That night, Billy couldn't sleep. He was thinking about what Mom had told them. Finally he went downstairs. Granddad was sitting at the table having a glass of milk with chocolate cake in it.
“Why the long face?” Granddad asked.
“Mommy told us about our birth-mother today,” Billy said. “Why did she leave us at the hospital? Didn’t she love us?”
“I think she did,” Granddad said. “Sometimes the hardest decision a birth-mother has to make is to allow someone else to raise her children.”
“Mom said that our birth mother might not have had enough money to take care of us,” Billy said.
Granddad nodded. “Some people in your birth country are very poor right now. Life is hard for them, and it takes a lot of money to care for a child.”
“Mom said that our mother may not have been very old,” Lisa said. She had been standing at the foot of the stairs, listening. “Mom said that she mght have only been a teenager, maybe sixteen or seventeen.”
“That sounds pretty old to me,” Billy said.
“It seems old to you,” Granddad replied, “but really it’s not. Teenagers sometimes aren’t ready to care for children, especially if there's no one to help them.”
Granddad poured glasses of milk for each of them.
“I like babies,” Lisa said, scraping some icing off the cake plate. “They’re cute and funny.”
“But babies take a lot of work,” Granddad remarked. “And you have to change diapers and get up a lot during the night to feed them.”
Lisa wrinkled her nose.
Billy’s eyes were still filled with tears. “If Mommy and Daddy died, or didn’t have any money, would we be adopted by someone else?”
“No,” Granddad said, giving him a hug. “Most people have families to help them. If your parents got sick or died, we would take care of you, or you might want to live with Aunt Carol, Uncle Tommy and Sara. You wouldn’t have to go to live with another family.”
“It feels strange, being adopted. I’m not like everyone else.” Billy said, sadly.
“Lots of people adopt children or are adoptees,” Granddad said.
He went into the living room and brought back the oldest photo album. “This is my grandfather, Samuel. His parents died when he was just a little boy, and so he and his sisters went to live with their aunt and uncle. They grew up with their cousins.”
“I didn’t know that,” Lisa said.
“Lots of famous people were adopted as children,” Granddad replied. “Now you two need to finish your milk and go back to bed. We have a busy day ahead of us tomorrow.”
PREVIOUS PAGE NEXT PAGE