic way of telling her that she still had the right to be dead wrong about it. Unable to come up with a response, I told her, “Okay,” which seemed to satisfy her, and then I ended the conversation. I knew what I had to do, but I didn’t want to give her the impression that we were impulsive. So I let a few days pass before I called to tell her we wouldn’t be accepting the offer.

As Laurie and I scrambled to find a decent apartment with openings in the following weeks, we felt good about our decision. We hadn’t been able to resolve the issue with Lisa and knew she and her team probably considered us dogmatic, opinionated, and overly sensitive. But we made our peace knowing we’d stood our ground, confident we’d be able to handle the bigger battles that lay ahead.

Dream Job

2009-04-15T21:07:00.003-05:00

"Things move from order to chaos."
-The Second Law of Thermodynamics

The transition from working a traditional job to a stay-at-home mom is tough on anyone. But for my wife who worked as a nanny before having kids, she had a particularly difficult time. For over twelve years, she mothered other people’s children. She changed diapers and cleaned up toys full time. These may have been long days but at least she had a paycheck and the end of the day to look forward to.

Her first job after college was working full-time for a wealthy family of lawyers. This was before we had met and she’s mentioned this experience to me several times. “The husband was horrible. He turned me into a housekeeper. Every day I had to run the dishwasher even if there were only a couple of things to clean and then empty it before they came home from work. I had to fold all the clothes and towels a specific way and position them in the closet facing the same direction on wood hangers. In the winter, I had to vacuum the ashes out of the fireplace every day. He would yell at me if I didn’t do things exactly the way he wanted. It was the worst job I ever had.” Despite being offered a raise to stay, she quit after working for this family for a year.

My wife has a family of her own now – a toddler son, an infant daughter, a fifty-pound Australian Shepherd, and a little Pomeranian/Chihuahua puppy. She’s been trying to cope with the fact that cleaning the house is a losing battle. I came home from work the other day and all the children ran to greet me, including the furry ones. My wife was sprawled out on the couch and was the least enthused to see me. “Sorry about the house,” she groaned. I surveyed what was left of the living room. It looked like the cave of a pack of wild animals. The floor was littered with toys, granola bar wrappers, and clumps of black dog hair. The coffee table was strewn with the day’s mail, multiple board books, and overturned sippie cups. Sitting next to my wife on the couch was an unopened package of diapers. I put my keys on the kitchen table and noticed several used diapers next to the laptop.

I headed to the bedroom to take my shoes off and get comfortable, I saw a layer of toys on the floor and another layer in our bed, along with some folded laundry and a few snack wrappers. I made enough room on the bed to sit down and took off my socks and, as I threw them in the hamper, I saw the dirty clothes piled up to my waist.

My wife walked into the bedroom. “Honey, I know the house looks bad and I don’t want to hear it,” she said.

“I didn’t say anything.” But I couldn’t help but think back to the obsessive lawyer and his dishwasher and wonder what he did right that maybe I was doing wrong. I decided to say, “I’m sure you’ve had a rough day,” which I thought would be a neutral statement. However, she received a different message – You are not doing your job – and felt the need to defend herself.

“I have had a rough day. The baby’s been crying since she woke up this morning at 6am. She cried anytime I wasn’t holding her. When I picked her up she either thrashed around or hit me. The dogs got into the trash again. All your son ever says is, ‘Can I watch a show?’” She paused for a moment. I thought she might have been done but she was only considering how to go on.

“I know I should straighten up when they take their nap but I’m so tired I just need a break. You get to leave your job and come home. I never get a break. Even when you’re here, they’re still constantly all over me. They start before the sun comes up and don’t stop until bedtime.” She took a breath and put her arm over her forehead and lay on the bed quietly.

I waited a few moments to make sure she was done. When I thought it was safe, I said, “I’m sorry you’ve had a hard day. What can I do to help?”

“I don’t know. Just keep everyone out of the kitchen so I can make dinner.”

She got up and headed to the kitchen. I sat on the edge of the bed for a few moments. I thought about what she said and tried to sympathize. I’d worked a long, hard day but I had something to show for it. I felt bad for her because the house was in such bad shape that I couldn’t even notice what she had done.

I realized the difference between the lawyer’s home and our home was that she was being paid for her work. Keeping their home clean was her job. Mothering my children was not just her job, it was her whole life. It’s futile to think that I could pay her an adequate salary for the tireless work that she does or the endless hours she puts in.

I remember a story my wife told me about another family she had nannied for. She had been taking care of the boy, Jarrett, who at the time was probably three. The two of them had had a perfect day together. They played games and read books all day. He hadn’t had any tantrums and she hadn’t lost her temper at him once. At the end of the day, they were watching a show together when his mom came home from work. My wife and his mom debriefed the day while Jarrett went into the next room. After a minute or so, Jarrett’s mom and my wife looked over and saw that Jarrett was naked from the waste down and lion-taming the family dog with his step stool. My wife said, “So we just looked at each and laughed. Then I grabbed my keys and said, ‘See you later.’”

I would think incidents like this as well as things like diapers and the countless hours without adult engagement as a nanny would have worn her out before she even became a mother. But it hasn’t. She’s so glad to have kids that she rarely complains about that stuff. It’s the clutter that stresses her out. And it’s not because she doesn’t notice or care. That’s what I love about her. She does notice the pile of laundry and the dishes. But she’s just one person who is drastically outnumbered. I may be home only a few hours everyday, but even I see the children pull toys out of their toy bins just to pull them out. They don’t even play with the toys, they just move on to emptying the next bin. I think about the lion-taming incident and consider how my wife took for granted her job as a nanny where at least she could look forward to going home at the end of the day.

Grief - and Joy

2009-03-21T21:20:00.009-05:00

For those of you who aren't able to check out Adoptive Families Magazine, they posted the article, The Waiting Game. Their edit is not too different from my own until the end. So I've included an excerpt from what didn't make it in the magazine.

We recently celebrated the one year anniversary of the court date finalizing her adoption. We spent the day at the mall where we ate lunch, built her a teddy bear, and ate a large sugar cookie with “Forever Family” iced on. When we got home, we pulled out some home movies of the four years between the infertility and birth of our daughter. Seeing my wife and myself during this time gave me a different perspective on grief. I thought the despair would be evidenced on our faces and taint the holidays and special occasions we were filming. But as I looked for signs, I didn’t see any. In the videos taken the first couple years of our marriage, my wife had a beaming smile as she opened her Christmas presents from me. But what wasn’t in the video was her crying herself to sleep that night as she mourned the passing of another holiday without children.

I thought about our celebration day and realized that I hadn’t let any grief or fear defeat me or ruin my day. The idea that something wrong could happen never entered my mind. I didn’t have to dread a phone call or emails with bad news. I could allow myself to rejoice that sometimes things do work out. I was free to spend the day with my wife without worrying that she could break down into tears at any moment. Without my greatest fear, that one day my daughter could be gone or taken, I’m not only free to enjoy my life with her, but to enjoy my days with her, to love her, to kiss her, to play with her.

We got our copies today

2009-02-27T21:57:00.004-06:00

My article that I wrote about Vivi's birth is on page 23 & 24, titled Grief and Joy. It's about the grief and loss when we were going through infertility and the effects they had when we adopted our daughter.

Our son, Isaac's picture is on the Family Album page 47.

And our friend Debbie's daughter, Isabel is on page 30.

My wife will be keeping Isabel part-time for the next couple months and is really looking forward to it.

If you do not have a subscription to this magazine, get one. It is full of really useful information. You can also have your local Barnes and Noble order as many copies of it as you want.

Chicken Soup for the Moms

2009-02-25T15:57:00.008-06:00

Here's a link to the publisher for Chicken Soup for the Soul: Power Moms which will contain one of my stories. She's got a post and a you tube video about the upcoming book which will be released March 24th.

For anyone in my fan club, don't get your hopes up. I'm not in the video. But I'm okay with that. The authors featured in the video are famous celebrities and NY Times Bestselling authors. Now I know what you all are thinking. "Billy. You're just as talented as they are." Of course, you're right. But I have yet to attain their status or receive their accolades. At present, I can only claim to have read a NY Times Bestselling book once. However, I can't remember what it was called or what it was about.

Nonetheless, the publisher has also put in an author's bio link on her website. There you can view bios like "Starred in Emmy-winning" this, or "Won the National Book Award" for that, and then see my "Works at Starbucks." She had to change the heading (and men) just for me. Yeah, baby! Take that, Stephen King!

A Smaller Version of Me

2009-02-04T20:41:00.007-06:00

People are always telling Laurie and me that they want to adopt, especially couples who haven’t become parents yet. Typically they follow this statement with, “But we want to have our own kids first.” Another common comment happens when people first meet our kids or find out we’re a multiracial family. They ask, “Couldn’t you have your own kids?”

Although they would never admit it, the implication is that our kids, since we adopted them, are not our own. For the couples who haven’t become parents, it suggests the need to have their own DNA replicated. They envision a smaller version of themselves that people will fawn over and say, “Your baby looks just like you.”

Before Laurie and I became parents, the idea that our kids would turn out like us was more a source of anxiety than excitement. We discussed our personality flaws, our impatience and selfishness, at great length. Each disagreement, once resolved, was then debriefed exhaustively. “What are we going to do when we become parents?” Laurie has said. “We can’t be acting like this in front of or toward the kids.”

I remember incidents like a time Laurie was sick in bed and called to me from the bedroom in a raspy voice, “Honey. Can you bring me some juice?” After I pretended not to hear her, I paused my movie and brought her some juice and hurried out of the bedroom before she could ask me for anything else.

The image of a smaller version of me roaming the earth and inflicting my personality on others still haunts me. Now that I have my own kids, I constantly examine their behavior for traces of my influence. An incident with Isaac the other day gave me a little hope about him growing up nothing like me.

Lately, Isaac’s favorite game is called “Can’t Catch Me, Dad” and is little more than him loudly taunting me with this phrase until I chase him around our apartment at full speed. Each round ends when I tackle him and tickle him for five minutes. The game starts innocently but usually climaxes with one of us getting injured. Just in the past few weeks alone, the boy gave himself an upper-cut on my knee and I got my neck stepped on. Whenever he got hurt, he cried loudly until I said, “Maybe we shouldn’t play anymore,” and his sob immediately turned to a shriek of joy and he ran off again begging me to chase him. I was much more hypocritical when I got hurt. Once I regained my breath, I put him in time out and announced that “Can’t Catch Me, Dad” was no longer allowed in this family.

“You’re the one that gets him wild,” my wife told me later that night. “You can’t get him wound up and expect him to know when he’s gone too far. You’re the father and you need to stop it before it gets to that level.”

As usual, I took her advice with good humor and immediately applied it to our next game time. Last night, while chasing him around the apartment I bashed my knee against the side of our bedroom door. The next thing I remember was an excruciating pain shooting up from my knee throughout my entire body.

“What was that?” Laurie said from the kitchen.

Unable to find my voice, I sort of grunted, “I hit my knee against the door.”

“Are you okay?”

I thought about it for a second and realized that I wasn’t mad at the boy which I figured was a good start. “Yeah,” I told her. “Just let me lay here for a minute.”

While I lay on the floor of the doorway, I saw Isaac cautiously emerge from his room. He slowly approached me and began patting my back. “Are you okay, Dad?”

“Yes, Bubs. Dad’s okay, but I’m a little thirsty.”

“Oh. Okay,” he said happily. “I will go get you a drink. You just sit there and I will bring it to you.” He promptly ran into the kitchen and said, “Mom, can I have a drink for Dad?”

“Honey,” she said to me, laughing. “Give me a break.”

“Mom,” he said, reproving her. “Dad got hurt. He needs a drink.”

He returned with a glass of ice water with a straw. “Thanks,” I said.

“You’re welcome, Dad.”

He ran off to play while I got up and tried to walk around. There was a small lingering pain in my leg but otherwise I felt better. I started to pick up some toys when Isaac reappeared from his bedroom, grabbed my hand, and led me to the couch. “Dad, you need to sit down.” He grabbed a blanket from the basket in the corner of our living room and draped it over my legs.

“Thanks,” I told him. “But I don’t need the blanket.”

“Dad, you have to rest. I will go get you an ice pack from my lunch box.”

“No, Bubs, you don’t have to do that. Really, my knee doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“I will go get it for you just in case.”

I heard a rustling in the kitchen and his mother say to him, “You know you’re not supposed to be in the kitchen when I’m cooking dinner.”

“But Dad needs an ice pack.”

He returned from the kitchen and put the pack on my knee. Then he grabbed my hand and placed it on my knee and said, “Now, Dad. You have to hold it here so it will feel better.”

From our living room couch I could see Laurie in the kitchen giving me an “Oh Brother” look. “What?” I said to her. “He’s being helpful. You should be proud of him. He’s being so sweet.” As I was saying this, the boy climbed onto the couch, grabbed some pillows and poked me on the shoulder. “Sit up, Dad. This will make you more comfortable.”

I looked back at Laurie who was now giving me a funnier look. Then I think she said something about how she was sick for three days last week and no one catered to her, but I couldn’t concentrate because the boy had laid his head on my shoulder and was rubbing my knee.

She came out of the kitchen and asked, “Can you clear the kitchen table?” Her voice was more amused than annoyed, at least until I asked the boy to clear Dad’s magazines for him. “Honey,” she laughed. “You’re pathetic.”

While I sat on the couch under a blanket with a Lightning McQueen ice pack on my knee and pillows propping me up, I saw some advantages to the fact that Isaac’s personality is so different from mine. The boy certainly has his faults, but he has a generosity and desire to please that I know did not come from me.

I imagined my wife sick in bed and calling for me to bring her a Popsicle. From the living room couch, I say, “Just a moment, Sweetie.” I’m so moved to compassion that I call to Isaac, “Son. Mama’s sick. Why don’t you go take her a Popsicle? And bring Daddy a snack while you’re in the kitchen.”

Coming March 24th

2009-01-30T18:11:00.007-06:00

So I'm going to be published in a Chicken Soup for the Soul anthology due to be available at bookstores on March 24th! I've been having a lot of fun talking about my "book deal." It's pretty crazy. I wrote a story, called Dream Job, about Laurie being a stay-at-home mom and submitted it back several months ago. And now it's going to be in print. I have two more stories coming out in two more anthologies this year. Until then, here's the description from the website:

Wendy Walker, author of Four Wives and The Queen of Suburbia, has become the go-to media expert on women leaving the workforce to raise their families and run their homes. This book contains 101 great stories from mothers who have made the choice to stay home, or work from home, while raising their families and becoming active members of their communities. Stories from grateful husbands and children are also a fun read. These multi-tasking, high-performing women have become today’s Power Moms. Every stay-at-home and work-from-home mom will view this book as having been written just for her. Perfect for book groups, it will also contain a reader guide.

Black Sabbath has been published!

2009-01-07T13:03:00.005-06:00

Hey all

Just thought some of you might be interested in checking the Jan/Feb 09 issue of Adoptive Families magazine. My article, Black Sabbath, is on page 20. I haven't received the issue in the mail yet, so I have no idea what their edit looks like. But I thought y'all could be on the lookout. This is so far my fourth published work and my second paying one!

Cheap Entertainment

2008-12-08T15:40:00.013-06:00

While attending college, I lived with three guys. Each of us had our quirks and mine, I think, was my practicality and down-to-earth attitude. However, this may be an optimistic way of saying that I stood out as the least intellectual. Sitting at our second-hand kitchen table eating dinner, I’d have no idea what they were talking about. I consistently accused them of turning every conversation into a philosophical or theological discussion. I might have a lousy day at school or a fight with my girlfriend and tell them about it only to have one of them respond, “So what did you learn from that?”

It wasn’t just the difficult stuff either. An interaction with the cashier at the grocery store, the decision to buy brown shoes rather than black, when you set your mind to it, anything can be made a teachable moment.

I remember watching some forgettable schlock movie and later making the mistake of telling one of them about it. “So what did you learn from watching this movie?” he asked.

“I didn’t really learn anything from it.”

“Then why did you watch it?”

It was a legitimate question and I found myself at a loss for words. I thought, it didn’t teach me anything. It was nothing more than mind candy and it served a film’s primary purpose – to give me ninety minutes or so of peace from worrying about my checkbook balance. But this didn’t seem an adequate answer.

My interest in movies has grown exponentially over the years. I haven’t had even basic cable since I lived with my parents and built up my hobby with videos and DVDs. With roommates, it was no problem to escape into my room or the garage for a few hours, but when I got married, my hobby became more complicated.

The first year of marriage, my wife and I got by with just a DVD player. These were the nights we spent going out with friends or enjoying quiet nights talking. Then my father-in-law installed an antenna and gave us the gift of network television. Overnight, frustrated yelling replaced calm conversation. “Move it more to the right. The OTHER right! That’s too much. This isn’t working. Let me go stand in the kitchen and hold my arms up. That worked yesterday.”

To this day, my wife and I don’t share the same taste in TV and film. She gravitates to the traditional chick-flick while I will watch just about anything that doesn’t have Meg Ryan in it. Thus, when we agree on a show or movie, we embrace it with the zeal of a Trekkie.

To this day, whether I’m watching a sitcom or an epic period film, Yoshi’s question haunts me.

The Manhunt
In a day when television has to be very careful to use words like “alleged” when referring to a murderer or pedophile, John Walsh and America’s Most Wanted appealed to my wife’s conservative sensibilities. This is a world where “innocent until proven guilty” means nothing.

“Good evening. I’m John Walsh and tonight we need your help in catching some perverts. Our first story tonight is about a real dirt bag.” Where else but Fox will you find a grown man revert to name-calling? Everyone’s a creep, slime ball, or a cold-blooded sicko.

We started watching AMW a few years ago, back when the show announced their 700th capture. Their tally now runs over a thousand, many of whom never knew their profile had been shown on network television. They’d been on the run for months or even years until the broadcast and then a coworker who regularly watches the show turns them in. The update usually aired a few weeks later.

“Good work this week, guys,” John tells us. “Your tips led to the capture of this scum bag and lets hope this time some incompetent judge doesn’t let him out on bail again.”

What I’ve learned: If I’m ever on the run from the police, casually find out if my employers or landlords watch the show. Also, set aside time every Saturday at 8pm and find a private place to watch. That way, if I’m profiled, I can get some kind of head start.

Bad Boys
In Dallas, COPS airs right before AMW. At first, my wife or I would turn on the television ten minutes early and catch the last segment. Then we’d tune in earlier and eventually planned our whole day around skipping afternoon naps so the kids would go to bed at seven in time for COPS.

We’ve been watching COPS for almost a year now and I still haven’t figured out why. Maybe it’s the show’s predictability and simplicity that initially drew us in. Without the need for a script, narrator, plot, or any real production costs, all the producers have to do is send a camera crew to just about any city with legalized gambling and they’re sure to find primetime gold. The busts usually start with a routine traffic violation but quickly escalate when someone throws something out the window. As sure as death and taxes, the cops take the driver into custody and find a trunk full unlabeled pill bottles. “Those aren’t mine,” the driver says. “Those belong to this guy, Paul, I know.” The cop then finds out the car had been reported stolen and that the driver has a warrant out for felony drug trafficking.

What I learned: The next time I’m driving down the Las Vegas strip with enough crystal methamphetamine to supply the West Coast, I will first check my taillights, as well as the registration and inspection stickers.

My Tube
When there’s nothing on TV, my wife and I sometimes settle into bed with the laptop and randomly search the web. Occasionally we’ll get lucky and find a full episode of something we both want to watch. Other times, we wind up typing funny things into the search engine.

Our love of dogs eventually drove us to the Sonoma-Marin Fair, otherwise known as The Ugliest Dog in the World Competition. Together my wife and I scrolled through the archive of past winners and saw a history of protruding tongues, bald spots, blackheads, broken teeth, warts, and cataracts.

This led to our discovery of youtube. Here we found a link to an emcee reading the judges’ ratings system for the competition:
· Overall appearance
· Teeth – noticeable overbite or buck-toothed
· Special/unusual attribute
· Legs – crooked or missing
· Eyes – Sad sack, bug-eyed, or missing
· Tail – crooked or missing

My wife watched these videos while I was at work and updated me on her research when I got home. “This is Tater. His tongue looks like that because he’s got permanent nerve damage.” She insisted we watch these and then wondered why she had nightmares for days.

The tricky thing about youtube was the sidebar of “Related Videos.” This lured us into a world of highly educational videos like “Anaconda vs. small white boy” and “Hamster eats own young.”

What I learned: Videotape everything. Eventually, it will pay off, especially the next time I’m vacationing in the Amazon and see a pack of alligators attack a hippo.

The Other Greatest Story Ever Told
This past Christmas, I turned on the TV horrified to see that my regularly scheduled program had been postponed for the annual broadcast of It’s a Wonderful Life. I don’t mind the film without commercials which clocks in at just over two hours. But the network television version begins at seven o’clock and concludes just before sunrise. At eight, George is just now beginning his battles with Potter. At nine, George is slapping around his drunken uncle. At ten, he’s in a bar praying and gets punched in the face. By eleven, he’s finally on the bridge and I’m so despondent that I find myself wishing Clarence would mind his own business and let George do his thing so I can go to bed.

At some point, I asked myself, does this film really represent Christmas? The film is about a man’s downward spiral and subsequent realization that his life really is significant. The message is good enough despite the fact that the decline takes up over ninety minutes of the film. It’s not the negativity that bothers me. I just don’t see what it has to do with Christmas. It has nothing to do with the birth of a savior. Rather, the climax of the film happens to occur on December 24th.

Finally, I got fed up with the film and clicked around until I found an edited-for-television version of Die Hard. This is the version where McClane jumps off the Nakatomi building after overdubbing to himself, “John, how the ‘heck’ did you get into this ‘crap?’”

In light of the holiday season, I reconsidered the plot. A foreigner saves a bunch of upper-middle class Americans from the forces of evil. This, I thought, is the true meaning of Christmas.

What I learned: Die Hard is a better Christmas movie than It’s a Wonderful Life. Yippee-kay-yah!

Sad Gorilla

2008-11-25T20:39:00.006-06:00

The other night, I lay in bed trying to go to sleep. It was August and the bedroom in our apartment was the typical ten degrees hotter than the rest of the apartment. While I tossed and turned in the bed, my wife sat in bed next to me reading the newspaper and making it harder for me to sleep. It wasn’t the lamp or her rustling of the pages that kept me awake as much as her reading me a headline every four minutes.

“Honey, did you read about what the health departments have been finding when they test the sanitation levels of public pools?”

“No,” I whispered, pretending to sound too tired to talk. She didn’t elaborate but I was already wide awake and thinking about the countless public pools we’d taken the kids to in the last few months. Then, for some reason, my mind wandered to a food handler class I’d taken a few years ago. I didn’t recall any facts but I did recall some of the anecdotes the facilitator shared with us.

“How many of you eat sushi?” he asked. Several people raised their hands. “I love it. But you have to make sure to eat it at a reputable restaurant. My sister got some bad sushi once and a few days later complained that her throat had a weird tickle. When she went to the doctor, he reached down her throat with a pair of tweezers to pull out five worms, about two-inches long each.”

As I lay baking in bed, rubbing my throat, and thinking about the moral of the food class – that anything can make you sick – my wife said, “Oh my gosh, Honey, did you see this article about the mother gorilla that won’t give up her dead baby?”

“Excuse me?” I said. “What was that?”

“This mother gorilla gave birth to a stillborn baby. She’s been carrying the dead baby on her back for days. The zoo is trying to remove it but she won’t let them.”

“What do you mean she won’t ‘let them?’”

“She won’t allow her handlers to get anywhere near her or the baby. She lashes out at them when they approach.” She read on as if searching for a certain piece of information. “What they need to do is give her a cat?”

“What?”

“That’s what they do with mother gorillas when they lose a baby. They give her a cat. It’s so she’ll transfer her grief by caring for the cat. Seriously, I think I’m going to cry.”

“You don’t know why she won’t let them take the corpse. When did you become an authority on grieving monkeys?”

She wiped her eyes and shot me a dirty look. “A monkey is different from a gorilla. This is not a monkey. It’s a gorilla and that’s how gorillas show their sadness. She’s grieving the loss of her baby. Haven’t you ever heard of Koko?”

“Who?”

“Koko, the gorilla. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you who Koko is. She worked through her grief when her handlers gave her a kitten to raise.” Evidently she was upset with me for what she considered my insensitivity on the issue. I knew it’s my job to be a good listener. But gorillas? Really? Admittedly, I had questioned the credibility of her knowledge of sad gorillas, but she was clearly overreacting. I didn’t want to be defensive, but I wasn’t about to be labeled insensitive over something like this.

“So she just carries the carcass around like a backpack?” I asked.

“Yes. She has to. That’s how she says goodbye.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“It’s not disgusting. It’s sweet. I’m going to clip this and save it.”

She got out of bed and came back with some scissors. I had my next argument ready to go. Actually, you’re going to stuff it in the pit you call your nightstand along with a bunch of unread books, stationary, and other random crap you’re never going to use or throw away. Deflecting the argument from her supposed knowledge about primates to her lack of organizational skills would have been a low blow. And besides, she knew she’d already won the fight. I was not only insensitive, but I was also wrong. Any further statements would have made me look worse.

I rolled over and tried to go to sleep but I couldn’t stop shifting. Maybe it was the stifling heat in the bedroom, the fact that it was late, or the imaginary worms crawling around in my throat. As I reread the script to the conversation in my mind, I wondered why it bothered me so much. What do I care if she’s right or not? Ultimately, I fell asleep sometime after I admitted to myself that what upset me was that I was wrong.

A few days later, I watched as my wife showed the clip to her best friend, Brandi, who took one look at the picture and immediately said, “Oh no. Don’t tell me that baby is dead. That’s so sad. It reminds me of Koko. They should get her a cat.”

The Temp

2008-11-08T17:21:00.009-06:00

So here's the story, originally title The Temp. A friend sent me the link to Fostering Families Today starting on page 56. Thanks Debbie!! I can't believe how big it is. I didn't know it would be a feature!!

Offending Parties

2008-10-31T21:40:00.006-05:00

My wife, the kids, and I were at a going-away party a few weeks ago for one of my wife’s best friends, Gloria, who was moving away with her husband and daughter. Most of the partygoers were either total stranger or acquaintances we hadn’t seen or talked to in several years. Typically, my wife and I have different attitudes about seeing old friends – more specifically, old friends who don’t know we’ve adopted multiracial children. My wife gets excited as she sees these events as opportunities to introduce the kids. I see these events as chances for people to confuse small talk with intrusive and endless prying.

The host’s house overflowed with strangers. I’d been separated from my wife for a while, which meant I had to wander through the house alone and bounce from one mundane conversation to another. The kids were playing in the backyard and I kept checking on them through the window, hoping they’d provide some excuse to leave. I didn’t want them to get hurt, but getting sick would do nicely.

After what seemed like forever, my wife and I met up. She threw herself next to me on the sofa and gave a big sigh. “I got cornered into talking about adoption.” Her voice sounded drained of emotion. Apparently, an old friend had cornered her into a panel-like discussion. Questions had been asked about infertility treatments and agency fees. The jury had concluded with our favorite, “Can we get together later so I can ask you more questions about this?”

“And you asked her not to, right?”

“Of course not.” She started rubbing her forehead. “I just said sure.”

“Do you really think she’ll call you?”

“No way.”

“How did the conversation even start?” I asked her.

“The same way it always does. She said, ‘I didn’t know you guys had adopted your children? I think it’s so great what you’re doing. My husband and I have always talked about adopting but we want to have our own kids first.’”

I rolled my eyes and gave my wife a comforting little back rub. I didn’t ask for any more details because I knew how the rest of the conversation went. We’d each had it countless times.

I wish I had a dime for every time someone said this exact statement to us. Typically at parties or other social events, it’s only a matter of time before we encounter someone who can’t think of anything to say and, unable to cope with the awkward silence, will pull something totally ridiculous like this out of their behind.

The struggle we then encounter is deciding how to react. Do we ignore the person and try to change the subject? The times my wife and I chose this path always left us feeling cheated. We saw it as a missed opportunity for us to educate the person.

Having committed that something had to be said, we now faced the challenge of which part of the statement to address. The first part of the statement, “You guys adopted your children?” was said with a bit of a surprise, as if we’d hidden this vital piece of information from them and had cheated them from knowing the truth. You guys won the lottery? It’s not the initial surprise that bothers me. I can’t really blame anyone for being shocked. My wife and I received similar reactions from our own family when we told them about our son. A family member who shall remain nameless said to us, “Why don’t you just want to adopt someone from our own race?”

“What you’re doing is great,” was the pseudo-encouragement we’ve heard all the time. It suggested that we were the boy’s saviors. I found this dangerous because it appealed to my vanity. This tempted me to accept their admiration and admit to myself, “Yes, I should be recognized for all that I have done for him. I applaud your insight.” But I have to check my ego and remind myself that the boy saved my wife and me a lot more than we saved him. He saved us from a childless existence and gave us the gift of parenthood, a gift we’d desired and labored over for years.

The next part of the statement – “We’ve always talked about adopting” – gave me a mental image of the couple fantasizing about their future. They’re discussing potential jobs and cities to live in. At some point, one of them might suggest adopting and the other might say, “Ooh. I’ve always had a heart for the orphans from another country.” Then the subject moves on to where they will vacation next summer and what they’ll be eating that night for dinner.

The final part of the statement, “Our own kids,” disturbed me more than the rest. The unintentional implication was that our kids are not our own kids because we didn’t biologically produce them. Calling them out for this statement would be too easy to recover from. I imagined them saying, “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant to say.” But I didn’t want their apology. I wanted them to see me as just another father. I had just as much snot on my shirt as any other father and deserved to be treated as such.

It might be easy to allow people’s unenlightened remarks to make me cynical and bitter. I’d probably give in to these feelings were I not self conscious of my own ignorance. As my wife told me about the comment, I didn’t think, “How ignorant.” Rather, I thought, “Have I ever said something like that?” I started thinking about stupid things I’d said to people who were too gracious to rebuke me in the moment.

I recalled an incident that occurred when Gloria got engaged. There was a lot of talk among our friends about how big her ring was and how her fiancé had been saving for an engagement ring since he was a teenager. I had never really looked at engagement rings before so when Gloria showed it to me, I simply said, “It’s not that big.” I can’t recall her reaction once these words had vomited from my mouth. At the time, I just tried to make a joke and when I didn’t get the reaction I sought, I moved on.

It wasn’t until months later that I gave the comment some much-needed analysis. My wife and I had been dating for a while and Gloria kept finding ways out of going on double dates with us. After several refusals, I decided that she didn’t approve of me. In trying to figure out why she didn’t like me, I was forced to look within and I thought back to the incident with her ring. Remarkably, I stood by what I’d said and justified it, thinking, It was just a joke. It shames me that my initial thought wasn’t, She should have reservations about her best friend dating this horse’s ass.

At the going away party, as my wife and I sat on our host’s couch, the party raged around us. I stole a glance at Gloria who had been bombarded with conversations since we’d arrived. I thought again about her ring and considered the potential questions she’d probably been asked about moving.

“How are you going to get all your stuff there?”

“Are you worried about finding a doctor for the baby?”

“Is it expensive to live there?”

“How can you say goodbye to your family?”

I looked at my wife who hadn’t said anything for several minutes. Her head rested on my shoulder suggested to me that she was as content as I was to ride out the rest of the party on the couch. “Do you want to leave?” I asked her.

“Do you?”

“I can do whatever.”

“Me too.”

I’d seen first hand Gloria’s capability to withstand stupidity. Seeing her patience and grace with others gave me a hint of inspiration. If I can’t be that nice, well then I can at least just pretend to be as nice as she is.

We got up from the couch and spent a moment surveying the crowd, as if anticipating who would be the next perpetrator. Someone made eye contact with me and smiled and I immediately reconsidered my eagerness to give patience and good manners another shot. I smiled back, pulled at my wife’s arm, and whispered, “Let’s get the kids and get out of here.”

The Uterus Dialogues (another rerun)

2008-10-19T22:33:00.004-05:00

Here's another post for the readers from Adoptivefamilies.com. This is the article that AF published in their July/Aug issue. Their edited version and mine differ a bit. So y'all that have read them both, let me know what you think. Enjoy!!

“The things which proceed out of the man are what defile him.”- Mark 7:15

As the parents of a multiracial family, my wife and I both recognize our uniqueness. Those who have never struggled with infertility or fostered or adopted children typically treat us as a novelty. We know that as the parents of these kids we have signed up for a lifetime of explaining and educating people and we try to approach new people with optimistic and hope they will use discretion and tact when asking questions or making comments. We’ve learned that people’s questions and comments typically catch us off guard because they can come at anytime and from anyone – strangers in the grocery store, acquaintances, and friends and family with whom we thought we’d be safe. We recognize the importance of giving people the benefit of the doubt but only up to a certain point.

When we first considered adoption, I had a concern of how people, strangers in particular, would identify us. I imagined parties where the host or a friend would introduce us as “This is the couple I was telling you about. They adopted their children.” Each person or couple would have a label; like the couple who just got back from a trip, the couple who sells real estate together, and us, the couple who adopted. We would then be forced into situations where we unintentionally dominated the attention of the group. Uninterested parties would have to feign interest in our adoption story for fear of being rude. While we wanted to be proud of our identity as an adoptive family, we didn’t want it to be the only thing that identified us.

Often times, the oddest comments have come from people who seemed uncomfortable and didn’t know what to say. When someone at work found out I adopted my son, he offered that his Japanese teacher had adopted a newborn but the birth father was contesting the adoption. Since I failed to see the relevance, I simply said, “Okay.”

When our son first came home, my wife and I had a difficult time adjusting to the feeling of people looking at us. At first, I was somewhat sympathetic to the blatant staring. I had to admit that if I saw a white man chasing a small black child through a crowded restaurant who was crying and screaming “I want my Mommy!” I’d want an explanation too. But as his parent, the staring makes me all the more want to claim him as my son. “I Love you, son” or “Hold Daddy’s hand” I’d announce when I noticed someone looking at us.

My wife and I don’t suffer the same kind of inappropriate conversations. My lot is to endure blunt questions like “Why did you adopt? Do you shoot blanks, or something?” “Is your wife barren?” or “Do you wear boxers or briefs? I’ve heard briefs can really mess up your count?” Many times, while I scramble to come up with an adequate response, the other person becomes impatient and changes the subject.

My wife undergoes a very different and, for the most part, more subtle get-to-know-you type of interrogation. Our son, our infant daughter, and my wife had lunch with a Mom’s group the
other day and recounted to me some of the questions the other mom’s asked.

The conversation began abruptly, as usual, when one mom asked my wife, “So how long have you had the baby?”

“Since birth,” my wife said. “Her birth mom asked us to be in the delivery room when she was born.”

"Did it cost a lot of money?" another mom asked.

My wife and I have been asked this question quite often and have always toyed with the notion of responding by asking if their hospital bills when they gave birth were expensive. But, my wife responded with as always. "All adoption agencies charge a fee for their services."

"Don't they come to your house and look through your stuff?"

"The agency does come to your house for an interview. It's called a home study."

“What’s her background?”

"If you mean her ethnicity, she’s multiracial.”

“What do you mean?”

“She is part Caucasian, part Hispanic and part African-American.”

“How does that work?” The woman was obviously struggling with the level of mathematics required to understand more than two races. After my wife explained the ethnicity of the baby’s birth parents, the lady remarked, “Oh, but her skin looks so much like yours.” My wife later told me at that point she glanced at our son and felt relieved he wasn’t old enough to understand the lady’s comment. “They think I need my children to look like me. What’s our son going to feel like when someone tells him his sister looks like his parents? He’s going to look at her light skin and his dark skin and feel like an outsider.”

When the race questioning concluded, the moms moved on to asking more adoption questions. “I hope you don't mind me asking, but why did her mother give her up?” the leader of the group asked.

“Each birth mom has different reasons for ‘making an adoption plan’. Usually the birth mom doesn’t have the resources to parent a child for eighteen years or so.”

“Is that what happened with her?”

They didn’t seem to be picking up on my wife’s subtle dodging of the questions. “We don’t really share our children’s stories with other people. We feel it belongs to them and that when they’re older they can decide who they’ll share it with.”

“Was her birth mother young?”

“No. Why?”

“I’m just wondering what kind of person...” and she caught herself. “Well, I just I can’t believe anyone would give up a baby who smiled so much.” My wife later told me that she while attempted to think of an intelligible response, another mom changed the subject for her. “Why didn’t the grandma want to adopt her?”

“Well, the birth mother's mom is older and this isn't her child to raise. As you know, parenting a child for a lifetime takes a lot more than love."

“So do you still have contact with the birth mom?” someone asked with concern.

“Somewhat. We have an open adoption.”

“Is that weird?” someone asked.

“Why would it be weird?” my wife responded.

“I just think it would be too hard to see her holding the baby. I’d get jealous.”

“Well, she’d be holding my child. Besides, she hasn’t seen the baby since birth.” The moms let out a collective sigh of relief, so my wife decided not to tell them we planned to visit the baby’s birth mom soon.

At this point the discussion transitioned to the inevitable question. “So did you try to have your own kids?”

“Well, these are my own kids,” my wife said. The leader began to fumble over her words.

Clearly, she knew she had asked an inappropriate question. By then, my wife had become an expert at knowing when to make a person uncomfortable when they’ve said something stupid and then when to bail them out. “Did you mean to ask me ‘Did we try to conceive?’?” “Yeah, that’s what I meant.”

“We tried for a year before we realized God was calling us to foster and adopt.”

“We’ve always talked about adopting,” someone said. This statement is perhaps the all-time most common response said by parents when we tell them we adopted our kids. It seems that mothers in particular say this and often follow it up with either “Being pregnant is so hard. I don’t think I could do it again” or "My husband and I have always wanted to give a home to all the poor babies that don't have a place to go.”

“It took us a while to get pregnant, too,” another wife responded.

“It can take a really long time for some couples.” My wife said this assuming the lady had experienced the same grief as many of the infertile couples we had met in support groups who obsessively labored and agonized for years to conceive. “How long did it take you and your husband?”

“It took us a couple of months before we got pregnant.” My wife responded to this the only way she knew how – she nodded her head. Then she called my cell phone to see when I was coming to pick her up.

As I walked into the restaurant, my wife spotted me and rapidly began putting our son’s shoes on. I noticed the kids’ diaper bags and carriers already sitting by the front door. I waited for my wife to introduce some of the other moms to me and, when she didn’t, took the hint and looked for some way to speed up the process. “What do you need me to do?” I asked her.

“Just get me out of here,” she whispered.

My wife cheerfully said goodbye to the group. We headed toward the door and I couldn’t help overhearing their conversation. They were discussing how much their children resembled themselves and their husbands.

Black Sabbath (rerun)

2008-10-11T10:26:00.006-05:00

Intro - I posted this a few months ago and it really caused a stir. This story is about my wife and I adapting to our new identity as a multiracial family. Enjoy!

When our son first came home, a friend said to us, “We’re so excited! Our child doesn’t have any black friends.” Immediately, the phrase ‘token black child’ rang in my ears. I suddenly became aware of my own whiteness. I’d always considered myself racially progressive. I’d always been careful not to say stupid things like any sentence that begins, “I don’t mean to sound racist but…” I resented people like Pat Boone and The Osmonds who make the white race look like dorks. I appreciated Spike Lee’s movies, although I’m still not sure why he calls them ‘Joints’. Carlton from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air had always annoyed the junk out of me.

But being racially progressive and racially educated were two different things. I thought about an interview I saw of Miles Davis where he said he can always tell a black band from a white band. “I don’t know how I can tell, but it just doesn’t go into my body the same way.” After watching the interview, I tried approaching the radio and my CDs for weeks from this perspective but honestly could never seem to tell the difference. I understood how one could tell the race of a vocalist by the tone of their voice. But I couldn’t figure out how he could determine the race of a saxophonist or drummer just by listening.

Our foster care training had emphasized the need to instill a healthy ethnic pride in our children. “Become students of your children’s culture,” an instructor told us. So we began to research the hygiene of a black child – hair care, skin care, etc. We began to build a library of books on multiracial adoption, child rearing, and black history.

Then we set out to surround ourselves with families of other races, families that might understand the things we were going through. At the time, we only had a few acquaintances but none we were close enough to ask the kind of questions we wanted to ask like, “Does his hair look like it was done by a white person who doesn’t know what they’re doing?”

Our first attempts at casual conversation tended to be awkward, bordering on nosy. We might see a child at the store and try to find a nonchalant way of asking his mother what kind of lotion she used for their skin. A nice, black man sold us our van and during our test drive. While I concentrated on the performance of the vehicle, my wife interrogated him about things like where his wife liked to shop for his kids’ clothes and if he knew a place in the area that sold ethnic toys? He responded as graciously as could have been expected. I know I definitely would have been caught off guard if a stranger asked me where I would want my kids to attend private school.

After a few months, we decided visit a church that was primarily black. My wife and I had spent weeks researching the church online. Really, it took up this much time to work up the courage to go. By now, we were used to white people staring at us. But this was going to feel different. What would it feel like if they stared at us?

We pulled into the parking lot and sat in the car for a minute or so to mentally prepare. My wife and I had both been attending church regularly for years, but neither one of us could shake the feeling like this was our first time. I took a deep breath. “It’s natural to fear the unknown,” I told myself.

We walked in the door and were greeted by two fresh-faced college students. “Welcome to Lifeline,” one of them said cheerfully as the other handed me a program. I waited for a dirty look or even a double take but it never came.

As we walked in, the boy looked around and began pointing to people and shouting, “Mom! That person is African-American like me!” This was his new thing. Weeks ago, he’d begun to notice other people’s race and to point it out loudly in public. At the mall or the grocery store, we could usually shush him before the person noticed or figured out what he said. Now, surrounded by African-Americans, his zeal and volume exploded. “Dad! That big guy is African-American like me!” We expected dirty looks, but people smiled and even laughed.

We proceeded into what looked like a basketball stadium and found seats in the back corner. The website told us the service started at 3pm. We had arrived five minutes early and sat around for nearly twenty minutes watching people trickle in and mill around. Finally, some singers took the stage. They began to clap and chant, “Welcome, to the Lifeline family.” I noticed people shaking hands and hugging and figured out this was the greeting.

A few minutes of this went on until the pastor took the stage and greeted everyone. “What’s up, Child of God!!” he shouted.

“What’s up, Child of God!” everyone shouted back at him.

“I can’t hear you! I said, ‘WHAT’S UP, CHILD OF GOD!!’”

“WHAT’S UP, CHILD OF GOD!!” everyone repeated louder.

“All right, then. It’s time to break into your small groups.” My wife and I looked at each other in matched confusion. White church never made us break out into groups on Sunday. It was much simpler; sing some songs, listen to some preaching, then stay and socialize for two hours. Small group time was supposed to be later in the week in someone’s living room with couches and snacks. A young, very tall girl must have noticed our confusion because she approached us and invited us to sit in her group.

As we sat down, each member of the group introduced themselves warmly. The group leader explained to us that small groups discussed the text the preacher would be using throughout his sermon. Once we got into the discussion, my wife and I began to like it. The discussion felt genuine and the group had a lot of fun.

After small group time, the pastor directed everyone to their regular seats for praise and worship. I had tried, on several occasions in the past, to teach my wife how to clap with music. Sadly, she is hopelessly incapable of finding the beat. When the worship leader directs the congregation to clap, she consistently manages to clap the exact opposite of the rest of the congregation. I had always found her lack of awareness endearing. People would look over and she had no idea why. She just kept on enjoying herself. However, now I couldn’t help but feel self conscious. What saved me from total embarrassment was that this entire congregation was totally uninhibited. There was singing and clapping and everyone was in tune. At one point, I looked over at the boy and noticed he was standing on a chair, clapping enthusiastically, and stomping in his chair. I noticed everyone smiling at us and couldn’t help but feel as if he, even at the age of two, knew he had found his roots.

At the end, he closed in prayer, made a few announcements, and invited everyone to stay because his mom had made barbecue. My wife and I exchanged glances that let each other knew we liked these people. They had been welcoming and inclusive. We had a great time. That is until we made our way to the back to eat and a white man approached me and asked, “Is he yours?”

Returning quickly to the mindset of a Caucasian, I considered several responses. “Actually, he was our ticket in. How’d you get in without one?” But since we were at church, it felt wrong to antagonize a total stranger. So I forced a smile and said, “Yes, he’s ours.”

Hello Readers of Adoptive Families!!

2008-10-03T16:35:00.005-05:00

Welcome all you adoptive parents!! You probably got this site from the Adoptive Families Blog page. I'm so excited because this affords me the opportunity to vent my rage to a whole new group of people!

A little something about goggy (me) - my wife and I became foster parents a few years ago. Some were removed and were placed elsewhere. But our second foster child became our son just after his second birthday. As the ink dried on his adoption papers, we began the process with a private agency. Three months later, our daughter was born.

I began this blog almost two years ago as catharsis - too many funny stories about my kids and inappropriate things said by friends, family, and even total strangers. Being a multiracial family never has a dull moment. People openly stare at our African-American son, then look at us, look at him, then look at us again and ask, "So is he adopted?"

Sons of the Rich

2008-09-09T20:40:00.005-05:00

Summer time is a difficult time for guitar instructors. Students and their parents are always going on extended vacations and, when they’re not golfing at Pebble Beach or yachting in Tahiti, they’re forgetting about their lessons and no call/no showing. I had no students this past summer. All twenty canceled in May. It was for this reason that, when the owner of my studio called me in mid-August with a “unique offer,” I reluctantly called him back.

“I’ve got this wealthy family who’s been with me for years,” he told me. “I hope they like you. They haven’t liked the last four teachers I sent them.”

“They’ve had four different teachers?”

“Yeah, the two boys are both brats. They don’t want to do what the teachers tell them to do. They only want to have fun.” He paused for a moment, as if waiting for me to respond. Having nothing constructive to say, I let him continue. “Look, just teach them whatever they want. Oh, and by the way, it’s an in-home lesson.”

An in-home lesson is where, instead of the parent bringing the student to the studio where there are amps, keyboards, and CD players, I have to lug all of my crap to their house, setup in the child’s bedroom where I’m surrounded by dirty laundry, video games, and countless other distractions. I’d made the mistake of teaching in-home lessons in the past. They’re always for families who have the money to pay extra to have you come to them. This was the last job I wanted to take. But, like Orson Welles, I needed a paycheck.

I pulled up to the house and immediately knew I must have made a mistake. I passed a massive fountain surrounded by elaborate landscaping and a five-car garage. When I unloaded my gear, I looked down at the flawless cobblestone driveway and couldn’t help but notice how out of place and dirty my truck looked. The cracked windshield, the sun-faded paintjob that had once been white, the garbage in the bed of the truck all seemed to warn me. We don’t belong here.

I approached an intimidating front door which was black, windowless, and extremely large, like a medieval dungeon. I felt more like I was rapping on someone’s chambers rather than ringing a doorbell. The feeling got worse when a small portal in the middle of the door opened and a young boy’s face appeared.

“Who is it?”

“I’m here for the guitar lesson.”

The massive door was opened by a small, preteen boy who politely invited me in. The boy offered me his hand, introduced himself as Lenny, and offered me a drink. I’m not sure what kind of intro I expected, but this certainly wasn’t it. I had been led to believe that this family was totally obnoxious. So his courteous demeanor and mild manners caught me totally off guard.

Lenny ushered me to his bedroom where I set up my gear and made small talk. So how long have you been taking piano lessons?” I asked.

“Three years.”

“And what’s your favorite song?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really listen to a lot of music.” No wonder he’s in music lessons.

“Well, what’s the last song you learned?”

“We Are the Champions.”

“Okay. Can you play that for me?”

I expected him pull out some sheet music but he chose to play for memory instead. He hacked his way through a verse and a chorus with a few pauses and mistakes. Overall, his rendition wasn’t very good but it wasn’t excruciating either, especially considering he played it without looking at any music. “Not bad,” I told him. “Let’s work on a few things though. Where’s your music?”

“The instructor never wrote it down.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know how to read music.”

“So how did you learn the song?”

“I memorized his hands.”

Since I’d never taught any of my students with this kind of approach, I had to consider on the fly where to go from here. Ordinarily, I would spend a few weeks teaching him the basics to reading music and then we’d be able to move on to learning songs. But it had been made clear to me that this child was not interested in doing things my way. Up to this point, Lenny seemed pleasant enough which made me rethink new speculations as to his strategy for running off the previous teachers. I now pictured him sitting at his little keyboard, politely smiling, and complying with the teacher’s direction. Later that night, his parents would ask about the lesson. He would report that the teacher was boring or harsh. “Well, we’ll see about that,” they’d say. They’d call and complain to the owner who would promptly reassign a new teacher. I found this new form of intimidation far more effective. So I took the easy route and did the best I could to kill the rest of the lesson by having him play whatever songs he remembered and giving him little suggestions like, “If you slow down and take your time you won’t play so many wrong notes.”

His brother’s guitar playing was just as crude. Weldon knew some power chords, some basic open chords, and could hack his way through a handful of songs he had demanded his previous instructors teach him. But he didn’t even hold his pick correctly and his guitar was out of tune the whole hour and he never seemed to notice.

With three years of lessons, I concluded that these boys were terrible. The only traditional knowledge these boys had of music was what most kids learn the first month of lessons. Neither of them had any sense of rhythm or melody because they hadn’t allowed anyone to work on these things with them.

While driving home, I considered whether or not to take the lessons. On the one hand, I couldn’t afford to turn down the money. On the other hand, one lesson a week wouldn’t really make much difference. Was it worth it to drive out for ninety minutes of what really would have been nothing more than keeping them busy? At least with my other students, I reigned supreme over their progress, or lack thereof. They might be lousy, but at least they were lousy on my terms.

As I went back and forth, my ego forced me to consider that maybe I could be the one who finally got through to these boys. It would undoubtedly be a lot of work, but I pictured myself as a Mary Poppins-figure who made unpleasant things like knowing the names of the chords and reading the notes on the page fun. But then again, these things weren’t supposed to be unpleasant. And I’d never been very good at motivating people who didn’t want to be motivated. On top of that, their wealth and laid back appearance intimidated me. Ultimately, I concluded that I wasn’t the guy for the job.

Then I considered what my wife could do for the kids with $45 a week and I remembered a common fantasy I’d had from time to time while driving home from a long and draining day. My family is seated a large banquet and my son is addressing a tremendous crowd.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, What can I say about this man sitting next to me? The man we’ve come here to honor tonight, my Father.

"This is a man who worked tireless hours to feed my mother, sister, and me. This is a man who drove the same non-air-conditioned truck to two jobs for thirty years just to pay for private school. He denied himself countless luxuries and survived for years off a diet of dollar menu burgers and burritos just to pay for karate for me and dance lessons for my sister.

"And yet, despite working grueling hours, he never missed a single play, pageant, or game. He always made time for us. He helped with our schoolwork and made time to take us out for ice cream. ‘You kids enjoy your sundaes. Dad’s just fine with ice water,’ he’d tell us.

Overcome with emotion, the boy pauses for a moment. Finally, he wipes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and continues.

"It is this man who inspired me to audition and become the NBA’s youngest first Draft at the age of thirteen. It is this man who then inspired me to achieve my dream of becoming the first person ever to win Academy Awards for Best Writer, Director, Actor, and Best Picture in the same year. It is this man who then inspired me to run for office. And God willing, I will become this country’s next President of the United States of America.

[Pause for applause]

"And now, I’d like for you all to raise your glass to a man who is more to me than an inspiration and a mentor. He’s also my best friend. Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to present to you your candidate for Father of the Year. My Dad!”

The crowd jumps to their feet in a thunderous ovation. I attempt to stand but my cane wobbles and I can’t quite get up. The boy steps down from the podium to help his old man to his feet. Too humble to make a speech, I show my gratitude by waving and mouthing the words, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

This is the fantasy that in the past had given me the will to keep going, to persevere for the sake of my children. I had responsibilities and couldn’t just turn down a paycheck, however pathetic.
So I psyched myself up for the job. Trying to play the part of the tough-love teacher, I called Richard and agreed to teach the boys as long as they learned the songs I chose and learned them my way. It would be my way or the highway.

Richard said he’d call the parents and get back to me. A few days later he called me back and told me the parents had requested someone who could teach another day.