Two to Tango

Shane and I recently celebrated the TEN year anniversary of our first date. It was a DECADE ago that he invited me to his dorm room to watch 'The Nightmare Before Christmas" on Halloween night. Yeah, that sounds weird to me too, now, but apparently it worked. We dated for a year, got engaged, and were married nine months after that. I was 21, and he was 23. Yeah, that sounds crazy to me too, now, but apparently it's working.

Somewhere along the line during those dating months, we wistfully discussed all of the fun hypotheticals: What do you want to be when you grow up? Where would you want to live one day? How old do you want to be when you have kids? How many kids do you want to have? What football team will you teach them to root for? (What? Not all 21 year old girls vet the NFL preferences of their potential mates?)

Since by that time in my life I had already done the math on the 'surplus of family love (me)+ deficit of family love (many children out there) = adoption' equation in my mind, during one of these conversations I mentioned that I'd like to adopt in addition to having biological children. I don't remember the exact conversation or specifically what Shane said in response, but I remember thinking that he wasn't into the idea.

In reality, he probably said something like, "That's interesting." And when we were far enough along in our relationship that the hypothetical conversations had turned to more practical conversations about our future together, he probably said something like, "Let's just cross that bridge when we get there." I suspected that he thought my desire to adopt was a lark, or at least that it was something that was too impractical to actually happen, like living abroad for a year or finding jobs that allowed us to travel the world.

As the conversation progressed over the years, he expressed a concern that he might not feel as connected to an adopted child as he would to the biological children that we both hoped to have as well. He worried that the love that he imagined would come naturally for a child that shared our DNA, that looked like us and in some ways acted like us, would come unnaturally or not at all for a child that more-or-less showed up on our doorstep one day.

He also worried about the "risk" of committing to raise a child whose genetic background and in-utero history were unknown to us. What if the birth mother did drugs while she was pregnant? What if learning disabilities ran rampant in their family? What if they were (gasp) Raiders fans? (Oh wait, that would have been my concern)

Shane didn't really know anyone who was adopted. To him, adoption had been somewhat of a theoretical concept, something that "other people" do - probably because they can't have children of their own. As is the case with most people, Shane expected to fall in love, get married, have children, and generally live happily ever after. You know, a normal life with a normal family.

Slowly over the years of our marriage, however, our conversations about adoption planted a seed of curiosity in him. He observed my family's relationship with my cousin Sam, who is adopted from Korea. He looked more closely at families in our church who had adopted children. He started to consider what it would be like for him, for us. It started to seem less "out there," less scary.

When I gave birth to our son, Louie, this past February we were both instantly in love with him. I had wondered how the experience of having a biological child would impact my own desire to adopt, and I worried that it could be a deal-breaker for Shane, who at that point was "open" to adopting if I insisted on it. What neither of us expected was for the experience of having our biological son to overwhelm us both with the feeling that we simply HAD. TO. ADOPT. Which is exactly what happened.

Shane says that the change for him was the realization that the immense and unconditional love that he felt for our son really didn't have anything to do with the fact that we shared his DNA, it had much more to do with the feeling that this child was a gift - innocent and miraculous and perfect - that had been entrusted to us. Shane felt strongly after our son's birth that if Louie had in fact just showed up on our doorstep that he would be just as much of a gift, and that the fatherly love Shane felt would have come just as naturally. He recognized that certainly all babies are perfect and innocent and miraculous, and this one just happened to be related to us.

So it was decided. The next baby would just show up on our doorstep. Well, we would do a lot of homework and jump through a lot of hoops and ask God to give us superhuman strength, and then a baby would just show up on our doorstep. And it will be ours. And the love has already come, in case anyone was worried.