As the old proverb—as well as Hillary Clinton—says, “It takes ….” As important as villages are for all kids, I believe parents of kids who have experienced long-term trauma at the hands of adults need to be especially mindful about who gets a key to the gate. With that in mind, here are some of the key players in our extended family world. In almost all cases, they enriched (and continue to enrich) our experience in amazing ways. Then there were the few who seemed to model their entry into the village on the Trojan Horse. 

Small World

In Little League, as in skating, there are several levels. Each level uses a different-sized field—so when your kid moves up a level, it’s off to a new set of fields. For a few of Daveon’s many Little League years, his field was behind a junior high school, directly across the street from a higher-end grocery store. This gave Dad a great excuse for in-game snacking. I still dream about the Frisbee-sized chocolate peanut butter cookie.

Anyway. On one particular day, I went across the street mid-game as usual. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t getting a cookie this time—maybe a sparkling water? That sounds much healthier. I’m carefully studying my many water options—at higher-end grocery stores in the Bay Area, there’s always a full aisle’s worth of water options. And then I hear a familiar voice behind me. Could it be? I turn around, and sure enough, it is—the boys’ county social worker extraordinaire, Amy. Amy is one of my favorite people, not least because every time I see her, she tells me how we are one of her favorite families. It was Amy who more or less made it possible that the boys moved in less than two months after I first saw their picture. Amy gets a high pedestal in my hall of fame.

After we chatted a bit, I told Amy that Daveon was playing baseball across the street, and Mark was somewhere nearby in the park. If she had the time, she should come over and say hi. She did, so we checked out together and walked out. After we crossed the street and approached the dugout, Amy gave a big shout “Hello!” and walked straight into the arms of . . . another player on Daveon’s team.

Aside from them both being very cute, and sweethearts, you’d have a hard time mistaking this other kid for my son. He had at least a foot on Daveon, and though also nonwhite, the skin tones weren’t even close. Maybe when Amy kept telling me how great our family was, she was thinking about someone else entirely. Talk about an ego bruise.

As it turns out, the other boy had also been a foster kid, and Amy had also been his (I’m sure amazing) county social worker. As these things happen, the couple who adopted him were among my favorite fellow baseball parents.

After Amy caught up with this kid and his folks, and gave my ego a chance to recover, she turned and let out another “Well, hello!”—this time to one of the other team parents. I started to wonder if there was some kind of secret social worker/Little League network, and what it cost to join. As it turns out, this parent was Amy’s boss at the county. Seeing as they worked together on an ongoing basis, Amy and this mom had less to catch up on.

Which meant that, finally, my kids got their turn on Amy’s dance card. Of course, last did not mean least, at least not based on all the praise Amy heaped on the boys. She even got Mark off the swings. We’re talking big-time bonding here, folks.

It was a wonderful experience not only to connect to someone who was so instrumental in bringing us together, and who has always been a vocal supporter, but also to see how interconnected our story is with the lives and stories of others. It helped validate that, while we are surely an alterna-family in many ways, our experience isn’t so unique after all.

Weekly Visits

During the first year we were together, my kids and I had the great good fortune to enjoy regular weekly visits from not one, not two, but three of our family aunts and uncles. Each visitor had a regular night. The boys—who had better memories than me back then, and have way better ones than me at this point—could, I’m sure, tell you which one was an Uncle Herman night, and which one was Uncle Jim. The only one I’m pretty confident about was that Wednesday was Aunt Leigh.* Except for the occasional illness or out-of-town vacation, these visits were as regular as movie night. As you might imagine, they were treats that the kids looked forward to week by week—almost as much as Dad did.

(*As you read on, you’ll see why that one sticks.)

Each visit had its own flavor. Uncle Herman was the playmate, spending most of his time on the floor with the boys while Dad was freed up to cook, work, and clean. While I’ve never exactly embraced cooking, working, or cleaning, it was certainly easier to do it when the kids were trying to put someone else in a headlock for a change. Although given that Uncle Herman was bigger than both kids put together, it’s a wonder that these headlocks never translated into trips to the emergency room.

Uncle Jim divided his time. Half the evening was kid play—“the claw” was a regular feature, much to my kids’ delight. (Till the time the boys moved out, if Uncle Jim came to visit and we were in the car with me driving, I’d still have to tell them to knock it off with all that claw nonsense.) And half was grown-up talk with Dad, providing badly needed conversation that didn’t include the words “Spongebob” or “time-out” or “phonics.”

And Aunt Leigh . . . well, basically, Aunt Leigh took over: cooking, cleaning, mending, probably getting some teeth brushed and hair combed in there as well. When Aunt Leigh was in charge, Dad could read the paper or take a nap.

Lesson learned: For every uncle in the picture, make sure you have a few aunts.

As if it had been prearranged, after almost exactly a year, the visits ended pretty much across the board. Uncle Herman had a new guy and soon moved to Santa Cruz. Uncle Jim took a job in Boise, Idaho. And Aunt Leigh and not-yet-uncle Marty bought a house that required as much time and energy as any kid—which they then piled on by having two of their own.

But the imprint of that early contact is indelible. Over the years, the boys saw Aunt Leigh only occasionally, Uncle Jim less often, and Uncle Herman not at all. But all it takes is a mention of any of those names, and they can go on with favorite moments, “remember when . . .” stories, and general good vibes based on the memories.

We have had many other regular visitors who either were or became family, but I have to give a special shout-out to those early pioneers, who stepped in during the period when this whole family concept was a bit of a wild card. Their presence helped create the needed sense of security and smooth down some of the rough edges. All of us were in better moods* and on our best behavior with other grown folks around—and I will always be grateful for what they brought to the table. Especially when that included pork chops. Thanks, Aunt Leigh!

(*Except me. I’m always in a good mood. Stop laughing, kids.)

East Coast

For most of our time together, the East Coast was sort of a mythical place to my kids. Having a father who is a California expatriate, there was something magical about stepping off a plane and being surrounded by the entire balance of the immediate Sadusky family: four sets of aunts and uncles, a gaggle of eight cousins, and, in the center of it all, the one-and-only Grandma Connie. Even after a dozen years of hearing from, talking to, and visiting, the boys still consider the East Coast some combination of Wonderland and Oz (minus the bad people).

I would love to say that making this connection was a piece of cake. I would be lying. In the middle-class, Mid-Atlantic, mostly-very-Catholic world of my blood family, the reality of me, a single gay man, adopting two boys of a different race didn’t exactly follow anyone’s script. And in my middle-class, Mid-Atlantic, mostly-very-Catholic blood family, folks are not exactly shy about letting you know when they disapprove of your off-script choices. Loudly. For my part, I did what I’ve always done in family conflict situations, from the age I was able to recognize (if not name) conflict. I withdrew.

Given all that, I consider it a blessing (if not a minor miracle) that over time, everyone has stepped up and embraced the kids both physically and emotionally in ways that I’m really grateful for.

My father was actually the first one to extend a welcome. In fact, our first trip back east, about a year after the boys moved in, was to see him solo. Given that my parents were married and living in the same house, this required some FBI-level logistics.* But Grandpa Joe was game.

(*Although long-lasting, my parents’ marriage wasn’t a happy one. That’s another book entirely.)

Unfortunately, Grandpa solved the logistics problem conclusively by passing away about two weeks before our trip. Dad (me) made the rescheduled trip solo. I wasn’t excited to have my kids’ first exposure to the Saduskys be a funeral.

Mark, on hearing the news: “Awww, I wanted to meet him.”

It took about another year before my mother made her first overture toward my new family, and gradually the rest of the pack followed suit. From that point until the boys left the nest, we made the trek back east at least once yearly. All four sisters and their families live within an hour of my mother—who is still in the house where we all grew up—so it was fairly easy to plant ourselves somewhere central and make visits to most or all of the homes.

We usually tried to time the trips to some occasion. We were there right around the time of my youngest niece’s and nephew’s births a couple of Augusts apart, and we hit a few eighth grade graduations. Although we usually traveled in the summer, one year we made an exception and flew out on New Year’s Eve to celebrate Daveon’s early January birthday with the East Coast family—at his request. The winter gods did their part by chipping in some birthday snow.

Unfortunately, by the time we started our East Coast visits, the boys missed not only my dad, but also several of the grand old ladies of the family, including Aunt Bett, Aunt Phine, and Cousin Betty.* The boys did get to meet my grandmother, Mom Mom, before she passed at age 100. They have, as cousins/nephews will, formed different types and levels of bonds with the various aunts, uncles, and cousins, some of whom they stay in more or less regular contact with through the wonder of social media.

(*I grew up around a lot of Italian women. The men all died young, which may be why the women typically made it to at least age ninety and generally seemed so cheerful.)  

As maybe the best sign of the connection, on our last trip east as a threesome, each kid spent time with the family separately. (If you knew our family dynamic, you’d understand what a big deal this is.) Daveon went first, by himself, while Mark was finishing high school. After Mark and I flew east, Daveon and I took off for a few days to look at colleges in the area. It was quite an accomplishment that kids who came into a family as preadolescents not knowing “Who is my parent?” would within a few years—as teens, even—willingly and eagerly look forward to spending solo time with the extended family. I am glad that “East Coast” is available as a resource for them, and hope they and their cousins maintain close bonds as they become the next generation of adults.

Coaches, Mentors, and Other Parental Stand-Ins

Some of the most fun* you will ever have as a parent is dealing with the many flavors of folks who take on pseudo-parental roles with your children. This group includes babysitters, teachers, coaches, counselors, aunts and uncles, “aunts” and “uncles,” and many others.

(* It’s not really fun.)

Some of these parental stand-ins will become your child’s best friends; some will become yours. In a perfect world, at least one or two of them will fall into both categories. But this is rare—the job descriptions for kid-friend and parent-friend are very different.

Overall, the boys had some pretty wonderful people guiding their academic, athletic, musical, and personal pursuits. Many of these folks have become long-term, integral members of our family life. I talk about most of them elsewhere in the book.

Instead, here I present a few episodes that stand out on the maybe-not-so-wonderful side. Some of these were comical, some a bit less so. I’ll later talk about fit, which might be the single most important concept for an alternative (and maybe any) parent to get familiar with. Call the folks I’m about to mention, not such a good fit.

We start with the babysitter who took the kids to the corner store to buy, drum roll please, ice cream, candy, cookies, and soda—all in the same afternoon. And I don’t mean, “Eat one now, save one for later.” When I got home, each kid babbled on and on about how he scarfed down ice cream, candy, cookies, and soda, in roughly a four-hour window.* I mean, even my mother, whose house is a constant rotation of sweets, couldn’t top that.

(*Of course they were babbling. The sugar high lasted three days.)

This babysitter also turned our kitchen into a science lab to make play-dough creations. I think that’s cool. I’m also still wondering why making play-dough involved just about every pot and pan we owned, as well as a fair amount of the sugar, salt, flour, food colorings, and other assorted ingredients. And even this wasn’t too much of a problem, except that this young person apparently assumed our science lab came with a custodian. All of the above-mentioned items were left out, and dirty, and often dripping, spilled, dusted, or otherwise splattered all over the place. You might not be surprised to hear that I didn’t ask this person to watch the boys again.

On a more serious note, there was the director of a boys’ mentoring program at the kids’ elementary school. One day, this leader called Daveon—who was a member of the program—a sissy. When we met to process the situation, the director denied it. Daveon may have his flaws, but when he comes crying to me down the hall and crawls into my lap—in school, in front of everyone—I’m pretty much going to believe whatever he says happened.

During the meeting, the program director also said, “You (Joe) are Daveon’s father, and I’m his father, too.” Whoa there, cowboy. I don’t have the world’s best memory, but I’m pretty sure I’d be able to recall if you ever fed the kid, or took him to the emergency room in the middle of the night, or even cleaned up his babysitter’s play-dough kitchen mess. If you ever want to take on any of those tasks—or any of the countless others that define “father”—please call me. You (the reader) might not be surprised to hear that I was pissed.

And finally, there was the only issue I ever had at Mark’s middle school, which I otherwise loved: the coach who insisted that Mark really, really wanted to play basketball, and couldn’t we work something out? Mark was heavily into skating at the time, and doing dual sports was not an option. We’d been there, done that, and unless your idea of a good time is a kid who’s always exhausted, stressed out because there isn’t enough time to get school work done, and falling apart at home on a regular basis, this wasn’t an experience I was eager to repeat. So Mark, as he did in the past, had to choose one activity. He chose to continue skating.

From my end, this settled the matter. Apparently, the school had other ideas. The coach actually got the principal involved—and remember, we’re talking middle school basketball. The principal emailed me to see if there was some way that we could work with Mark’s “great interest” in playing for the team. Of course there was: Mark could choose basketball over skating. He did not. The punch line came when Mark later said to me, “I don’t really want to do basketball, anyway. The coach just keeps pressuring me.” Because, you know, nothing speaks to great interest like the push from otherwise caring adults.*

(*I’m purposely avoiding mentioning that in a mostly white school, Mark was black. And tall.)  

Other Alternative Families

Someday, I hope someone does a study on whether kids from alternative family structures have a sixth sense and can feel each other out. Sort of like the alt-family-kid version of gaydar, with the difference that some of our (read: my) gaydar is exceptionally lousy (read: always wrong), while alt-family-dar seems spot on.

Whatever the cause, my kids have certainly bonded with a proportionately large number of kids from family environments similar to ours, and dissimilar from the mainstream. Here are some examples of my kids’ best friends over the years.

Friend 1 took Daveon under his wing at their elementary school and showed him the ropes. As the boy later put it, “I remembered what it was like to be the new kid at the school, and I didn’t want Daveon to have to go through that.” (Yes, that kid was and is a sweetheart.) Daveon and his new friend were pretty inseparable during the first few years, and though their paths later moved apart, they still see each other a couple of times a year and remain close.

This boy lives with his grandmother (his mother’s mother), plus the grandmother’s second husband—he calls them mom and dad. His biological mother lives around the corner and visits pretty much every day. Her father was her mother’s first husband.

So what, exactly, is a traditional family again?

Another friend is, like my kids, adopted. Unlike my kids, his parents adopted him at birth. His biological parents are in the area, and he sees them once in a while. His mother’s sister also has an adopted son, who is her (the sister’s) biological nephew. That nephew/son went to the same high school as his cousin and my kids.

For what it’s worth, Friend 1 is mixed-race Mexican, Friend 2 is mixed-race Latino, and the cousin is black. What is the saying about like attracting like?

And let’s not forget Friend 3, whose birth parents are divorced (or split up—I’m not sure they were ever married). Each has remarried and has had a second child. So Friend 3 splits his time between his birth mom, stepdad, and little brother, and his birth dad, stepmom, and other little brother. Meanwhile, Friend 4 has it pretty simple: She is the adopted Chinese daughter of a single white mom. She also plays a mean ragtime piano.

I could go on (and on, and on), but you get the point. I’m pretty sure that in none of their classes did either of my kids stand up and say, “Hi. I’m adopted and part of a cross-racial, single-parent family. Anyone here can relate and want to be friends?” It just . . . happened.

Heck: Even my white, WASP, originally from Michigan friend has two mixed-race boys by her Chinese American partner. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I can name one birth-mom-plus-birth-dad-with-their-mutually-produced-biological-kids-all-of-the-same-race-under-one-roof family in our entire circle. Maybe it’s something in the water. Maybe it’s a sign of the times. Or maybe it’s time to reexamine our sense of normal.

Next Chapter: School