The Easy Way
The easy way to have a child,
The gossips would agree,
Is just to place an order
And avoid the pregnancy
Why bother with the nine months wait,
The gain, the girth, the pain?
Why try so hard just to conceive?
It's really quite inane
When all those homeless babies
Wait behind the agency doors.
Why overpopulate the earth
When those kids could be yours?
The easy way to have a child
Is just to order one,
And drive right over and pick one out -
Either kind - daughter or son!
Besides, they say, God's plan must be
Both wise and circumspect,
That you will raise the children
That the rest of us reject
The easy way - no muss, no fuss,
No worry before the birth.
The easy way - no recovery time,
You can hurry back to work!
The easy way? Ah, mavens!
Perhaps you didn't know
The wait has stretched to years, not months,
Adoption is so slow.
And twenty-five eager couples wait
For every babe who's placed.
There are rules and regulations,
Investigations to be faced.
And if we pass inspection -
Are approved for a daughter or son -
We face a years long "pregnancy"
And supervision 'fore it's legally done.
And then we face the gossips agains.
Their questions and comments hit home.
Do you know his real mother and father?
How sad there's not one of your own!
Or, How could anyone ever give up
Their very own flesh and blood?
Poor baby, he'll miss real mother love.
How kind of you people, how good!
Then it's How could you ever do that -
Take such a child to your breast?
The child won't know where his place is!
He'd be better off somewhere else.
Adoption avoids the labor,
But there's pain of a different kind.
There's just as much worry beforehand,
No less apprehensive a mind.
But, then, children don't ever come simply.
There are trials in every way
To gain the treasure of love in a family.
There isn't an easy way.
-- Pat Johnson, Perspectives on a Grafted Tree
