This is the short version, for the extended story, I’ve included a video below.
When I was nineteen, an acquaintance told me that daycare costs were killing her. She had been sixteen when she conceived her daughter and three years later was working a night shift. She asked if I could help by watching her child from when I got off work until she came home at midnight. Without realizing how that would change my life, I said, “Sure!”
The next day, I stopped at the daycare facility and announced that I was there to pick up a child. I didn’t know the mother’s last name and didn’t know the child’s name. And they looked at me blankly. (This was before people worried about child abduction.)
I’d seen the girl once at a distance and described her to the daycare workers: she’s about so high, three years old, blonde hair. They took me to a room filled with three-year-olds about so high with blonde hair. It struck me that I might have been a bit unprepared for the responsibility I’d agreed to shoulder.
The workers looked at me. I looked at them.
A little girl came running out of the crowd, her arms outstretched, shouting, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, and leapt into my arms. She squeezed me tight with unconditional love and never let go—for the next forty-five years and counting. (Naturally, there was a strain in that love-fest when she was a teenager, but we managed.)
As so often happens in unplanned teenaged parenthood, her biological mother had every intention of being a good mother but jumped at the chance to start over when I offered to raise the child.
I had no idea what was involved.
I only knew that for the first time in my life I was desperately important to someone. We all want to be important to someone. It is the primary motivator in human life.
We struggled and succeeded financially and emotionally but we made our little family of two work. She taught me everything about life by surviving my many parental mistakes. Somehow, she managed to thrive despite constantly moving, changing schools, the shifting sands of Dad’s love interests, and many other upheavals. She now lives in Seattle near her three children. We talk regularly.
Adopting versus biological children: Several times I’ve been told by people who have no actual experience, that adopted families do not have the same bond as biological families. That has not been my experience. I have felt every pain and insult, every triumph and success equally with all three of my children. One visceral difference I have witnessed is that when you and your wife are pregnant, your family and community are pregnant with you. When you adopt, you adopt alone.
As a tribute to Nicole’s resiliency and self-determination, I modeled Pia Sabel’s grit on her. In addition, Pia Sabel has Nicole’s gray-green eyes.
Check out the series at https://seeleyjames.com/books