Sometimes, life gives you the chance to do the right thing. When it does, you have to be ready to stand up.
Our moment came when our youngest daughter was 12 and in her first year of middle school. One day she came home and asked if she could have money to buy an extra lunch card for the school lunches. When asked why, she said "My friend never has anything to eat. She says there's no food in her house and her mom won't give her any money for lunches. Yesterday she passed out in the hallway." So, of course, she got the extra money.
A few weeks later, my wife went to pick our daughter up at school, as she had stayed late for an activity. It was November in Colorado, where we lived at that time, with temperatures near freezing and the sun long since set. At the school, my wife noted a little girl sitting alone on the steps of the school. "Who is that?" she asked our daughter.
"That's my friend I told you about."
So my wife parked her truck and went to talk to the little girl. She was informed that the girl's mother would be there eventually when she got off work, "Maybe at 7 or 8 o'clock."
"You're coming home with us," my wife said. We gave our daughter's friend supper and notified her mother where she was; the mother offered no objection.
This quickly became a regular thing; our little girl's friend started riding the bus home with her; we would give her supper, and sooner or later, her mother would pick her up — or maybe she wouldn't. We bought a second bed and put it in our daughter's bedroom for her friend. Over time, she started spending more and more time with us; her mother worked weekends as well, so she started staying with us over the weekends, and we grew to love this little girl whose biological parents didn't seem to show her much interest. We paid all her school fees, or they wouldn't have been paid. We bought her new clothes and shoes. She needed a home, so we gave her a home, our home, a happy home filled with love, and one evening, she looked at my wife and me and asked, "Is it all right if I call you Mom and Dad?"
Our reaction was immediate: "Oh, honey, of course you can."
She became ours from that moment on. Her best friend became her sister, her best friend's two sisters also became her sisters, and in every way that parenting counts, we were her Mom and Dad. In this life, there are bonds of blood, and there are bonds of love, and she became ours through bonds of love.
All this was very under the radar. We had no legal rights with our new daughter whatsoever. Her birth parents always knew where she was. In the years she lived with us, up to her 18th birthday, they could have shown up at our door at any time and demanded she come with them; they never did. After a year or so, she was staying with us 24/7, and we were all happy with the arrangement. At one point, when the "twins," as we came to call our two youngest girls, were in high school, my wife needed to talk to the school counselor and had to explain our arrangement. The counselor wasn't surprised; "You'd be surprised at how often things like this happen."
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Sadly, some people seem to show little interest in their children. But it's good that more people like us are willing to take a child in.
In time, our informally adopted daughter turned 18. On that day, as a senior in high school, she marched into the school's office, announced that she had reached her majority, and officially changed her address at the school to our home address. In time she graduated, the "twins" in the same ceremony. They went off together to college in Michigan, where our daughter-by-love met the young man who is now her husband. They moved back to Colorado in time, the twins and the young man, and when our daughter got married, I was happy and proud to walk her down the aisle — because, in every way that parenting counts, we are and have been her parents, I am and have been her father, and we love her every bit as much as our daughters by birth, even as our daughters by birth love their adopted sister as their own. Some day, our daughter and her husband may have children, and when they do, they will be our grandchildren, and we will be their grandparents.
Bonds of blood, and bonds of love. Both are important. Both are vital. But love is critical. A family is built on love; a family can't exist without love. It's the only thing you can give someone and still have.
Sometimes, life gives you the chance to do the right thing. My wife and I are thankful every day that we were there and able to do the right thing; it ended up being one of the best decisions we ever made.
