The Easy Way

I was gifted a book of poems by a dear co-worker who also adopted young ones. I think the poem below expresses perfectly the emotions surrounding conversations about adoption. I also believe it's a good reminder to be kind (and more sensitive) to one another; what you and I may perceive as the easier way -- whether that's in growing a family, marriage, or some other issue altogether -- may be the most difficult moments of a person's life.

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