Monday, September 11, 2006
Watching the first one go
The first one is gone. Dan, 18, is out there on his own, facing the great big world. It’s not exactly time for the empty nest syndrom, because I still have five more at home and it’ll be at least another 13 years before the youngest can
leave, but it’s still a moment that releases a flood of strange emotions.
I adopted Danny when he was just a little more than five months old. His birth mother, possessed of remarkable self-awareness at a tender age, knew she was ill-equipped to mother this child at that stage of her life and she decided to put the child up for adoption. It was her greatest act of love for this child.
Over the next several months, she gave Danny additional gifts by working closely with her social worker, consuming a healthful diet and getting prenatal care.
Upon arrival, her healthy baby boy was put up for adoption. The weeks passed, then the months. Such is the state of race relations in America: A white healthy male newborn will have a waiting list of parents wanting to adopt him the day he is born; a black healthy male newborn will not.
The social worker had shown me a picture of "baby boy" – a Polaroid shot of a remarkably ugly, but still lovable, child – so when I went to the foster care home to meet my new son for the first time, I stepped right over the angelic baby on the floor, looking for my homely one. "Mr. King," the foster care mother said, "you just walked past your son."
I stopped and looked back. "This one?" I pointed at Danny. "No, it can’t be. This child is beautiful."
And beautiful he was. He was such an "easy" baby that my friends said I wasn’t experiencing "real fatherhood." I think the fates may have been trying to balance things out with those early years, when Danny redefined gregarious and reinvented the melting-together hug. He was strong, happy, funny, loving, talented, handsome and smart (we’d later learn he has an IQ of 130): my golden child. There was no hint of the coming storms.
The first day he was ours, as we were driving home with him buckled into his baby seat in the back, realization, disbelief and fear gripped us in quick succession. "We’re now responsible for this other person, this helpless little person. How could they do that? How could they just hand us a baby and let us drive away? What do we know about babies? We’ve never been parents before. Are they crazy? Are we crazy? What are we doing to this precious child?"
Never mind the months of screening and training we endured at the hands of the state social workers. One of our fellow prospective adoptive parents remarked that the process was something like standing naked in front of a room full of strangers, and standing there for a very long time.
Finally, either in desperation or a moment of insightful wisdom (achieved by dumb luck), I said: "We’ll trust the child." What? "He’ll tell us what we need to know to help him grow. All we have to do is pay close attention."
As it turned out, that inclination wasn’t half bad. With everyday stuff, you have to turn a deaf ear, because they’ll try to tell you that they "need" candy instead of vegetables, they "need" to climb from the tree limb to the roof instead of coming down right this instant, or that they "need" to stay up another hour past bedtime. But when it comes to the really important stuff, paying attention helps a lot.
In our case, it helped us help him as he struggled – as we all struggled – with Reactive Attachment Disorder, ADHD, depression and PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal infections), as well as the Tourette's Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that followed.
To the rest of the world, such a child is simply a bad child – especially when that child is black. Knowing that he was ill, rather than evil, we – a "we" that came to include me and my wife, my former wife and her husband, a Foster Care mother and father and one remarkable social worker – became fierce advocates for him. The school system, the court system, the social welfare system and even parts of the medical system were far too willing to write him off, often without a second glance, as a hopeless case of a unredeemable, bad kid. His pediatrician once said "If he was anybody else’s kid, he’d be dead by now."
I won’t lie to you. I won’t tell you that the struggle didn’t bring indescribable horror, anguish and sorrow. I won’t tell you that it didn’t, at times, make us feel insane with pain, rage, fear and self-doubt. I won’t tell you that I didn’t slog through the swamps of despondency and despair.
Now he’s off – out there in the world, a young man working his way through life on his own and eager, even determined, to show us that he can. There is a sense of relief in that, and a sense of pride. But whenever we’re together, he wraps his muscular arms around me in a tight, completely uninhibited hug (none of that awkward pat-on-the-back "man hug" crap) and says "I love you, Dad." It’s then I think that maybe I’ve done OK – that we have done OK – with the first one. I’ll keep you posted on the next five.
The first one is gone. Dan, 18, is out there on his own, facing the great big world. It’s not exactly time for the empty nest syndrom, because I still have five more at home and it’ll be at least another 13 years before the youngest can
leave, but it’s still a moment that releases a flood of strange emotions.I adopted Danny when he was just a little more than five months old. His birth mother, possessed of remarkable self-awareness at a tender age, knew she was ill-equipped to mother this child at that stage of her life and she decided to put the child up for adoption. It was her greatest act of love for this child.
Over the next several months, she gave Danny additional gifts by working closely with her social worker, consuming a healthful diet and getting prenatal care.
Upon arrival, her healthy baby boy was put up for adoption. The weeks passed, then the months. Such is the state of race relations in America: A white healthy male newborn will have a waiting list of parents wanting to adopt him the day he is born; a black healthy male newborn will not.
The social worker had shown me a picture of "baby boy" – a Polaroid shot of a remarkably ugly, but still lovable, child – so when I went to the foster care home to meet my new son for the first time, I stepped right over the angelic baby on the floor, looking for my homely one. "Mr. King," the foster care mother said, "you just walked past your son."
I stopped and looked back. "This one?" I pointed at Danny. "No, it can’t be. This child is beautiful."
And beautiful he was. He was such an "easy" baby that my friends said I wasn’t experiencing "real fatherhood." I think the fates may have been trying to balance things out with those early years, when Danny redefined gregarious and reinvented the melting-together hug. He was strong, happy, funny, loving, talented, handsome and smart (we’d later learn he has an IQ of 130): my golden child. There was no hint of the coming storms.
The first day he was ours, as we were driving home with him buckled into his baby seat in the back, realization, disbelief and fear gripped us in quick succession. "We’re now responsible for this other person, this helpless little person. How could they do that? How could they just hand us a baby and let us drive away? What do we know about babies? We’ve never been parents before. Are they crazy? Are we crazy? What are we doing to this precious child?"
Never mind the months of screening and training we endured at the hands of the state social workers. One of our fellow prospective adoptive parents remarked that the process was something like standing naked in front of a room full of strangers, and standing there for a very long time.
Finally, either in desperation or a moment of insightful wisdom (achieved by dumb luck), I said: "We’ll trust the child." What? "He’ll tell us what we need to know to help him grow. All we have to do is pay close attention."
As it turned out, that inclination wasn’t half bad. With everyday stuff, you have to turn a deaf ear, because they’ll try to tell you that they "need" candy instead of vegetables, they "need" to climb from the tree limb to the roof instead of coming down right this instant, or that they "need" to stay up another hour past bedtime. But when it comes to the really important stuff, paying attention helps a lot.
In our case, it helped us help him as he struggled – as we all struggled – with Reactive Attachment Disorder, ADHD, depression and PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal infections), as well as the Tourette's Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that followed.
To the rest of the world, such a child is simply a bad child – especially when that child is black. Knowing that he was ill, rather than evil, we – a "we" that came to include me and my wife, my former wife and her husband, a Foster Care mother and father and one remarkable social worker – became fierce advocates for him. The school system, the court system, the social welfare system and even parts of the medical system were far too willing to write him off, often without a second glance, as a hopeless case of a unredeemable, bad kid. His pediatrician once said "If he was anybody else’s kid, he’d be dead by now."
I won’t lie to you. I won’t tell you that the struggle didn’t bring indescribable horror, anguish and sorrow. I won’t tell you that it didn’t, at times, make us feel insane with pain, rage, fear and self-doubt. I won’t tell you that I didn’t slog through the swamps of despondency and despair.
Now he’s off – out there in the world, a young man working his way through life on his own and eager, even determined, to show us that he can. There is a sense of relief in that, and a sense of pride. But whenever we’re together, he wraps his muscular arms around me in a tight, completely uninhibited hug (none of that awkward pat-on-the-back "man hug" crap) and says "I love you, Dad." It’s then I think that maybe I’ve done OK – that we have done OK – with the first one. I’ll keep you posted on the next five.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
It's love that makes a dad
Yesterday, the great political writer Josh Marshall wrote in his blog about the death of his father. Not only was it a beautiful tribute to a wonderful man, and a moving expression of a son’s love for his father, but it was a touching affirmation for this particular American dad. What follows is excerpted from Josh’s loving essay.
In the two weeks since my dad died I’ve struggled to know how to describe him to those who didn’t know him. I can see him in my mind’s eye. I can feel who he was. I remember the texture of his skin and all his unique gestures. I felt his hand on my shoulder the day after he died. But like a fish who can’t describe the sea, because he was so central to my experience, I find it difficult to know how to explain who he was, how to decide which details to pick out of the panorama of my life with him. The qualities I remember are his curiosity and his integrity, his gentleness of spirit. The sounds and memories are of his laughter and wit, his lack of cant or pretense, the way he called me ‘my boy.’ But these recollections each stemmed from those first three qualities....
"I could never quite match the awe my dad (a biologist) had for the architecture of life. My interests turned eventually to history and politics. But he infected me with his love of science, astronomy, space and space travel, and wonder about the future, which were the building blocks of my childhood. My father enlisted in the Army after he graduated from college in 1960. And as a college graduate he’d had the opportunity to go to officers training school but chose not to. One day when I was a child I asked him why he hadn’t been an officer. His answer was that he didn’t want to. He wanted to be ‘one of the men,’ he told me. He didn’t want to be above anyone else.... His modesty was the root of his gentleness and empathy and, in a way I’m not sure I realized before he died, his curiosity....
"I knew my father for close to 40 years.... He never had any real wealth and never held a position of power. But at every stage of his life he was surrounded by this web of devoted friends who gravitated to him, like something that grew up around him wherever he went. When I was child I couldn’t see this.... Only when we grow older and our horizons broaden do we see the range of alternative possibilities in life and start to understand who we and those around us really are. As I grew older and stopped seeing my dad as the all-knowing, all-powerful figure I saw through a child’s eyes, I saw him as a man. And I saw how people were drawn to him, loved him....
"One of the great heartbreaks of my life is that my dad did not live to see his first grandson who – God willing – will be born in November. But even in the midst of the grief that crashed over me I had the satisfaction of knowing that my father had lived long enough to see me make something of myself. And I knew he was proud of me. What I worried and grieved about after he died was whether I had made it clear enough while he was alive how proud I was of him, how much I loved him and how he’d been my anchor through my life. He meant so much to me that my fear of his death sometimes scared me away.... Since he died ... I’ve realized how much he shaped me ... how the main guideposts of my life were ones he put in place. How much I was, in a word, his son. And that is, paradoxically, all the more precious to me since we shared not a drop of blood between us. My biological parents were divorced soon after I was born. I don’t know just how old I was when my mother started dating Alan. But I know that he was there at my first birthday party. And I have no memory of anything before him. Our love for each other transcended biology....
"Two days after he died I wrote him a long letter that was with him when he was cremated. I told him how much I missed him and how much I loved him. I asked him to tell my mother I love her. And I told him I’d see them both again."
I was so moved, I couldn’t help but respond. I sent Josh an e-mail that read: Your tribute touched me and not simply because it is beautiful. It touched me because I, too, fear most my father’s death. He’s that much a part of me. It touched me because my father, too, is one of those to whom others are naturally drawn. A man of great gentleness and compassion. It touched me most deeply, though, because I have two step children and two adopted children, and your love for your father helps relieve my other great fear: Can they love me as I love my father despite the fact that I’m not their "real" father (as the cruel and ignorant among us say)? You’ve provided an affirmative answer. It is possible.
When I adopted my two oldest children, a relative remarked that I’d never have the bond with them that "real" parents and children have. They’re not my blood -- they’re not even my race. And they’re "damaged goods" (both were special needs adoptions). I was certain I could love these children no more than I did, so what was I missing? Maybe it was that they could not love me.
When I married my wife and became dad to her two young children (from a previous marriage), the same thing happened. I’d forever be something less than their "real" dad, and they’d forever be something less than "my" children. But my love for them was all encompassing, so what’s the problem? The old fear came again: Maybe they can’t love me as blood-related children love their fathers.
When our first child was born -- my fifth child, but my first "biological" child -- I knew half of what I was told was wrong. The love I have for my adopted, step and bio-children differs in neither quality nor depth.
But, again, what of their love for me? Is it possible?
Today, I have an answer. Yes, it is. For this, you have my eternal gratitude.
Yesterday, the great political writer Josh Marshall wrote in his blog about the death of his father. Not only was it a beautiful tribute to a wonderful man, and a moving expression of a son’s love for his father, but it was a touching affirmation for this particular American dad. What follows is excerpted from Josh’s loving essay.
In the two weeks since my dad died I’ve struggled to know how to describe him to those who didn’t know him. I can see him in my mind’s eye. I can feel who he was. I remember the texture of his skin and all his unique gestures. I felt his hand on my shoulder the day after he died. But like a fish who can’t describe the sea, because he was so central to my experience, I find it difficult to know how to explain who he was, how to decide which details to pick out of the panorama of my life with him. The qualities I remember are his curiosity and his integrity, his gentleness of spirit. The sounds and memories are of his laughter and wit, his lack of cant or pretense, the way he called me ‘my boy.’ But these recollections each stemmed from those first three qualities....
"I could never quite match the awe my dad (a biologist) had for the architecture of life. My interests turned eventually to history and politics. But he infected me with his love of science, astronomy, space and space travel, and wonder about the future, which were the building blocks of my childhood. My father enlisted in the Army after he graduated from college in 1960. And as a college graduate he’d had the opportunity to go to officers training school but chose not to. One day when I was a child I asked him why he hadn’t been an officer. His answer was that he didn’t want to. He wanted to be ‘one of the men,’ he told me. He didn’t want to be above anyone else.... His modesty was the root of his gentleness and empathy and, in a way I’m not sure I realized before he died, his curiosity....
"I knew my father for close to 40 years.... He never had any real wealth and never held a position of power. But at every stage of his life he was surrounded by this web of devoted friends who gravitated to him, like something that grew up around him wherever he went. When I was child I couldn’t see this.... Only when we grow older and our horizons broaden do we see the range of alternative possibilities in life and start to understand who we and those around us really are. As I grew older and stopped seeing my dad as the all-knowing, all-powerful figure I saw through a child’s eyes, I saw him as a man. And I saw how people were drawn to him, loved him....
"One of the great heartbreaks of my life is that my dad did not live to see his first grandson who – God willing – will be born in November. But even in the midst of the grief that crashed over me I had the satisfaction of knowing that my father had lived long enough to see me make something of myself. And I knew he was proud of me. What I worried and grieved about after he died was whether I had made it clear enough while he was alive how proud I was of him, how much I loved him and how he’d been my anchor through my life. He meant so much to me that my fear of his death sometimes scared me away.... Since he died ... I’ve realized how much he shaped me ... how the main guideposts of my life were ones he put in place. How much I was, in a word, his son. And that is, paradoxically, all the more precious to me since we shared not a drop of blood between us. My biological parents were divorced soon after I was born. I don’t know just how old I was when my mother started dating Alan. But I know that he was there at my first birthday party. And I have no memory of anything before him. Our love for each other transcended biology....
"Two days after he died I wrote him a long letter that was with him when he was cremated. I told him how much I missed him and how much I loved him. I asked him to tell my mother I love her. And I told him I’d see them both again."
I was so moved, I couldn’t help but respond. I sent Josh an e-mail that read: Your tribute touched me and not simply because it is beautiful. It touched me because I, too, fear most my father’s death. He’s that much a part of me. It touched me because my father, too, is one of those to whom others are naturally drawn. A man of great gentleness and compassion. It touched me most deeply, though, because I have two step children and two adopted children, and your love for your father helps relieve my other great fear: Can they love me as I love my father despite the fact that I’m not their "real" father (as the cruel and ignorant among us say)? You’ve provided an affirmative answer. It is possible.
When I adopted my two oldest children, a relative remarked that I’d never have the bond with them that "real" parents and children have. They’re not my blood -- they’re not even my race. And they’re "damaged goods" (both were special needs adoptions). I was certain I could love these children no more than I did, so what was I missing? Maybe it was that they could not love me.
When I married my wife and became dad to her two young children (from a previous marriage), the same thing happened. I’d forever be something less than their "real" dad, and they’d forever be something less than "my" children. But my love for them was all encompassing, so what’s the problem? The old fear came again: Maybe they can’t love me as blood-related children love their fathers.
When our first child was born -- my fifth child, but my first "biological" child -- I knew half of what I was told was wrong. The love I have for my adopted, step and bio-children differs in neither quality nor depth.
But, again, what of their love for me? Is it possible?
Today, I have an answer. Yes, it is. For this, you have my eternal gratitude.
