Who's My Dad?

That's a question I expected from the Boss several years from now, not last Saturday having lunch on the breezy patio of a taco shop.

Working out the complexities of even a "regular" family can be confusing with a preschooler. He knows he has "big" cousins that he sees on Friday Pizza Nights and "little" cousins on the East Coast. He knows he has, in addition to "Auntie", Aunts and Uncles who don't live with us. He talks about "my Grandma who goes on the airplane" and Grandpa. He's figuring out that Peaches and Squeaker are his sisters but has no idea that that makes Seamonkey his nephew.

We also talk about adoption and he will always know his adoption story and the few details we have about his original family as he is old enough to understand it.

Last Saturday I was trying to explain to him that my Grandma was my dad's mom when he sprang the question. He was aware enough to ask it two different ways. First, "Do I have a dad?", then "Who is my dad?"

I think about these issues a lot and did so even before I adopted as a single mom. I debated whether it was right, knowing that kids should have and do best with both a mom and a dad. The conclusion that I have come to is that, while possibly not the ideal choice, having one loving parent who will raise them for Jesus is far better than having no parents at all (the great state of California is not much of a parent for the thousands of foster kids it claims as dependents). And the sad truth is that if any of our kids had stayed with their birth families not one of them would have been raised in an intact two-parent home.

I understand the enormity and great responsibility of what I have done in choosing to be a single parent to kids who already have a lot of baggage from their first families. I know that we will be dealing with the abandonment issues and the dad issues for years to come.

For now, the simple answer for the Boss was: "You don't have a dad but God said he would be a dad to those who don't have one. Is that okay?"

His reply, "Yep!" He knows he's loved by his family and by God and that's enough for him for today. We'll handle tomorrow when it comes.