Published: 12 Aug 2019

The website tutorial for the tests to become foster parents kept us grounded for almost a whole week before and after work. Not that we didn’t find other things to occupy our time, we had the list of suggestions from my coworkers to go over, some from my dads’ and “uncles”, and also suggestions made by some of Alex’s employees. We made it a rule that no talking would take place during the end of the chapter quizzes in our tutorials and that ensured at least some quiet each evening in the house (Alex’s) we were sharing.

He had asked if I was comfortable living with him in his family’s home and I assured him I was, but there were a couple of changes I thought we could make to it that would benefit us both, so one day at work, once my projects were all caught up, I worked up plans for some changes to the home we would be sharing.

Thankfully Alex loved the plans and he had a crew he could start on the reno right away, so our home was torn up for a month and his crew really did try to minimize the disruption as much as they could. Of course, we could always spend the night at my dads’ place if we had to, but it was only the last week, the week before our wedding, when work was being done on our own bedroom and bathroom that we spent a few nights in my old bedroom. Alex loved being at our house, he said it made him feel like a kid again, and to be honest, it made him randy as hell. Alex was the youngest in our household, younger than me by almost three years, and that was why we had never really known each other in school. Of course, we knew who each other was, being neighbors and all, but we were just far enough apart at that age to run in different circles.

We had decided on our local MCC church for the wedding, although neither of the two of us was all that religious, but it would accomplish a few things, one was that it would make my dads and uncles happy, and two, it was the middle of February and an outdoor wedding was just impractical for that time of year. The day of the service did start with a little snow shower, but an hour later when we came outside the sun was shining down on us, making our wedding bands shine like gold in the bright winter sun. The bronze bands had been crafted locally, and we had also gotten a neck chain for Alex to wear his ring on while he was working with tools to eliminate the risk of it getting caught and ripping his finger off.

A week later and we were back from a little trip we had taken to a great B&B in Vermont, near a ski resort, which we visited a few times during the week. Upon our return we settled into the newly renovated house Alex had been raised in. Doorways had been widened into very large openings to give the first floor a more open look and feel, kitchen cabinets had been painted, new counters and backsplashes had been installed, and a new dishwasher had been inserted under the counter by the big original farm sink. Our master bedroom now had a really big closet and the cracked hearth in front of the fireplace had been repaired. The very old tub in the bathroom was now a double shower stall and a urinal had been installed near the toilet.

The floors had been refreshed throughout and now they gleamed under the runners in the halls and on the stairs, the orientals in the rooms really stood out now. It was a great home to come back to, and we celebrated that night like teenagers in rut. Two days later we got a call that changed everything. We had an almost regular work day, I say almost because not only did I get a new house to design, but Alex got a new contract also, to build the house I had just finished the plans for before our wedding. Alex had been one of five builders to bid on that job, which was here in town, but his bid and his talks with the future homeowners had won him the job. After dinner that night we were just about to watch some TV when we got a call from the local Department of Children and Family Services.

The call was to inform us that our tests and application had been gone over that week and they told us that we were approved for fostering, as soon as a home inspection was completed. Arrangements were made for that to happen the next afternoon, as it was a Friday and we both would be able to be home for the four o’clock appointment we had all agreed upon. The social worker who came out to the house from the main office in Springfield was a nice man, maybe a bit older than us. He was impressed with the place, and how Alex’s parents had separated the house and its yard from the workshop area and the big garages where the work trucks for the construction crews were parked.

His report must have been quite favorable because on the following Wednesday we were invited to an “Open House” for prospective foster parents at the boy’s dormitory at the Springfield facility. The monthly event was held on Thursdays and if you and a child “clicked” you would be able to invite him to spend the weekend at your home. Three successful weekend visits and then there would be the possibility for permanent placement of the child in your home, adoption could follow 3 months after.

We accepted the invitation and then the nerves set in. I mean the testing and inspection was all expected. The agency’s investigation extended to people we knew in town and at our workplaces and my family, since Alex’s was all gone by then. Our financial investigation must have gone well too but now we were going to be able to put faces to the children who most needed our care, and that, my friends, is a daunting prospect. I had very little memories from back when I had been in the system, and not all of them were good, as an itch near my stump reminded me, and Alex had been an only child of older parents, so his home experience was quite different than mine. We talked about not much else through dinner and on our walk after, out in the chill night air, but it was getting warmer out in the evenings and you could tell that Spring was definitely in the air.

The next day at work I had the first meeting with my new clients to go over a rough floor plan I had drawn up, and the first of the exterior designs that had won me their business. Only a few minor changes had to be made to the rough exterior design and then we went over the proposed floor plan and all three of us made suggestions and they were hashed out and changes made to the final plan. In talking to the slightly younger couple I found out they had two adopted children, a boy and a girl, and they had first fostered them before adopting the children. Our conversation then focused on the process of first fostering and then the adoptions. They had a couple of bumps along the way which had delayed the actual adoptions, but once those were cleared up it was pretty much smooth sailing for them. All in all they said that the whole experience was good for them and their children and they highly praised the case worker they had been assigned and the staff at the DCFS facility.

The night of the actual open house we had dinner early and then drove into Springfield, wondering about the kids we were about to meet. It was sort of funny when Alex parked on the far side of the parking lot, with the now much bigger tree I had fallen out of as a child, and shattered my left leg, right in front of us. I introduced Alex to the tree, and I noticed that all the trees around the lot had their lower branches chopped off, so the chance of some child repeating my accident was greatly diminished.

Indoors, inside the entry, I showed him where I used to sit, waiting for my dads to pick me up and there at the sign out window was a clerk to sign in the visitors, so we signed in and received our name badges, well you know, those adhesive name cards you see people wearing at big corporate meetings, or conventions. I helped get Alex’s name badge on and then remembered that my cell phone was on the charger in the car, and I was expecting a call from clients that had said they wanted to see me on Friday afternoon for a very minor change they wanted to make in the plans for their new house before it all went through the process to make the building blueprints. I told Alex I had left my phone in the car, plugged into the console so I was just going out to get it. He nodded and I took off for the car at the edge of the parking lot by the abutting access road for the highway,”my” tree on the dividing tree belt.

I was crouched down over the driver’s seat unplugging my phone when I heard tires screeching to a halt, a car door opening, and then incoherent yelling and then a thud and a slammed shut door and the car peeling away from the curb. By now I was looking out the windshield and saw the car pull away, the illuminated license plate visible as it raced down the access road,”BIATCH” clearly lit for me. I was backing out of the car with my phone when I heard the whimpering from over on the other side of the tree and I ran to see what, or who, the driver had been thrown from the car that was making that noise.

I was expecting a dog or a cat, but what I came upon was a boy, a young boy curled in a fetal position and holding his knee and weeping. I crouched down near him and asked if his knee was hurt, as I could see his thin jeans were torn there and he nodded his head and I told him I thought I could help him. He tried to stand, and he was really favoring his right leg, so I picked him up and started to carry him into the dormitory. I asked his name and he told me it was Josh, I then asked if that was his mother who was driving the car and he sniffled and told me it used to be. Josh told me as I carried his little frame that she was messed up again and she wanted him gone from her for good, so she threw him out on the street. I told him I was glad she had stopped the car to do that, because otherwise he would be hurt much worse than a skinned knee and he told me he had other boo boos too. By then I had reached the doors to the dorm and Alex was waiting there for me. He opened the door for me and the look on his face was just so precious I had to chuckle, and Josh could feel me chuckling as I held him to me, and he started to laugh also.

The woman at the check in/out window came out and asked if she could help and I handed the five-year-old Josh to Alex and said that I’d be right back after introducing Josh to my husband. The woman and I went to the side of the hall and I told her what had happened, and what I saw and what Josh had told me, and she went right to the phone and called the police. Soon I was back, and I took my boys (how did that happen so fast?) to the men’s room and I cleaned Josh’s scraped knee and then blotted it dry enough I could roll his thin jean leg back down over the scrape. He thanked me for “fixing” him and he thanked Alex for holding him up for me to do it. He really was a very agreeable and polite kid.

Once back on the ground he took one of each of our hands to walk out of the men’s room and out again into the entry hall. There we were introduced to the supervisor of the facility and a nice policeman who had just arrived. Josh held onto us the whole time. He even crawled onto my lap as the nice policeman asked him some questions and then when I mentioned that he had other bruises on him the officer and the supervisor asked if I would go with them to have his injuries documented. We went to the lady’s office where I told Josh we needed to see his other boo boos and he started undressing right away, eager to show us older guys what his mother had done to him. Several snapshots later the older and newer black and blue marks, and what looked like strap welts were documented and the officer thanked Josh and left to go have a talk with his mother. Josh said he didn’t want to see her again and the supervisor told him that she didn’t think he would have to, in fact she looked to Alex and me, and I figured she thought we might have started to bond with little Josh, and we might want to care for him.

Alex looked to me, and with a nod from me, he told the woman that we thought Josh might like to come out to the country for a while. I wasn’t surprised when the woman asked us three to help ourselves to the buffet in the main living room while some paperwork was created, and she’d bring it to us as soon as possible.

We joined the others in the big room and we both helped Josh to make up a plate from the cookies and fancy breads out on the buffet and we of course loaded his plate because we would snack off this plate while we all got to know each other a bit while we waited. There was a brief interruption part way through as one of the social workers came out to talk to us and asked if we would mind taking Josh to one of their preferred pediatricians tomorrow for a physical, or would we prefer to take him to the hospital emergency room now to have it done, as it was important for this emergency placement, plus the police would need his medical report for their investigation. Alex said he thought we should get all the uncomfortable stuff out of the way so we could all enjoy the weekend, so we finished our snack and went to the emergency room with the social worker meeting us there, where there was a doctor and nurse available and waiting for us by the time we got there.

As Josh was looked over and his bruising documented again, I was interrupted by the phone in my pocket going off and I stepped out of the cubicle to answer it. The police had arrested Josh’s mother and had retrieved a couple of bags of his clothing and a few stuffed toys for him and the nice policeman from earlier asked if we could wait at the hospital for a few minutes until he could get to us with Josh’s things. I told him we were just starting so we should still be here by the time he got here. When I returned to the cubicle, they were just about to take Josh for x-rays and I told Alex that the police had gotten some of Josh’s things from his former home and would be dropping them off here sometime soon.

Josh was all giggly when they wheeled his gurney back in and the doctor came back in shortly as Josh was telling us about his ride through the halls with the nurse and the orderly. The doctor told us there were indications Josh had had some cracked bones in the past and that as of now everything but the bruising looked good, their reports would be copied and a set given to the social worker, one set to the police and one set would be given to us to take with us, as we lived out of town. Alex and I helped Josh get dressed again and then we only had to wait for a few minutes for our copy of his file and then a few more minutes out in the waiting room for the officer to appear with Josh’s belongings.

There were only two shopping bags of clothing and another of toys, not exactly what I would have expected for a five-year-old, but then he had had a mother that really didn’t care about him. Well, we did, and we were going to give the tyke a loving home. We scooped him and his bags up and returned to the car and again started for home with our newly signed emergency placement papers and a little boy to care for. By nine thirty Josh was nodding off in the back seat but we were pulling in to the property and I gathered the sleepy lad up and Alex grabbed the bags and we took our boy into the house to get him settled in the bedroom closest to ours.

By ten thirty I was putting the load of washed clothes for Josh in the dryer and Alex had hand washed the dirty stuffed toys that were in the other bag and he had them all squeezed out and drying on paper towels on the kitchen counter. He told me he thought they should be dry by the morning, but for tonight he had one of his own old Teddy Bears for Josh to sleep with. We went up to check on him and Alex had the chance to slip the fawn colored Teddy into bed beside Josh. The two of them looked so cute there that both Alex and I snapped photos on our cells of them, the bear almost as big as Josh. Josh’s light auburn hair contrasting with the stuffed bear and his little pixie face relaxed and the very hint of a grin on his face as he instinctively cuddled the bear in his sleep.

When the wash was done and dried I put the other stuffed animals into the dryer while I folded the clothing and then asked Alex to bring the couple of piles of clean clothes and put them on top of the dresser in Josh’s room while I closed up and followed with the now dry stuffed toys and I put them around the room so Josh would find them in the morning. I figured that we should have Josh help in putting the clothes in the dresser so he would know just where each item was when he needed it.

We snuggled in bed, talking about what all had gone on tonight and how Josh just seemed to have been left at our feet, so to speak. We talked about tomorrow and since it was a work day for us both, I decided it would be a lot easier for me to work a short day and to also take Josh with me, since I only had that one appointment with the couple who wanted to make just a few adjustments to their house plans, so Alex said he’d come home for lunch and eat with us and then we both would go to work and Josh would come to work with me for the afternoon, I’d call in for the morning, after all, I was the boss, and if need be the office was only a couple of hundred yards away across one field.

I woke about three in the morning and I went to check on Josh and he was tossing and turning in his double sized bed and I saw the big Teddy Bear on the floor and as soon as I placed it up on the bed against him, Josh, in his sleep, hugged the Bear to him and immediately settled down to another restful sleep, hugging the toy to him. I slipped back into our bed and hugged my own Teddy Bear and fell back to sleep also.

After breakfast, Alex smooched us both and left for work and Josh and I loaded his dresser with the clean clothes. We then shared a shower and then dressed, both of us fairly casual, and I called Amy at the office and explained that I wouldn’t be in that morning, but if something came up, I was at home and she could reach me there or on my cell, but I would be in after lunch. I thought that to help get through the morning I’d take Josh for a real tour of the house and then we’d take a walk over to meet my dads’ and the “uncles”.

Josh loved the big rooms of the house and we then put on our jackets and walked hand in hand to meet my dads’. My dads’ and Heath and Jake were all having coffee at the big kitchen table and when Josh and I walked in they were all over him in a flash, of course the granola bars and the glass of milk didn’t hurt in getting Josh comfortable with these four new men in his life. We made it home in time to start preparing our lunch (grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup) and everything was done about the time that Alex arrived for his lunch dates, as he called us. Josh was dying to tell Alex about his morning, which was full of new people and the delicious granola bars.

After lunch Alex went back to work and after we had cleaned up the kitchen, I told Josh it was time for us to go to work too. We walked toward my dads’ house but we turned down the lane toward my office building and when we arrived I tried to explain just what I and the other architects did, but what fascinated him was what Glenn, our resident model maker did, and was doing, as I showed Josh into the big model making and printing room. Before too long Glenn had Josh putting together a small house from pre-cut foam board. Josh had found something that was fun to do and a willing new friend to show him how to do it.

My clients only had one change to the exterior plans, but to them it was important, they wanted a double door entry to the front of the house which I agreed would make the moving in of large furniture pieces easier. With that done and a quick change to the building plans to accommodate the new double opening at the front entry, I took Josh around to introduce him to the others working, including Amy who fell into instant love with the little guy. Glenn was sad to miss his little helper during this time, but I told him that he and his muscle boy fiancée could do what Alex and I had done, get married and take the fostering classes. Josh and I hung around for another couple of hours and then went for a walk down to the cow barns and he got to see and pet a few live cows as the farm hands got ready for the afternoon milking. He was thrilled when I took him to the horse barn and I saddled up my horse and then picked him up and put him in the saddle before I climbed up behind him and we went for a ride up and down the lane between the grazing pastures and then over to our property where we rode between the fields Alex was renting out to local farmers.

Josh was just about incandescent by the time my dads’ and uncles joined us about a half hour later and he begged us all to race so we found a fairly wide tract between two fields and we trotted (which seemed to Josh as if we really were racing fast) and for the first time since I was a youngster I won the race with my little buddy sitting with me on the saddle. I now knew the older guys had held back to let me win in our previous races. But Josh was a gracious racer and asked if we could do it again, and I told him that maybe tomorrow we could, but right now I thought we should get dinner ready for Alex, for when he got home from work in about an hour. He said he liked Alex a lot and could he call him Dad too, and when I was able to say anything again, I told him that I thought he’d like that a whole bunch.

The dads invited us all to dinner the next night and I thanked them, as we had been going to invite them, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. We settled on five thirty for dinner time and the four of them said their goodbyes to us and rode off home and Josh and I followed to return my horse to the barn. Once my horse was groomed and put up for the night it was getting late and we held hands as we walked the path to our house where we washed up a bit and then started dinner. We had talked it over and I found that Josh had never had much more than a fast food dinner before, so I went all out and prepared pork chops, breaded and browned and then popped in the oven and we snapped some beans as the potatoes boiled in a big pan on the stovetop so they could be mashed once the chops had been roasting for a while. Josh had fun ripping lettuce leaves for a salad and just when we were near done Alex came home to a very excited boy who wanted to tell his dad just what he and his daddy had done all day.

Alex sat at the kitchen table, holding Josh on his lap facing him, and as Josh prattled on you could see the little boy animatedly talking to his dad and dad’s tears starting to run down his cheeks. I handed him a kitchen towel to use on his tears and told him that he’d get to spend tomorrow having wonderful adventures with our son, and he did. They started the day with a horseback ride while I had an errand to run and from what Josh told me after they had ridden all over the place, even stopping to pet some curious cows along the way. They then rode over to see the grandpas and uncles and they all rode for what Josh said was “all day”. Until they rode back to the grandpa’s house for lunch and then they rode again! Josh was so happy. After he had a rest after lunch, I was able to convince him that we should walk over to the horse barn with his dad and it was there I had arranged for a pony to be delivered.

The new grandpas had gotten the pony settled in and the uncles had cleaned up a set of tack that probably hadn’t been used since I had had a pony, but it had been stored properly and it sure did clean up good. We six men got the pony rigged out and Josh had an afternoon of riding lessons, all of us old guys giving hints and instruction when needed as we all rode both properties. Josh pitched right in when our ride was over, and it was time to groom the horses and the pony. He couldn’t reach very much, but the pony’s legs got a good brushing and Josh got plenty of pony kisses as he curried those legs. That added to the giggling and it seemed his pony liked hearing those giggles, as did we men.

We shared a delightful dinner with the dads and uncles and Josh got to see the bedroom I had used as a boy. He thought it was “neat” for a room filled with old stuff. He did see a few things that caught his interest, a few trucks and graders I used to play with out in the yard, and some small toy cars. He looked enviously at them and without having to say anything Alex followed behind him putting those items in a couple of bags for us to take home with us. Josh asked what he was doing, and he said that he was making sure the boy we loved had what we could give him, even if it was old stuff. Josh rewarded him with a big hug and then he ran over to me and asked if it was OK that he played with my toys. I told him it sure was and if he needed any help playing with them to just let me know and I or his dad would help him. That got daddy a big hug too and I hugged the little guy to me as we all went down to say our goodnights to the granddads and uncles.

We spent part of Sunday after church shopping to fill in the missing parts of Josh’s wardrobe. He had some worn out clothes that might be good for play, but he was going to be attending daycare/kindergarten in a week or so and he’d need some sturdier clothes for that, as well as a pair or two of sneakers and maybe a pair of sturdy boots for riding and running around outside the yard where the grounds of both farms was a bit rougher and the paths not paved. It seemed that he had never gone clothes shopping before, so everything from church to shopping was new to him that day.

The next day, Monday, we had a visit from the same guy from the DCFS in Springfield who had inspected our home for the agency before Alex and I were approved for fostering. He was pretty early, but Alex had already gone to work, but I wasn’t going in to my office until about eleven and Josh was coming with me again. Mr. Young was just checking to see if all was going well for Josh and once, he met him he could easily see that the lad was settling nicely. Josh was proud to show him his room when I asked him to, and I admit I stood out in the hall out of sight as Josh gave this nice man a tour of his room and pointed out his “new” old toys from his daddy’s old room and the new footwear and clothing he had been given yesterday. I went back downstairs as it sounded like Mr. Young wanted to talk to me privately as he asked Josh if he would be alright playing in his room for a couple of minutes as he talked to his daddy downstairs, and Josh told him that was alright.

Mr. Young told me that Josh seemed to be coping very well with us and he hoped that the suddenness of his coming to stay with us wasn’t proving to be hard on us. I told him it just seemed to be the right thing to do and that we had fallen for him as soon as we had met him. He then told me that the mother would be in court this afternoon and that with all the evidence against her they expected her to be incarcerated for at least ten or more years. The investigation at their apartment had revealed she was a drug user and the furnished apartment they had been living in was paid for by her “gentlemen friends”. He further explained that her parental rights had been revoked over the weekend. He then produced from his briefcase a sheaf of papers which he was pleased to tell me were the permanent placement documents, and that under the circumstances the agency was willing to forego the three-week trial period and grant this exception under the circumstances. He also had two checks, one for buying the essentials for Josh, and the other for the care and support for Josh, which would be a monthly check to be mailed to us. I handed back the first check, saying we hoped the agency would find a way to use the money for those boys still at the dorm, and I told him that he knew our financial situation, and we didn’t need or want their money for taking care of the boy we loved already, and I handed him back the monthly support check as well.

He thanked us for our generosity and after Josh had a chance to say goodbye to him, he left. We then went out to see how Josh’s “new” trucks and cars worked in the yard and about ten thirty we got cleaned up and into better clothes and we went to work. Josh had a lot to tell his new buddy, Glenn, in the room set aside for Glenn to make the models in and run off the large blue prints. Josh had his little model to work on while Glenn went about his normal routine and I had another new client interview to conduct.

I kept things varied as much as possible for him during that first full week, sometimes taking him to work with me in the morning, sometimes he went riding with his grandpas. Sometimes I took him places in the morning and we went to work together in the afternoon. Then came the beginning of the next week and it was time for Josh to start daycare, which in this case was a kindergarten class at the elementary school in town. Yeah, there were other day care places in town, but this way he’d be in the school where he would be attending first grade the next school year, alongside several of his classmates. He took to it like a duck does to water. He told me every day when he got to the office (his grandads picked him up every day) about his school and the other kids and what they did during their school day. Either Alex or I walked him in from the school parking lot every day, depending on our schedules and who had time that morning to drop him off, but we figured this way we were totally involved, well, as much as possible, in his schooling and it would be a bit different after the summer when he would be attending first grade at the school. By then he would be six and a half and be able to ride the elementary school bus to and from the school. He only had about three months of the kindergarten class, but it was definitely worth it. He had a chance to be around other children during the school week, he learned the basics as far as the structured parts of the day, just as first grade was set up, with a certain set time for math, reading, spelling and so on.

When we’d read to him at night, he was able to follow along and even point out specific words to us before we had even read them out loud to him. I didn’t know at that point if he was going to be a really smart kid, but he at least showed us he was paying attention to his teacher. It was about one month after Josh had started at the school when Mr. Young called and told Alex and me that he had taken our case and was now our official caseworker. He also let us know that Josh’s mother had been found guilty on all charges after her trial and that she would be spending at least twelve of the fifteen years she had been sentenced to in prison before she would be eligible for parole. He suggested that if we were interested in adopting Josh we should probably get with our lawyer and start the process, it wouldn’t be too long before the three months waiting period would be over. He told us that the agency would not be opposed to our adopting Josh, in fact we had just about taken over his care from the moment he had been tossed on their lawn that first night.

Alex and I had contacted a lawyer who handled family law matters the first week Josh had been with us, and now I called to let her know that I had spoken with Mr. Young and it was a go on the adoption we had filled in the forms for that first month Josh had been with us. Yes, we knew early on that Josh was our son, even if he had literally fallen into my lap that first night.

Everything went well for his adoption. We had further visits from Mr. Young and other investigations done on us, and the day we all appeared in family court was nerve wracking, but with the granddads and uncles with us we made it through the surprisingly short procedure (one hour), and left with our legal son, Josh.

I was just a kid and the whole experience with my dads’ bringing me to a farm was just so different from anything I had known previously, but these big guys were so kind to me, even the two guys who lived across the hall from my room, Jake and Heath. Dick and Brad told me they were training them to run the farm one day and that I should just treat them like Uncles, so that is what I did, even calling them Uncle Heath and Uncle Jake. They really liked that, so I made it a point to do it. When my dads’ adopted me, they had a big party at the farm and a lot of people came, both the other farmers they dealt with, and other folks from church. I felt so good and I saw how proud my dads’ were and I remember telling myself that one day I would make a kid feel the same way; loved, protected, and safe.

There wasn’t a day that Alex and I regretted bringing Josh home with us. Yes, there was added cleaning, added wash to do, and working out his care during the day in the summer months. Of course, being self-employed we had some leeway with this and having the dads and uncles just next door helped a lot. And then when the summer was over and he was happily back in school, starting first grade, we missed him greatly as we both watched the clock to see when he’d be dropped off by the school bus and he would again be our excited little boy, excited to be able to tell us about his school day and everything he had learned that day. Sometimes before, and sometimes after dinner we would all three ride, Josh and his pony usually leading the way, but we often had the grandpas and uncles with us and they added even more of an audience for Josh to regale with his school tales.

Alex had another of our projects to build, the clients liking that he was a local builder and thus reachable without having to wait to talk to him in person if the need arose. The fact that we were married and lived not that far from my office had never come into play in his getting the contracts he did from our clients, in fact his bids were sometimes higher than other bidders were, but his were totally justified and totally explained to the customers, and he had a stellar reputation in the area. He made a suggestion once that he ought to move his office into mine, to save on the travel time between appointments, and it got me to thinking that maybe we should combine our offices, maybe not blending them, but maybe right alongside each other. My business relies on good communications with not only our clients/customers, but with the builder who would make our creations come to fruition.

His building business relied on detailed plans and design details that they could follow to a T and thus make the client happy. We started off talking about this in a somewhat joking manner, but within two months we were adding his business office to the farther end of our building. Yes there was a door that opened from one office to the other, but it was cleverly disguised by a swinging bookcase on his side and was not used except by Alex and me for some after-hours fun and for communication when Josh was with his grandparents, or when we were each working on something we couldn’t take home with us and we then left the secret door open so Josh could find either one of us if we had him with us.

Alex and his secretary were the usual ones in his office space, but occasionally he had some of his crew in for meetings, especially at the beginning of a build so that everyone understood the plans as they had been drawn up. The trucks for his crews and their workshops and crew rooms(lockers, shower rooms, a lunch room) were all still at our home property, an arrangement that made things easier on my dads’ and uncles, since except for the office building and our parking pad the rest of their farm was undisturbed and nothing interfered with the “home farm” as we called it. Alex’s property was slowly being rented out to my uncles, more acres added every year, for both grazing and as fields to grow crops needed for the cash crop animals they still maintained, primarily the milk cows and beef cattle.

Just after the fourth of July the year we adopted Josh we got a call from Mr. Young, our caseworker who had handled Josh’s case after the court had stripped his birth mother of her rights. He asked how things were going and how we had settled in after Josh’s adoption, but I have to admit that I got a bit excited when he asked if he could come out and talk to us soon.

Alex then piped up and said that we were available just about any time he was, but if this involved an emergency placement, why didn’t he just bring the boy out to us and we’d take it from there to see if we could help in any way. Mr. Young sighed a brief sigh of relief, but then asked if he remembered right, that we still had two empty bedrooms? Without thinking I answered we did and then it sunk in what he had asked, and I blurted out if that meant he had two boys that needed our help. Alex was chuckling and said that I sounded too eager and Mr. Young told us he’d be out to us in about an hour or so, he had one stop to make before coming to our house.

There is more to family than just being married. Let Art know you are reading this story: ArtWest at CastleRoland dot Net.

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