A Question

     Tonight my typical daughter asked me to read me her latest library book, just as my learning disabled daughter asked me if I had ever considered giving  her up for adoption. It was not an emotional question, but an informational one. She wondered if we would have considered that as an option because she had learnt earlier that other people had done that very thing, particularly sometimes with challenged children. While trying to answer her question, I was torn by sadness that sometimes children are given up. I was also imagining the sheer joy that a childless couple would have at the possibility of giving an adopted  child a life with them, as a family. It is hard to understand and to try to be in another's shoes when they are making such a horrendously difficult decision. It is a fact of life--- some children are raised by parents of choice rather than those of biology. I  have an adopted sister.  She also gave up some of her own children for adoption. Maybe that's why she gave them up--- because she saw the value in giving children a life with people who wanted them rather than (in her case) leaving them with a parent unable to give them the life she wanted for them. I don't know. All I do know is that our daughters are two very wonderful, very different human beings whose company we could never willingly forsake.  We are blessed to know them and to be able to raise them and keep them near. Not every parent has that opportunity. Whether they may not or cannot, their child's welfare is foremost. The object of one's loss becomes the subject of another's joy. And books are read, life is lived.