normal family

We recently went on our first road trip of the summer down to southern Iowa to celebrate my cousin's marriage.  We stayed the night at a hotel, and on the morning after the reception, had some time to "relax" by the pool as a family.  We were just going about our normal family life, helping our anxious one become comfortable in the water and our overconfident one stay safe.  There were only a few others in the pool area, and as we were getting out, a gentleman approached Bryan.  He asked the obvious question that still catches us off guard because most of the time we are too busy being a normal family to think about being an adoptive family.

Bryan responded and the gentleman held out his hand and said, "I want to shake your hand.  Step dads and adoptive dads have a hard job.  I've been a step dad before, and I know..."  Bryan and I both pretty much stopped listening at that point.

Being an adoptive dad is not anything like being a step dad.  A step dad is a step dad usually because he fell in love with a women who had a kid(s), and usually there is this other person called "Dad" still in the child(ren)'s life.  On occasion (and I intimately know two of them) step dads do become Dads as they fully envelop the stepchild(ren) is (not as) their own, even through formal adoption.  In both of the families I experienced, there was no longer a distinction of "step dad" - it was just Dad.  Step parenting, in my view, is participating in the parenting of someone else's child(ren).  Being an adoptive parent is parenting your own child.  Parenting for sure is a tough job, and there is certainly some extra business to tend to when your children were adopted.  But there is no distinction between adoptive children and biological children.  There isn't his kids, her kids, and our kids, and we're not raising someone else's kids.

I really cannot stress this enough, because it seems like no matter what, people who have not intimately experienced it (either in their own family or a family very close to them) don't seem to understand the bond of adoption.  This gentleman said he "was" a stepparent, indicating he no longer held that position.  All of our children are permanently ours.  Difficult times, divorce, even death, would never change that.  How they got here might be interesting but is irrelevant when it comes to our love for them, their love for us and each other.  Wouldn't it be a tragedy if one or two of them felt like they didn't belong, weren't forever, or somehow were less ours than another child?

We might not fit in the box, but we are a normal family.  Can't you see?  I'm clinging to Reggie so he won't run out of the picture, Lydia is carefully posed not to show that she spilled fruit salad all down her white dress, Brett is sporting his typical "I'm standing here because Mom promised me a treat" pose, and Bryan and I look like we never have enough "couple time".  Looks pretty normal to me!