For the Better

and soon you'll see how things 

have turned out for the better

I got married when I was nineteen.  We were basically just two dead-broke kids living in a middle-of-nowhere southern town.  Tim was twenty-three and starting grad school, and I was in between colleges, working a string of odd jobs and trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up (I'll let you know when I figure it out).  That was seven years ago, and it never would've occurred to us that we'd have a redhead kiddo and move to a foreign country someday.

Isaac was a surprise.  We'd just bought our first fixer-upper, a 1920's ramshackle: teal countertops, asbestos siding, and a leaky roof.  We called it The Fort because, well, to be honest, I always refer to my parent's house as 'home' and everywhere else I've lived as 'The Fort.'  I don't know why; I moved away to college when I was seventeen so you'd think someplace else would stick as home, but nope.  I need my siblings to be there.

We had a mean cat named Faust who would sit at the top of the stairs and hiss on a nine to five basis.  She was our thing we took care of, if that makes any sense.  Just us, the cat, and these grand plans of redoing The Fort and turning it for a profit.  And then the housing bubble burst and you know that story.  So yeah, we weren't exactly prepared to become parents.

I had a really rough pregnancy.  Not physically, but emotionally.  As is the case with any oral contraceptives I've tried, pregnancy made me deeply depressed.  I spent the third trimester locked away in that dark little house, trying to wrap my head around what was happening.  No need for specifics, but, to be honest, it's not an experience I'd like to repeat.

That being said, I love my kiddo for all I'm worth.  We never really felt like a full-fledged family until he came along, and it just gets better.  I like to call him my watercolor baby, with that red-red hair and blue eyes, adding so much color to my white Scandinavian apartment.  He fits us.

And now he's five, and I'm twenty-six, and it feels like just about everyone is getting married and having babies, starting out this whole new life at perhaps a more practical age than, well, nineteen. Granted, we'd never have this complicated, beautiful, multi-colored patchwork effect if all our stories were the same, and that's okay.  More than okay.

Which brings me full circle, the point of this post:

We'd like to adopt.  This is something that's been in our hearts for awhile now, for many reasons, not the least of which is we are able to be a home for someone without.  I've always known, in some unexplainable way, that I could love a stranger's child the same as my own.  Maye some people are just meant to adopt, and if so, I think I'm one of them (she says, having no experience to speak of).  What's more, I'd like Isaac to grow up with a sibling who makes him feel at home the way I feel with mine.

We were thinking a little girl, maybe two to five years old, any country.  I say any country because I am that open to the idea, but if I were asked to be more specific, I'd love to adopt from Nicaragua.  We went there just after we were married, and met dozens of beautiful small children living in shantytowns.  They have left a big impression on my heart.  

Earlier this year we did some research, made a few calls to a handful of stateside agencies, checked out home-study costs and adopt abroad programs, and then everything went to a standstill because, to be honest, we just can't afford to pay for an adoption right now.  Life in Europe is expensive, and adoption even more so.

All that aside, I get this feeling that it's something we're supposed to do.  At some point.  I'm not really concerned about the finances because if it's meant to happen, it's going to be a God thing.

So anyway, there's that.  Just something to keep in your thoughts for me.