Multiracial Families: Loving Walter and DeAndre

“You get funny questions and rude comments right in front of the kids. ... You still have some old-fashioned, closed-minded people. Some believe whites should stay with whites and blacks with blacks. We’re all brothers and sisters in God’s eyes. What’s the big deal?”

- LaDonna  Puttere

Here's a happy story published yesterday in Florida's Lake City Reporter about (transracial) family. Stephen and LaDonna Puttere are Caucasian and adopted two African-American boys five years ago. LaDonna Puttere, pictured above with her sons and her niece, wrote a book called My Black and White Family on the joys and challenges of transracial adoption. Do you know the history of interracial, or transracial adoption? This blogger gives a summary, including the following:


According to The Adoption History Project, the first recorded adoption of an African-American child by a white family occurred in Minnesota in 1948. (A Washington state couple later adopted an African-American daughter who had been placed with them as a foster child in 1944.) Americans in the late 1940s and early 1950s also adopted German war orphans and children of U.S. servicemen, some of whom were the children of German mothers and black American soldiers.

Transracial adoption is often a given in international adoption. The growth of African programs, including ones that place orphans from countries such as Ethiopia, increases the number of interracial families in the U.S. 

Some people continue to speak out against interracial adoption, citing fears about children losing a vital link to their heritage. But can't parents, regardless of their race or that of their children, teach kids to appreciate their unique ethnicity?  Is it better for children to languish in foster care or live as orphans and in poverty than to be welcomed into a loving family?  

LaDonna Puttere said, "“I’m proud of our family,” she said. “Automatically, people see mixed families and think they’re unhappy. Our children are happy. We’re happy. I wouldn’t change anything in the world for my family. And who wouldn’t want to look at these two handsome boys?”

Well, you know my opinion about transracial adoption.  What's yours?

The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow, Miss Havisham

In the most recent issue of Adoptive Families magazine, readers discuss the play Annie (as in "little orphan" and the sun will come out tomorrow.) They talk about whether it's a damaging one for kids who were adopted, or is just good plain fun. 


Almost every reader who submitted comments either whole-heartedly embraced the musical or found it benign and recommended just talking with children about the differences between that work of fiction and the reality of most adoptions and orphanages.  


Until I read these remarks, I had felt guilty about my daughters' love of Annie when they were younger, how they played "orphanage" in their room after seeing the movie, and that they sometimes enlisted me as Miss Hannigan and gleefully laughed as I barked at them to scrub the floor and make it shine like the top of the Chrysler building. So, reading the magazine last night, absolved me of my guilt. (About that, anyway.) 


But it's hard, isn't it?  To know when to be cautious and when to laugh off the ways kids hear about adoption? 


For the past several weeks, my 12 year-old son has been preparing for (and then performing) the role of (Young) Pip in Great Expectations. When I saw the preview, the night before the show opened, it was the first time I'd seen him in the part. Ian is an independent person and one whom I parent with as light a touch as possible. When he feels controlled or manipulated, he tends to withdraw or rebel. And, in general, he makes very good choices. ("Make good choices!")  So, as he's learned his lines, gone to costume fittings and rehearsals, I have given him space. No stage mom, I!  


When I finally saw the preview, I was a bit concerned.  Not with the production or my son's performance (loved both), but with some of the content in the second half of the play. I worried that when my daughter Mia went to see it a few days later, she might be upset by Estella's frequent, icy reference to Miss Havisham as her  "mother by adoption" and by Miss Havisham's description of how she came to adopt the girl. That she raises Estella to be cruel and heartless to all men in order to punish the one man who broke her heart reveals that her adoption isn't about creating family, but about exacting revenge. (Yipes.)


I told some friends, adoptive parents all, about my concerns.  They seemed a bit puzzled, but were supportive.  It's not like me to worry about such things. So that she could see her brother perform, I told Mia she could go to the first half of the play. I'd take her home at intermission, I said, or maybe we could even go to the new frozen yogurt shop while the rest of the family were at the theater.  Mia demanded to know why she couldn't see the whole show, so I explained that I didn't want her to feel upset about the way the play handles adoption.  


"I won't," she said. "Why would I?"


I acquiesced. When I told my friends that I'd changed my mind, they seemed relieved. "It didn't seem quite right.  It wasn't like you..." one said.  It's true I'm rarely in the position of being the overly-cautious or protective mom. 


After she saw the show, Mia looked me in the eyes. "Um.  What in the world does that have to do with my story?" she asked.


Last night, however, I got a different peek into her response to the play. I was putting food away after dinner and she was sitting at the kitchen counter drawing swirly designs on a piece of paper. She asked me what are the reasons people adopt children.  I talked to her about infertility, about concern for the world's almost 150 million orphans, and that some people just love big families and want to adopt a child, like we did. God makes families in all kinds of ways, I said. She nodded; she was totally on board with the conversation.

Then, in the same, matter-of-fact tone she’d used before, she said: “And some people adopt because they are weird and lonely and just want someone to spend time with.”

"What?  What do you mean?" It was such an odd thing for her to say.

“Like that Miss Haversham.” 

I laughed, uncomfortably, and sat down beside her. I told her what children without families faced in Dickens’ time, reminded her that was fiction, and told her about the way governments in our time try to protect children from being adopted by someone as mentally and emotionally ill as was the character of "Miss Haversham." Home studies. Fingerprints. Reports from doctors and employers and friends. 

“Okay,” she said, looking down at her paper and continuing to draw.

We all hold secret thoughts, make observations and come to conclusions we never articulate. And in day-dreamy, watchful kids like my daughter -- an eight year-old who still believes in fairies and Santa and the tooth fairy (despite TF’s ongoing tardiness) -- these private thoughts seem particularly mysterious. 

The readers who wrote about Annie in Adoptive Families are right - I guess the best we can do is be honest, keep talking, and tell the truth.

National Adoption Month - November 2010

("Dad, There comes a time in every teen's life when he must insist on being dropped off a block away." You don't have to be perfect to be a perfect parent. Ad Council print advertisement for National Adoption Month 2010.)

Happy November first!  

This morning I replaced the Van Morrison albums in the kitchen cupboard above my CD player with a new set of music. October, for me, is Van Morrison month – all Van, almost all the time. What better way to say hello (or goodbye) to autumn than “Into the Mystic”?

Now it’s November. 

In two weeks, my book is due. (Yes, some quiet panic underlies that informative little sentence, even though I'm on track to meet my deadline.) Before I sequester myself for the day, and rake over chapters I’ve written (Is that really what I meant to say?) or fill in the ones with holes (Wait – I skipped the whole issue of the…), I need to embrace November.

November holds a visit from a family I love. An outing, with them, to see one of their dear friends play Timon in The Lion King.  It’s been years since I saw that show and my husband and I were in tears before the first few measures of the opening song had ended. The beauty of the costumes, the immediacy of the drums, and the spectacle of it all overwhelmed us. 

The month holds visits with family and friends from the East coast. It’s time to take the family Christmas picture, think about holiday shopping, and excavate the Christmas movies and CDs from their place in the back of a cabinet in the family room.

The one I most look forward to dusting off every year is “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  The 1946 film – in case somehow there are one or two people reading this who haven’t seen it – tells the story of good-hearted George Bailey who has decided, in great despair, to commit suicide.  We see snippets of his life in flashback and witness the countless times he has chosen to serve others instead of pursuing his own desires. 

An angel is sent to save George and does so by showing him what his community would be like had he never existed.  In this alternate world, his idyllic hometown itself has a different name and is rife with crime and with brittle, lonely people. “Strange, isn't it?” The angel Clarence says to George.  “Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?”

Do you know any George Baileys?  They may not live in Bedford Falls or claim to be able to lasso the moon and they very likely don’t look anything like Jimmy Stewart.  But the moniker fits all the same:  without them, the world would be depleted light and goodness it so badly needs. 

November is "National Adoption Month," an annual campaign to raise awareness about children and youth in the U.S. foster care system. When you learn about foster care, you are suddenly introduced to all kinds of George Baileys. They are the foster parents who welcome children into their families for a day, a month, or permanently and lovingly become their parents. They are mentors who befriend children in foster care.  They are grant administrators who support college students who grew up in foster care.  They are social workers and teachers and nurses who extend themselves to children who may have little or no support elsewhere. 

According to the government child welfare website, this year’s “National Adoption Month initiative targets adoption professionals by focusing on ways to recruit and retain parents for the 115,000 children and youth in foster care waiting for adoptive families.”

I remember seeing an advertisement on adoptUSkids.org a few years ago, showing a middle-aged man slumped on a couch in front of the television, snoozing, while a boy sits beside him wearing a happy, bemused expression.  The ad reads:  “When you adopt from foster care, just being there makes all the difference.” I love that ad – that it features a non-traditional family (a single father and son), that it celebrates the bond between an adopted child and his parent, and that the father in the picture isn’t stressing out over parenthood – holding up flashcards or feeding his son celery sticks – but is just being present and himself.  (Who knows? Maybe he they worked on math facts over dinner.) Adopting or fostering a child is not, of course, the only way to be help the many American children in need. See this site and others about ways to help.

Foster parents who care for children whose early life has left their spirits bruised or crushed face sometimes formidable challenges. Fortunately, there are George Baileys in this world – people who lovingly create chosen families, who do their best to address their children’s challenges,  and who put the needs of others before their own. In doing so, they make the world a much better place -- not just for one child, but for all of us.

I don’t know about you, but I think foster parents truly do lasso the moon.  

A Laugh Like Diane's

This week my husband's aunt and grandmother are visiting from Pennsylvania. My kids adore these two relatives, but really did they have any choice?  They are, indeed, easy to love. And also, when we are preparing for a visit to (or from) them, my children see a buoyant, excited side of my husband. It's one that, for a man who tends to be a teeny-tiny bit misanthropic, is notable. 


My husband David's early life was lived in (Great) Grandma Funck's house. His young parents, in grad school and in the early years of their marriage, lived with the elder Funcks for a time. And Aunt Diane, my father-in-law's sister, has always been a favorite of my husband's - she lived with him and his parents when she was in college.  She read him the Chronicles of Narnia.  (Chronic - what?  Sorry - I've got a middle and high schooler in the house.)  (In da house.) Diane likes to laugh a big, true laugh that opens up a room. And she is in love with rollercoasters. (What's not to like, right?) All to say, it's a big deal when the Funcks from Pennsylvania are in town. 


My brother-in-law recently made a beautiful video to celebrate the 90th birthday of Great Grandma Funck. In it, photos of her life from babyhood to the present, snippets of an informal interview my husband's cousin conducted with her, and other video clips are woven together elegantly. It's like a finely-crafted mini-documentary.  We've watched it several times together.  And, while it's playing, members of my husband's family have said, "Oh look. Theo has his grandpa's chin!" or "Can't you see David in that uncle?" 


Two nights ago, after a family dinner at my in-laws' house (with aforementioned, beloved, visiting relatives), my youngest said to me, "I'm not a Funck.  I'm just me.  I'm not really related to them, not in the way they talk about.  I don't look like any of those people in the video."  


We were sitting beside each other at the kitchen counter. She was coloring and I was sorting through a stack of school papers and forms that needed to be signed, clipped with a check, or recycled.  She looked up at me and I saw that she wasn't sad or disturbed.  She was just stating facts.  


I scootched the stool she was sitting on closer to me, put my arm around her shoulder, and whispered in her ear.


"Yeah," I said.  "Me neither."


And then we laughed.  Really laughed. It was big, open laughter, like her Great Aunt Diane's.

For those that do not believe you have labor pains when adopting, let me fill you in on a secret: The labor is worse when adopting! I have done both and know that the physical labor pain goes away quickly, but when adopting the pain starts when you decide to adopt and does not end until that baby is in your arms! (Maria Hickman)

Who is the "Successful" Child?

A bumper sticker announcing a child’s status as an honor roll student. Trophies lining a shelf. Notes about play dates and birthday parties and extracurricular activities cramming the space on a calendar page. A college acceptance letter hanging on the refrigerator.

How do we, as parents, define our children’s success?

Most of us want our kids to taste the success that comes from hard work, but even more than that, we want them to be forces for good in the world. 

Sometimes we can lose track - receiving a good report card or excelling at sports are easier to recognize than whether the child is a loving friend or has a curious mind.

In their book The Successful Child, parents and pediatric experts William and Martha Sears list the qualities they believe define a successful child. Happily, markers like straight-As and an armload of ribbons and trophies aren’t on the list. 

Instead, they are: 

• being able to forge “meaningful relationships with others,” 
• being empathetic, 
• being smart, healthy, and polite, 
• having confidence and joy, 
• making moral and wise choices, 
• being able to communicate well, and 
• having a healthy attitude about sexuality.

The foundation for all of these qualities, according to William and Martha Sears, is being emotionally attached to parents as babies and little children. 

Dr. Sears has co-authored several parenting books with his wife Martha, a pediatric nurse, and is credited with the development of the idea of “attachment parenting.” Attachment parenting is an approach that asserts that a strong emotional bond with parents during a child’s early life is crucial for a person’s emotional health and is a predictor for success in life. 

William and Martha Sears identify a number of “tools” for parents to use. These include breastfeeding on demand, the “family bed” or co-sleeping with children, and “wearing” infants (in a cloth baby sling) instead of keeping them in playpens, car seats, or strollers most of the time.

Early on in The Successful Child, the authors state that of all the stages in a child’s life, the most important one in terms of attachment is the period between birth and one year old. When I read that statement years ago as a new mother, I took it to heart. I wasn’t a convert to all the tenets of attachment parenting, but I incorporated many of the tools into my parenting. 

Like many parents, I picked and chose from various parenting techniques – I followed the smörgåsbord methodology. A bit of this, a bit of that.

I wore my babies in slings. I breastfed. I co-slept with my newborns until they were anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months, depending on the child but, ultimately, “Ferberized” them all. (Richard Ferber is the author of Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. He advocates a progressive approach regarding getting babies and children to get to sleep on their own, and stay asleep all night. I picked up the Ferber method when I witnessed close friends and their baby use it and saw them transformed from three insanely exhausted people to three happy, content ones.) Letting a child cry for a few minutes in her crib is a major no-no in attachment parenting, but was a good choice for my family. 

I recently picked up the book, The Successful Child again. This time I read it as the mother of a child adopted as a toddler. I can’t help thinking it was a glaring omission for William and Martha Sears to fail to write a chapter on attaching to a newly adopted child. I tried to imagine what I would have felt like, as a new mother of a child who was adopted, reading the book.

Some adoptive mothers can breastfeed, but many cannot. Some adoptive mothers bring their babies home as newborns, many do not. Some adoptive mothers know what their babies’ early life was like, some do not. I could hear myself and other parents of adopted children demanding of the authors: “Yes, but how can my child be The Successful Child.

There is an answer in the book, though you have to make the connection to adoptive attachment parenting yourself. The authors assert that 

“It’s never too late to practice attachment parenting.” 

They give examples of how to attach to children of all ages and how to help them grow into emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and physically healthy people.

I feel very grateful that when I adopted my child, I’d already parented three children from birth through the preschool years. I had some awareness of the developmental stages that little kids go through, of the ways I’d fail myself and my children and the means by which I’d extend grace to myself to get past such shortcomings.  All parents, including adoptive ones, can be confident that giving boundaries, providing security, and showering children with love can help to make every child – in his or her own way – “the successful child.” 

The Day This Picture Was Taken

(photo by Greg Halvorsen Schreck)

It was one of those hot days that wraps itself around you from the moment you enter into it. You open the front door and, within seconds, you feel your clothes begin to adhere to your skin, the hair on the back of your neck is wet with sweat, your eyes sting in the heat.

By noon it was approaching 95 degrees. Now it was one o’clock and the temperature was still climbing. There were 27 of us in the small, attic studio. 13 children, 12 parents, and two adults who were along to observe. The children were arranged on a raised platform, the first row of them sitting on a bench. A lone fan attempted to keep the air in the small room moving. From time to time, some of the children stepped off of the platform and put their faces inches from the fan, making vibrating, insect-like sounds with their voices. They laughed at the transformation.

The photographer held a camera whose lens was the size of a small plate. His 8 year-old daughter wore braids and a bemused, patient expression. A little girl with piggy tails screamed. A boy in the back row with a crew cut stood up straight and alternatively showed his teeth (as his father instructed) and closed his mouth to smile (as the photographer requested).

“Teeth, Andrew,” his Dad called over the sound of the fan, the crying two year old, the voices of the other parents.

“Close your mouth, Andrew,” the photographer said.

Andrew intermittently opened and closed his mouth, smiling all the while.

The mother of three of the girls sitting on the bench in front handed out Swedish fish and sang a song. Her daughters’ eyes tracked her, shining with love, as she sang, jumping up and down next to the photographer.

“A peanut sat on a railroad track,” she sang raucously. “His heart was all a-flutter...”

The girl with the piggy tails began to shriek. Perhaps she didn’t like the song. Or maybe she was just hot. The youngest of all the children, a very little girl wearing a white dress with eyelet and puffed sleeves, looked concerned. She sat on a large Ansel Adams book on the bench in the front row. The proximity of her own mother – kneeling before her on the floor – and the half-eaten Swedish fish in her hand kept her from crying - for the moment.

“’Round the bend came number ten. Choo Choo! Smash! Peanut butter!” Other parents had joined in the song. 

Did I mention it was hot?

My daughter, standing in the second row of children, pushed her hands more deeply into the pockets of her jeans. They were new jeans, bought that morning for this picture. Her new blue suede sneakers peeked out from the flared bottoms. The strap of her sleeveless top fell over her left shoulder. Her bangs, black as licorice and straight as a line, began to stick to her warm forehead. She stood confidently, patiently, eyes glued to the lens of the camera. Among all the beautiful, exasperated, overheated children, she was, in my eyes, the most still and brave. 

All of the children posing for the photograph had come into their families by adoption. Their birth countries stretched from Latin America in an arc over the globe, past China all the way to South Korea. They were here to pose for a picture that would celebrate families who were forged by international adoption.

I wish the photographer could have turned the camera around – could have caught expressions of love and pride and anxiety on the faces of us parents as we smiled, waved, sang, and whispered bribes (“Just smile – then we’ll get ICE CREAM”) to our children. What a photo that would have been!

The slim, blonde mother of the little girl perched on the Ansel Adams book. The cheery parents singing the peanut song, handing out Swedish fish, waving and cajoling, instructing (“Teeth, Andrew!) their kids. All of us hoping to facilitate the process and allow the photographer to do his work so that we could leave this hot attic, shuffle these children into a cool place, and reward them with ice cream.

Seeing those two pictures – the first of the children and the second of their parents at the edges of the room – might work to break down some of our fabricated distinctions or labels about “us and them,” about race, and even about geographical boundaries. In those pictures, the notions that we sometimes unthinkingly rest in about what constitutes a family, and about what a family resemblance really means, disappear.

After all, not one of those children had any doubt who her mother was. She was the one whose eyes were locked on her child’s, who saw her own child as the most beautiful, and whose heart was swollen with love and delight. 

The Red Thread

An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet,

regardless of time, place, or circumstance.

The thread may stretch or tangle, 

but it will never break.

(Chinese legend)

the privilege of suffering

Susan and Todd, with sons on their wedding day in August 2010.

My friend Susan recently got married.

I never knew her first husband Brian -- the man she adored, the man with whom she had two sons, and the man she lost to cancer in 2005. Since Brian's death, Susan has been raising her children, working as a teacher, and -- among other things -- learning about suffering.

Below are some of her words, excerpted, from her blog. The title of her post was "Sweet Redemption."


Last week I got married. Graciously—for a second time. 


As I’ve reflected on that moment of pure grace, I keep dancing around the great biblical notion of privileged suffering. Maybe it’s all those years in Los Angeles when I first learned of the “very important people’ concept—being on the list for On the Rox, getting in the side door with Vince Vaughn or hanging with Prince in the VIP room. Name-dropping. Walking on the red carpet. The Deserved. The Entitled. 


But what if the deserved didn’t get to be first? Instead, they were last? VIP suffering, maybe? 


As I’ve traversed life as a widow—one without a partner but never alone or abandoned—God has gently and persistently pushed on my heart the value of sacrifice and suffering—in this world and culture. 


Missing out on family gatherings because I didn’t have a male counterpart was painful at times. Knowing my kids may never have a dad to coach soccer or baseball or go camping with the Cub Scouts often felt a little like lemon on a paper cut—stinging with a cry of pain but then subsiding. 


Or evening after evening, in the quietness of my house, knowing that I could never fill the shoes of a father and trusting that God would be there for my boys—all the time, every moment.


But I learned something invaluable...the privilege of suffering. Suffering, I think, is where we understand redemption. 

For the past few years, I've thought of Susan every week, always with admiration for her strength, her authentic and abiding faith, and her beauty.

As her Facebook update in August, when she and her new husband Todd (see photo, above) were marrying, she wrote:

Goodbye, sweet widowhood, you've taught me to live by faith, to never fear, and to take each moment intentionally. Amazing grace, a redemptive hand--I get to do it again. Laguna Beach--a lovely place to get married.

She's called herself a "second-chance bride." Other friends of mine who have entered into marriage for a second time have started to use that moniker as well.

When I showed my kids the photos of her wedding in Laguna Beach, California, one of my sons pointed to a picture of Susan's son reaching to take her new husband Todd's hand.

"Look," he said, tapping on the computer screen. "Look at that." As a boy who worships his own father, my son Theo noticed when a boy who had adored his father (and who had lost him) had found a man in his life who would be his father, not the one he knew before, but a real and present one all the same. A second chance father, maybe?

So...Susan's blog isn't technically about adoption, but when I see pictures of her with her new husband and sons, they are no longer "hers" but "theirs." Boys who lost a father now have one. Second chance bride. Second chance sons.

As I work on "Love You More" and dive deep into times of suffering in my life and in the lives of others (miscarriage, dry stretches in my marriage, the choice to hand a baby over to a foster mother, self-doubt, and the many times I feel I've failed my children), I'm all for second chances.

Bookshelf: Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other by Scott Simon

This week I've been reading a pristine hardcover copy of "Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other: In Praise of Adoption" by Scott Simon (author and host of NPR's Weekend Edition), along with a few other books...a galley copy of my friend and fellow Redbud Writer Anita Lustrea's "What Women Tell Me: Finding Freedom from the Secrets We Keep" and a beat up paperback copy of "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight:  An African Childhood" by Alexandra Fuller that I got on half.com.

I'm trying to hurry through Simon's book -- but every time I sit down with it, I come across a line, a description, a passage that makes me stop short. Because one of my best friends has adopted three times from China, in some ways I feel like I've made that trip myself. And I've been there on the other end, watching from outside of customs at O'Hare for the doors to slide open and the arrival of a new little person into our extended, chosen family. A little person for whom we've waited so long.

So much for hurrying through the book...in spite of eagerly anticipating my friend's reaction to this book, reading Simon's descriptions of everything from his daughters' reactions to being placed in their parents' arms for the first time ("room service") to his articulate (and fresh) exploration of transracial adoption is an experience worth savoring.

Here's a little taste of the book, to whet your appetite. In fact, this is how the book begins:  

"Adoption is a miracle. I don't mean just that it's amazing, terrific, and a wonderful thing to do. I mean that it is, as the dictionary says, 'a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.'"

Read more about Scott Simon and his work here.

Theo Bremer-Bennett Each Day

I met Theo Bremer-Bennett about 20 years ago when we were both in college. He was (and is) the cherished friend of my husband's brother and, from the start, I understood why Brian was so fond of him. There's just something about Theo. His creativity and gentle spirit make you want to sit next to him on a park bench and just watch the clouds move by, if that makes any sense.

Theo's a musician. In college, he and his friend Kristofer Widholm wrote songs together. My favorite from that time is "All My Letters from Delphine." (You can give his music, including that song, a listen, here.)

After our first child was born, my husband and I spent the two days I was in the hospital engaged in the delicious task of naming our son. We test-drove names such as "Whitman" (yes, for Walt), "Eliot" (for T.S.) and "Stanley" (for the great grandfather he never knew) but none of these fit this new little boy.

"Who are you?" I'd ask him.

The hospital employee in charge of getting parents to fill out paperwork returned to our room again and again.  After a while, she dispensed of formalities and would just lean into the room:  "Ready with a name?" "Ready now?" "Ready?" and we'd say "No, no, no. Not yet."

Finally, though, we hit on it. We said the name and everything aligned, like when you're taking a test at the eye doctor and she says, "Tell me when the dots come together and you only see one." One name, one baby, one person. The name was "Theodore," meaning "gift of God." My husband said, "We could call him 'Theo.' You know, like Theo Bremer-Bennett." We said if he grew up to be half the person Theo Bremer-Bennett is, we'd have been a part of ushering someone vital into the world.

Now Theo, the younger, is 14 years old and I'm happy to say that by some bit of serendipity or divine favor, he shares some of that sweetness, love of music, and strength that we always admired in Theo, the elder. And the two, in my recollection, have never met.

Theo, the elder, lives in New Mexico and is the father of five children, including Yohannes (see video, above).  Like my husband and me, Theo and his wife Carol are the parents of children by birth and by adoption. Carol is Native American and their son Asa is the only Bremer-Bennett who came into the family by birth. (Carol, too, was adopted as a child.)

In a recent email, Theo wrote:

"...the latest is that we've moved into a school dorm to accommodate our family. We're up to 3 Ethiopians, 1 Navajo, and 1 native/anglo who's not adopted -- but we like him too!"

Theo made this little video after his son's homecoming from Ethiopia. I remember watching it over and over, soaking up the joy Theo and his new little son shared.

Enjoy.

(Thank you Theo for granting me permission to post it here.)