Lou’s View

I just sent my son off to school. He leaves every morning to go down to the bus stop, walking with the little neighbor girl. This is the worst part of my day. I will never fully understand those parents who can’t wait to ship their kids to school and make them the government’s problem; the second Paul leaves the house, I begin to miss him. I’m left alone with just the dogs and the laundry.

I don’t know; maybe it’s because Paul is adopted. And since November is National Adoption Month, I thought I’d kick off the month by getting a column out of it.

Adoption often isn’t what people expect. A lot of people ask what country he’s from, which is weird as he’s from New Orleans. (Angelina Jolie has a lot to answer for here.) And many people seem to think that Paul was some sort of foster situation, that we rescued him from horrible neglect. This is also not true—Paul’s birth mother is a lovely, wonderful young woman. She decided that she couldn’t give him the care he deserves, so she made a very difficult decision and made our family happy. I actually adore Paul’s birth mother; she is a smart, kind person.

We had been with an adoption agency, American Adoptions, for about a year and a half. We got the call about a month before Paul was born, back in 2014, and got connected with his birth mother. The day before he was born, we began driving down to New Orleans, and we got there fourteen hours after he was born, and he became our baby.

As soon as you get a baby, your life changes. Not you, you understand—Just your life. You are still the same person who accidentally got tomato sauce in a houseplant the week before. And now you have to adapt this ineptitude to raising a baby, which is frankly terrifying. I spent the first several weeks of Paul’s life checking every five minutes to make sure he was still alive, which now seems to have been unnecessary.

We had a sort of weird gap year where he was living with us, but the adoption hadn’t quite been finalized yet. It was Louisiana state law; you have to return to court a year from the birth to finalize the adoption. (I’m told this law has since been changed.) So when Paul was one, we drove back down and went to the courthouse, which was not a big dramatic battle like some people assumed. It was a quiet, laid-back session that took ten minutes. We verified all of our information, and the judge declared him legally ours.

A lot of the time, I forget he’s adopted. I mean, life doesn’t work like that, with the adoption being the primary thing—We’re just a family. Adopted families have a few differences, such as the presence of Gotcha Day, a little extra holiday on the day of his court hearing. But mostly, it’s business as usual, at least as much as anything is with children.

Paul is eleven now. He’s in school, and does competitive dance, and plays with all the neighborhood kids. Most of his friends call me by my first name, which is okay, and some of them just call me “Paul’s Dad.” “Hi, Paul’s Dad!” they will call out as we pass on the sidewalk. I don’t understand why I’ve heard some parents complain about this, either; I quite like the reminder that I have a kid now.

He and I play together, and go ghost hunting, and explore cemeteries. I go to all of his dance recitals and competitions. He is picky as hell about his food, he complains about school, and his room is a disaster.

Sometimes he drives me crazy, and when he gets tired, he’s cranky…..In other words, he’s a typical kid.