“Dad, did you feel weird in Africa?”

The question from my 12-year-old son, Yosef, caught me off guard. My face must have told him so.

“You know,” he continued, “because you were white?”

Maybe it was because I was jet-lagged and tired of chasing my 2-year-old daughter around the gate area during our flight delay. Or, maybe it’s because I rarely think about race even though my son is black and the rest of our family is white.

We adopted Yosef nearly 11 years ago from Ethiopia, and our recent trip to visit my wife’s relatives in the nation of Senegal would be his first back to Africa since.

Although we weren’t going to Yosef’s home country or connecting with his birth family (we hope to do both someday), I assumed our trip would be emotional for him. However, I never gave the racial elements of our journey much thought. I also never gave a thought to the fact I would be a minority in his homeland as he is in his adopted one.

While others might notice Yosef is black and his family is white when they see us, in my mind, I’m just Dad and Yosef is, very simply, my eldest son. Questions like the one he asked, though, confirm that the issues of race and being a minority weigh on him more than me.

His question was serious, and I was unprepared to answer. I pulled out my classic trick – I questioned the questioner to buy myself some time.

“What do you mean, buddy? Do you think I acted like I was uncomfortable?”

“No,” he said. “It’s just that you’re never in places where there aren’t more white people than black people. I just wondered if you felt different. I dunno.”

As his voice trailed off, I said the only thing that popped into my exhausted head: “At first it was different – not bad, just not like home. But, I got used to it and, by the end of the trip, I don’t think I much noticed.”

Yosef flashed his signature, toothy smile. “That’s what I thought,” he said.

I nodded, gave him a fist bump and headed toward the escalator to — again — retrieve my rogue 2-year-old.

From the instance I walked away to now, weeks later, I have regretted my answer to Yosef that day. Boy, did I miss an opportunity.

Yosef, I’m sorry.

After all, it’s easy for me to be dismissive of race. I was able to leave the awkward feeling of being a minority behind when Delta flight 407 left Dakar, Senegal, at 1 a.m. on March 28. That was it – back to home and normal for me.

But Yosef can’t do that. When he is home with us, his family and friends, he’ll never be able to.

And, even scarier, he’s turning to me to help deal with that through curious questions that I choose to answer only at the surface.

Worse yet, my answers might suggest to Yosef that eventually he won’t even notice that he’s black – that the best defense may be simply getting used to it.

Yes, I failed.

But, I will not give up.

So, how do I get better?

I could go back to all of the things our pre-adoption classes taught us about raising a child cross-culturally – surrounding them with acquaintances of the same background, finding mentors and participating in events aimed at his cultural heritage.

These things are easy. They only require more effort for us to put into practice. I got that!

There is harder work to be done, though.

I need to change my mindset. I need to be more sensitive to racial issues that will always surround my house. I should welcome conversations with all of my kids about race. I need to coax Yosef – who’d rather be playing Xbox than having a heart-to-heart with me – to talk about times when he feels different more freely.

I plan to do that hard, sometimes uncomfortable work.

It’s my job to make sure Yosef is comfortable in his own beautiful, black skin.

And, as we more openly talk about the colors of our home, we’ll acknowledge the disparity between our skin tones while focusing on the absolute uniformity in the color of blood that runs through us and the heart that allows that to be.

That same heartbeat transcends our surface-level differences, compels us to action and provides me the second chances I need when I screw up.

I did feel differently while in Africa and, I’m glad that Yosef’s question made me take notice. minority minority 

Darren W. Carter received his birthday wish and then some, and so did some children in need.

Carter, an organizer with our Cleveland Dads Group, asked friends and followers on Facebook in December to donate a backpack or duffel bag filled with clothes, toiletries or personal supplies to him in lieu of presents last month. His goal: collect 48 bags with gear to donate to a foster care organization to mark his 48th birthday.

Here’s why:

Carter and his wife, Theresa, have been working with the local chapter of the national nonprofit Specialized Alternatives for Families and Youth of America (SAFY) for the past few years, and are in the process of adopting a child through the group. What he has seen during that time got him thinking about how he could make a difference in some other foster children’s lives.

“When a child is taken from a given situation, the child is often given a black trash bag to put some belongings in,” he said in an interview with City Dads Group. “Most children are coming from a traumatic situation and now they have to put a little of their life in a trash bag. That seemed more traumatic to me. And if they are moved on in the system, they often carry that same trash bag.”

Carter asked for donations so the organization could instead give children something better to help them as they move into a new situation. As a result of his month-long campaign, mostly online, he and his wife last week were able to donate 97 bags and other supplies — more than double his goal.

“I’m overwhelmed at what you all did for us,” he said in a Facebook video thanking donors. “So overwhelmed at what you did for all those foster children.”

Ohio has more than 15,000 children living in its foster care system, a number that has been steadily on the rise in recent years in part because of the ongoing opioid crisis, according to media reports.

This is not the first year Carter has asked others to make donations for his birthday. In past years, he has asked for others to make monetary donations to suicide prevention groups, he said, having himself attempted to take his own life twice.

Here is a video Cater made of his family making the donation:

Editor’s note: To mark the conclusion of National Adoption Awareness Month, guest columnist Tobin Walsh writes about his (and every) family’s worries about such a life-changing decision.

When I thought about adopting a child, my list of reasons about why I couldn’t began like this:

1. Money
2. Family impact
3. Time
4. Energy
5. Work

When we entered an adoption process close to 11 year ago, we were also too busy, too broke, too tired, too everything. But, still we did it.

Our lives were forever changed.

As I sit in my office today, re-reading that list, I quickly realize that it hasn’t changed much.

I’m guessing others have similar mental lists if they’ve ever considered fostering or adoption. Most of those lists, like mine, end up filed away for another, not-so-busy station in life.

Somewhere, though, there is a child who hopes someone can eventually see past the hurdles that leaves our lists tucked away.

Somewhere there is a child whose struggles put mine to shame – a child whose obstacles are far more monumental, dire and immediate.

Somewhere there is a child spending much of his or her day waiting and worrying about what’s next: the next meal, or the next home he will be placed into, the next time she will see Mom, Dad or Grandma.

Somewhere there is a child who wonders whether there will be another next.

Yes, somewhere there is a child, and that breaks my heart and leaves my list rather inconsequential.

And, in this somewhere, these children have very simple needs – to be “normal,” to be loved, to be part of a family, to have someone to help with homework, to have a little sister to fight with, to play on a soccer team.

Somewhere there is a child who doesn’t want you to save him or her because, in fact, this child has done nothing wrong. These children who wait just want a chance.

There are too many of these waiting, worrying kids — an estimated 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system today.

That figure makes me sad.

My list of why I can’t (or won’t) help, makes me sick.

And, for me, the tug between life’s unending list of responsibilities and the pull of the need that I know exists in the foster and adoption systems is paralyzing.

I’m so glad that such paralysis didn’t exist for me a decade ago.

Our adoption story

Adoption formed my family in 2007 when we adopted my oldest son, Yosef, from Ethiopia. I remember so much about that time – some things fondly, others more solemnly:

• We still have the banner my family members used to welcome us home.
• I remember putting Yosef’s last diaper on as we boarded a flight in Washington, D.C., the last of three flights to home and our 20^th (and last) diaper on a 16-hour journey.
• The honk of the car horn as our driver ripped through the towns on the Ethiopian countryside as we traveled to meet Yosef’s birth mother still rings in my head.
• I fight back tears as I recall the sorrow of his birth mom not making it to meet us that day (we heard that she’d mistakenly been there the day before).

When I think about our adoption, I recall about 99 percent joy and 1 percent pain.

I certainly cannot empty the pool of pain, but I can choose to swim in the deep end of joy on most days.

Families of adoption can do so only because, at some point, we put aside our lists – the notes of all the practical things that made fostering or adopting seem a far-off commitment that we couldn’t make.

My personal “somewhere” was Ethiopia – a long distance from my home and an even longer way from my ability to think about adopting or fostering again.

That time and place feel so far away until about 4:30 each weekday afternoon.

That is the time Yosef comes home from middle school, parks his bike and says, “Hey, Dad!”

He smiles and that is enough.

Yes, my list is still there, still filed away – just not important anymore.

Yosef is my somewhere child.

And, somewhere there is a child that can save you.

+  +  +

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tobin Walsh writes the blog The Good-Bad Dad, and is an aspiring author and speaker. The Florida resident is a father of five. You can follow him on Twitter or Facebook, or contact him directly at thegoodbaddad@yahoo.com.

Editor’s Note: City Dads Group is proud to occasionally feature writing from members of The Handsome Father, a support community that helps connect, prepare and inspire gay fathers. In this piece, Patrick Roth writes about letting his new husband into his daughter’s life.

I was a single parent during my daughter’s preschool years. It was a period of transition for us. We moved from the West Coast to the Midwest, contracted to build our first house and learned to live with the new dynamic of single dad and his little girl. I can remember tucking her in, reading bedtime stories and kissing her goodnight, only to wake the next morning to find a head of curly blonde hair on the pillow next to me. She would sneak in, ninja-like, in the middle of the night to crawl in bed with Daddy.

During that time, I was so focused on being a father that I didn’t give much thought to having a partner. I had learned to be content being single, was thrilled being a dad and totally absorbed in our daily routine. As these things tend to happen, I found THE guy when I wasn’t looking. He wasn’t looking for a partner either, and certainly not for an instant family, so naturally we fell for each other.

He knew I had a daughter from the beginning, but he didn’t meet her until he and I started to get close. I was very careful who I allowed in my child’s life. When they did meet, he was introduced as “Daddy’s friend.” She actually called him “Friend” for the first year or so. I knew he had potential because of how much they adored each other right away. Still, he didn’t spend the night until she asked if he wanted to come for a sleepover.

When we met, I had my own home and he had his. We were each established, stable and content with our lives. Neither of us wanted a “let’s live together” relationship and I wasn’t about to move someone in and let my daughter get attached to them unless I thought it was forever. We agreed that if we were to live together, it would only be if we decided to get married and commit our lives to each other. This was around the time that Canada legalized same-sex marriage. We married in a park in Vancouver with our adorable little flower girl at our side.

Pops enters the picture

Still, for the first few years together, she was MY daughter. While he was a fully committed and involved stepfather, all major decisions about her where mine to make. Even after she began calling him Pops, I had her long-term happiness and stability to think about. In my will, she would go and live with my mother if anything happened to me. At the time, she had known Grandma all her life, but Pops for only a couple of years. We knew that eventually it would be better for her to stay with him, but there were no set guidelines for when that would be.

After several years as a family, Pops asked to adopt her and officially be her parent. Coincidentally, the court date was set for the same day as our wedding anniversary. I remember him looking at me and saying “you realize this means you’ll have to start letting me make decisions for her too, right?” He’d tell you I still struggle with that.

We are 12 years into Pops being in our daughter’s life, more than twice as long she was alive before they met. We are completely and legally a family. He has all the same rights and responsibilities of a father as I do, but if I’m being completely honest, I will always think of her as my daughter. The time spent when it was just the two of us left a permanent and particular mark on my heart. I can never fully let go of that.

Now our family is even bigger. Pops and I jointly adopted a son last year. Even though I look back at my time as a single parent with warm memories of special times spent with Daddy’s little girl, I can’t imagine how I could have made it through the last 12 years without her Pops. I would certainly not have a son if not for him. His strength, compassion and commitment have been lifesavers for me and our daughter in so many ways.

That’s a funny thing about the human heart. No matter how full of love it is, there is always room for more. Me and my daughter became us and our daughter. Then it became us and our children.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Patrick Roth became a father in 1998. He lives in Austin with his family — husband Wade, daughter Julia and son Cephren.

Many people ask us, a pair of gay men, how our son, Max, was conceived. It’s a rather personal question that some parents would understandably decline to answer. We usually don’t mind it, because we see it as an opportunity to inform them about the wonderful ways that families can come together outside of the norm.

Of course, some people ask in more articulate ways than others.

While some may understandably ask if Max was adopted, others have simply blurted out, “Where did you get it from?” I’m always tempted to reply: “They’re a blue light special this week at K-mart—hurry before they sell out!” I once replied that Max was born in Georgia, and the person assumed I meant Georgia as in the former Soviet republic! Until recently, Russia was a popular country for international adoptions. (To see why it isn’t anymore, recall this disheartening story). I now make sure to say Atlanta, Georgia.

But regardless of how people ask the question, my answer always winds up with me bragging about Max’s surrogate mother, Christie, in one respect or another.

There are many reasons why we brag about Christie. First, there’s a lot to brag about. Max is a lucky boy to get half of his genetics from her. She is both beautiful and super smart. She has two master’s degrees, one in the sciences, and she is an AP chemistry teacher. Max can thank his lucky stars for her prowess in the sciences because neither Stewart nor I are math or science whizzes. She is also incredibly driven, which is another trait that we hope Max emulates. For example, our journey almost ended before it even began, if it hadn’t been for Christie. We were having trouble finding a doctor to perform the IUI (intrauterine insemination) in the Atlanta area for two men. There weren’t many doctors who performed it for infertile straight couples and finding one of those in the Deep South who didn’t mind that we were gay was even more challenging. It was Christie, after much persistence, who found a doctor to perform the procedure. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that it turned out the doctor was Jewish and originally from New York!

There’s another reason we like to brag about Christie. There is a common misperception that traditional surrogates aren’t known for having great looks or intelligence. When we met with some surrogacy agencies to see if we wanted to work with them, we mentioned that we were also considering traditional independent surrogacy. They told us point blank that we were not going to find what they thought was a “quality person” to do traditional surrogacy; and, that we were especially not going to find such a person online. They warned us that a surrogate found that way would likely not be college educated, would be from a different class level, and therefore would be hard to relate to!

We feel that the agencies (not that there aren’t pros to using them, which is beyond the topic of this post) really push this incorrect stereotype because it scares infertile couples into thinking they need to sign up with them and pay for an expensive egg donor, which then leads to having to pay for expensive IVF treatments to implant the donor’s egg into the surrogate. Given that this is what couples exploring surrogacy are often told, it is not surprising that when we met other couples planning to have children via surrogacy, they would raise their eyebrows when we said we were not working with an agency and were on a journey with a traditional surrogate.

So another reason we brag about our surrogate to anyone who asks about our story is to debunk the stereotype that prevails about traditional surrogates and carriers. We’ve come to learn that, in reality, traditional surrogates are as beautiful, talented, and smart as any other women out there, and on top of that are extraordinarily selfless and courageous. We talk to a lot of couples (and even some singles) looking to start their family through surrogacy. We tell them all about Christie not only because we’re so proud to have her as Max’s surromom, but also because we hope to open their eyes to the fact that independent traditional surrogacy is a real option for them, and that they aren’t sacrificing a bit—genetically or otherwise—by pursuing that route. We don’t think that the agencies adequately convey this message, so we feel like we have to, as a counterbalance. Because if we had listened to the naysayers, Stewart and I would have lost out on the son, and the surromom, of a lifetime.

About the author

Jacob Drill lives with his husband, Stewart, and young son Max in NYC. Follow his adventures as a gay daddy at his blog, Gaddy Daddy.