I adopted my first kids nearly 48 years ago, although their finalizations took a while. Since then, I have adopted many more. All of this came together again yesterday, on Father’s Day, when I heard from most of them, and many of my grandchildren.  This past month, despite my age, I did it again. Kind of. Both are boys; both are/have been in my Family Focus program. The one is 19, and he signed out of care a while ago, and so we are doing his finalization privately. He has no family to speak of.  The other is only 17, still in foster care, and he has an involved active mother who is dealing with medical issues and cannot currently care for him. 

My response to either teen is exactly the same: I am committed to your good forever. I hold you – I put you – in my heart exactly as I do with every other one of my other kids – some now in their 60s. There is nothing anyone can do to make me change my commitment to either of them.  I have enough parenting experience to know this about myself. My goal for them is only that they be true to themselves and if they are, I am certain that they will then be true to anyone who comes into their lives. 

…This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man…

– William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3.

My commitment to each of them is a parental commitment. I need nothing from them to make this commitment except their permission; They don’t owe me anything and never will. My choice to love them is MY choice. It is not conditional on any behavior of theirs, or feeling of mine. It is also not revocable. 

Might they get pissed off at me and walk away?  Yep.  I have had a few of my kids do that over the past five decades (eventually – sometimes years later –  they came back).  So what? Were those years painful for me?  Of course. But again: so what?  I’m a big boy and I can take the pain – trusting that I am giving my kids what they need, even if that is a parent to resent, to blame, to cut off, to walk away from. Because too often before, the earlier parents they had would not allow them to do that without getting angry, resentful, blameful, and so forth. 

I love my kids – but I don’t need them to satisfy some emotional need inside me. And that freedom I am able to give them is exactly how love is measured. I was taught that; and I have experienced that from the real parents who took me on – at 17 – and changed my thinking and my life forever. 

It costs me next to nothing to give my kids themselves.  

And the payoff for me?  My kids love me, in response to my love for them, beyond measure. “There is nothing,” I was taught by Msgr. Huntington, “that is not mutual.” Yes, yes, yes. 

And so, I am the luckiest man I’ve ever met.