There it was in big, bold letters. Welcome to the Class of 2029. Our little babies were going to be kindergarteners soon. That's when it hit us. We were going to be 70 years old the year that our little guys graduated from high school. What have we done? What were we thinking?
This was not our first parenting rodeo. Our oldest son started kindergarten in 1995, and our two daughters began a few years later in 1998 and 2001. We looked around the school auditorium and realized that most of these nervous and anxious parents were probably half our age. In fact, many of them could have been the age of our grown children. We knew that we stood out like a sore thumb. The people around us probably wondered why we were there. Fortunately, some familiar faces started to greet us, and we temporarily forgot about our concerns. We were there just like all the other parents waiting with anticipation to hear about the school's kindergarten program. We knew our little guys were ready to start their educational journey. It was time.
Our little guys are adopted. It was not our plan; it was not our goal. It just happened. They were placed in our newly-licensed foster home in an overnight emergency when they were five months old. That was in July 2011. Five years later, our overnighter has become a lifetime. After a series of unfortunate and unexpected circumstances, our little guys had to remain in foster care much longer than anyone had anticipated. On March 14, 2014, we received a call from the county prosecutor. After multiple hearings, both at the county and state levels and years of custody battles, the county had won permanent custody of our twin boys. The prosecutor wanted to know if we were interested in adopting them. What had started as a phone call of asking us to accept five-month-old infants in an overnight placement had become a phone call of lifelong parenting. After meeting with lawyers, financial advisors and most importantly our grown children, we knew we couldn't turn our backs on our little guys. Our family permanently adopted Brian and Matthew on October 20, 2014.
So here we sit. Another 13 years of parent-teacher conferences, science fairs and book reports. Welcome to the Class of 2029.
