“As her mom sat across from me, we both had tears streaming down our faces. I asked if I could write my student a letter to be delivered to her at the hospital. ‘My daughter would love that,’ she said. I wrote cards to every one of my students, over 100 of them.”
“I look back at this kid and his mom, and I’m overcome with an urge to compliment HER. Because she is obviously doing something very, very right. So I did. I looked deep in her eyes. And then coolest thing happened.”
“I checked out what she was wearing and smelled her hair to see if she washed it. I’m not a creep, but I care about you.”
“They were on video chat with a doctor from a different hospital. They told me something rare happened, something no one in this hospital has ever seen. This doctor was the only one who knew exactly what to do. It’s been 2 years, but today, we happened to be back at the hospital where he happened to be working.”
“My husband’s father looked up from his paper. ‘Your cousin is losing his rights to his child and is looking for someone in the family to adopt her.’ And just like that, he went back to reading his paper. We both looked at each other. He didn’t even have to ask me. ‘Yes, us.'”
“I went to my bedroom and packed everything as fast as I could. My phone pinged. ‘You’ve got 1 new voicemail!”
“We had no family history of it. When we got the news, I was thinking we had some quack doctor in the middle of the desert trying to diagnose my son by smelling his breath. He added, ‘If you waited 3 hours, he would’ve died in the car.’ My heart broke into a million pieces.”
“We were so happy, trying to have a baby, talking marriage. A month later, I got the call I’ll never forget.‘Tom overdosed last night. They think it was accidental… pills and vodka.’ I kept repeating, ‘What am I supposed to do? What do I do now?’ I’d never felt so lost in my life.”
“Our son with Down syndrome had just battled multiple heart failures and a stroke. Us: ‘Let’s have another kid.’ Universe: ‘Hold my beer.’ Our life was like a TV show playing out in real time.”
“There we were, in and out of court, screaming in the street during drop-off like a Jerry Springer episode. At some point we realized it’s easier to put our differences aside and to co-parent these kids together.”
