Wednesday's Child

Here's the link to our interview segment that ran on Wednesday, May 22 on the "Wednesday's Child" segment on "Las Vegas 8News Now."

Justice & Justin Find a Forever Home

Lights, Camera, Action!

In the course of an average day, it never occurs to us our story is interesting to other people. We're too busy living it to notice. Why this blog has garnered 8,000 hits in the past year is utterly beyond my comprehension. I mean, thank you, I'm flattered...but what you're all tuning in for, I have no idea.

So, imagine my surprise when Dave Courvoisier, our local longtime news anchor, called me on the phone to set up an interview and tell our adoption story on 8 News Now.

"Ryan," he said in his smooth, flawless baritone. Even on the phone, I could picture him at his desk on the news set, chroma key screen behind him, light coat of pancake makeup on him, popping off cell phone calls in between segments on the MGM business numbers. "Dave Courvoisier from 8 News Now. I'd love to come out and do a success story on you and Adam and Justice and Justin on the news this week."

"Um, define success," I wondered out loud.

"It's for Wednesday's Child," he laughed. Even Dave's laugh sounds newsworthy. I'm not kidding. His laugh has perfect pitch.

Wednesday's Child is a segment Dave Courvoisier has been doing on the news since, oh, I don't know, the Hoover Administration? Every week, he features a child up for adoption, a set of foster kids, a new adoptive family, you name it. If it's a way to promote adoption and fostering in Las Vegas, Dave's all over it.

"Well, sure," I stammered. "That would be great."

We set up a time and hung up cordially, me still wondering what in the world we were going to talk about. I guess I still see our family of four as survivors in the adoption trenches and not so much a human interest piece, but hey, when in Rome.

Here are the things you think about in the three days between setting up a television interview and actually having the news people come to your house:

1. The toilets. It's not possible they'd come in here and accidentally shoot the toilets, right?
2. Why, why, why haven't weeded the back yard since 2009?
3. What can I be cooking in the background when they're shooting the b-roll? On a typical night, we have hot dogs in the microwave. When a news crew shows up, you want to roll out your "A" game. Is miso glazed salmon with roasted sesame seeds over-reaching? Let's go with that.
4. Please God, do NOT let Justin drop his pants and show Las Vegas his penis. Not even in silhouette.

Turns out, I didn't have to worry.

Channel 8 made it as painless as possible.

The news van showed up first and a cameraman named Jonathan hopped out.

Immediately neighbors started peeking out of doors and windows, gathering in the street, and I could hardly blame them. Usually when a news van shows up in our neighborhood, it's because somebody's fleeing the police.

Dave Courvoisier pulled up next in a jet black, bad-ass, custom-looking sports car, of a make and model I've never seen before on the entire planet Earth. "Shit, Dave," I muttered under my breath. "Forget the story on us. Let's do a story on your car."

We started the taping at 7 pm, so the first thing they wanted to get before the sun went down was a few background shots of the kids playing outside. Justice was a little shy, but Justin happily obliged, strapping on his helmet and hopping on his bike so the cameraman could film him riding up and down the street, darting out in traffic and narrowly missing collisions with parked cars, in the kind of award-winning footage that is sure to bring Child Protective Services back into our lives as soon as it airs.

They put a wireless lavalier mike on Justiin before they filmed him riding his bike...how wierd is that? I guess they wanted to capture the essence of boyhood, leaving no noise unturned. I've got news for you, Channel 8. I've heard the noises that come out of Justin. You do not need a special microphone to enhance them.

After that, they decided they wanted to film me in the street, throwing a football back and forth with both kids, for more touchy-feely background footage. I was happy to comply, because any time we can show America that a gay dad knows what a football looks like, it's a win-win for everybody. The downside was, I break a sweat peeling an orange, so ten minutes of football was enough to ensure I'd look like I'd just taken a spin class before we sat down in the house to shoot the close-ups.

We survived the interview with wobbly finesse. The story was there, but the words are a little hard to find when a thousand watt halogen pops on and hits you in the kisser. Nonetheless, we made it through, no worse for the wear, our normally overly-vocal kids awed into monosyllabic grunts and nods. Dave asked them a lot of quesitons, bless him, but the kids were shy and the pickin's were slim.

They did, however, light up and come to life when Dave asked them to show him their bedrooms, and then we did another little segment where we fingerpainted their hand prints on a canvas poem that'll eventually wind up at Grandma Cindy's house.

All in all, a successful night's work, and a fun experience.

It'll air Wednesday, May 22 on KLAS-TV Las Vegas, 8 News Now, at 7am and 4pm Pacific.

A day or two afterwards, you'll find the same segment archived here:
http://www.8newsnow.com/category/43104/wednesdays-child

I met Dave Courvoisier several times before all this happened. He is a regular, longtime fixture in the world of fostering and adoption in Las Vegas, and one of our true community champions.

He was there at the Adoption Exchange Heart Gallery opening where we first met Justice and Justin. He was also master of ceremonies at last year's Adoption Exchange Annual Gala, where I donated my services as an event photographer.

If you foster or adopt in Nevada, chances are real good you're going to run into Dave Courvoisier somewhere along the line. "I can't say no," he told me with a smile and a shrug when I told him we see him everywhere when there are kids futures at stake. And in the case of dedicated local influence, that's a good thing.

Monday's child is fair of face
Tuesday's child is full of grace
Wednesday's child is full of woe
Thursday's child has far to go

We've spanned the week with these brand new babies of ours...grace and woe and far to go. And that's just for starters.

But it's nice to see them shine in the spotlight, and it was really nice of Channel 8, and dear, dedicated Dave, to give them that chance -- and that once-in-a-lifetime, really fun experience.

Thanks, KLAS. Set your TiVos folks.

We'll see you on the news.

Shades of Green

“I’m very honored to be here, because Justin and Justice are very important…not just to me, but to many people across the Jewish community. The fact that we have people here from different synagogues and different sections of the Jewish people is really a compliment to you two. There are so many people who love you and are here for you from all different parts of the community. You two really act as a bridge between us. Usually you have young people who have a few people to look after them. You two have hundreds of people! And they’re going to be looking out for you for years to come.” -Rabbi Malcolm Cohen, at Justin’s bris.

When we told Justin, a few months ago, that he’d soon be having a hatafat dam brit  (literally, “drawing of blood of the covenant”), he received the news with such casual complacence, my jaw almost dropped.

We were actually hoping for a horrified “What????” A true connoisseur of potential comic moments, I’d actually  geared up for telling him with camcorder in hand, hoping to capture the hilarious, shocked expression on his face I could burn to DVD and haunt him with for decades to come. It’s not every day you tell your son you’re going to make his willy bleed. You expect a little more zing for your money.

While my personal memory is a bit fuzzy as to my own relationship with my penis at age six, I’m fairly certain if my dad told me we were going to drop my pants, have a rabbi grab my junk and give it a jab with a pinhead until blood came out, I think I would have done the McCauley Culkin cheek slap from Home Alone . Swooned, at the least.

Not Justin. When we told him about his impending bris - a rite of all Jewish boys – and explained what would be done to his relatively young equipment, his impressive nonchalance approached actual passivity. Disregarding the whole hullabaloo with a shrug and a smile, he went back to playing Skylanders on his Wii.

Unflappable, fearless Justin. You can see it on the recording. If there were a thought-bubble subtitle on the screen, it would have to read, “Whatever. You want to poke my peeper, weirdoes, knock yourselves out.”

I guess I should back up and explain.

Justin was circumcised at birth, but did not have the ritual, ceremonial brit milah or circumcisional bris that most Jewish baby boys have when they’re eight days old. This is a rather significant step into Jewish maleness. And all modern squawks of genital mutilation aside – (give me a break) – we Jews are culturally bound to the directions laid out in Genesis 17. Read it and weep. Particularly if you’re attached to your foreskin.

“You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and that shall be the sign of the covenant between Me and you. And throughout the generations, every male among you shall be circumcised at the age of eight days.”

Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Barbaric? I don’t know. My non-Jewish friends overseas seem to think so. They go a little bit bat shit when I even mention it. But really? Long run? I’m circumcised. Adam’s circumcised. We’re still walking around without a limp. Problems?  Sorry. Take it up with a rabbi. To paraphrase Popeye, we yam what we yam.

So, for me and Adam and our particularly prickly double-dad adoptive situation, what do we do with Justin, who was circumcised in the delivery room, but came to us without the ever-important eight-day ceremony already under his belt, pardon the pun.

Enter Rabbi Fromowitz, certified mohel, and a personal friend and former rabbi of birth-grandmother Cindy. Rabbi F agreed to perform a hatafat dam brit for us, a “watered-down” version of a bris, in which no actual foreskin is cut or removed (since it’s already long-gone), but instead, a little spring-loaded clicker is used to quickly poke the penis until a single drop of blood shows. Click, click, latex gloves, a dab of gauze and that’s all she wrote. A little prick on the little, well, you know, and like the umpire says, you’re outa’ there.

“Mazel Tov,” Rabbi Wyne, Grandma Cindy's current rabbi said to Justin, inspecting Rabbi Fromowitz’s handiwork from distance respectful to Justin's modesty, which at six, is nearly non-existant, so he needn't have worried. “That didn’t hurt, did it?”

Justin, who grinned sheepishly through the whole procedure - five clicks to actually get the job done - that's how tiny and non-intrustive the needle actually is - beamed and said, “That didn’t hurt at all!”

“You’re lucky,” Rabbi Wyne said. “When I had my bris, I couldn’t walk or talk for a year.”

Ba-dump-bump! He always goes for the classics, that rabbi.

After the actual poking was done, the rabbis on hand marched Justin back into Grandma Cindy’s living room – (the actual procedure was done in a private room, away from the crowd, for heaven’s sake) –Rabbi Wyne announced “Here he is, a Jew!” and people smiled and clapped and patted our backs and sang “simintov and mazel tov,” and Justin looked proud.

It was a banner day for him. He even got to have his first sip of wine – Maneschewitz Concord Grape – a staple of Jewish homes everywhere, which he later pronounced “scusting,” with his usual scrunch-nosed Justin flair. And kiddo, just so you know, since 1888, Jewish wine drinkers everywhere would agree with you.

So, the bris proper, the poking itself, was not a big deal, neither emotionally or physically. Naysayers, relax. No animals or children were harmed in the making of this motion picture. He walked away smiling and proud of his own bravado, without so much as a scratch. Well okay, a tiny little pin spot, the red badge of courage, but not an actual cut. Thank you, Rabbi Fromowitz, for going gentle on the family jewels. Even us gay dads want grandkids.

One thing that did remind me of the differences in practice that still exist between Orthodox Jews (like Grandma Cindy) and Reform Jews (like me and Adam) was the Hebrew name Rabbi Wyne gave to Justin during the prayer he offered at the brief service and “baby naming” that followed. It wasn’t what we asked for.

Justin’s Hebrew name is Binyamin Aviel ben Avram v’Aharon, (Avram and Aharon being Adam’s and my Hebrew names). That correct name for Justin was warmly accepted and used by our reform rabbi, Rabbi Cohen, at our naming ceremony for the kids in our own synagogue, Temple Sinai, two months ago. No questions asked. Parents discretion. Dealer’s choice.

When we asked Rabbi Wyne, an Orthodox rabbi, to use the same name as he officiated at Justin’s bris, the answer was a polite no. We were told it wasn’t traditional. Not halachic or proper under Jewish law. Adopted boys do not receive the adoptive father’s name in Orthodox custom. If their birth father's Jewish faith is known, they are given the birth father's name. If it is not known, they are called “ben Avraham Avinu,” “son of Abraham, our father.”

So, not to put too fine a point on it, but Adoptive Dad #1 and Adoptive Dad #2 were more or less snubbed in the Orthodox naming prayer. Our names were not connected to Justin’s in any way. There were smiles, mazel tov’s and pats on the back from all who attended, but in the prayer that mattered, Orthodox custom deemed us not connected to Justin in any sense of legal lineage, and it makes no politically-correct exception for the fact that we stepped in to raise him. He is not “Benjamin, son of Adam and Ryan,” he is “Benjamin, son of Abraham our father,” a distinction given to adopted children and converts. Not exactly a preference in my eyes, certainly not what Adam and I would have picked for the day, but in the words of my friend Dianne, “Honey, it is what it is. Get over it.”

We knew it would happen, and early on, we did our best to take a run at it. We told Rabbi F and Rabbi W before the service, we’d like to have our names used. We still don't know if we'll show up in print on the certificate. Sensitively speaking, it was sort of a sticking point from the beginning when we knew an Orthodox bris was on the horizon. We'd hoped for inclusion in the actual naming part of the service, but assumed que sera. No cynicism intended, but Orthodox is Orthodox, and if you want your kids to have the liberal version of prayers versus the old-school verbatim, you’re pushing your shopping cart down the wrong aisle. As King Henry said to his sons, “There’s no sense asking if the air’s any good when there’s nothing else to breathe.”

So, yeah. It pisses me off a little. It stings.

Adoptive parents are told all the time, “you’re not real parents.” Sometimes outright by awkward, bumbling, well-meaning folks who say things like “it’s amazing they even look like you!” Sometimes by people prying for gossip -- and that group is neverending with their whispered, conspiratorial “what happened to their real mom," but always and forever, not a day goes by that someone doesn’t remind us in some covert or overt way, we’re not their real dads. It's ironic that adoptive parents are often praised as heroic, but simultaneously, in a million different ways, branded as a special subclass, one rung down the ladder from actual parenthood.

So, yes, I have to admit, I let it sting for one full day. Being snubbed in the prayer that gave my son his Hebrew name in front of his grandmother's community is a bit like saying, "we love him, but we want want to make sure we're all clear that he's not really yours." If we hadn't done an earlier naming ceremony in our own shul, where he was given a connection to our names in such an important, intimate, father-son sense of legitimized identity, I think I would have been devastated indeed.

How to explain to those who don't recognize our realness, we have taken great and careful pains to return two children to the Jewish birth they started from. We recognize the special story and the special symbolism they hold for some people, and it matters to us. Not because of that but in celebration of that, we faithfully take them to Jewish services every Shabbat, they study weekly in a Jewish Sunday school, they are enrolled in a Jewish private school Monday through Friday. We have, I say with all utter lack of humility, turned up the Jewish steam valve on their cultural and spiritual raising. Jewish values live, breathe, and are alive and well in our home.

So, fast forward to bris and a rabbi who can’t technically mention us in connection to the boy who will now be our son for a lifetime, and feelings are bound to be hurt. Hearing our absense and disconnection announced so clearly -- prayed so clearly -- whether it’s tradition, Jewish law, or whatever else you chalk it up to -- is, to us, just another sad sigh and a slap in the face, reminding us of our further perceived inequality in the eyes of people who should know better. “He is Benjamin, son of someone, and son of the Jewish people,” they seem to tell us, “but, he is not the son of you.”

How do I make peace with that?

Because I have to.

Adam read the notes below and said I was being generous. Maybe too generous. Because he's hurting too, hearing his name replaced at an important, incredibly profound and personal event by a different father...the historical figure of Abraham. Not Ryan, not Adam, but Abraham being called the only father of our child.

This is hard for us, trying to understand the technicality of halachah (Jewish law) in our unique situation. We also have to find a way to understand that not all Orthodox folks dig tonight’s exciting episode of My Two Dads. I still hear the words echo in my mind, before we got the kids, from an Orthodox rabbi, who told a friend, who told us, they wished the kids would go to “a regular family.” Ouch.

So, here’s how Adam and I have to make peace with being perceived by so many as "not really real."

Imagine the Jewish community as paint brushes, each with their own color.

Adam and I are yellow. Reform, vibrant, burning yellow. Hot as the sun and full of liberal ideas and the goal of inclusion. We practice diversity and bending and putting the emotional, unique and distinctly intimate needs of all types of people and all complicated modern circumstances before the strict letter of the law.

And our Orthodox friends, who we love and admire… Rabbis Wyne and Fromowitz included…are painting instead with a beautiful deep blue…much different than ours, but full of the richness of law, purity of purpose…the foundation on which everything else is built, from where we all began in a biblical sense, and if we don’t take heed and give it it’s honor, what kind of painters are we to begin with?

I can’t be pissed at their blue paintbrush for painting the world blue, any more than they can be pissed at mine for painting it yellow. Sometimes it's the only color you've got in your can.

If Justin and Justice are really a bridge between communities and branches of faith as Rabbi Cohen so perceptively pointed out, then I have to stop worrying about what offends me personally or hurts my feelings, and take a broader view and understanding. I have to be mature enough to realize I would be failing them as a father if I didn’t relax and appreciate an evolving Jewish world where we all have to come together and paint them green, because it’s the only obvious combination when blue and yellow collide.

Not just plain green either. As these kids grow, they'll find kindness and nurturing, certainly wisdom in both branches. They'll lean one way or another, sometimes pulling more of our color to their palette, sometimes reaching for their grandmother’s. They may be many things, but they won’t be simple green. They will be teal and tea and emerald and fern. They will be forest and moss and jade and sea. Their hue and lightness and tints and shades will be an evolution only they can determine. They'll be a product of two seemingly conflicting worlds, whose people are famously oppositional, but through them, are already finding surprising acceptance and syngergy. Justin and Justice will take Reform yellow and Orthodox blue and mix it in shades we have yet to dream of.

 “You must remember this,” I wrote in a Facebook toss-off yesterday, “a bris is just a bris.”

And Justin’s was beautiful.  Reform Jews and Orthodox Jews singing and clapping together, wishing our children only the best, both camps following Torah as it can only be defined in their own individual hearts, wishing our kids nothing but goodness and the happiest lives, no matter what shades of green they turn out to be.

Mazel tov, Binyamin Aviel ben Avram v’Aharon.

And mazel tov, Binyamin Aviel ben Avraham Avinu.

Doubly-named is doubly blessed, and I think in this case, there’s room in this faith for both of you.

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

Crumpled Post-It Notes

For trivia's sake, as I dust off the final files and tuck them into their nooks and crannies for safe keeping, I went back into my laptop's "Adoption" folder and did a quick count.

It holds 278 MB of information. Not terribly impressive, until you consider it's all text.

There are 205 individual files.

There are 19 categorized subfolders.

The total pages they contain? I couldn't even imagine. Many of the files are multi-page documents - some of them 10, 20, even 30 pages long - I would estimate, conservatively, there are about five or six hundred pages of paper if I had to print them all out. These are things that somebody, somewhere needed us to do, write, file or give to them, to adopt the kids.

That's what you're in for if you plan to adopt a child. From start to finish, about six hundred pages of paperwork. That's after the Paperwork Reduction Act of Who-Knows-When, by the way. Before then, whew, hire a tow truck.

Add to that another five or six hundred pages of DFS case notes, medical and therapy records, background and history given to us as hard copy a few weeks before we went to court, when we were finally allowed to see it, and that doubles the material we have on file.

Add to that another 200 pages of training notes, handouts, emails and communications from the Department of Family Services that haven't made it through my scanner yet, and it's fairly safe to say -- again, conservative estimate -- it took us anywhere from 1,100 to 1,400 pages of paper to place, train ourselves, care for, medically manage, and ultimately adopt Justice and Justin.

1,400 pages. Two adoption agencies. I couldn't even tell you how many case workers and DFS employees. Two therapists. One occupational therapist. One physical therapist. One pediatrician. One psychiatrist. One orthopedist. One neurologist. One medically fragile case manager, and 2,694 miles on the odometer going to and from medical appointments and required trainings from June through February. I haven't even tallied March yet. March 19 -- finalization hit -- and my first instinct was to jump in the air, click my heels, and build a great big paperwork bonfire.

I mention all of this numerical trivia not for the accolades, because no we are not saints, and no we are not crazy (presumably). I only mention the mind-boggling paper trail above because it puts the following into total perspective.

Out of all those minutes and all that minutia and all those miles, the thing that made the greatest impact on me -- the one piece of all of the above that stands out as the document, note or file I'll keep closest to my heart today, tomorrow and thirty years from now -- are the five yellow Post-It notes...written on, crumpled up, then smoothed out again, that I got in a training class and I now keep in my desk upstairs, where I can see them every day.

Five crumpled Post-It notes explain all of this.

Adam and I took our final training class back in February.

"Take your Post-It Notes," said the instructor, "And write down the five people or things in your life who are most important to you."

The class wrote things like "Mom," and "Home" and "Family" and "Dreams."

"Now crumple them all up," he said. "Throw them away. You don't get to have them anymore. And even worse...if you still want them, I'm going to send my assistant in here to take them away from you. She'll crumple them up for you. You have no say in the matter."

And he did. An assistant came in, took all our notes away, crumpled them up and threw them on the floor.

"Now pick them back up," he said. "Smooth them out. Let me try to give them back to you, so you can start over."

We dutifully retrieved our crumpled Post-It Notes, smoothed them out the best we could, and put them back in front of us.

Parents. Family. Home. Future. Dreams.

"What do they look like now?" he asked us.

"Damaged," someone said from the back of the room.

"Not the same," I said.

"Not new anymore," someone else said.

"Those are your kids," he told us.

And he stopped for a minute to let that sink in.

"Everything they knew was taken away from them. It was crumpled up and thrown on the floor."

We try to straighten it out again as best as we can, but that's the thing about being crumpled.

You're never quite new again.

Not fully, anyway.

So, there we have it. Some major food for thought as we sit here basking amid the accolades and celebrations we were immediately blessed with as soon as we finalized in court.

"Please don't tell me how lucky I am," adopted children often try to express when the well-meaning congratulations become too overwhelming. To them, in their first year, this brand new life is still very much an audition.

I'm afraid you will abandon me. Fear and abandonment are inextricably woven together and tied into one big knot in the psyche and spirit of the adopted child. Listen to the word pictures adult adoptees use to describe the abandonment they felt as children...being left behind while others go on with life, being left behind at the side of a road, a child looking into a window on a cold winter's night at a happy family. [When you adopt, you are essentially] entering your child's haunted house. - "Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew" - Sherrie Eledridge.

Adam and I are the lucky ones.

Justice and Justin?

They are sometimes happy. They are often haunted.

They are my beautiful crumpled Post-It Notes. My sweet and silly, always complicated, often angry, damaged, amazingly-resilient children. Even after a finalized adoption, they are a long way from happy-go-lucky and home.

We smooth them and soothe them the best we can, but let's remember "luckiness" is in the eye of the beholder, and all us who behold them are definitely still on the outside looking in.

Lovely, complicated, beautiful angels.

Tread lightly when we call them lucky.

For now, let's be satisfied with calling them loved.

The Happiest Place on Earth

I'm looking at our pictures from Disneyland two weeks ago, and I have to admit, for all my endless Blogger blubbering, we look like a pretty happy new family.

Here's a picture of Justin in the car, headphones on, movie playing, Kindle in front of him, multitasking his way through "How to Eat Fried Worms," Angry Birds, and his sister's relentless teasing. But nobody got hit, nobody threw up, and both kids had bladders of steel, faithfully peeing on cue whenever we asked them. And in a 270 mile drive to Anaheim, that's nothing short of a miracle.

Here's a picture of Adam driving. Adam drives most of the way to Los Angeles at 190 miles an hour. When turning corners, the car goes up on two wheels. He did this once on the way back from Visalia through the Tehachapi mountains, and he aged me by ten years. That's why I'm wrinkled. That's why I'll look old at Justice's wedding. Adam also pees a lot on road trips. We stop for him, not the kids. The kids have bladders of steel. Adam has a bladder of aluminum foil.

Here's one of Adam on our first lunch stop, holding up the new, special bacon menu at Denny's. I don't often type the letters "WTF" because I'm not a texty, shorthandy kind of guy and I'm a little skittish about the "F" word in my journals in general. But seriously, Denny's...really? Maple Bacon Sundae? Maple Bacon Milkshake? Salted Carmel Brownie Sundae with Bacon? WTF??? Even if I did not keep kosher, even if I farmed pigs for a living, WT-Almighty-F are you doing? Oy vey!

Here's our parking space in the Mickey and Friends Garage. Level 5. Donald Duck Level. I was so excited to get things started, I took ten pictures of the parking garage and the tram.

Here's Justin squinting in the sun in his first set of mouse ears. Thank you, thank you, thank you, God, for letting us buy our kids their first set of mouse ears at Disneyland. Justin's look like Perry the Platypus from Phineas & Ferb. I have no idea who Perry the Platypus is. But it is so much fun listening to Justin say "platypus." Better than taking him out for a hot dog to hear him say "Wienershnitzel." Justice's mouse ears are the sparkly princess kind, with the long, flowing streams of pink-blue pastel lace scarf flowing behind them. Did we expect her to go with anything a little more understated? No.

Adam and I bought the old-school, original mouse ears. Black felt, black plastic. Original logo on the front. Younger people in the park didn't even know they still existed. One young guy in line asked Adam if they were antique collectables we brought from home. Yes, to the younger generation, we look that old.

Here's one of Justice and Justin standing in front of the Sleeping Beauty Castle. Happiest Place on Earth, my ass. It was 90 degrees and they were squinting directly into the sun. Plus, they just got back from waiting 60 ridiculous minutes in a Spring Break-sized line for the Dumbo ride. The Dumbo ride! It doesn't do anything! You sit in Dumbo and he goes up and down! 60 freaking minutes! Needless to say, they are not posing patiently for another one of Dad's happy crap pictures in this one. They're ready for a Diet Coke and some orthopedic mouse slippers.

Here's one of all of us on the Tea Cups. Oh, Lordy, how I love the Tea Cups. We gave them cotton candy beforehand, hoping they'd get a little green around the gills, but they didn't even blink. These two kids have constitutions like billy goats. They could eat four cotton candies, two milkshakes, a couple of churros and a tin can, and they wouldn't even burp. Absolutely, digestively steady-as-she goes at all times. Tea Cups, you didn't stand a chance.

Here's one of Adam and the kids leaning over the moat around the castle. Adam told them he spotted a crocodile in the water, and God bless him, they believed it. They spent all three days walking ever-so-slowly over that castle bridge, craning their necks, hoping for a glimpse of Daddy's elusive crocodile. Good one, Daddy. Tell them there's candy buried in the carpet if they clean their rooms.

Here's one of Justin with his first light saber after we came off the Star Tours ride. I didn't get to watch him take his first baby steps. I didn't get to hear him say his first words. But I'll teach him to drive and I'll teach him to shave and I watched him throw his first NFL football and I bought him his first light saber. And in my world, those are riches beyond measure.

Here's one of Justice making her cute face so we'd buy her something. Who knows what. A stuffed kitten? A parasol with her name on it? Little does she know it's Disneyland, it's her first trip, and Adam and I are going to buy her anything she wants. It's pre-ordained. It's already in the grateful, celebratory stars. We don't tell her this in advance, though, because it's fun watching her make the cute face.

Here's one of the kids wearing face paint. Justice is a pink and blue kitty. Justin is a warrior. Justice takes to face paint like a fly takes to honey. Put a face paint booth at any event or venue, and it truly becomes her primary reason for living. 55 rides and 510 acres of fun at Disneyland and it all comes to a screeching halt while we look for the face paint. It's behind the Matterhorn, by the way, if you ever need to know. You'll have to ask about two dozen dazed, disoriented parents before you actually find the helpful couple who'll remember where their sunstroked kid got their face done-up. Finding the face paint is the ever-important needle in any of Justice's special event haystacks. Disneyland was no excepetion. Cha-ching. $31 for a kitty and a warrior. Mission accomplished.

Here's one of Justin climbing around the cage of bones on Tom Sawyer Island. Justice was not impressed. He liked climbing the caves and crannies and stumbling joyfully over the rolling log bridges, and she was bored with the whole thing. "Boys are so dumb" radiated from every eye-roll until the Columbia set sail back for New Orleans Square and her macaroni and cheese and carrot sticks dipped in ranch dressing for lunch.

Here's one of Justin talking on our restaurant buzzer. He thought it was a cell phone and didn't understand why nobody was talking back. He jumped ten feet when it finally went off.

Here's one of me in my giant pug t-shirt. We don't own a pug, but it was a funny shirt, so I bought it. It was definitely a crowd pleaser in line. I got several compliments. Justice was kind enough to point out that its giant eyes lined up perfectly with my giant boobs. Bless you, child. You will never be faulted for your lack of honesty.

Here's Justice driving the Autopia cars. And here's Justin hot on her tail behind us. Lord, they loved those Autopia cars. "Let's do the cars again! Let's do the cars again!" That's all we heard for three days. $970 to get four people into Disneyland for three days. I could have walked them across the street to Las Vegas Mini Grand Prix for twenty bucks a head. Live and learn.

Here's one of the kids with Minnie Mouse. And all of us with Mickey. And two of them with Pluto. And one of them with Goofy. We don't have any princess shots, strangely. We looked over in Fantasy Faire, but they must have been on break. We did see Mulan over by the Mark Twain Riverboat, but by then the Ritalin was wearing off and by the time she saw Justice rushing toward her in what appeared to be a potential full-on tackle, she took off running.

Here's one of the kids outside of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. We tried to explain to them how we used to equate this ride with Grandma Katie driving down Rainbow Boulevard when she still had her license at age 89, but they didn't draw the correlation. Before their time, I guess.

Here's Space Mountain. Man, that line was long. 90 minutes one day, 110 minutes the next day. I rememeber standing there, phone-posting my Facebook wall, "At what point does standing in a 90-minute line for a 90-second ride become pure folly?" The answer is never, because the kids loved it and the $14 dollar picture at the end is priceless. Adam is laughing. Justice is laughing. I'm throwing my head back, laughing like a loon. And poor Justin has his head buried so far into my chest, it's bringing back memories of Kanga and Little Roo. "I had my eyes open," he assured me later with recovered bravado. "I just looked down at the ground."

Here's a dozen more of the Autopia cars. Man, Justin was pissed we got the Fast Track pass for Indiana Jones that night instead of Autopia. Indiana Jones just annoyed him. Fast access to Autopia, he considered his birthright. We're all in serious trouble when that kid turns 16. He cranks those cars around the corners with the passion and concentration of Jeff Gordon on a qualifying run. God help us all. States, keep your overly-cautious seat belt laws in place.

Here's one of Justice staring over the railing waiting for the Jungle Cruise. Man, is she pretty. She just radiates all of that beauty and presence in such a dignified, confident way. "She's got a way about her," Billy Joel sang back in my day. "I don't know what it is, but I know that I can't live without her." Here's the picture that proves it. That's her brother in the background, quacking like a duck. He radiates entirely different things. But I know that I can't live without him either.

Here we are, the four of us, coming down Splash Mountain. Speaking of radiating things, I'm fairly certain Justin peed his pants on the way down Splash Mountain. He had a great time. Wanted to go right back on it. But I'm fairly certain he pissed himself, God bless him. He got away with it scott free as we got off the ride -- we were all soaked from stem to stern -- Adam in the front took the brunt of the hit, and Justin's wet pants legs didn't even register on my radar -- but back in the hotel that night, the soggy, Spongebob essence of eau de little boy on the underwear he tossed on the bathroom floor was a little too pronounced to explain any other way.

Future Justin, I know I'll be proud of you for many things on many days, but here's one I'll always remember. You were so scared on Splash Mountain, you pissed yourself. And then you got right back on. You get bonus points for that one, kiddo. You look life in the eye, and pee or no pee, you bounce back, fearless. Always do that, Justin. That'll take you far.

And here we are, waiting for the train ride. Day is done. Trip is over. Three days at the park, five days in California. My feet are so tired, I can barely hobble up the platform.

"My dogs are barking," I say to Adam.

"My dogs need to be put down," he replies, and we laugh.

That, too, will become a phoned-in Facebook status.

The kids, however, are still going strong. Train ride around the park, tram ride back to the parking garage and they're still turning cartwheels on the way back to the car while elderly dad number one and elderly dad number two wonder what in the overactive hell we've gotten ourselves into.

There is just one moon
And one golden sun
And a smile means friendship to everyone
Though the mountains are wide
And the oceans divide
It's a small world after all.

It was a smashing trip to Disneyland. The microcosm and magic of traveling for the first time as a post-adoptive family of four turned our big world into a small one, and put problems on hold for a blessed week of sheer, ridiculous, expensive joy. Money well spent and a trip worth waiting for.

Disneyland 2013. The first, the finest, and the one that sets the bar. Like a first kiss from a sweetheart, the one that all future kisses will be compared to, and found lacking.

Thanks for looking at the pictures with me.

You'll notice we're smiling in all of them.

Three Cheers

Thunder, thunderation!
We're the Comet delegation!
When we fight with determination!
We...create...a big sensation!

"Justice is an outgoing and helpful child," reads her Department of Family Services bio sheet, the sales brochure DFS and the adoption agencies shop around when they're trying to place an older child into an adoptive home. "She enjoys singing and dancing and likes to make up cheerleading dances."

And if you believe that, kiddos, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn.

Before Justice got here, we took one look at that promising paragraph from the DFS spin masters and assumed we'd be getting all-star cheerleading peformances every night. There we'd be, naively happy Dad and Daddy snuggled cozily on the couch with a big bowl of popcorn on our laps, while J1 and J2, matching pom-poms in hand, would give us a little of that old-school shake your groove thing that took the mighty Waupaca Comets to two state championships. (Not in my era, of course, but I digress).

Anyhoo, we thought they liked the cheerleading stuff, so before she got here, we even bought the pom-poms. I shit you not. Two pair, hanging in her room, one for her and one for her brother, just in case he wanted to join in. (Fair warning, we're gay dads, so if Justin wants to join her cheerleading squad, he gets a full blessing from us. And if Justice ever wants to play football and beat the crap out of boys, even better. This is not a house where gender holds you back).

But alas, the best laid plans of mice and men.

Instead of pom-poms and synchronized choreography, we got 45-minute temper tantrums and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Which just goes to show, if you pull a DFS Bio Sheet out of the literature rack on the showroom floor, you're going to want to read between the lines. And then read between the lines between the other lines.

However, nine, going on ten months later, the kids have adjusted to us enough (i.e. enjoy our company enough...Amen) that they'll actually shake, rattle and roll as some of those old war cries come back in boisterous delight; high school relics I haven't sung out loud since ol' Ronnie Reagan was napping his way through two terms of peace, prosperity and Pretty in Pink. 

Justice, Justice, what's your cry?
V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!

Justin, Justin, what's your cry?
V-O-T-T-O-N-I!

He gets the spelling a little mixed up, but it always rhymes at the end.

And the third cheer they really enjoy is that old perennial favorite from the bleachers of old Waupaca High:

We're number one!
You're number two!
We're gonna beat the whoopie out of you!

Only, on our team, the kids have mysteriously pluralized "whoopie."

Justin insists (and his sister follows suit) that "we're gonna beat the whoopies out of you."

Apparently, two or more whoopies take the playing field at our house at any given time. And may God have mercy on their souls. These kids can kick a whoopie like nobody's business.

It's been fun teaching the kids these happy songs from my own crazy wonder years. This week, we've been working on the Waupaca Comet Fight Song (which is to say the Notre Dame Victory March with somewhat different words since Ma and Pa Comet were shameless plagiarizers). The J's haven't quite captured the lyric's finer points. They're fairly conversant with "crash those cymbals, beat those drums," but the more noble, "ready Waupaca, standards to bear," leaves them scratching their heads wondering what the hell I'm talking about.

Nonetheless, it's been a fun week in the car, singing "thunder, thunderation, we're the Reisman delegation," and having their happy, chirping little voices singing along, enjoying it, living it...and like a rain cloud lifting, meaning it.

That's a V-O-T-T-O-N-I I'll take any day.