What Adoptive Parents Carry

Adoptive parents raise a story that started before they got there. That's a strange thing to sign up for, when you think about it — loving a child completely while knowing there's a chapter you weren't in, that you can't fully see into, that might come knocking one day in the form of a phone call from a stranger.

My parents got that call. My mother thought it was a scam and hung up. My father almost did too, until something about it snagged on him enough to call back. I think about that hesitation a lot — not because it was the wrong instinct, but because I understand exactly where it came from. They had spent years loving me without a shadow between us, and a stranger on the phone can feel like the shadow finally arriving.

It wasn't. It never has been. But I don't think that fear is something adoptive parents should be ashamed of feeling. Loving a child whose full story you don't own is its own kind of vulnerability — you're trusting that your love doesn't get smaller just because someone else's does too.

Mine didn't. My parents made room. It took them a minute, and then they made room anyway, and that's the part I want said out loud: not that it was easy, but that they did it.