When I was little, one thing I enjoyed doing was to sit with my grandparents and go through old photographs of our family. They had these yellowing photo albums with black and white photos, arranged in no particular order. Colored photos trickled in over time, too.
I did not really want kids. It’s not that I don’t like kids - I loved working at camp every summer. It’s that I feared having that responsibility. To be in charge of someone else’s wellbeing and well, everything, did not sound awesome.
But I’m also a helper. Whenever a friend or well, mostly anyone, needs help, I’m usually one to show up. (For example, today my neighbor called asking for a shovel because her son’s pet snake died. I showed up with the shovel and helped conduct what felt like a mini-funeral.)
Somehow I helped us into adopting a kid.
Now that we can see the light at the end of the adoption tunnel, the reality that we not only have a son, but someone who will carry on the Bland name, is sinking in.
Last night, as I laid in bed, I thought about those photo albums. I don’t think I absorbed much about who those people were from the photos, but I know they’re related to me. Now, it’s up to me to sit with Bradley and tell him about those photos. The Blands have a long history in America, not to mention the Harts, the Timberlakes, McKenneys, etc. And while he isn’t a Bland by blood, I want him to know the people that form our family tree that helped grow the family to where we are now.
I also know he will want to know about his biological families’ history. Or maybe he won’t.
It is really interesting, wild, even, to think about a family’s history completely disappearing. No one to share the impact a family had on this earth. It happens all the time. But I hope that I can remember just enough information about the photos we have to share the story of the Blands with its newest member.