by David Marin
[Editor's note: so a few weeks ago, a manuscript came over the virtual EAP transom, with a query letter–was EAP interested in publishing the story of David and his three kids? After the second chapter, I was in tears, and the answer was yes, of course. I asked David to introduce himself to everyone at EAP and explain a little about how he decided to become the single dad of not one, but three, children. So here's the introduction. EAP meet David. David meet EAP. And here's his answer…]
In 2005 I was the only single Caucasian male in the United States to adopt three minority children – a delightful, thin, trio of witness protection program siblings abandoned by fieldworkers and felons in Santa Barbara County. EAP will publish our story in October, 2011.
My path to fatherhood was like crossing a river on the backs of crocodiles. Born in the South, raised in the Midwest, educated in the Rockies, and employed on the West coast, I ran out of contiguous land and excuses for being divorced and childless at age 40. I looked in the mirror and saw a Y chromosome version of the women I read about in Newsweek twenty years ago who put career ahead of having children and looked back too late, wondering why.
A media executive with a law degree, I’d led a pleasant, shallow life punctuated by golfing (three holes-in-one), skydiving, and rescuing olive ridley sea turtles in the Costa Rican surf. Thinking I’d meet and marry the mother of our children, I had no intention of adopting. Then I learned the United States had half a million children in foster care. California, my home state, had 98,000. 19% were Hispanic, my hidden half, concealed by genes.
I attended adoption classes and, aided by a translator, met my children in a foster home 75 feet from the strawberry fields of Santa Maria. The thunderbolt struck. Meeting children I could love and raise, especially if I helped them avoid my mistakes (arrested three times before I was thirteen and suspended from school at least 10 times) crystallized my feelings. When I learned no one wanted them, the mission was clear. When I saw dimpled smiles and fell in love, life had meaning, and it was not too late.
People ask, “Why Hispanic?” “Why three?” and “Why single?”
Freckled with red hair, I’m the son of a blonde Missouri mother and a light-skinned Puerto Rican father. I often travelled to visit my Spanish-speaking relatives and I’m comfortable in that culture, even if I didn’t openly embrace it because a.) there were too many Puerto Rican jokes out there and b.) as a boy I saw no successful, nationally recognized Puerto Ricans outside of Chong and Cheech–also a Marin. A therapist would say adopting Hispanic children is my way of saying sorry to myself, it’s okay to be who you are.
Why three as a single parent? When I was seven my father died of melanoma cancer, leaving my mother the single parent of five children, ages one, three, five, seven, and nine. Single parenting several children wasn’t an experiment for me, it was the limit of my experience. My parenting gender bending ability came from my mother. My siblings and I did not think of her as the mom and the dad like my children called me when they were younger – I got Mother’s Day cards they made at school – but she showed us that a woman can work the job and raise children, and that the stereotypical household was down the block if there and at all.
My challenge was that men are not traditional adopters. While 33% of foster-care adoptions are to single females, only 1% are to single men–and I bet they rounded up. When I met my children, ages two, four and six, I nested, collecting string and shiny objects. I bought sippy cups, diapers, car seats and little forks like all mothers do. When I spotted an afternoon peer group of new mothers sitting on blankets under a San Luis Obispo oak, I wondered if they’d let me join. I’m blind to gender and race, couldn’t care less, and invite people to join me. It’s anarchy according to Fox News, but with so many children frozen in foster care, it’s a good cause.
Men can love, can be patient, supportive and multi-tasking, just the same as women. Like the time I had pizza delivered to a hospital emergency room while waiting for the teenage (?) doctor to staple the gash in a five-year-old forehead. I see men at the park playing catch or flying kites with their children. The instinct to parent is gender-neutral. Men yearn the same as women for love. And if they are self aware they know they have to give what they want or it’s not fair.
I held my own with the kids, but we had challenges. My children were homeless, ate pet food, and they did not like the police or social workers, who they referred to as “the robbers” for taking them from their home and installing them in foster care. Over and over. There were social workers opposed to me adopting my children, a boss opposed to me adopting (I sued), and a law firm that sought revenge for the suit by interfering with the adoption process. Their mother returned and tried to trick me. I had great challenges reuniting my children with their two older sisters; and those challenges continue.
My joys are simple. When I got my children, I loved smelling two year old baby hair, holding hands across the parking lot, carrying a toddler on my shoulders, and listening to the kids sleep soundly in a living room slumber party, arms wrapped around each other. Today, my children are happy, healthy and good. Led by a nanny, they’ve spent many years on the honor roll. We're a normal family. We have a dog–an abandoned Pointer, thinner than my children were, a 48-pound stripe. We take him every day to the park to fetch. If it’s raining we wear hats. If it’s dark we’re alone under the light.
I’m pleased to have met Tod and thrilled with the energy she will put into the book. We have not settled on a title. If you have an idea, please share it. The winner gets a thank you, or what the heck, if you want I’ll use your name as a character in the book [Editor's note: if you name the book, the least we can do is give you a signed copy]. All of the names in the book are changed except mine because after I adopted my children a Social Security Administration worker told me they may be related to a world famous drug dealer. So, with your name and mine there will be only two of us the bad people could identify and I’m leaving town soon…
Thanks for reading.
David