This process began some years ago, when we were considering adopting from China.  Our son and heir was off to college, and we were casting around, not quite knowing what to do with ourselves.  We went to an informational meeting then, too, but decided, after fooling around with the finances, that it would really be too expensive.  To adopt from China can cost upwards of $30,000.  At the time, the adoption counselors suggested that we consider foster-adoption from the state.  We considered it.

Somehow, with one thing or another, we let the process drop.

This summer, the Coastal Journal started running a monthly series called “A child is waiting”, which features a boy or girl currently waiting for adoption.  It tells his or her story, and what he or she wants out of a family.

And then, in December, a boy scout touched our hearts by his project to provide Christmas gifts for teens in foster care.  The Coastal Journal got involved to help Zach Washburn provide Christmas presents for 140 teens who have every reason to believe that the world has turned its back on them.

He did it.  Like Hillary, every time I think about it, I mist up. 

The teens have little hope of being adopted.  When they turn 18, they’ll age out of foster care, and if they’re lucky and their education hasn’t been completely disrupted by their experience, whatever it was, the state will help them go to college for four more years of quasi-protection.  Then they’ll really be on their own.

I think about our own son and heir, Tristan.  He is 22, and is On His Own, supposedly.  But when the car breaks down, when he needs an Old Navy gift card for new pants, when he needs help with FAFSA to get money for college, he knows whom to call.  Heck, he calls on the cell phone whose bill we pay, and drives around in the car we bought,  and insure.  You’re just not ready to be released on your own at 22, let alone 18.

Tristan has somewhere to go for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  He knows somebody will buy him a birthday present.
I think that, more than anything, is the part that gets me.

Family is more than keeping a kid alive until his 18th birthday.  It’s forever.  It’s having someone to call and complain to about an unfair professor or boss.  It’s having someone to sit in the front pew in a dowdy dress at your wedding.  It’s knowing whom the first call is to when your baby is born. 

And it’s knowing that, if things get tough, there’s someplace you can go and someone there will help you out.
So we are thinking about teens now.

At the informational meeting, Ron told us we’d change our minds a hundred times before the final decision was made.  And maybe we will again.

Sure, we’d like to start with a baby, who wouldn’t? ... a little blank slate that we get to imprint all our triumphs and follies on, and find out in a trice than none of it mattered.  But this isn’t really about us, anyway. 

It’s about them.  The waiting ones.  And most of the waiting ones are well beyond preschool.  But they are still children, and hopefully, will be somebody’s child forever. 

Maybe even ours.