Last week was a really big week at the Clark house, a week we weren’t sure we’d ever see. “What made it big?” you might ask. We were matched. No, that doesn’t mean Janet and I have taken up online dating. If it did, Janet would have a much better chance of being matched than I would. It means we were officially notified by the People’s Republic of China that our family is about to become bigger by one person, a boy named Elijah. That’s him in the picture. A letter, written in Chinese and translated into English, arrived at our adoption agency. They forwarded it to us. A Fed-Ex driver walked it to our door. We signed it. Now, we’re on the fast track to travel to China.
To understand how big this is for us, you should know a bit more of our story. Janet and I got married in 1992. Before the big day, we talked about how many kids we wanted. I freely admit it wasn’t my idea to talk about this. My thoughtful future in-laws sent us to a communication boot camp for engaged couples, where I shared a room with a guy who snored like a rusty chainsaw and Janet shared a room with his fiancée, who also snored like a chainsaw. It was a match made in heaven for the other couple. For three days, we listened to speakers discuss topics like finances, sex and kids. After each talk, we wrote responses to a bunch of questions, including how many kids we wanted, when we wanted them, and why. Then we passed our answers to our partners and talked about what we wrote. In my sleep-deprived state, I remember thinking, “I’m OK with two, as long as they come later.” Janet wanted… well… more. I was too groggy to notice.
Our ideal plan was to start our family four or five years later. Ideal plans are like those model lunches they display at the end of the counter at Chick-Fil-A. They’re designed to entice you. “See how good I look? Yummy! Buy me!” They look perfect. But if you swipe the display cookie, take it to your car, and bite into it, you find out it’s an old cookie that’s been sitting there for days. It doesn’t turn out the way you thought. I swear I’ve never done that. The counter clerk told me it happens. That’s how I know. And I’m not comparing our children to old cookies. I’m just saying plans turn out differently than we thought. When the time arrived in our ideal plan to begin having children, we found we were struggling with infertility. It took significantly longer than we had hoped.
In 1999, our daughter Taylor was born. Seven months later, Janet came to the top of the stairs holding a pregnancy test, looked down at me as I fed Taylor, and said, “Guess what?” Although I could see what she was holding, my mind was in denial, so like an idiot, I asked, “What?” Only later did I realize the question was rhetorical. Seven months later, our son Jordan arrived. At that point, in my mind, we had the perfect, little nuclear family, one Dad, one Mom, one girl and one boy. I was completely content. We could sit in a standard restaurant booth. We could play man-to-man defense, if needed. We had accomplished what I had set out to do in the family department. Now, I could develop a hobby or buy a boat or plan a two-year-long trip in an oversized recreational vehicle to visit every national park in the U.S. and Canada. Not that I ever think about those things. But Janet, I would soon discover, was not as content as I was….