Pro-living

Tomorrow I am driving up to an area around Davenport, Iowa, which is about three hours west of Chicago to meet my biological family. I have a mother, a brother, and a sister.

I'm excited, but only as excited as I would be to meet a fellow castmate in a play production. Think about it. Castmates have usually never met before but know they would be working together at some point. Castmates come together for a limited time to achieve something special. Castmates must quickly befriend one another and look for a connection in order for the process to go smoothly. And so on. You get the metaphor.

The point is I don't necessarily expect to get along perfect with a group of people I've never met in only a few days' time. It's like that with any group of people. The difference is adoptive children and biological parents, like castmates, strive to achieve a fleeting connection before life moves on.

I haven't thought about my true roots as much as I have the past year because I knew the University of North Alabama college monster would be off my back. And I would be free to do what I wanted to do. Not just staying up late, moving to LA, watching infinite TV, and playing Halo.

I am in the right family, and for a while, Florence was the ideal place. I'm in a family that allows free-thinking and decision-making. I'm in a family that can be as interested in a subject as you are or can lay off when the mood's not right. I'm in a family that puts God first and values practicality over wishful thinking. I'm in a family that sees the dignity in sewing clothes, working on cars, and cooking meals, rather than traveling the country adding up their fly miles and being louder than the others at cocktail parties.

I never figured there was something more to my life here, never wondering what would have been. And that proves the triumph of the Salter family and my ability to accept what is given to you. Not to say we get along perfectly...we think differently and have had our share of dysfunctionalism. But the thought has never crossed my mind to be disappointed. As dull as Florence, Alabama has become the past several years, I have never had the wish that I grew up somewhere else, much less with a different family.

Who am I to question why? I can venture a guess and say my adoptive family were supposed to have their wishes granted, and a mother was supposed to be saved the horrifying ordeal of choosing abortion. I can't say; I don't know the other side of the story yet. I just know it's worked out because destiny, or God's will, wouldn't have it any other way.

I would like a connection and a few questions answered before I come home. But if nothing happens, there could be no way I would be disappointed. The events of the past 20-something years are enough proof the redemptive choice of adoption was the right call. Everybody's happy and everybody's alive.