Forty Reasons to Adopt: Part 2

In Forty Reasons to Adopt: Part 1, I listed the first nineteen reasons my husband and I would foster-adopt our two children all over again if we could. Here are the next twenty. Enjoy!

20. Vacations.
There are some kinds of trips that are much better shared. Dino Land. Bug Village. Thomas the Train Day at the Henry Ford Museum. But the very word “vacation” has a particular meaning for our kids. It means a hotel—any hotel, really, as long as there is a pool and pizza delivery service.

21. Water.
I learned to swim when I was fairly young, but for the past twenty-five years or so I have studiously avoided being caught in a bathing suit in public. With Sarah in tow, it just doesn’t matter. No one is looking at my cellulite as long as Sarah is running around the deck with her bathing suit cap pulled down, making her look like a Shar-Pei, screaming, “LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME!!!!” (Splash.)

22. S’mores.
Need I say more? Ditto cotton candy.

23. Christmas pageants.
Sure, watching little kids pull their angel costumes over their heads and torture the upper ranges of “Silent Night” is endless fun. But it gets even better when the third angel from the left is YOUR little flasher.

24. A second childhood.
Growing up, we didn’t do certain things. Celebrate Halloween (including trick-or-treating). Watch Tom-and-Jerry reruns (we didn’t own a television set). Go to Disneyland. Swing dance. I get to do all these things now ... with my kids.

25. Spiritual milestones.
I was thirty when I entered the Church, and so I never got to experience First Holy Communion the way my daughter will in a few years. I already have her white dress and veil stashed away in my closet. Christopher, too, loves to hear about the day he gets to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. And I never get tired of telling him.

26. Faith through a child’s eyes.
Thanks to my children, I get to experience the wonder of faith all over again. The retelling of Jonah and the whale, and David and Goliath. (“Hey, Mom! Was the giant REALLY nine feet tall?” They wait breathlessly to hear the angel in the bellfry ringing the bells that call out, “Come to church, come to church! Everybody come to church!” And listen again as the Eucharist is elevated and the chimes ring again, knowing that we are never closer to heaven than at that moment.