Innocence

Some people stay far away from the door

If there's a chance of it opening up

They hear a voice in the hall outside
And hope that it just passes by

 From where we started to where we are now, Justice's adaptation to her new life and circumstances are a night and day difference.

She does not scream and rage at us anymore, not daily anyway. Oh, don't get me wrong. In her eyes, we still make buffooning parental missteps that send her into glaring, bitter lockdown mode; her sharp eyes drilling holes of anger into us. If looks could kill, my friends, you'd already be visiting us twice a year at King David and putting rocks on our gravestones. Yitgadal v'yitkadash.

But there's another side to Justice. Another magnificent, magnanimous side that is trying so very hard to learn how to be loved by two dads.

We advance, she retreats. We lunge, she parries. It's not exactly a dance of love we're doing, it's more of a fencing match, and Justice is in the lead.

She tries so hard find her flèche, her astounding eight-year-old prise de fer, scorning us for attempting to kiss her forehead when we tuck her in at night, but coming to us plaintively, sweetly, even longingly every day, uttering "pick me up," and "carry me," in the tiniest of needful voices, the only way we can hold and hug her safely, with no admission of reciprocal affection needed on her part. As yet, it's the only way she'll accept tactile affection by the two dads who are standing by and overflowing with love to give -- a veritible Hoover Dam if she'd just let us throw the switch-- held back by the fact that she never envisioned us as a permanent part of her future. It's hard to hug two people who were thrust on you by the arbitrary circumstances of life.

Some people live with the fear of a touch

And the anger of having been a fool

They will not listen to anyone

So nobody tells them a lie

When we all met for the first adoption home placement meeting at "Central" last May -- "Central" being Clark County's dreary Department of Family Services headquarters on Martin Luther King -- there were nine of us in that room: me, Adam, Justice, Justin, Miss Mary, their case worker, Miss Tabitha, their therapist, Bonnnie and Brenda, their foster parents, and Rich, our adoption recruiter. That's a whole lot of people in the room to tell a pair of kids, "hey, guess what, we found you a home."

But we did. All of us, the wise and knowing "CRT Team." Care Resource Team? Child Response Team? Honestly, I still don't know what those letters stand for and nobody ever told me.

But we all sat around that big, chipped conference table, and Miss Mary, the case worker, told the kids, "You know Adam and Ryan, right? You've met them now a couple of times, and you've had some playdates, and you had a sleepover at their house, and now we're all having a meeting to tell you something very special."

"You know how we talked about finding you a forever family?" said Miss Tabitha, their therapist.

The children nodded.

"Well," said Miss Mary, picking up the thread, "Adam and Ryan are going to be your forever family. They want to adopt you and be your new dads."

Everyone in the room beamed proudly, as if indeed, we'd invented sliced bread.

Justin grinned sheepishly. He was sitting in the chair next to Adam, doodling in our notebook.

Justice however, had other thoughts in mind.

Justice looked up at the case worker, and in a tiny, incredulous voice, responded immediately with seven words that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

"But I'm supposed to have a mom."

So, that became the opening en garde, those sobering words from my daughter-to-be, the fact that every little girl wants a mom, and I don't care how pro-gay-equality you are when it comes to same-sex couples adopting, we're all left with the simple, yet powerful and burning chastisement from the girl herself: by my very existance in her life, I've taken that opportunity away from her. And if you think for a minute I don't understand and internalize -- profoundly internalize -- what that awesome omission means to her, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn for you, and it's going real cheap.

That's not to say Adam and I haven't given her an entirely different kind of opportunity -- the chance to grow up in a home that knows no boudaries in equality and gender, to be loved to an astounding degree by two fathers with their hearts wide open. She will not lack for love, and I challenge any mom to do it better. Dare any mom to do it better. She will grow up safe, loved, protected and cherished in a world where love picks its own people. Where two dads loving you can be just as powerful as a dad and a mom. I know that matters more than anything, and give her time, and she will love us for it. Respect us for it. There will come a day when she will not imagine a world without me and Adam at her side, faithful and waiting, all the times we were still at arm's length.

As I'm sure you've heard bemoaned before, future love and hope envisioned was a moot point this past year as Justice drew pictures in school of a fictional family that included a mom, dad, brother and dog. Perfectly healthy, said the therapist. Not harmful. Not unusual. But also, not us.

Now those fantasy pictures have stopped. Justice is resigned to the fact, even open to the fact at times, that she has Dad, Daddy, Justin and a betta fish. That's it. That's what life dealt her. And now, nearing 11 months with us, she is adapting, even thriving, as well as can be expected. She laughs with us, smiles with us, teases us and acts cute for approval. All the things "Attaching in Adoption," our manual -- our bonding Bible -- tells us are true signs of progress.

"Eaaaaasy, baby," Ben Vereen crooned in Pippin, "You're on the right track."

I wish she liked me a little more, though.

I wish she'd show it.

I know you're only protecting yourself

I know you're thinking of somebody else

Someone who hurt you

But I'm not above

Making up for the love

You've been denying you could ever feel

I'm not above doing anything

To restore your faith if I can

There is a children's blessing we sing in our Friday night service. Y'simcha Elohim k'Efrayim, v'chi M'nasheh. Y'Simeich Elohim k'Sarah, k'Rivkah, k'Rachel v'Leah. May God make you like Ephriam and Menasseh. May God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, matriarchs all, strong mothers and daughters.

During this prayer, we gather our children in our arms and place our hands on them lovingly as we sing in Hebrew the words almost everyone knows: "May God bless you and keep you. May God's light shine upon you and may God be gracious unto you. May you feel God's presence within you always, and may you find peace."

I think I've told you once before, Justin and Justice don't cuddle up with us during this song. Not like the other parents and children we wishfully watch. Justice will cuddle with our friend Julie, whose mom-dad nuclear family is a blessing of normality to us and to her. She will snuggle tightly to Adam's mom, "Mama" to all the grandkids. She will let those beautiful women bless her with love and affection -- y'simcha -- but not us. Not yet. We are left longing. We are left waiting.

Some people say they will never believe

Another promise they hear in the dark

Because they only remember too well

They heard somebody tell them before

Many people came before us in the raising of Justice and Justin, and we are sometimes grateful, sometimes angry, and often confused as to what they left behind in our new children's hearts and souls. Justice and Justin have been, at times, embraced and abandoned, nurtured and neglected, screamed at and hurt, and then turned around and loved with profound and blessed ferocity. What have you done to them, I often wonder. What have you done?

Adam and I are, at present, just another link in their lives, the newest part of their history, and how easy it would be to blame all those parental figures of the past for their problems, but as Chris, her grandma's former partner told me openly, unexpectedly and heartbreakingly one day, "I did the best I could. I really did. We both did." And I believe him in his honesty. What can any of us do at the end of the day, except nagivgate our difficult lives the best we know how. And heartfelt words like Chris's make me reevaluate my quick, cavalier judgement of all those I accuse of hurting the kids' psyches because they "left them behind." Nobody means to leave any child behind. The truth of the world is, sometimes life takes turns and children just get left.

But Adam and I, who are left to gently rebuild the fragile little souls who faced it, try to understand and try to forgive. It takes magnanimous leaps on our part too, to see what we see, and still try to absolve the too-rough fingers of the world.

But I've been there and if I can survive

I can keep you alive

I'm not above going through it again

I've not above being cool for a while

If you're cruel to me I'll understand

Here's what I'm left with. I tuck Justice in, as I do every night. Some nights, when I kiss her on the forehead, she giggles. Some nights she turns her head in anger. Some nights, she hauls back and hits me in the face.

And I am so full of love.

And sometimes for that, and for all that came before me, I walk out of her room and all I have to show for it is a broken heart and a bloody nose.

Trying to love. Hit, hurt and lost once again.

There's enough blame for everyone. A birth father in jail. A birth mother who-knows-where, lost in a world of drugs. Relatives who tried, but ultimately couldn't keep them. Foster parents who gave them love but not permanancy, and now us. Two dads who had the audacity to love them, and will pay the price forever. All of us guilty, all of us innocent of the great heartaches and headaches in Justice and Justin's lives.

But we go on trying, and we go on fencing, because someone needs to teach them how to love and trust again, and this is their time, and we're all they've got left.

"Here I am," says Geoffrey to Henry in The Lion in Winter. "I'm all that's left. Love me."

Some people hope for a miracle cure

Some people just accept the world as it is

But I'm not willing to lay down and die

Because I am an innocent man

World that did this to Justice and Justin Reisman, I pay the price for all of us, and I always will.

But I absolve us all, myself included, because if I don't, we'll never move on with the kind of love they need. I can't blame you and I can't blame me. I can only celebrate our innocence today and love them.

In the end, that's all that counts for anything.

"An Innocent Man," c.1983 Billy Joel, Columbia Records