It happened seven years ago today.
The boy with the soft-deep black-brown eyes that had stopped our hearts in our chest the Christmas Eve before walked through the curtains of a civil affairs office in Guangzhou, China … and transformed not just our hearts but our LIVES.
We called him “Superman.” But there’s absolutely no way we really understood then just how SUPER this boy would really be.
Today, at the super-fun age of 9, this boy who captured our hearts at age 2.5 in China has conquered 14 casts, stomached 11 surgeries, spent multiple weeks of his life NPO (literally no water, food or drink) and done with four fingers for the last eight years what takes this much-less-capable girl FIVE.
What’s more, he’s done it all with a warrior spirit and a can-do attitude and a heart that is as SWEET as it is STRONG.
He’s the lover of the family – the absolute peacemaker – and the one who is everyone’s very best friend.
He frequently reads to and helps school Superhero 4, and at night, 30 and 40 minutes past the tucking of little toes, he’ll stay up chatting with his loquacious little roommate, who asks him a million and one questions he pretends to be interested in answering every single night.
He and Superhero 2 spend their virtual schooling breaks looking up abandoned huskies they want to raise together when they grow up (in houses that will apparently home millions of dogs and exactly no spouses to say “no” and get in their way), and together, they plan out lives as veterinarians and wolf keepers who run dog rescue organizations on the side. (They also plan to adopt “lots of kids,” but only after they adopt lots of dogs.)
He is the only one Superhero 1 will allow to actually touch him and the one Superhero 1 requests to play board games with time and time again, probably because he’s killer at Catan and adults struggle to beat the kid in chess.
And he's my current No. 1 kitchen volunteer, asking nearly nightly if he can help with dinner or snacks or Grinch-ka-bob holiday treats.
He loves Legos and drawing and sushi and crab and, possibly more than anyone else in the house, quality time at home with family. (Enter Covid, Superman's personal gift 2020.)
With the most sensitive spirit and the most contagious cackle laugh, this boy who just loves being beside PEOPLE brings joy everywhere he goes.
And where he goes, he RUNS — usually very quickly.
As this boy who melts our hearts 100 times a day with his “love you, Mom”s and sweet snuggles and hugs has grown, we’ve tried to position him more and more in the driver’s seat of his adoption journey … in a place where he can take more ownership of this story God has written in his life. He’s had such little control over the way his story has gone, and allowing him to decide how he wants and needs to respond to the days and occasions that remind him of his hard history are the least we can offer this precious angel whose beauty in our life came at the cost of deep brokenness in his.
Which means that, as we approached this seven-year milestone, we asked him how or even IF he wanted to celebrate what he still calls “Gotcha Day,” even though, because of the possessive and objectifying nature of that phrase, we’ve tried to move in recent years to language like “Family Day” or “Adoption Day.”
“But it’s NOT our family day,” he told us last night as he snuggled up in our bed right between us, his special Adoption Day night-before request. “Our family day would be the day the last member entered and made us complete. And that would be Alaska,” the dog lover astutely and lovingly observed.
Which brings US back to the language of “Adoption Day” with him still preferring the title “Gotcha Day” and all of us coming together on this day, no matter what we call it, to honor the simultaneous beauty and brokenness of adoption.
So today, we’ll remember Superman’s mama and baba — the beautiful parents who birthed him and loved him first — with prayers, a moment of silence and a toast.
We’ll grab Superman-requested Chinese take-out (and okay, some Thai and sushi, too, because we’re line-benders and because, after a cumulative four weeks in China, we will never, ever in our lives be okay with Americanized Chinese ever again).
And, at Superman’s request, we’ll watch the video we made of our two weeks in China and the day his last name officially became the same as ours.
And as we celebrate this superhero who has taught us so much about perseverance, overcoming obstacles and loving deeply, even in the midst of grief no other can understand, we’ll mourn loss with him, celebrate redemption beside him and thank God FOR him.
One of the most super boys we’ve ever had the privilege to know.
