Magic Lessons: Celebratory and Cautionary Tales About Life As A (Single, Gay, Transracially Adoptive) Dad

By Joseph Sadusky

Every family has a story—but very few have a story like Joseph Sadusky and his sons, Daveon and Mark. In Magic Lessons, Joe shares a look back as he, a single gay man, decided to build his family through transracial adoption. In a lighthearted collection of stories and lessons learned, Joe humorously but honestly describes the process as he set out to adopt two older children, and what happened after they came together under one roof and became “us.” Along the way, Joe details how often he was, in his own words, “amazed, aggravated, mind-blown, jaw-dropped, befuddled, exasperated, and awed—both in good ways and bad, both by my kids and by the many players who have had a part in our family story overall.” Among these players are members of the majority—racial, cultural, and otherwise—who taught Joe many bewildering, if not outright painful, lessons about being “other.” To complete the picture, Joe reflects on his own mistakes made as he has ventured through the land of alt-parenthood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jun 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781483493275

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SADUSKY

Copyright © 2019 Joseph Sadusky.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-9328-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-9327-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018913152

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 06/10/2019

for Mark and Da

veon

without you, there’s no story

and for Linda

we Miss you more than words can say

Welcome to Our World

Every family has a story. Very few have one like ours.

My name is Joe. I am a single gay man, and for the past fifteen years, I’ve had the usually good—and sometimes great—fortune to be dad to Daveon, now twenty-three, and Mark, now twenty-one. Our decade and a half together has been … wow … has it been.

Magic Lessons: Celebratory and Cautionary Tales about Life as a (Single, Gay, Transracially Adoptive) Dad is a collection of stories and reflections: part memoir, part lessons learned. It’s based on a simple premise: Alternative families are people, too.

The book includes everything from the kids’ first trip back east to meet Grandma, the aunts, the uncles, and the cousins, to our strange but ongoing relationship with the Queen of England, to Dad’s through-the-looking-glass experience of being a gay parent in a straight world. Along the way it touches on topics of race, single parenthood, and sexuality.

If the book were a graphic, it would be a set of concentric circles. At the center are stories and issues particular to transracial adoptive families. In a larger circle around these are stories and lessons that apply to adoptive families of all types. And in the largest outer circle are observations that apply to parenting in general.

The book is divided into two main parts. The first one, Magic, falls more on the memoir side of the equation. These are the stories of how we became us, followed by some of the more notable qualities and quirks that define us. The second section, Lessons, presents snapshots of the experiences that taught this (single, gay, transracially adoptive) dad what being a (single, gay, transracially adoptive) dad is all about—including the pains, struggles, and major mistakes. With a few parenting approaches and techniques thrown in for good measure.

How do the two halves make a whole? I think about it like this: Fairly early in my life as a parent, I found myself caught in the (not-uncommon) loop of harping on all the annoyances, inconveniences, and aggravations that were part of the daily grind. I spend my life in my car! I spend my life (in the car and out) providing all these openings for my kids to be honest, expressive, and happy—and they’re still often sneaky, bratty, and closed-off! Straight people—don’t get me started! And so on.

It took me only about five years to recognize what I was doing. (Never let it be said that I’m a quick learner.) When the lightbulb finally went off about how my mental world was built around complaints, I made a conscious decision to—at least occasionally—take a breath and think about what went right on any particular day. This, in turn, helped me realize that my time with the kids actually included a large number of magic moments—things that didn’t just go right, but were fun and funny and amazing. And maybe this is just a case of rose-colored glasses, but I would swear that the more I paid attention to magic moments, the more of them occurred.

So, in a way, the entire first half of the book represents what might be my first parenting lesson: The more you focus on the positive aspects of your life with your kids, the more positives there are to focus on.

I think Daveon put it best: You should write about our life, Dad, because we’re a success story! Maybe we can inspire or help other adoptive families. So consider the Magic section a snapshot of some of our more notable successes—and, if applicable, may they inspire and help you.

It works in reverse for the second half. Reminding myself of our little magical core often helped make some of the more difficult, even painful, lessons of parenting easier to bear. I hope that, by sharing our ups and downs, our story might provide some encouragement or insight—especially when you’re facing challenging lessons of your own. May Lessons help you remember that you’re not alone—and maybe provide a solution or two that you’ll find helpful.

There’s also a short third section, Empty Nest, that answers the question: What happens to magic and lessons when your kids grow up and move on?

This is book is, of course, for anyone who is part of, or considering creating, an alternative family structure—especially, but certainly not limited to, LGBTQ prospective or current adoptive parents and their kids. More broadly, I hope it might speak to those who consider themselves, or their life, alternative in any way. By sharing a bit about who the boys and I are and some of the things we were up against, I would be happy to make even a small contribution toward normalizing the experience of anyone who feels different. And maybe, just maybe, help to dissolve the distinction between different and normal in some tiny way.

But First …

Before I dive forward into describing the family I created, I’d like to take a step back and share a story about the family that created me.

Several years ago, my family held a surprise ninetieth birthday party for my grandmother Vincentia. Always loving an audience, Vinnie held court the entire day, beaming and schmoozing the extremely large crowd. (When you’re ninety and outgoing, you get to know a lot of people.) Toward the end of the event, a few folks stood and paid tribute with short speeches, reminiscences, or just kind and loving words. My mother turned and whispered to her sister, You just know she’s not going to cry, that tough old broad. And sure enough, she didn’t. As wouldn’t have my aunt, my mother, or any of my sisters—or I.

I believe the scientific term for my family’s personality type is cold fish. Going back as many generations as I have known, on both sides of the family, we are funny and friendly and smart, and are the most loyal friends you will ever have in your lifetime. Some things we really aren’t, though, are warm, fuzzy, or emotional. We are the world’s nicest, friendliest cold fish.

I’m bringing this up because who I am as a person obviously affects who I am as a dad, which affects how the stories you’re about to read played out. Throughout the book, you won’t hear how I cried when my kids hurt themselves (I didn’t), or how I lay awake at night when they were in trouble (I didn’t, at least not until much later). You also won’t read about how I raged against the injustice when I was asked by a stranger, for roughly the one-hundredth time, if I was the kids’ coach—or when the foofy private school administrator belittled me because we were receiving financial aid. (OK, I might have come pretty close on that one—but still, no.)

What you will read is how often I was: amazed, aggravated, mind-blown, jaw-dropped, befuddled, exasperated, and awed—both in good ways and bad, both by my kids and by the many players who have had a part in our family story overall.

Along similar lines: Please take the title of the book seriously. If you’re looking for a gritty tale of one nontraditional family’s struggles, trials, and tribulations against the discriminatory majority culture … well, that’s a different story about a different family. When each of my boys graduated high school, I put together a photo album of pictures taken over the years of our time together, for them to take with them to college or wherever their next steps might lead. What struck me among the hundreds and hundreds of photos was how often each kid was smiling or laughing. And not say-cheese-for-the-camera smiles—but the real, bubbling-over-fountain-o-happiness-show-all-your-teeth deal. Yes, there were many bumps in the road (which got bumpier, and the bumps humpier, as we went along). But the only word that really describes what went on here over those first dozen years or so is: magic.

So, like my grandmother, reading this book probably won’t prompt you to pull out any hankies. But, if nothing else, I hope you’ll get at least a good chuckle or two. For us cold fish, when you dive into parenthood, a good chuckle feels like a prize well-earned.

Magic

notable people, places, and events in the lives of the Sadusky boys—including the boys who made it all happen

Pre-K

As hard as it is for me to remember, once upon a time my life was pre-k(ids). This section describes some of the key moments of that life that led up to me shedding the pre label, including the intensive training process I went through to get to the next phase. The title also represents how, even with that training, my understanding of what parenting would involve was definitely on the pre-K level … and that was on a good day.

Dipping Toes

There are a few points where you could say our family’s story begins. Here are some background moments that laid the groundwork leading up to the official start of our family saga.

When I was in college in the late 1980s, I took a couple of American Sign Language (ASL) classes. This led to becoming a Big Brother to a boy who attended the Rhode Island School for the Deaf. This stint as a Big lasted for just about a year. I would love to say I was amazing in my first foray into pseudo-parenthood, but I think I’ll have to settle for pretty good. Nobody got hurt, but I did manage to almost lose my Little once. (If my Little happens to be reading this, please accept my rapid circular fist rubs on my chest as my apology.)

In addition to being cool enough to offer ASL classes, my university was one of the few that offered an undergraduate teaching credential program. Which meant that, while I was getting my English degree, I also got certified to teach secondary school English—thus doubling my career potential in low-to-no-paying jobs. As part of the credential program, I had two polar-opposite experiences. After my junior year, I taught a class on myth and poetry in a summer program for privileged high school students staying on campus and getting a preview of the college experience. Then, in the first semester of my senior year, I was a student instructor teaching English to freshmen and sophomores at an inner-city high school.

I’m not sure how many of my lessons—including the awesome one that used Joni Mitchell’s Amelia to teach about poetic verses and refrains—my students got anything out of, but I learned and remembered an extremely valuable one: I like kids. I also learned that, given the choice between the elite group and the underprivileged one, I’d hang out with the city kids any day. We certainly laughed a lot more.

Moving to California just after graduation, I decided to put these lessons into practice. I worked in group homes for the first year and change, then taught special ed for the next three or so. The stories from those years deserve a book of their own—although they did reassure me that, as far as taking care of kids went, I wasn’t too shabby. (I didn’t even almost lose anyone!)

Then—having exhausted no-pay path number one—I left teaching to pursue writing full-time. And—why not make this as challenging as possible?—I didn’t go for some corporate, or even nonprofit, writing job. Instead, I decided to pursue only meaningful, creative projects. I wrote a ton of poetry (my first writing love), a handful of short stories, even a screenplay or two. I also spent a lot of time temping to pay the occasional bill. Which didn’t prevent me from receiving not one, not two, but three eviction notices for falling behind on rent. This was one of my first memorable experiences of magic, as the money to catch up always seemed to appear just in time.

Being a starving artist didn’t exactly prepare me for parenthood—although it did teach me how to eat on a budget. I spent a few years starving-artist-ing in a little cottage under a big tree, away from schools and group homes. And it wasn’t long before I started really missing being around kids. This led to a new idea: I think I want my own.

So I did the next logical thing: I became a Big Brother once again. This one was more of a success than my first, brief experience. My (no longer even remotely) Little, Max, has two moms—no typecasting there, Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America. The first thing he said when I met him was, Don’t you think Smokey Robinson was the greatest singer of the sixties? Max was ten at the time. Smokey Robinson and I have the same birthday. It was love at first sight.

Fast-forward twenty years: Max and I are still in touch, and he and his moms have been family to me and my kids since day one.

A year or so after I met Max, I got pretty serious about having kids of my own. To that end, I jumped from starving-artist-ness to freelancing. This was based on the crazy idea that my future kids might enjoy eating and wearing clothes. It was also based on the idea that if I were going to raise kids by myself, a flexible schedule might come in very handy. (Plus—as anyone who knows me can verify—9-to-5 and I don’t get along very well.) This career switch turned out to be an exercise in very good timing, as this was right at the beginning of the 1990s tech boom. You could contact pretty much any new tech company, tell them you knew how to write, and end up with a contract within an hour or so. And make plenty of money doing so. Adios, eviction notices!

Agencies

One thing I have learned is that parenting—at least, twenty-first century, urban, middle-class parenting—involves a lot of shopping. And not just the obvious food, clothes, and bandages. If you are or become a parent, you will very well find yourself spending many hours of your life shopping for the right school, the right camp, the right tutor, the right after-school activity, the right …

Actually, replace many hours of your with practically your entire. Now you’re getting warm.

For me, the shopping process began even before I officially became a parent. In 2001, after five years of training with Max—I’m not exactly the world’s fastest mover and shaker—I got to the point where many might say our family’s story really begins. That fall, I decided I was actually going to do this thing: I was going to get some kids. Being smart, as well as gay and single, I realized this translated into: I am going to adopt some kids.

Many parents who want to adopt are looking for newborns or infants. This process can cost upwards of $10,000 and can take months, if not years, of research, planning, travel, and the like. I, on the other hand, knew right away that I wanted older kids. Older meaning (a) they could sleep through the night and (b) they knew how to use the toilet. Hey, I know my limits—if I were going to raise a couple of kids by myself, diaper-changing was definitely not on the menu.

Unless you’re doing what’s called a family adoption—taking your niece, nephew, or other relative, or possibly a friend’s kid—adopting older means taking kids who are already in the foster system. To do this, you have two options: working directly with your county Social Services agency, or going through a private agency that specializes in special needs adoptions (more on that lovely term later).

I avoided going directly through the county, because I heard horror stories of how overworked the social workers are and how slowly the process moves—people waiting two, three years just to get to the point of looking at potential kids. The joke was on me when another couple I know, who started their process about the same time as I and did go through the county, finalized the adoption with their first son a good six months earlier than mine. So much for conventional wisdom.

In my county-avoiding way, I began attending information sessions for different private adoption agencies in the area. The good news: Pretty much every agency holds such a session, where