Grandchildren

 I’ve told you about my oldest son and his wife and baby.  (See “Love At First Sight”). My younger son is a whole different story.  

Lee is 38 years old.  His identical twin was killed in a car accident when they were 15.  He has never gotten over it, and he never will. We were afraid we would lose him to suicide because all he wanted was to be with his brother.  It has taken years, but he has finally found happiness. 

He’s never married and runs from commitment because, as he told me once, “If I love somebody I’m afraid they’ll die.” He has had a succession of girlfriends over the years, but when they start getting serious, he runs!  He did live with one for a couple of years, and that’s where this story begins. 

When they met, she had 4 children by two fathers.  My first thought was that this ain’t good.  But I was wrong. She’s a really good mother. The older two have a good dad. He sees them regularly, pays his support, everything he should do.  The dad of the younger two is a walking piece of human garbage.  He was 30 years old, married, with two children, and his ambition was to be a roadie for a rock band. His main goals were sex, drugs, and rock and roll. After they divorced, he never saw the children, never paid a dime of support, nothing.  She finally had his parental rights terminated. 

When Lee moved in with their mother, the younger kids, Atticus and Tatum, were 18 months and 6 months.  He’s the only father figure they’ve ever known, and he has loved them completely from day one.  Even though he wasn’t obligated to, he helped support the children, bought school clothes, birthdays, Santa Claus, etc, even after he and their mother broke up, because he loves them.   

A couple of years after they broke up, someone told him about an obscure law in Mississippi where a person who has been in a family type relationship with children can adopt them. He hired a lawyer and pursued it  The mother had no objection and even testified for him.  The judge listened to the evidence and granted the adoption. He was granted joint custody and they even gave the children his last name.  I’ve never seen him so happy.  He absolutely adores those children and they feel the same about him.  He’s a completely different person since the adoption and that makes me so happy.  

And that’s how I acquired two beautiful, smart, wonderful grandchildren!  They are 9 and 10 now. I love them so much. They bring me so much joy. A couple of years ago, we celebrated Grandparents Day at church   The pastor was recognizing all the grandparents and when he got to me, he said, “Dale has one biological and two adopted grandchildren.”   I quickly corrected him and said, “No, I have three grandchildren. Period!”  And I’m so glad I do!  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Angel

 No, not like the angels I wrote about earlier.  This is much different.  I’ll explain in a minute.  And I promise this will be the last post on this subject, but I need to write this for my own peace of mind. This is about the Angel of Death.   I’ve known Robert since we were 3 years old, almost 67 years.  We were two months apart in age. We grew up together, went all through school together, and even though we traveled different paths after high school, we remained friends and stayed in touch.  I stayed in Utica while he got a job in Saudi Arabia and lived there for nearly 30 years.  But no matter where in the world he was, he didn’t forget his old friend. He stayed in touch and would see me when he was back in the States. After he retired, he and his wife settled in the Orlando area in Florida    I hadn’t heard from him in a couple of months, and I thought that was strange.  We usually email, text, or talk once a month or so. The...
Read more

Christmas

 Today is Christmas.  Families everywhere are gathering to celebrate, exchange gifts, and eat themselves into a food coma!  I’ve had a nice Christmas, quiet and low key, but nice.  A far cry from Christmases past.   When I was a kid, we had to go to both sets of grandparents. We’d get up early, my sister and I would see what Santa brought, and open our gifts from each other.  Then we’d load up the car and go to my mother’s folks.  All the aunts and uncles and cousins were there.  We’d eat a huge lunch and open gifts.  Then we’d load up again and go home for a few minutes and go to my father’s folks.   Same scenario there.  Aunts, uncles, and cousins, except this side had more of each. Another huge meal and we’d head home.  By this time, we were so tired we didn’t want to play with our new toys, all we wanted to do was go to bed! After I got married, it got more hectic.  We had to go to my mother in law’s for Christmas with...
Read more

The Greatest Gift

 At my cousin Roy’s funeral a few weeks ago, I was talking with one of his co-workers and he said something about how Roy could fix anything.  He was amazed. “Like how did he know all this stuff?”  I explained that it was almost a way of life in our family.  I mentioned in my earlier post about the tractor shed, how my father taught me so many things.  Roy’s dad, my Uncle Jerry was the same way.  It was a great gift.   Uncle Jerry was an appliance dealer. He sold and repaired Whirlpool appliances for over 50 years. Naturally, all our appliances came from him.  But, like Daddy, he expected me to fix things myself whenever I had a problem.  He would sell me the part and talk me through the repair over the phone and if I still couldn’t fix it, then I could bring it in or he’d send one of his guys to check it out.  But he was teaching me how to do things for myself. I tell people all the time that the greatest gift my father gave me was to t...
Read more