There was a man at the breakfast place the other day. He was
a white guy in his 40s and he had with him a white girl of about 8 and a black
girl of about 4. Mom leaned over to me and said “What do you suppose his story
is?”
I said, “The younger girl is adopted. The family is staying
across the street at the motel. Dad is giving Mom a treat and letting her sleep
in while he takes the girls to breakfast.”
Mom said, “Oh, yeah, that’s probably right.”
But then I thought about it a little more and came up with alternatives. The
older daughter is his from a first marriage. The younger girl is his African
American girlfriend’s from her previous marriage. Now they are having their
first vacation together and he’s trying to win points with both mother and daughter
by letting Mom sleep in and taking the girls out for a special breakfast.
And then I thought: he and the older daughter were part of a
happy family until his wife died suddenly of cancer. He had always thought he’d
have a big family and now it’s just the two of them. It takes a few years to
come to terms with the loss of his wife, but he would still like his little
girl to not be an only child. So as a single dad he goes and adopts the younger child.
We played the game again at dinner last night. There was a
man in his 30s with 2 girls, 2 and 4 years old. Mom said, “He’s divorced and
has the girls for the weekend.” I said, “It’s Tuesday and he’s wearing a ring.
His wife died and they’re on their summer vacation.” Mom said, “No, she’s not
dead, she just over did it in the sun on the beach so she’s home sleeping off a
bit of heat stroke while he takes the girls to dinner.” Then they proved us
both wrong when the wife came in with an infant who had clearly just been fed
and was now dozing off. She passed off the boy to fall asleep on his dad’s
shoulder while she dug into the big salad that he’d ordered for her.
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