Spurgeon's Cigar

This is the fourth and final part of my adoption narrative. Part 1 is here , part 2 is here , and part 3 is here . We arrived a few minutes before the agreed-upon time. You may be wondering where one goes to pick up a newly-adopted child---McDonald’s, of course. We sat down in the middle of the restaurant so that we could keep an eye out through all the windows. To my right, in a booth against a wall, sat an elderly couple. It had to have been 90 degrees outside, but they were sipping piping hot coffee. They were positioned to watch The O’Reilly Factor on the elevated television set. The old man was pre-occupied with killing flies. Apparently, Nacogdoches has suffered a fly-infestation this year due to the mild winter, and this determined man with a high-sittin’ cap was determined to exert dominance over the noxious creatures. Armed only with a napkin, and an unbridled sense of determination, the old man destroyed his prey. His face lit up more than Ralph Macchio when he caught ...

Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here . The following day Faye (one of my law partners) and I called Katrina to come up with a game plan. Faye said she would drive down to Nacogdoches the following day to speak with Katrina and the birth mother and try to talk the birth mother into relinquishing her rights in my favor. Tish and I prayed again. Thursday I had a trial in Rusk, Texas. It was a little fender-bender case. My client was the spitting image of Eddie Murphy in “A Vampire in Brooklyn,” and at lunch told us that the plaintiff is rumored to have had an oedipal relationship with his mother, but he didn’t want to gossip. The trial went well, and I was on my way back to Tyler, curious as to how Faye’s meeting with the birth mother was going, but not really believing a woman would agree to give us a child, sight-unseen. Just as I was getting into Tyler, Tish called to tell me that Faye was driving back from Nacogdoches with an Affidavit of Relinquishment, and the child was,...

Fourteen months prior to that episode two important events occurred: Tish and I attended an informational meeting at a church near Lindale for potential adoptive parents through Loving Alternative (a local adoption agency), and a young child was born to a single mother and absent father in Nacogdoches, Texas. The most difficult aspect of adopting is the waiting. It took us from February of 2011 until December of that year to get all of our home-studies done and our paperwork together. From December of 2011 to May of this year was simply waiting.  While you’re doing home studies and getting references and such the wait is no big deal, because you’re doing something. Some document must be turned in before you get a child, so there’s no need to be concerned—that’s the attitude, and a source of comfort during that period. But once there’s nothing to do but wait, you just wait. Hopefully, you also pray, which we did (with varying levels of consistency). Feelings of...

This is the first of a series of posts regarding the Fair Tish and me adopting a baby boy. I've broken this up for readability, so I'll post a new part each day over the course of this week. On April 3 rd of this year, I drove down to Center, Texas, which, incidentally, is nowhere near the center of the state, in order to take the deposition of a police officer. This day was going to be an absolute whipping. After the officer’s deposition that morning, I was to take the deposition of a crusty old woman who was driving an 18-wheeler involved in the accident made the basis of the suit I was working. After that deposition, I was to be in Lufkin, Texas to meet with a new client on a case for which I had just been retained, the trial for which was set for a month later. When I set up in the conference room in Center, the court reporter came in beaming, “I just found a $100.00 bill outside!”  “Wow, I know who’s buyin’ us lunch today, Don,” I told the other lawyer. “O...