By Madeleine Melcher
I always knew I would adopt. Not in an intentional “I’m going to adopt” kind of way. You see, I was adopted and as I have likened it before, knowing I was adopted was always as normal to me as having a belly button-- It was just always there.
I was fourteen months old when the nice man from the agency rolled up to my parents’ apartment building in Germany. I was delivered to my parents in a yellow Mercedes that day. “I saw her and I just knew she was for you” he told them in broken English, when he called the day before, to let them know I would be theirs. “Theirs”. That word alone would set some adoptees in a tailspin, but for me it is a word of love, of belonging. You see, they were MINE, too. FAMILY. It is the strongest of connections and for me that did not require biology.
Ever since I can remember, I have loved the mother that kissed my boo-boos, helped with science projects and dealt with my “teen girl hormones”. The mother that, until the day she left this earth, thought of my sister and me first and always. Isn’t that the way it is supposed to be? Loving your children with all of your heart, with no thought to DNA?
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