It was a Tuesday. I was halfway through with my shift, eyeballing the clock and tapping a pen on the table, when my boss brought me the office phone. My wife was in hysterics, and her coworker was on the line to relay the message: our sister-in-law had taken her own life.
With my wife’s brother having already passed away, their three children were now orphans.
I was devastated. I had never personally met these kids, since they lived four thousand miles away, but my wife often spoke fondly of them. Knowing they had once again lost a parent, and knowing they were now alone… It was a lot to digest.
My boss allowed me to go home early, and my wife followed suit shortly thereafter. Through tears, she asked if we could talk, but I already knew everything she was wanting to say.
My brother-in-law had passed away in his sleep, at a rather young age, due to a combination of sleep apnea and bronchitis. In the wake of his death, my sister-in-law became depressed and—as the police have since determined—she found kinship in the arms of a certain flock: a cult operating in and around northern Texas. This cult had been convincing its members, one by one, to drive into the desert with a propane tank, roll the windows up, open the valve, and breathe deeply until they had entered the long sleep on the road to paradise.
As the result of our sister-in-law’s death, our two nieces (ages 12 and 4) and our nephew (seventeen years old) had plenty of options for guardianship. Unfortunately, not a single one of these options was desirable.
The first option was their 97-year-old grandfather: a veteran of the Second World War and an abominable racist. He had long-ago been a contractor specializing in casinos, which made him fantastically wealthy, but he was no caregiver. This man had been abusive as a father, and he was in no position (physically or emotionally) to undertake the wellbeing of three children.
The second option was our late sister-in-law’s drug-addled mother. She, too, maintained a steady reputation as a horrible caregiver, and our nieces and nephew barely knew her as a result. This woman had been a neglectful and contemptuous serial-mother, which explained much of our late sister-in-law’s emotional anxieties.
The third option was their aunt: a cantankerous, greedy woman who collects foster kids for their welfare stipends and uses them as free labor to maintain the household. She had a history of working kids to the bone and then shipping them off to another home. She was self-serving and practically incapable of feeling maternal emotions, such as compassion. This woman was evidently their least desirable option.
The fourth option was not much better: their godmother, who was physically as old as our late sister-in-law but, emotionally, as old as a teenager. She was prone to outbursts and tirades, with a mean-streak a mile wide. Not even a week prior to this terrible Tuesday, the godmother was emotionally abusing our twelve-year-old niece so callously that the aforementioned ancient grandfather had called my mother-in-law, incensed, saying he was two heartbeats away from contacting Child Protective Services.
My mother-in-law had said, in that moment, she’d adopt her grandchildren if she could — and yet, as soon as it became an option (a mere few days later) she claimed to be having second thoughts. Apparently she had only offered her home in a compassionate manner; she had never actually considered the gravity of such a decision. She needed some time to think it over.
The sixth option these kids had was to be put into the foster care system. They would have likely been split up, and the seventeen-year-old would have likely emancipated himself in a few months, once he became old enough. This option was particularly intimidating, for the sake of the four-year-old, as we did not want her spending her most impressionable years bouncing around a series of foster homes across northern Texas.
There was a seventh option, as well, and it was the reason I did not criticize my mother-in-law for needing some time to reconsider adoption. This seventh option, you might have guessed, was for my wife and I to take them in.
A few weeks prior to this terrible Tuesday, I had been lamenting to my wife about the mistreatment of a boy in my class. He was ten-years-old, and he was one of my favorites. (Teachers “aren’t supposed to have favorites,” but all teachers do.) I had spent the past eight months helping this boy transform from a diminished, repressed, and frustrated kid into someone who actively expressed himself, was eager to make friends, and loved being at school. It didn’t help that he always had to end the day by going home.
At home, he was a hindrance. His parents had divorced two years prior, leaving him to be “the man of the house,” as his mother said, but she never officially granted him the responsibilities that came with the title. She had a been a trophy wife to a Navy Seal, and she remained in her element by continuing to dress as if she lived in Beverly Hills and by showing as little attention to her two sons as a crack addict shows to their electricity bill.
The most these two boys heard from their mother was a criticism. Typically, however, she was apathetic and hurried. She didn’t have a job, and yet she frequently relinquished parental responsibility to her mother—an elderly Korean woman who was dying of cancer—which typically included picking them up from school. Only every once in a while did she pick-up her own sons from school, and half of the time she’d intended to she’d forget entirely, and she’d arrive forty-five minutes later acting as if bringing her kids home was an inconvenience.
This woman relied on her lunky guido of a boyfriend to maintain her lifestyle of excess and apathy. Her eldest son loathed this boyfriend of hers, as the guido had not only found a joyous comfort in replacing his father, in the eyes of his mother, but he had assumed all of the responsibilities that come with being “the man of the house,” leaving the boy with practically no identity beyond what he discovered in school. To make matters worse, this guido-turned-father figure was an arrogant, entitled meatwad named “Rocko” who appeared to have learned his demeanor, persona, and image from Andrew Dice Clay.
Prior to entering my classroom, this boy was deeply frustrated—a side-effect of not receiving compassion at home—and he resigned from most activities and social interactions. This was deeply unsettling, as I (a former elementary schooler, once crippled by introversion) could relate. I showed interest in him, and I gave him the care and appreciation that he lacked, and I meant every bit of it.
I was seeing a change in him almost immediately. Three months into the school year, he had two new best friends and he was happy. He was genuinely happy — at least, until it was time to go home.
He expressed to me, on a number of occasions, how he wanted to live elsewhere; how he did not want to be under his mother’s jurisdiction, in a house with a phony father, where he was ignored and criticized and frankly unimportant. It was in my classroom—and in my classroom only, it seemed—where he felt like he mattered, and where he felt like people cared.
For months, I went home every day wishing I could give him a better home. His younger brother, a kindergartener, was so accustomed to being treated like a wallflower that he rarely spoke, he rarely emoted, and he rarely participated in anything. This kid had barely any recollections of his father, unlike his older brother, and all he knew was a life of obscurity with his mother. His perception of what it means to be a child was more in line with that of what it means to be a workhorse or a venereal disease: a passive existence and the occasional critical interaction.
This younger brother had quietly expressed to his grandmother that he wanted me to adopt them both. When his grandmother told me of this, I was put nearly on the brink of tears. I went home with a pang in my heart, seriously considering it. These two boys were on the verge of moving away—about to leave the few friends they had—since their aloof mother had become betrothed to her lunky caricature of a boyfriend, and she had thereby decided to move her family to his boutique home on an island across the Puget Sound.
My wife thought it noble that I was willing to take them in, but I thought myself weak as I knew I was all-talk unless provided the opportunity. These two boys were smart and capable enough to adapt to being under new management, with lesser accommodations, but I knew it would be a massive undertaking on my part. Entertaining, nurturing, and appreciating them would be a non-issue, but providing for them was a different story entirely.
I was skating by, financially, due to my student loans, my wife’s medical bills, and our combined monthly payments for vehicles, insurance, rent, gas, electricity, food… It didn’t help that we had gotten lost in a pyramid scheme—desperate for a second stream of income, and “a financial asset” to ensure a stable future—which was putting us dead-even for the biweekly fruits of our labor.
Adopting two boys in my class was not feasible, and while my heart said “do it,” my brain didn’t bother to consider it realistically. A hope for their comfort was one thing, but a desire to emburden myself with inopportune fatherhood was another. It would have been naïve to go so far as working out the logistics and legality of such an endeavor, so I acknowledged that my heart was in the right place while I otherwise moved on.
The two boys were ultimately relocated to the island. Our parting farewells were inevitable, and the boys were rather displeased—though they were accustomed to the feeling. I told the eldest, who was particularly sour, that his life would someday get better. All he needed was patience. — I’m not sure if that was the truth, but I believed it was at the time.
After these two boys moved away, I believed the concept of hypothetical adoption would be forever behind me. To a degree, I was correct, however—with the untimely death of my sister-in-law—this concept arose once again, and, this time, it was not hypothetical.
I had recently thought myself honorable for being so willing to offer a home to youths in need. Those prior beliefs on the matter were fine and dandy, in a hypothetical situation. And then the sky opened-up, and a large, metaphysical hand descended from the stars, and it snapped its fingers, telling me I had passed the experimental phase and was now ready for a real-world scenario.
“Well, shit.” It was time to see what I was truly made of. Initially, prospects were good: I was on-board with my wife before she had a chance to speak. These kids needed a good home, and nowhere in Texas was going to be satisfactory. They’d have to move. The obvious location would be a town in New Hampshire, where my mother-in-law lived on one end and my wife’s sister lived on the other.
My mother-in-law hadn’t committed, now that it was a real-world consideration, and frankly she didn’t have the money to do so. She had survived as long as she did only because her rent had been fixed for twenty years. She made just enough money by the end of every month to afford to feed herself and one cat. As for my wife’s sister, she was halfway through a college degree and still working full-time. Even if she had the money, she didn’t have the time.
The responsibility fell upon my wife and I. My wife, whose sense of family growing-up didn’t stray far from her feminine tripartite, had found an unshakeable sense of ownership for the three children of her once-estranged older brother. We were honor-bound.
My wife had been preparing to go to college—an aspiration long-overdue—and I was knee-deep in figuring out how to apply my degree to the job sector. Furthermore, we were poor; we were two months away from moving across the country; and we had gotten married a mere four weeks prior.
We were kids, not too long ago; we were unsteady; we were trying to enjoy life as much as we could while we still had the leisures of youth. Of course, we wanted someday to have our own children, but that was far down the road. We were in a spontaneous, thrilling, open-ended period of our lives. We could go anywhere; we could do anything…
And my wife—bless her heart—was willing to put it all aside in order to take-in her three orphaned niblings. (She is, without a doubt, the most gracious and self-sacrificial person I have ever met.) She told me she wanted to redirect the money we’d make for her college education towards sheltering and raising these kids instead. She told me she'd put off the next two decades of her life if it meant being able to give these three lost semblances of her dearly-departed brother a chance at renewing their lives.
They had lost everything, and she wanted to give them all she could to supplement their losses. I could resonate with this idea of hers. I really could. I felt the same way — but at the same time, I couldn’t bring myself to commit to it. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. And I felt horrible for it.
The next day went by slower than most, as I spent my entire shift thinking about what to do. My coworkers, having heard about a “family emergency,” occasionally came by to ask if I was okay. I would always smile and say “no.”
I thought this state of mind would negatively impact my job as a teacher but, surprisingly, I found myself elevated with a new state of “worldliness,” as if having to answer “the hardest question of my life, to date,” brought me some enlightenment. My thresholds for patience and comprehension were both at new highs. I was “awoken.”
This, I determined, is what makes the elderly so wise: they’ve bathed in the shit of life, and it’s made them more aware of the reality of the world.
The shit of life may scare you, demean you, or make you loathe your own mind, but for every occasion that you're submerged in life's shit, another layer of vain cynicism is exfoliated from your skin, and the humanity within you shines through. The ‘wise old man’ stereotype belongs to those who have bathed in so much nauseatingly-rank shit that a globule of frustration is insignificant to them. They have no need for melodrama, and they have the patience to see through irritations, disappointments, and inconvenience.
I was not yet experienced in this new level of enlightenment. I had only been caked in this new level of life’s shit for 24 hours, and yet I was already somewhat changed. There was so much on my plate that the frustrations of my job were relatively tame in comparison. This was, truly, the hardest decision I had yet to make.
Without any sense of guidance, and with very little intuition for such predicaments, I turned to reddit—the internet’s open forum—and I supplied my situation in exchange for advice. Naturally, the first wave of answers were unhelpful, coming primarily from self-loathing assholes who scour fresh prompts to fuel their vitriol. On the contrary, the second wave of answers were rather nice. It was suggested to me that we contact the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
My wife made a few calls their way, whereas I phoned my parents for their opinion on the matter. Coming from out of the blue, as it did, my prompt rather threw them for a loop. The last they had heard from me was four days prior, when I was asked “what’s new” and I replied “nothing much.” My answer, this time around, was that my wife’s nieces were freshly-orphaned and we were seriously considering pouring hot water into a big bowl of Instant Parenthood.
They said our motives were noble but that we, as a couple, were not stable enough to succeed in adoption. It was the sad truth. Even if we had enough income to pull it off, the fact that we had not yet realized who we were “as husband and wife” would have buried us.
And yet, despite their sound advice, we still resolved to see-through the adoption process.
I had been raised in a household that was always willing to take-in familial strays. My parents had done so to aid our cousins, our friends, and our foreign exchange students. This urge to support and provide was baked into my blood. As for my wife, well, she was born that way.
My reactionary emotions cooled after the first 24 hours. I began to think again with the logical portion of my brain, and everything suddenly seemed all wrong…
I had been texting my brother and he suggested I reframe my proposed solution to this situation. We had been thinking of it from the kids’ perspective, whereas we ought to have been thinking of it from our own. “Picture this,” he said. “We would give up our youth to struggle to raise these kids. Not to raise them, per se, but to struggle to raise them. We were in no position to raise kids, even if we had the skills to do so. This was a hardship that, once taken on, could easily cleave apart our new marriage, as soon as we’d settle into our new status quo and find it unbearably difficult. Could it be rewarding? Sure, but it would be a great hardship.”
“Even if we succeeded in getting custody, and even if we got stipends from the government to supplement our income, we still wouldn't be producing a lifestyle good enough for these kids. We were only 24 years old. Eventual parenthood is a certainty, but Instant Parenthood would be a death knell for us. We couldn't manage it. It wouldn't be fair to us, and it wouldn't be fair to them.” Despite our best intentions, we were not their best option for a new home.
My brother was putting into words all of the gaseous, nameless thoughts that had been swirling in my head throughout the doldrums of my workday. I was coming upon my true feelings — those which had been churning in my gut while my heart and head were trying to assure me this was a good idea.
My wife had told me not to agree with her on adoption only because she was interested in it, and I told her I sincerely wanted it just as much as she did. Now, however, I was reversing my decision, and I had to honor our matrimony by informing my wife that my feet had gone cold.
It’s hard to imagine the guilt one feels after deciding to not help three orphaned relatives.
I wanted to make amends, but there was nothing I could do. I was either in or I was out, but there was no “wrongdoing” I could upend. There was no solution to give without jumping in feet-first, and so it was rather simple: I was turning my back; betraying my instincts and reneging on the promise I had made. Not a promise I had made to them, nor one I had made to my wife, per se, but a promise I had made to myself.
I had always held myself to a certain measure of honor and integrity, but, when a real test came along, I realized I was too afraid to throw my ambitions away in exchange for two decades of working two jobs with a stomach full of double-edged regret: wishing to know what I could’ve accomplished had I not been “shackled to the stove,” and wishing I didn’t feel resentment for having been so generous.
Knowing myself, I can confidently say I would have felt this way down the road. Even if times were good and I was enjoying the arrangement, those regrets would have held heavy over my head, and I would’ve been plagued with them for the duration of my life thereafter.
The worst part of it all was that I really, really did want to provide a positive substitute for their home. I wanted to make sure they would grow up to be okay; to feel loved. I wanted this for them, but I couldn’t bring myself to be the one to provide it. No — I could have, but I wouldn’t.
I had asked myself “should I?” nearly a hundred times, but I never found an answer. Frankly, there was no true answer. The implications of Could, Would, and Should all extolled different kinds of futures. The first suggested possibility. The second suggested intention. The third suggested there was a truth to fulfill.
But there was no truth here. The question boiled down to “Do I risk my future to try my best at giving these kids a life that’s ‘good enough’ despite all that’s happened to them so far?”
Color me selfish. Color me prideful. Color me egotistical. But I couldn't take that risk. I could only offer to help them in other, less permanent ways.
I had come to an unspoken understanding with myself that my commitment [to the future I had been sloppily preparing for 24 years] was worth more to me than these three orphans. As you can imagine, my ego felt as if it had ruptured, and my senses of integrity and self-worth withered on the vine. Even though this was my decision, I followed my gut, and my gut turned out to be self-serving. (I suppose that’s owed to the preservation instinct of the human cerebellum; the lizard brain that defends the “self” at all costs.)
In visualizing the potential futures of both options, and the various outcomes of each path, I saw a diversity in the levels and periods of stress and joy alike. One thing remained constant throughout: a regret held for the other option.
I was consequently reminded of the narrator from a particular Robert Frost poem, though I was inspired by a critical indecision rather than a frivolous one:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both…
I chose a road. And thus, the kids would remain in Texas.
The grass is always greener. “Would've; Could've; Should've taken the other path.” I imagined some paths would’ve had me as a proud, blossoming father figure and provider, helping them with their homework and making pancakes for breakfast. Other paths I envisioned had me dreading every morning as the alarm clock woke me for a dead-end job that was neither emotionally nor financially rewarding, all the while knowing I had voluntarily chosen to surrender my future to three kids I had never before met.
It sounds harsh once it’s verbalized, but I’m sure—if placed in the same scenario, or one like it—any person would agree to experiencing the same grotesque feeling, whether or not they eventually sided with it. Furthermore, as someone who is already striding the dead-end job path, I’ve been feverishly trying to escape from this life while I’m still young. I could not imagine condemning myself to this fate whilst burying even deeper into it.
Pursuing my ambitions would have become impossible if not infinitely harder. There’s a reason so many older men and women live in an existential nightmare, constantly frustrated and unfulfilled, after sacrificing their dreams in order to support an unexpected pregnancy…
I’m certain adoption would have been rewarding. From what I've heard, the 12-year-old is a kick-ass girl with a beautiful soul, and the little one is a darling in the image of her father. The 17-year-old boy is wise for his age, and the soothsayer predicts he’ll have a promising future. These are kids that will someday make their parents proud… and I wouldn’t do them justice if I were their guardian.
Why is that? Well, if I had opted for adoption, I would have remained distracted by my passions. Despite all of the hurdles I’ve been through so far, I have not once lost sight of my end goal. I doubt Instant Parenthood would have been enough to dissuade me from pursuing my off-hours work, even if it meant losing sleep. My worries and struggles would’ve persisted, invading my personal life, and thereby invading theirs…
My wife’s eagerness to sacrifice for her family had been cockblocked by my refusal to do them and myself wrong. It's unfair to them and us both that my wife and I are their best option: we two young newlyweds, with credit card debt and a cardboard box full of old food. What sort of epic existence is God grooming these kids for, so much so that it requires his taking of both parents, leaving these kids with no suitable custodian? During such transitory times of their lives, no less!
It's unfair that this is the circumstance of their youth. It's unfair that they had such meager options for replacement guardians. It's unfair to my wife and I that we were “the best” of such meager options, and that we were in no position to help them, despite a desire to.
My parents were an established and stable household when they offered sanctuary to our friends, cousins, and foreign exchange students. My wife was among those once given refuge, during a transitory time in her own youth, because my parents could manage to provide it to her. But us? We're poor; we're newly married; we’re unprepared…
I explained this reasoning to my wife, and why it meant I couldn’t go through with the adoption. She was overcome with disappointment, although she promptly agreed with me, saying she would not want to risk losing each other if we went through with it. And, while I was glad she understood and respected my opinion, I still felt as if I had done something cruel; I had caused her such disappointment, and I had given myself one of the worst heartaches I'd ever felt.
There is something inherently shitty about ranking your relationships out of urgency. It reminds me of the opening scene of the movie 28 Weeks Later, wherein the identifying character realizes—almost instantly—that he prioritizes his own survival over that of his wife and daughter. At this moment, the audience screams obscenities and pleads through the screen for him to go back, but deep-down each viewer knows they’re capable of the same moral betrayal. I imagine I now know the depth of guilt he felt, despite his having made what Jean-Paul Sartre would call the “Authentic Choice:” essentially, the “you do you” approach to living a complete life.
This approach may come saddled with guilt, but it’s the path that leads you to the most fulfilled outcome: the nearest to a “true self” you can become; developed by making choices that feel intuitively authentic. And by making my toughest decision ever, I had forced my wife’s hand to go down the same path, even if it were not towards her own “truest self.”
This decision has since resulted in neither rifts nor fractures in our relationship. (In fact, I still believe it was the right choice for us.) However, I still feel as if there was no winning in answering such a Great Question: either I was to disappoint my wife by denying her kin a sanctuary, or I would have disappointed her by agreeing to a plan I wasn't on-board with. The latter would've shown distrust through a fear to communicate, in spite of our nuptial promises to be open and honest — and yet, turning down her family feels just as sinful…
“I could’ve adopted them, but I wouldn't, because I didn't know if I should.”
Would’ve. Could’ve. Should’ve.
The kids are with their fourth option now: the godmother with the short emotional range.
The seventeen-year-old has aged-out of her care and has moved on to college. The twelve-year-old is still kicking-ass. The four-year-old, as I’ve heard, is adjusting well to her new household.
As for my wife and I, at the very least, we have tried to be involved as an aunt and uncle. Occasionally, given a quiet moment, I’ll wonder what my life could have become had I been courageous enough to set my world aside for this once-plausible adoption.
It's rather incredible how swiftly your perception of yourself can change; how one moment can push you to the periphery of wisdom; how one phone call can turn everything upside-down…