Notes from a Rookie Firefighter...June 12, 2009

As I write this, I hear my 15 year old son's alarm to get up for school.

Just last week, he made the decision to go back to school for the last two weeks to return his life to some sort of normalcy, and go to therapy after school for 4 hours. This is a kid who knows what he wants.

I never told you too much about R. He wants to be a police officer. We adopted him at one day old from a tiny town near Ohio. I remember flying there in the middle of the night, alone, so that I could be in the hospital the next morning so his birthmother could leave the hospital.

Starting when he was little he wanted to be a cop. Time does fly when you measure how fast your kids grow, and just 12 years ago I can remember him finding anything he could to make a gun...sticks, anything. So much for the idea from the parent groups to not let your kids play with toy guns. Imagination is something you can't put a stop to, and we didn't even try after awhile.

I also knew early on that he would be homosexual. Or bisexual, as the kids say, which is supposedly 'in' now. We are a very accepting family, and throughout the years, the challenges we have faced raising an adopted, mixed race, gay son in a suburban area have been the reason I truly know he was meant to be with us. We could handle it.

I can't tell you how much all of your kind emails have meant to me. I do forget that I have a network of you all out there to help me get through things. I don't want to seem though like I have a litany of problems, because I really don't. We're all physically healthy, have a roof over our heads (even though we haven't paid for that roof in months), and have the philosophy - when I open a bill from a hospital, I think that's over and done with, we handled this issue.

However, I do sometimes think I am going crazy, and it's mainly because when I grew up, being the youngest of an Italian Catholic family, I was extremely sheltered and never even dated before marrying my first boyfriend. So, some of these experiences I am going through with my children I have never seen before. But then something happens like last night, and it reminds me I am where I should be, doing what I was meant to be.

My son's friend's senior prom was last night. He's two years older than my son and is here at the house alot. We even went to a fire in his basement last year. Anyway, he knew I was a bit sad that my daughter couldn't go to her prom this year and experience the once in a lifetime senior prom. So he came here with his tux in a bag, had his girlfriend meet him here, made me take a bunch of pics, and then asked me to drive him to the prom. Mind you, teenagers they are, it was a downpour and they had to be there within a half hour, and 10 minutes into the drive he remembered he left the corsage on my kitchen counter. This story is one I will never forget, ever, filing it with my other stories of how these teens seem to adopt ME.

Funny, isn't it?

Thanks for reading, time to get ready for work, and it's Friday.

Have a nice weekend everyone and thank you for your support.

Denise from New Jersey ala Eastern Long Island ala Brooklyn