It was the late 80’s. Our bangs were high, our socks were slouched, Debbie Gibson reminded us that our youth was electric, and New Kids on the Block taught us to hang tough. In our small, bedroom community, I was carving a childhood without a care in the world. Winters were mild and summers were sticky hot. From June until September, the boys on my street ran sweaty, bouncing from house to house, for hours. We spent long, lazy afternoons at the local pool, splashing with kids who’d trekked yards or miles to seek solace from the heat. Summer nights were often made of running through sprinklers, bouncing on trampolines, and the more than occasional sleepover.
Maybe it was the community
pool or maybe it was all the hours serving on the PTA at the only elementary
school within an eight mile radius, but friendships were forged between mamas.
Those relationships led to a network of kids bound together by chlorine, Otter
Pops, and the nagging dread that a new school year was coming.
Somehow, though I do not remember the details of my introduction to her, I became instant friends with a gangly girl one year my junior. I can only recall pieces of our early friendship; her hideously broken arm, achieved by falling off of a jungle gym at a backyard Vacation Bible School, her subsequent enormous cast that dwarfed her tiny body and her impressive side ponytail at my surprise 8th birthday party, her superior Barbie voice skills—especially when performing the role of Ken, and the fact that she was adopted.
For whatever reason, I became obsessed with that last bit. Long after our parents had fallen asleep, as we laid giggling on the floor of one of our bedrooms, I would hear a nagging voice in my head, begging me to find out the details of her first life. I would try to hush the voice but, eventually, it became too much and I would blurt out some intruding question that felt innocent enough but probably sounded a lot like, “What happened to your real parents?” (Oh, how I hope not. Lord, let it not be so. I’m slowly dying inside at the mere thought that it may have come out like that.)
She would tell me the stories. Of her parents. Of foster care. Of being adopted. And I would listen, riveted to her tale. I don’t think there was ever a conversation that ended because I was bored of the story. I think she spoke and I listened until, eventually, her narrative faded into the quiet rising and falling of our breath.
My friend was the first adoptee I ever knew. Decades later, I would apologize to her for being so intrusive, for asking her, so frequently, to divulge every detail of her first handful of years, for wanting her to tell me deeply personal and, often, incredibly painful stories. I had felt, then, that I needed to whisper, that, perhaps, it was a secret. But I hadn’t realized the weight of what I was asking her to share with me and, as an adult, I felt guilty for how careless my curiosity may have seemed.
She was quick to respond that I had nothing to apologize for, that talking about it was a release for her. So many years, and a great deal of maturity later, that was such a relief to me. To know that she had first kindled my passion for adoption, to know that I had served some purpose, however small, in her own journey gave me the sense that, in those early years, we had lived in perfect symbiosis. Me, presenting her with a space to share. Her, subsequently piquing my every interest in the complex odyssey of adoption.
Nearly a handful of years later, my aunt and uncle announced that they would be bringing home a baby girl. I sat on my parents’ bed and listened to my mom chattering on the phone with my aunt. I didn’t know how infant adoption worked. I only knew that, when my mom hung up the phone, she announced that I was gaining a cousin. I welcomed that little girl with every excitement that a baby obsessed preteen could muster, which is to say that I wanted to hold her every waking moment of every day.
Being so much older, I never grilled my cousin on how she felt about being adopted. In fact, I really never thought much about it. My aunt and uncle had a baby. And that was that. Except for one thing. In my cousin’s room was a photo album. The album contained pictures of her first family and photos of her birth. When I flipped through that book, I had this nagging thought that there was this whole other family that she belonged to.
There was a woman who had chosen to place my cousin in another home. She gave her position to my aunt and handed over this tiny blessing wrapped in pink to be raised and loved and snuggled by someone else. And I was so grateful that she did it, that she chose life for my cousin and that she gave that life to our family. Adoption had brought me a friend and a cousin. Even though I knew the loss and had a limited understanding of the grief that would come from that, to me, it was only beautiful.
To me, adoption was my cousin, toddling around with chestnut hair and big, wide eyes. It was my friend, now half grown, flailing wildly with me in a dance party gone bad and laughing until our sides ached. It was the little girl in an orphanage in Mexico.
When I was in high school I went on a mission trip. Part of our time was spent at an orphanage. One day, as my peers ran through the yard playing games, I walked through the bedrooms--alone. I wondered what it would be like to grow up there, where the ratio of adults to children seemed like eleven million to one. As I walked through the maze of bedrooms, certain I was hopelessly lost, I heard a soft cry coming from several walls over. Quickly brushing through rooms of hand-me-down comforters and lone dressers--of which each child had one drawer to call his own, I searched for the soul belonging to that cry. The nearer I got the louder the cry became until I burst through a door and skidded to a halt when I saw her. She was sitting in the middle of the crib, fat tears dripping down her precious face, naked, except for the bulging diaper. She saw me and reached her hands to me. Inside, something yanked loose. The women had their hands completely full with all the other children. And me, well, my arms were holding nothing. My hands were completely free.
In some ways, that one act of picking up that one child shaped me forever. I wiped her tears away and whispered to her in limited and broken Spanish. I tried English. She frowned. Hard.
Her eyes were glued to my face almost constantly. I tried to get her to smile. But still, regardless of what I did, the frown. And then something happened and she giggled. The frown didn't reverse, it simply shook up and down as she laughed. I realized then that she wasn't frowning. She was smiling, upside down.
Over the course of my time there, we became virtually inseparable. When it was time to leave, the lump in my throat felt like I'd swallowed a grapefruit. She clung to me and sobbed as they tried to take her away. I pulled her arms off of me and shoved her toward her caregiver. Then I spun on my heels and climbed on the bus. Looking out the window I saw her reaching her arms toward the vehicle, mouth open in a loud wail. I couldn't control the tears flowing down my face. It felt like someone had reached into my chest and squished my heart in his fist so that parts of it were sticking out between fingers while the rest thundered against palm. I couldn't breathe.
In my tears I knew that I loved her.
I knew then that I could love my own child, born not of my flesh but of my heart, instead. I knew that I could unconditionally love someone else's son or daughter. I knew that ethnicity and gender and circumstance didn't matter. I was in high school. I hadn't learned most of what I know now.
I have loved her for many, many years now. Though we will never, ever, be reunited, separated as we are by cultures and miles and years, I am so thankful that she tugged on my heart in that crib. So thankful that, in her outstretched arms, I was granted the spirit of adoption.
Adoption is sometimes a lot like an upside down smile. It is foster care and orphanages. It is first families making painful choices. It is grief and growth and learning to love in new ways. But it is beautiful. It is joy. It is recognizing that there is more love in the world than we can ever know. It is a pilgrimage worth every mile. It is friendship and family. It reaches across blood and borders. It is, at times, disheveled and chaotic. But it promises to be the most beautiful of messes.
Somehow, though I do not remember the details of my introduction to her, I became instant friends with a gangly girl one year my junior. I can only recall pieces of our early friendship; her hideously broken arm, achieved by falling off of a jungle gym at a backyard Vacation Bible School, her subsequent enormous cast that dwarfed her tiny body and her impressive side ponytail at my surprise 8th birthday party, her superior Barbie voice skills—especially when performing the role of Ken, and the fact that she was adopted.
For whatever reason, I became obsessed with that last bit. Long after our parents had fallen asleep, as we laid giggling on the floor of one of our bedrooms, I would hear a nagging voice in my head, begging me to find out the details of her first life. I would try to hush the voice but, eventually, it became too much and I would blurt out some intruding question that felt innocent enough but probably sounded a lot like, “What happened to your real parents?” (Oh, how I hope not. Lord, let it not be so. I’m slowly dying inside at the mere thought that it may have come out like that.)
She would tell me the stories. Of her parents. Of foster care. Of being adopted. And I would listen, riveted to her tale. I don’t think there was ever a conversation that ended because I was bored of the story. I think she spoke and I listened until, eventually, her narrative faded into the quiet rising and falling of our breath.
My friend was the first adoptee I ever knew. Decades later, I would apologize to her for being so intrusive, for asking her, so frequently, to divulge every detail of her first handful of years, for wanting her to tell me deeply personal and, often, incredibly painful stories. I had felt, then, that I needed to whisper, that, perhaps, it was a secret. But I hadn’t realized the weight of what I was asking her to share with me and, as an adult, I felt guilty for how careless my curiosity may have seemed.
She was quick to respond that I had nothing to apologize for, that talking about it was a release for her. So many years, and a great deal of maturity later, that was such a relief to me. To know that she had first kindled my passion for adoption, to know that I had served some purpose, however small, in her own journey gave me the sense that, in those early years, we had lived in perfect symbiosis. Me, presenting her with a space to share. Her, subsequently piquing my every interest in the complex odyssey of adoption.
Nearly a handful of years later, my aunt and uncle announced that they would be bringing home a baby girl. I sat on my parents’ bed and listened to my mom chattering on the phone with my aunt. I didn’t know how infant adoption worked. I only knew that, when my mom hung up the phone, she announced that I was gaining a cousin. I welcomed that little girl with every excitement that a baby obsessed preteen could muster, which is to say that I wanted to hold her every waking moment of every day.
Being so much older, I never grilled my cousin on how she felt about being adopted. In fact, I really never thought much about it. My aunt and uncle had a baby. And that was that. Except for one thing. In my cousin’s room was a photo album. The album contained pictures of her first family and photos of her birth. When I flipped through that book, I had this nagging thought that there was this whole other family that she belonged to.
There was a woman who had chosen to place my cousin in another home. She gave her position to my aunt and handed over this tiny blessing wrapped in pink to be raised and loved and snuggled by someone else. And I was so grateful that she did it, that she chose life for my cousin and that she gave that life to our family. Adoption had brought me a friend and a cousin. Even though I knew the loss and had a limited understanding of the grief that would come from that, to me, it was only beautiful.
To me, adoption was my cousin, toddling around with chestnut hair and big, wide eyes. It was my friend, now half grown, flailing wildly with me in a dance party gone bad and laughing until our sides ached. It was the little girl in an orphanage in Mexico.
When I was in high school I went on a mission trip. Part of our time was spent at an orphanage. One day, as my peers ran through the yard playing games, I walked through the bedrooms--alone. I wondered what it would be like to grow up there, where the ratio of adults to children seemed like eleven million to one. As I walked through the maze of bedrooms, certain I was hopelessly lost, I heard a soft cry coming from several walls over. Quickly brushing through rooms of hand-me-down comforters and lone dressers--of which each child had one drawer to call his own, I searched for the soul belonging to that cry. The nearer I got the louder the cry became until I burst through a door and skidded to a halt when I saw her. She was sitting in the middle of the crib, fat tears dripping down her precious face, naked, except for the bulging diaper. She saw me and reached her hands to me. Inside, something yanked loose. The women had their hands completely full with all the other children. And me, well, my arms were holding nothing. My hands were completely free.
In some ways, that one act of picking up that one child shaped me forever. I wiped her tears away and whispered to her in limited and broken Spanish. I tried English. She frowned. Hard.
Her eyes were glued to my face almost constantly. I tried to get her to smile. But still, regardless of what I did, the frown. And then something happened and she giggled. The frown didn't reverse, it simply shook up and down as she laughed. I realized then that she wasn't frowning. She was smiling, upside down.
Over the course of my time there, we became virtually inseparable. When it was time to leave, the lump in my throat felt like I'd swallowed a grapefruit. She clung to me and sobbed as they tried to take her away. I pulled her arms off of me and shoved her toward her caregiver. Then I spun on my heels and climbed on the bus. Looking out the window I saw her reaching her arms toward the vehicle, mouth open in a loud wail. I couldn't control the tears flowing down my face. It felt like someone had reached into my chest and squished my heart in his fist so that parts of it were sticking out between fingers while the rest thundered against palm. I couldn't breathe.
In my tears I knew that I loved her.
I knew then that I could love my own child, born not of my flesh but of my heart, instead. I knew that I could unconditionally love someone else's son or daughter. I knew that ethnicity and gender and circumstance didn't matter. I was in high school. I hadn't learned most of what I know now.
I have loved her for many, many years now. Though we will never, ever, be reunited, separated as we are by cultures and miles and years, I am so thankful that she tugged on my heart in that crib. So thankful that, in her outstretched arms, I was granted the spirit of adoption.
Adoption is sometimes a lot like an upside down smile. It is foster care and orphanages. It is first families making painful choices. It is grief and growth and learning to love in new ways. But it is beautiful. It is joy. It is recognizing that there is more love in the world than we can ever know. It is a pilgrimage worth every mile. It is friendship and family. It reaches across blood and borders. It is, at times, disheveled and chaotic. But it promises to be the most beautiful of messes.
I am always and ever thankful to my Father in Heaven for imprinting me with a deep curiosity about adoption. I am also so grateful to Him for giving me a spouse with a desire to adopt. Finally, I am ever thankful for the mess of infertility. For even with the desire to adopt, had we easily conceived time and time again, I don't know that we would have been brave enough or bold enough or, perhaps, reckless enough to choose this life. And I am blessed, every day, because He built my family in this remarkable way. I've heard it said that when we get married, we are better capable of understanding the complexity of the love that Christ has for His church. When we have children, we have a wider comprehension of the way the Father cares for us. I would submit that when we adopt a child, we are given a deeper understanding of what it means when we are adopted into the family of God through the accepted gift of salvation. It's truly an experience like none other. If you would like more information on infant, foster, or international adoption, please feel free to contact me. I would love nothing more than to share ways that you can be involved in caring for little ones in need. I would also challenge you to pray and ask God if adoption is a part of His plan for your life. I've heard so many people say that they are not called to adopt. But I wonder if they have ever actually asked God what He would have them do. Sometimes, He has abundant blessing in store for us and all we need to do is ask what His plan is.
Three Little Girls: an adoption story first appeared on Livin' in a Fishbowl.
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