I Tried to Adopt Once

When my father had his first heart attack, I was a senior in high school. The ICU was on the same floor as pediatrics, so while we waited for those periodic 15 minute visiting times with Dad, I would pass the time in the children's ward.

There were 2 little boys there, Shane and Dan. Shane was 2, Dan was 3. They were in for pneumonia, and their mother never came to visit them. So they never got out of their crib cages. Against all the rules, the nurses started letting me take the boys out and play with them.

It was just before Christmas. Since we weren't having a Christmas that year, I played Santa, and got the boys both tons of Christmas presents. Shortly after Christmas, Dan went home, but Shane had to stay. Even after my father came home to await his heart surgery, I continued to go back to the hospital to visit Shane.

I got very attached to Shane. I would leave school at lunch, run up to the hospital, feed Shane, rock him to sleep and then go back to school.

He could have been released earlier, but his mother couldn't get around to coming to pick him up. Finally, she came and got him. And the nurses, against all the rules, gave me enough information that I could find him.

Now you're probably thinking I'm obsessive (I can be), and the nurses were nuts. But check this out. I find the house Shane and Dan live in, knock on the door, the mother answers, I tell her simply that I played with the boys while they were in the hospital (I didn't even give her my name), and ask if I can take the boys to McDonalds. And she lets me.

This began a regular routine of me coming to get the boys - but it was usually just Shane, because Dan was in preschool or with his grandparents most of the time. I hated how they lived. They lived in a duplex, but the bedroom was in the cement block basement - and it was just one bedroom (where the boys, the mother, and her boyfriend slept). Their clothes were scummy (white socks were totally gray). And even at 18, I thought her parenting skills were non-existent.

But I knew they were poor, so beyond really not liking the mother, I told myself that I had to be the sort of person who did not judge just because someone was poor and had seemingly been raised without morals.

I bought the boys clothes. And I bonded with Shane even more. He was 3 now, and I visited him about once a week. His mother still didn't know anything about me - not my name, not where I lived. Nothing.

It was the following July. I took Shane to the lake, and we spent the afternoon eating chip-chop ham sandwiches, chips, and animal crackers (he dipped everything in mayo), and watching sail boats. When I took him home that night he didn't want me to leave him. That was normal. But this time he cried. And begged me to stay.

I reasoned that Shane wanted me to stay with him because I paid attention to him, I bought him things, I fed him good stuff and let him slather it all with mayo. I was more fun than his mother, and did things that she didn't.

And I told myself it was not fair for me to introduce him to all these things that his mother couldn't give him, or didn't know how to give him. It wasn't fair to her or to him.

And I also knew that I was on the verge of doing something really stupid - because I did not want to leave him there. Not with her. And not in that house.

That was the last time I saw Shane. For both our sakes.

That doesn't mean I didn't think about him all the time.

I knew the family had been involved with children's services (the nurses told me:)). And I had reported the sleeping situation. Not that I had issues with a mother sleeping in the same room as her children, but I did have a problem with a mother and her boyfriend sleeping in the same room as a 3 and 4 year old, because of what the kids might see or hear (inappropriate). Of course, no one told me why children's services was involved with the family, so I assumed it was because the mother was an idiot and needed parenting training.

A few years later, I was married, and I called Children's services to check up on Shane and Dan. I just wanted to know they were OK. I found out then that they had been taken away from their mother and that Dan had already been adopted. I immediately said I wanted to adopt Shane. I was so determined, that the caseworker told me things they usually would not tell someone who hadn't at least filled out an application or had a home study.

I learned that Shane and Dan had both been sexually abused. Not only by their mother's boyfriend, but their mother. And that Dan had not been in the home much, and had therefore not been as hurt. But Shane had been hurt terribly, and as a result, he was not available to me.

I was young and didn't understand this. If he had been hurt, and I loved him, why would they keep him in a children's home, rather than letting him have a family? I returned home for the holidays and learned more about what Shane had lived through. It broke my heart. Not just because of what he'd endured, but because that monster of a woman and the men she allowed near her children had destroyed the beautiful little boy that I'd known. He was so damaged at his young age, that even then, it was unlikely that he'd ever be adoptable. And the ONLY people they would consider would be people with no children at home, who had no intention of having children in the future. Both for Shane's sake, and the safety of the other children.

I lived for a long time with the guilt - I live with it even today. Common sense tells me that I was too young, and too unaware of what some of the harsher realities of the world were, to have any idea of what was going on with Shane. He never said anything to me that would have given me a clue - he just wanted to stay with me. And I never saw anything that was inappropriate sexually. I simply thought his mother was stupid. I had no idea she was evil.

And Children's Services was actively involved with the family. So I had no reason to believe that if anything was seriously wrong that they wouldn't step in and prevent it.

I could have taken him that last night. I WANTED to take him. And that's why I cut off the contact - for fear I'd hurt him, or do something stupid that would land me in all kinds of hot water.

I wish I had taken him. I wish I had realized what was going on when I was not around.

I wish I had saved him.

I still call Children's Services periodically to ask about Shane. And of course, Children's Services won't give me any information. It's been 18 years since I tried to adopt Shane, and by now he's a grown man, in his twenties. Just from what *little* I could pry out of CS, I don't think Shane ever was adopted.

That breaks my heart.