All stories begin somewhere and truthfully no story really begins where we think it does. This story begins in the Parks Mall on Cooper Street in Arlington, Texas — though it arguably begins years before, in the formative years of our young lives . . . or perhaps even centuries before when a Man walked along the shores of Galilee providing a way to reconciliation with others and with God. But we’re not here to tell the whole world’s story. We’re here to tell our own and any story has to begin somewhere, so we’ll begin at the mall, a most illustrious place to start such a tale.
It was late 2001, sometime after 9-11. We had moved to Arlington in 2000 for my job and Terri’s graduate work and often found ourselves discussing what it might look like for us to be parents. Now you have to understand, we appropriately (if not completely) understood parenthood to be a big step in life. But we talked about it casually.
When I was younger, a friend once told me she thought I would make a great dad. It was a word of encouragement that pierced my heart and stayed embedded there. I tell you this to say parenthood, fatherhood, had always appealed to me in such a way that I sometimes wonder if it appeals to others. I just wasn’t sure of the right timing (as if I could develop the proper time line for such a thing). We had discussed the related details before: finances, travel, jobs and school (Terri was still pursuing her Master’s degree), but we never felt as if we had an answer to that elusive question of timing.
Among those conversations and many others about family, Terri had told me that she had always considered adoption to be something she wanted to pursue. She grew up in a home where compassion was important and with two foster sisters who gave her a real life view of the difficulties of growing up without a stable family and living in and out of institutions. Since she was a little girl, she had talked about, dreamed about, adopting her children. But with age and the pressure to conform, that dream had faded a bit as she began to listen to those subtle voices telling her to do the “normal” thing and at least start with biological children. But just a few weeks before our story begins, she was bombarded with images of adoption: friends and professors who had adopted internationally were telling their stories, others were talking about working in baby homes and orphanages and showing pictures of babies and children all alone in the world. The dream refused to disappear quietly.
Back to the mall. There we were, minding our own business, eating Quiznos (a mesquite chicken with bacon hold the onions and tomatoes – I know this because it is all we have ever eaten at Quiznos) when the topic of family decided to pull up a chair at our table. I don’t know when he came in, but suddenly there he was at our table, wanting us to talk about him. So we did. And I found myself saying, “Maybe we should start with adoption. Maybe that’s how we’re supposed to start our family. Maybe the issue hasn’t been timing after all.”
I don’t remember every word from that conversation. It’s one of those where you wish you had a video to go back and replay. You never do in those times. I do, however, remember what I did. I went home, got on the internet, and began to learn about international adoption.
An inauspicious beginning – certainly not one that would hint to where we are today, but that’s the beautiful thing about life, you don’t have to have a map with markers plotted out to enjoy the journey!
I'm so glad you decided to share your story.
Such a simple start to a long jounrey with a beautiful end.
Posted by: Debbie | Sunday, January 14, 2007 at 09:11 AM
I'm liking this...don't make us wait too long for the next step towards Jacob/Stella. To paraphrase, "Can anything good come from The Mall?" Apparently, the answer amazingly is yes.
Posted by: Suzy Finigan | Monday, January 15, 2007 at 12:14 PM