Lucky Ones
In 2006, I found myself with an empty nest, my three bio-children having moved out to pursue their professional and academic goals. The time was right to fulfill a long-held ambition to become a foster parent. At that same time, I found love again with a wonderful man named Richard, the father of adult twin sons. We married, fostered several children together, and then decided we wanted to share the adventure of parenthood.
After completing a home study, our worker called us up and asked if we were interested in meeting 6-year-old twin boys who were waiting to be adopted. At our ages, weren’t we a tad long in the tooth for such young children? But, the minute we saw them, we fell in love. We took them for ice cream at our local Coldstone Creamery, which definitely broke the ice and erased all nervousness. By the time we were dropping them off, I knew they were meant to be our sons. Soon the boys moved in, and six months later, on August 7, 2007, Richard and I became the proud parents of Tony and Michael Gill. Our daily life was now filled with many fun activities and of course more visits to Coldstone.
Two years ago, Richard received a job opportunity in Toledo. We found a house with plenty of room to expand our family and began our home study with Adopt America. This time, we decided we were going to focus on older children; we knew that older children often wait a long, frequently aging out of foster care before ever finding a family. Not long after our search started, I saw a profile for Oved and Omar, in Alabama. They were 14 and 16 and looked like they could be Mike’s and Tony’s bio-brothers. I told our worker at AAN, Karen Hojnicki, that we wanted to learn more, and with lightning speed, she submitted our study and a dialogue between Ohio and Alabama began.
And then the unspeakable happened. On September 25, 2011, my youngest biological child, Andrew, was killed in a fall. Life as I’d known it came to a halt and I found myself in a club that no parent ever wants to join: I was now a bereaved parent. Our social workers in Ohio and Alabama were so kind and supportive; they let me know that they would understand if I needed to put our adoption plans on hold as I dealt with my grief. While this might not have been the right decision for some, I knew in my heart that the best thing for me to do would be to continue trying to live my life as I had before Andrew’s passing; I believed that this is what he would have wanted, and I also felt that the life-affirming act of adoption, of bringing new children into our family to nurture and enjoy, would be the best way to honor Andrew’s memory. The boys came up to visit us in November and again in December at Christmas, and on January 9th of this year, they came to live with us permanently. Their adoption finalized on September 20th.
Our life with four boys involves a lot of bantering and good-natured rough-housing, sports events, video games, trips to Dairy Queen and Taco Bell, and lots of grocery shopping. There are differences between adopting children at the tender age of 6 and bringing teens into the family. Omar and Oved had already experienced two disappointments with families who had said they were going to adopt them and didn’t; they were hesitant about saying “yes” to yet another pre-adoptive home. Richard and I knew that winning their trust was going to take time…a happy trip to the ice-cream shop wasn’t going to do it. Despite their fears, Omar and Oved agreed to leave Alabama behind, move to Ohio, and give it, and us, a try. I am in awe of their courage.