The day our lives changed for ever was the day we first met our son. It was
like a blind date, but with social workers playing the role of matchmaker.
They had read the reports, they had met us and we’d agreed: we could be
perfect for each other.
But you can never predict the outcome of a blind date. And it’s the same with
adoption. For the child’s sake, you are not introduced until it’s all been
set in stone. On that cold January morning, as we walked up the foster
carer’s garden path, our only certainty was that nothing would be the same
again.
When Sally opened her front door, I caught a glimpse of Scott behind her. He
ran into her living room. As we followed him in, I got my first proper look
at him, and he was every bit as gorgeous and wonderful as he’d appeared on
the photos and video they’d given us.
“Who’s this?” Sally asked Scott, as he looked us up and down with a shy smile.
Just short of his third birthday, his fosterers had prepared him for meeting
his two new dads with the help of a book of photos and a DVD that we’d put
together.
We don’t know what the first word he ever spoke was, but the first words I
ever heard him speak were our names. “Philip and Michael,” he said. Who can
be certain, but he seemed to understand who we were. We came away from that
first two-hour encounter elated. He had been affectionate and adorable. In
my gut, I felt that the blind date would work out.
Of course, most blind dates don’t take 18 months to set up. Last year I wrote
in these pages about getting approved to adopt. Having cleared that massive
hurdle, the much bigger challenge of finding the right child began. It can
take years. We were lucky enough to find Scott in a few months, and we first
met him a year and a half after making our first inquiry about adoption.
Over the next few days we had what’s called “introductions”, where we spent
more and more time with Scott, gently taking over the job of looking after
him, until two weeks after our first meeting, he walked out of his foster
carers’ home for the last time.
Sally stood on the doorstep and cried as Scott waved and blew kisses. I could
only think how grateful I was that she’d taken a neglected child and turned
his life around. We had also heard about foster parents not approving of
same-sex adopters and making the introduction period difficult. Sally and
her husband couldn’t have been more welcoming. I strapped Scott into his car
seat and drove him home.
The first night he spent in his newly decorated and furnished bedroom, Michael
and I woke up every 15 minutes wondering if he was still alive. Scott,
meanwhile, slept soundly for a good 12 hours. It was a relief to hear him
singing to himself at 6.30am. There have been unexpected moments. When the
three of us first got on a crowded Tube train, with Scott in my arms, a
woman gave up her seat for me.
There have also been challenging moments. At one point, Scott went through a
period of biting us whenever he was angry or even excited. It felt like we
were under attack in our own home. I asked myself why I had swapped the
atmosphere of carefully cultivated calm that used to exist behind our front
door for this. Luckily, when you adopt, the child not only comes with a full
set of clothes and toys, but also a team of people who want to help. We were
able to consult with a therapist who specialises in adoption for advice and,
mercifully, the biting phase has passed.
We are often asked what Scott calls his two fathers. Before the adoption, we
asked ourselves the same question. Some gay couples we know who had adopted
let their child use their first names, but that seemed to deny Scott the
chance to use a word used by most of his friends. Others, where one partner
is from a different country, used something like “Daddy” and “Papa” to
differentiate. In the end, we settled on “Daddy” (for Michael) and “Dad”
(me), uncertain whether Scott would be able to make sense of the
distinction. We needn’t have worried. He gets it right all the time. We, of
course, struggle still.
He also seems to be quite unconcerned about having two dads. Aged 3, he is
unaware that there is anything unusual about it. And the truth is, there
isn’t. Among our friends and in our neighbourhood, some kids have just a mum
or a dad, one of each or two of either. Hopefully he will grow up taking it
for granted, but we will also explain to him that family life can come in
many different varieties.
I thought I might have to make that point when I booked our first family
holiday, a seaside break, online last week. The website insisted all-male
parties could book only by phone. I imagine this is to warn off groups of
youths intent on trashing their nice cottages. Fortunately, the website
seemed to understand that one of us was aged 3, and the booking went
through. Although just in case he inflicts some form of destruction on the
place, I ticked the box for insurance.
We have got used to Scott’s occasional cries and — strange though this is to
say — it’s great when he gets upset. I don’t mean that I’m happy that he’s
unhappy. But if he’s fallen over and scraped his knee, I love it because he
now comes to us for comfort, arms outstretched, and, as I scoop him up, he
buries his head in my shoulder. He didn’t do that at first. It shows that he
knows we are there to look after him.
The other day I was sitting in the garden of a friend’s house for a barbecue.
I told Scott that I was popping inside to get his sun hat but obviously not
clearly enough because he suddenly realised that I wasn’t there, burst into
tears, and came running after me. I was over the moon to see him so sad. It
meant that he wasn’t happy to be left with just anybody.
Part of the reason that Scott appears to have settled in with us so well is no
doubt down to the fact that my partner Michael was able to take a year’s
adoption leave from his job as a teacher. Adoption laws changed in 2005,
allowing same-sex couples to decide who should be the primary adopter, and
receive the equivalent of maternity leave. With Michael’s employer, it
worked out at a year off work on just over half pay, and it has been
invaluable.
Having just adopted, we didn’t want to deposit Scott in a nursery and let
others do the job that we had spent so long persuading the social services
we would be good at. So Michael is a full-time dad and I’ve taken as much
time off work as possible, including two weeks paternity leave. It has
introduced us to a world of family life in our inner-city London
neighbourhood that we never knew existed. Michael particularly has become a
playground socialite, networking with the nannies and getting invited to the
best play dates.
Scott seems to be happily settled and enjoying himself, but I still reflect on
the peculiarity of the adoption process. You look through the profiles of
hundreds of children, trying to figure out who is right for you. We even
went to an “adoption fair” where children’s details were set out on stalls
for prospective adopters to browse through.
Michael first read about Scott on a website. Other fathers have ultrasound
photos; the first image of my son came in an e-mail. Michael was so excited
he called me as the e-mail landed in my inbox. I read the description of
Scott and looked at the photo. For the first time, I said to Michael: “This
is a child I could parent.” I thought that he looked like my brother did at
that age. I’ve always thought it strange how people go on and on about
children having a family resemblance, and then I find myself doing it about
a child I’ve never met and to whom I have no biological ties.
Seven months since we first met Scott, and I no longer need the help of an
alarm clock to wake every morning bright and early. His singing wakes me
from the dreams that he seems to constantly inhabit. Being his dad has been
exhausting, frustrating and rewarding.
Plenty of challenges and uncertainty lie ahead, and always will, and they
exist for biological parents too. But the tough times are more than
compensated for by the moments of joy, which can come with the smallest
triumph: when he remembers to tell us that he needs to pee; when he glides
along perfectly on his wooden bike; when someone stops to say how happy he
looks. I used to think that pride was a deadly sin, the kind of thing to
come before a fall. But that was before I had a son.
When I first told my parents about our plans to adopt, my mother was not
happy. She never doubted our ability to care for a child, but she needed
time to get used to the idea of two men parenting. But the approval process,
and the search for the right child, gave her time.
I was so pleased that when she first met Scott, any lingering doubts
disappeared in an instant. It was as if a grandparenting gene, which thanks
to a gay son had been allowed to lie dormant, suddenly kicked in. Initially,
she had expressed doubt over whether she would want to be called “Granny”.
Now she insists upon the term.
She keeps on talking about getting a climbing frame for her garden, something
that she never got me when I was a kid. And if we haven’t visited for more
than a couple of weeks, she phones up, eager to know when she’s going to see
her grandson next. Scott loves visiting them too, for all the attention, for
the garden and the ice cream, and because of the love of cars he shares with
Grandad.
Scott has brought our family closer together, but not only that. He has also
brought us a whole new set of relatives. We regularly see his two brothers
and sister, who have also been adopted, along with their new parents. We
also hope to maintain ties with his foster family. After all, they were the
people who looked after him for nearly two years of his short life.
I still can’t quite believe that I have been given the chance to bring up
Scott. I talk about my chosen family to almost everybody I meet. I was in
Los Angeles recently to cover the death of Michael Jackson for ITV News, and
when I found myself interviewing a child psychologist about the custody
battle for his children, I couldn’t resist crowbarring Scott into the
conversation. After listening to my story, she said how lucky he was to have
us as his parents. I told her we think we’re the lucky ones.
Some names have been changed.
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