“Herb and Hilda are applying to adopt a baby,” Chris announced one day. Herb and Hilda were a young couple around our age in the Lowe Farm church. That simple bit of news started wheels turning in our minds. We wanted a family and so far there was no sign of that happening. Adoption had never entered our minds, but now that it had it began to grow on us.
The first turn of the wheel was to find out where to apply. We filled out the initial application and were invited to attend orientation sessions in Portage la Prairie. I believe there were three or four evening sessions, one per week.
My understanding had been that adoption was all about finding a child to match the parents. The first thing we learned was that the Children’s Aid Society of Central Manitoba didn’t think that was a good idea. “When children are born into a home they vary in size, eye colour, personality and so on. Why should we try to do better than what nature does?”
They told us it was best if we didn’t know too much about the adoptive child’s background. “If you know all about the father and mother, uncles and aunts, when the child misbehaves you are apt to think he is just like his uncle and feel that there is nothing you can do about it. You need to feel that the child you adopt is your child and it is up to you to deal with any problems that arise.” This was a whole new thought to us, but they had research to back it up and it made sense.
One evening the topic was interracial adoptions. Some parents asked “But won’t a child of a different skin colour have a hard time adapting to living among white people?” The social worker answered “Are you concerned about the child or yourself? A child of a different skin colour is going to be surrounded by mostly white people, no matter who her parents are.”
After attending those meetings we had to fill out the official application to adopt. This required information about income, the size of our home, and also asked for references. One question on that application was cause for soul searching. It asked what our racial preference was. We looked at that question and felt we needed to pray before answering it. After the prayer we knew that the only answer that we could feel at peace about was to check the box that said “no preference.”
Once the application was accepted we had a home visit by a social worker. We were told that the waiting list was several months long, but we should start getting together the things that we would need to care for a baby in our home.
One of the things we would need was a crib and there was a used crib available in a town not far away. When Chris was in the process of buying the crib, another lady came along just a bit too late. The other lady was obviously nearing the point where the crib would be a necessity. Chris presented no such appearance, but we really would be needing that crib before the other lady.
The call came far sooner than we had anticipated. There was a baby girl available, were we interested? We were ready. We didn’t know what changes a child would bring to our lives, or how we were going to cope, but we were ready to embark on that adventure.
We drove to Portage la Prairie. The social worker told us the girl was part Scandinavian and about one eighth indigenous (back then they said Indian) ancestry and we were the only applicants who had indicated that we would accept a child who was not 100% white. Then she led us into a small room, brought in the baby and left us alone with her. She was sound asleep, wrapped up in a blanket. All we could see was her face, short dark hair on her head and her tiny hands. We took turns holding her. When the social worker came back to ask what we had decided, we knew that we did not want to hand her back.
There were a few more papers for us to sign and then the three of us were on our way home, our lives forever changed. We named our daughter Michelle Marie. She was 15 days old when she came into our home.
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