“He’s such a lucky boy.”
Baby and I have been stopped by a well meaning town resident who I vaguely know. He’s not the first to say this to us.
“We think we’re the lucky ones,” I say. This is not the first time I’ve answered this way.
For now, I can hate that phrase – He’s such a lucky boy – but it doesn’t yet do any damage to baby’s psyche. One day, though, it will.
The truth is that I don’t see baby’s life as lucky. Being born in a country that is so disproportionately poor and resource-starved to parents who were so poor and resource-starved themselves that they could not raise him (we know a little more about baby’s story than I am implying in the previous sentence but out of respect for baby being the keeper of his story, we are holding that private until we are able to share it with him, and he is able to decide if he’d like to share it and with whom) actually feels to me like anything but luck.
Baby’s life, to me, though, shows me what faith is – faith in something greater than ourselves and faith in other people. Think of a mother who has given birth to this beautiful boy who she, of course, loves with all her heart. Think of the challenge you must be facing in your life to make the decision she makes. Think of the wisdom she has to know that love, sometimes, means not physically holding on – a wisdom I, the girl who holds on too long, could never have. Think of the faith she has to know that the right family will be waiting for him. No, sir, how our baby’s life has evolved is not borne of luck. It came alive when a woman that I admire to my core made a decision based on faith, based on a knowing deep within her, based on a stark assessment of her life and the injustice of this world, based on what might look like hopelessness to some but what I believe is really hopefulness. I don’t know how to dramatically reconcile the poverty of this world; it is what I most wish I were able to do. It wasn’t luck that brought us together. I know that for sure. And though I can’t yet articulate all of it in the way that I wish: I know that baby coming into our lives, our coming into baby’s life is part of something bigger than all three of us.
