Tower and Town, August 2016 (view the full edition)AdoptionThe author Tony Hillerman is best known for his unusual detective novels set amongst the Navajo and Hopi Indians of the Four Corners country; Four Corners because the boundaries of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico all meet together at right-angles. But he also wrote an autobiography, Seldom Disappointed, where amongst other things, he describes his experience of adoption. He and his wife had one child of their own, but were advised not to have any more. So after much thought they decided to adopt. Over a period of years they added five extra children to their family. Here's what they have to say about adoption: "The universal question about adoption concerns parental love for kids you haven't produced yourselves. The answer is, don't worry about it. As veterans of raising both kinds, we can testify that all of them provoke affection, irritation, worry, joy, dismay, care, pride, anger, and, most of all, love. Each and every one of them is our child. Don't try to tell us they had another set of parents. Nor need you worry about adding adoptees into an existing family. Each of our five was greeted with excitement and enthusiasm and had to tolerate being mothered and big-brothered by the siblings they joined" My own experience of adopting absolutely reinforces that of Tony Hillerman. My first marriage was a package deal: wife and child together. It took me a couple of years to summon up the courage to propose, but once married, I began the legal process of adopting my wife's son (totally bewildering to the local solicitors - You mean only ONE of you is adopting? Yes, the other one is already his mother and doesn't need to adopt. Humph!). A year or two later, together we brought a daughter into the world. By that time my adopted son was, I felt, simply my son, and since then I have never detected any difference between the gut-wrenching lurches of emotion with which the two of them have filled my life. It's taught me that every child that comes my way needs the same loving parenting, regardless of biological origin, and my answer to that other common remark "I could never bring up another man's child" is: of course you can! 'Father William' |