Monday, July 7, 2014

A Family Story

Once upon a time, there were two truly amazing people living in a tiny town in Pennsylvania. One day, they took in a broken girl and decided to help her put herself back together again. They didn't have to; no one expected it of them. Very few people even knew it was happening. That's what made it so amazing: they didn't have to do it, but they did it anyway.

For awhile, it was rough. The broken girl was really very broken, and loving her wasn't always easy. There were fights. There were hospital waiting rooms in the middle of the night. There was a time when the broken girl, who had by then become a woman but who felt very small and dark inside all the same, pushed against constancy and love with everything she had, looking for a way to break it, searching for an escape route, convinced these two amazing people couldn't possibly care about her, someone else's castoff child. Other people had claimed to love her before. They had lied.

But this time there was no need to run. There was no need to escape. The girl pushed and struggled, and the man and woman held on. The harder she fought, the harder they held. And then, finally, the girl realized something phenomenal: They weren't going anywhere. She began to settle. She stopped fighting and let family be redefined for her, let people love her, let there be Christmases together,  and birthday dinners, and nights on back roads looking up at the stars, and all the little things that make up what it means to be a family.

And then came something even more amazing.

For years and years, the girl had been too broken to ever call another woman Mom. Dad she could manage, somehow, and she had a dad again, a great dad, the best dad there was: he taught her how to hunt for ghosts and how to throw darts and hatchets and change a fuse, and all about Star Wars and superheroes, but mostly he let her be somebody's little girl again, even though she wasn't little anymore.

But the part in the girl's heart that said "Mom" stayed empty, because she was too afraid to fill it. But time kept going by, as it will, and one day she wasn't as afraid anymore. And then she was a little less afraid, and a little less afraid, until finally she gathered up all her courage and said to the woman:

"Can I call you Mom?"

And the amazing woman said yes. Even though it made her feel old.

And then -- and pay attention, now, because this is where it gets really, really good -- the amazing man and the amazing woman decided to do something even more amazing than all the amazing stuff they had already done, and they adopted a baby boy.

When the once-broken girl (who was now just as mostly whole as most other people are, because everybody has cracks and scars, you know) first learned that there was going to be a baby someday, she was really excited -- and also kind of scared. A tiny part of her thought, if there's something that'll make them not want you anymore, it's a baby. (She felt horrible about feeling like this, but the fear was there anyway.) But it turned out to be nothing to worry about, because the great thing about a family is that it can grow and grow and never need to cut off any parts or pieces so that other pieces fit. The excitement drowned the fear. The girl told the fear to shut its stupid, ugly mouth and started planning a baby shower -- months and months in advance, before there was even a woman out there in the world with a heart big enough to give away her baby so that it could have a life with the amazing man and woman who had also taken in, once upon a time, the broken girl.

And then the day came, and he was born. Paul. And when the once-broken girl saw a picture of Paul, her heart grew and grew and grew until she thought it might burst. She was so happy for the amazing man and woman, who had waited so very long for their very own baby and finally had him -- Paul, perfect, beautiful Paul -- that she cried and smiled and smiled and cried and laughed with joy and couldn't stop crying and smiling and laughing and being so happy for someone else that she didn't know what to do with it, so she smiled and laughed and cried some more!

The amazing man and the amazing woman don't know how incredible they are. That's the thing about amazing people: they think they're ordinary. But there's a girl in the world who knows better, and now she has a brother who will know too, because over and over again she will tell him the story. She will take him on her knee and say, "Listen, little brother. Listen. Once upon a time, there were two truly amazing people living in a tiny town in Pennsylvania. And then there was me. And now there's you. Because the great thing about a family is that it can grow and grow, and never need to cut off any parts or pieces so that other pieces fit."

The End.