IIn the summer of 2000, I could never have imagined becoming a father. I was 34, living in New York City, with a good job in social care, but still living in a small apartment. I was with my partner Pete for just over three years; We were serious, but we didn’t live together. Becoming a parent was not my goal.
One August evening, I had finished work late and was in a hurry to make a dinner reservation with Pete. I was running towards the turnstile at Union Square Station when I noticed a bundle of clothes in the corner. I saw him moving and stopped in place. I got there, took off a dark sweatshirt and saw it: a newborn baby, with the umbilical cord still attached.
I was in shock. I quickly walked across the street and found a payphone to call 911. “I got a baby,” came out of my mouth. I went back to the stage and knelt down next to the kid. I touched her head to console her but she pulled her face away. “Okay, you don’t like it,” I said. We stared at each other. My heart was beating loudly.
It felt like hours, but it probably only took a few minutes for the police to arrive. I had a statement to make and I went home to drink heavily. Pete and I talked all night; Why would the mother have abandoned the child, why would she have chosen to leave him here, in the center of gay New York?
After a brief period of media interest, life returned to normal, 12 weeks later, when I was asked to testify at a court hearing because mother could not be found. I was surprised when the judge asked if I had any interest in adopting the child. The thought had not even crossed my mind, but immediately, I wanted to say yes. I told him I needed to talk to my partner but, in my mind, I had decided that this was what I wanted to do.
Pete was angry. We had never talked about starting a family. We were deep in debt – there were hundreds of reasons why it didn’t make sense to bring a child into our lives. But I was confident.
Pete agreed to meet with the child in foster care with me. As soon as I saw her, I took her in my arms. “Remember me?” I had said. Pete says that when he picked up the baby, every shred of resistance immediately evaporated. We came out of that house unitedly.
We were called back to court on December 20 and given custody. “How would you like it for the holidays?” the judge asked. We bought parenting books and read them all in 24 hours, and I moved into Pete’s flat.
We named him Kevin. Pete had an older brother named Kevin who died before he was born, and his parents always said he had a guardian angel named Kevin watching over him.
Taking baby Kevin home was incredible but scary, as it is for any new parent; But, unlike them, we had just one day to prepare. For several weeks we took turns sitting with him around the clock to make sure he was still breathing.
We wanted to make sure Kevin knew he was wanted and loved, so we wrote a story for him about how we became a family. They made us read it again and again and took it to school.
When Kevin was 11, New York legalized gay marriage and we told Kevin we would like to get married. She said, “Don’t judges marry people?”, and suggested the judge ask us if we wanted to adopt her. We were delighted when she agreed to do so.
Everything has not been easy. When he was a teenager, he had a lot of questions about his birth mother. He wanted to put up posters in the subway, and we’d watch him look at strangers’ faces to see if they looked like him. However, now he has come to terms with the situation.
Pete has written a memoir, and we turned the story we wrote for Kevin into a children’s book and made a short animation. We want other kids to understand that there are many ways to be a family.
Now, Kevin is an incredible young man and we are very proud of him. He works out of state as a software developer, but luckily, he’s still happy spending time with his dad.
Even after 26 years, we can’t believe that, by some miracle, it was us who were given the privilege of being a part of Kevin’s life. How lucky we are.
As told to Heather Main
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