3/4 Level Mini-GOP

I wrote this essay at the request of my son, Vincent, who wondered why I have this website but haven’t posted anything about him yet. He read it over and thought it was pretty confusing, but that I should post it anyway. I guess that was a fairly positive response, as reviews from my kids go.

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John and I agree on this fact: there was never a point when our answer was going to be no.

We have compiled all of the email messages that were exchanged during an almost unbearably long three weeks this past July — from July 5th, when we got the first really substantial information from the social worker for a 12-year-old boy named Vincent, to July 26th, when we met him and welcomed him into our home as our son.

Among all those thousands upon thousands of words, you can read worry, hope, confusion, even an emerging, impossible affection for a child we had never even met face to face. But nowhere will you find the words, “We can’t do this. We shouldn’t do this. Let’s not.”

It’s possible we were just naïve. It’s possible that Vincent will never really learn to trust us or love us as his real, true parents. It’s possible things will go painfully wrong sooner or later. Anything’s possible.

Anything except this: it is not possible that we would say “No, we will not be your parents” — not then, and not ever.

Knowing this and convincing Vincent that it’s true, however, are two quite different matters.

Adoption of an older child is confusing under any circumstances. Adoption of a child who has already been adopted and displaced once before is utterly mind-boggling for parent and child alike.

On our side of the equation, we operate with the knowledge that every promise we make to this child of ours has already been made — and broken — before. What can we possibly say or do to convince him that this time things will be different, that things already are?

That part, we don’t know. We do know that the proving of our commitment to our son will ultimately involve a great deal more doing than saying. Most of the words we’ve used so far — the explanations, reassurances, promises and declarations — have sounded pathetically inadequate, even to our own ears.

To Vincent’s ears, I think it’s possible that “I love you” and “I’m glad I’m your mom” and “You will always be our son” might sound like the wordless, mechanical voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher in the old holiday specials. We say it; he responds automatically. It happens so quickly that it seems unlikely that our words ever made it all the way to his heart before getting pumped back to us. For him, maybe these are just sounds strung together. Just something to say.

Even so, words are what we have immediately at hand, so we need to use them as well as we can.

Last night, in response to a question from him, I tried to explain why, even though I have always written about my kids, I felt reluctant to write about him. He didn’t get what I was trying to say, and neither did I. I was using too many words, and it was getting very mixed up.

So now I will try to make it simple, Vincent, and tell you that for your Pop and me, there was only ever one word for you. It was, “Yes.”