“One tall football player who looked like a grown man, beard and all, pressed me with questions I didn’t want to answer. The classroom was full, and all eyes were on me. A group text with my colleagues had begun. Rumors of a gun in the school. My insides knotted up.”
“He crossed the road, climbed the bus steps, and I watched this time as his face appeared in the window. I waited for him to see me, to smile or wave or even to cry, but he never even looked at me. Instead, he looked at his wrist.”
“‘I never want you to meet my mother,’ he would tell me. I assured him she couldn’t scare me away. The cops told him to pack clothes and leave his mother’s house. ‘You aren’t going to arrest her for assaulting me?’ The cop replied, ‘You’re a big guy. There’s nothing I can do.’ I remember just shaking my head, leaning in for a hug. I love you more, Michael. But that love wasn’t enough.”
“24 hours after my daughter developed a cough, we were rushed down the halls of the children’s hospital. I asked the nurse if she was going to be okay. She told me, ‘I can’t tell you that she is. We will try our best.'”
“The dads who said, ‘It’s okay,’ even when it wasn’t…”
“Then one day you won’t have to search any longer, because you’ll find her.”
“My son starts saying cute things at the doctor. He looks her in the eyes and says, ‘My mommy puts baby mice in her bum bum.’ The doctor looks horrified and says, ‘pardon?'”
“I got the call around 3:30 a.m. I spent 9 months preparing for that call. 9 months worth of nights obsessively checking the volume on the phone, making sure it was charged, that it was close by, that I hadn’t somehow missed any calls. Well I got my call. Loud and clear.”
“People did not come banging on the door to see him and hold him for the first time. People did not ‘Oooh and Ahhh’ over him. When we first told family we were adopting, we were greeted with….’That’s scary!’ ‘Are you sure?'”
“I was shoved down the stairs by a drunk guy at a party. ‘You are going too slow,’ he said as he pushed me. Once again, visuals of high school flooded my head, and I started to feel myself giving up.”
