The adoption paperwork was filed last week. No family ever came forward, and we’re told that in six months, it should be finalized. Lily and Rose will legally be ours. Two old bikers who never thought they’d be fathers, raising two little girls who needed them as much as we needed them.
People still stare when we roll up to school or the grocery store—two huge, tattooed bikers with two tiny blonde girls. Let them stare. These are our daughters. They chose us that morning at the bus stop, and we chose them right back.
Last night, Lily asked me if we were going to leave them like their first mama did. I got down on one knee and looked her in the eyes. “Never. You’re stuck with us forever. Think you can handle that?” She wrapped her arms around my neck. “Forever and ever?” “Forever and ever.”
Sometimes I think about their mother and that note. “Please don’t let them forget me but please give them a life.”
We won’t let them forget. We have that photo, and we’ll tell them the truth when they’re ready. We’ll tell them their first mama loved them so much she made sure they’d be found by someone who could give them what she couldn’t.
And we’ll tell them that sometimes the family you need finds you at a bus stop on a Saturday morning. With a paper bag, a blue balloon, and two scared bikers who didn’t know their lives were about to change forever.
Rose still sleeps with that blue balloon—deflated now, but she won’t let us throw it away. “It’s from the day we got our daddies,” she says. And she’s right. That’s exactly what it’s from.
