Half a life ago, I was picked up by two people I hadn't known very long. They put me in a car and drove off; I left the only home I’d ever known. I slept on the drive back, and didn't seem too worried about what had just happened. They took me to their small flat, took me outside that afternoon and we looked at a cat.
Half a life ago, my life drastically changed. I went from a family of four other people and a dog to a family of just two other people, and no pets at all. I went from a family that spoke with the only accent I’d ever known to a family with a very different sounding, foreign, accent.
Half a life is a long time, and I'm not sure how much of that first half I really remember. Was I really in that house with four people and a dog? What was it like to live there? What was it like to run through the hallway in that house, play in the living room, and ride in their cars?
My life now has a much smaller hallway, a much smaller living room, and I don’t remember the last time I rode in a car; we ride buses, if anything, where I am now. We have a big park I can walk to in a few minutes; the park where, half a life ago we looked at a cat.
Today marks the day when our kid has spent exactly half of her life with us.
There are times when I feel like she’s been with us forever and there are times when I feel like I don’t know her at all.
Who our kid is and who our kid was are two very different things, and I often wonder how much she wonders about her first half of life.
She’s no longer the kid with the thick Scottish accent who would say ‘Wee’ before just about everything ‘Wee car’, ‘Wee man’, etc. She’s not the kid would say ‘Ta’ on a regular basis; getting her to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ have been a bit of a struggle as of late.
She is a kid now, who gets so excited at the prospect of going in a car, that the first 30 minutes of a car ride is a constant stream of ‘We’re in a car!’, or some variation of that. She’s a kid who can tell you (with some help) what bus we take to preschool or to mommy's office. She’s a kid who, I wish we could provide a longer hallway to, so she can run like crazy, because running outside at this time of year is not my idea of fun.
I think a lot about who our kid will become; if she’ll be the kind of adult who wants to know about her life before us or the kind who just doesn't care. Will our kid become an adult who will wonder about the life that might have been or mainly think about the life they have? As I sit and write this now, I don’t have a strong feeling one way or the other. There is a part of me that hopes that, when she’s older, she’ll want to go on a mission to find out where her genes come from and there’s another part of me that worries she’ll want to do just that.
Although the past half of her life has been one of the more trying times of mine, the joy I have felt has been so much more greater than anything bad. The memory I have of her seeing that cat on that first afternoon, or any animal on any day, is far stronger than any memories I have of her worst tantrums.
The week before our kid came home with us, we were walking with her and her foster father, on a windy day. One of the first things I learned about our kid was on that day, when he said she loved to stick her face into the cold wind.
Just the other day, our kid asked ‘Daddy, did I like the wind when I was a baby?’ I told her that she did. She then said she wanted to pretend to be her as a baby and I would be me; I obliged, because it’s pretty easy to pretend to be myself. She closed her eyes, and stuck her face forward into the driving wind and made what she felt was a happy baby noise. I couldn't help but chuckle, being reminded of one of the first things I learned about this kid, and had the same thought I had half her life ago. ‘Man, this kid’s really Scottish.’
I don’t know what’s in store the next third of our kid’s life, or the quarter after that, or the fifth after that. I just hope that all of those portions are filled with better times than worse.
