In the dark, I study the little bundle that won’t sleep. To say he has five fingers on each hand is such an understatement. They are tiny and have this unpredictable independent movement that doesn’t remind me of the clump of cells he came from. I feel more than the handful of pounds that gently press on my legs. There is the weight of the impact this human will have on the world and those other humans immediately around him. Maybe I am not normal. Maybe I balloon the importance of the next generation I might have an infinitesimal impact on. But here, now, in the dark, he amazes me. I try to memorize every detail because I know it won’t last.
The next time I meet a new member of our family, it is much louder and brighter. There are people I don’t know milling about, and when I hold her, it feels a little off. She is still amazing, but there is something artificial and chemical about our first days together that takes some time to settle out. Having had my entire birth experience colored by the schedules and medicines of a hospital makes the experience feel at odds with my internal body calibration. The tiny fingers still move, all ten of them, but they are bathed in bright white light that makes me blink in my memory of it. When I get up to feed her and sear her little image into my mind early in the dark mornings at home, her brother sometimes joins us, and I try to balance my loyalties between two lovely, adorable little people. The early chemicals of her unnatural entrance dissolve quickly. It doesn’t take long once in our little nest for her big eyes and curious hands to melt our hearts.
When I met the next family member, I had been driven by a hired car to a narrow doorway framed by sidewalk shopkeepers in India. I stepped up a stairway and emerged into a room with white marble floors and lighting that had a slight green tint. White wooden cribs lined the walls. He used to be in one of these when he was small, but I won’t have access to the place he has lived for the past year or so since he became a toddler. I am given a tour of the large room and a tiny alcove for the youngest babies. Then I am ushered into the office of the orphanage administrator. She talks to me for a bit, answering every question I could think of that I should or want to have an answer to during this once-in-our-lifetime encounter, and then there he is. He is paraded around a bit so I can see how well he speaks to the staff and that he is trying to walk. Then we leave. He leaves the place where they speak his language and feed him rice with dal and ghee.
And then we all gather in our small ranch house on a quiet street in an incredibly small town, and all three of these guys start growing. I task myself with seeing who they are and not what I wish they were. This was one of my primary pillars when I was an angsty teen that I committed I would try to do better than my parents. So I tried. I peered into their beautiful eyes and tried to understand their minds. I tried to teach them in a way they could grasp about the world and multiplication and how adoption was a part of our lives that we were all going to experience and learn from together. I bought curry from the Asian store, encouraged them to go say hi to that kid over on the playground that was about their age, to read at their age level, and not to laugh when people fell.
And I failed. We all do as parents: in small ways and big ones. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, or how much I studied or read books or asked questions of the other parents around me. It didn’t matter how much I journaled or talked to the kids or cried in the bathroom. But I gave the project every fiber of my being and every effort in my soul. I tried, experimented, pivoted, admitted fault, and grew.
They did, too.
Two weeks ago I went up to the counter at our local train station. The attendant asked my youngest two children how they felt about riding a train as unaccompanied minors, and they assured him they would be fine. They had done it before, and they knew at the end of the ride my oldest son would be there to meet them at the train. The boy who wouldn’t sleep would drive his car to the train station and be there EARLY to make sure his youngest siblings would be met by an adult. All three of my oldest children now live an hour and a half from their two younger siblings and me. Once a semester, over a weekend, they set aside college friends and homework and jobs to host their younger siblings: teens who look up to them and think they are cool.
In previous years I came and spent the night somewhere in town while the young adult kids pumped up the air mattresses in their dorm rooms and tossed blankets and pillows and plushies onto the plasticy surface to make the younger kids comfortable. But now the younger kids are in high school. They don’t need as much comfort, or me, really. So I requested pictures and sent them off.
My oldest daughter, who entered the world in a blaze of artificial light, embraced all five of them with a comforting homemade dinner in the cozy bungalow she rented with roommates. She organized a driving range outing for all of my kids. I know this because photos of the whole gang showed up in the family text thread.
My young adult children are people who are making their own way in the world while voluntarily prioritizing care for the humans their parents brought together.
The day after getting together to golf, my oldest daughter brought her younger brother to the BMX track to share a new experience with him while my adult sons took their younger sister thrifting. They made these plans on their own with the desires of their younger siblings in mind.
At the end of the weekend, I drove the hour and a half to pick up the high schoolers and took my crew out for brunch. Everyone was together, happy, cared for, loved. I had failed, but I had also succeeded. I had given my all, and these beautiful humans are putting love into the world they inhabit. They are taking care of themselves and those around them. Would they have done the same without my influence? Science is still debating how much my nurture affects the chemistry in their systems. Either way, the world has gained some wonderful humans, and I am grateful.
