The boy comes out of a house followed by his parents and visiting grandparents. It’s just before 8 a.m. on the last Friday of the winter break. Despite heavy rain in the forecast there is a sun break revealing the Olympics and making wet streets glint. The boy’s coat is bright green; his mother’s bright red. Even though the boy has had a recent growth spurt (he’s almost as tall as one grandmother) he’s still just a nine-and-a-half year old boy who thinks he’s on way to King County Courthouse by way of the #18 bus.
Side-by-side in Husky folding chairs is a couple who left their children in their beds nearby. She is waving pom-poms while her husband (in pajama bottoms) holds a cardboard sign with many exclamation marks. More neighbors appear; a man and a woman with a dog, a couple each carrying a little girl in their arms, a mother and daughter. The boy seems delighted to see so many people outside, but not surprised. The neighbors are gathering for a special send-off. It’s adoption day.
The boy runs to greet the dog, Henry. “I wouldn’t be out of bed if it wasn’t for this,” one neighbor remarks to another. Beaming, the boy looks at the growing cluster of neighbors as everyone takes turns in front of or behind a camera. A man who’d been finishing his bowl of cereal before joining the others says, “This is turning into a Ballard block party. We should fire up the barbeques or something.”
When Melanie Olson first moved to the street, eight blocks from where her Ballard husband grew up, they were one of the young couples. They have since raised three daughters, all now grown, and become block “elders.” It’s a north-south street that always has a party in August, and a place where neighbors tend to communicate face-to-face. Together they’ve been through what happens in life; cancer, infertility, adoption, issues with this child or that one. As Melanie says, “There are not a lot of secrets in this neighborhood.”
Although on adoption day morning the neighbors are guarding one secret.
This particular day has been a long time in coming. The boy came to live here three years earlier with a couple that first rented and then owned on the street. He was a foster child, already considered “older” at the age of six. It has not been an easy path for the three people about to formally become a family in front of a judge. There was ugliness in the boy’s past; people who could still hurt him. The couple has faced their own heartbreaking trail of miscarriages, and the irony of being approved for a foster child but not a Greyhound rescue dog. In order to get the adoption license they needed a bigger house. Leaving the block was not on option. They bought a house two doors up from the first one.
Every morning the boy runs up and down the block, it helps with his attention deficit hyperactivity. Sometimes one of the neighbors runs with him. Melanie and many others on their way to work see him every morning for their chats. As she puts it, “I’m not the only one who adores him.” But as a teacher and parent she is qualified to say, “He didn’t come without issues.” Neighbors like her and many others have helped this new family survive some tough years, supporting what they saw as the foster parents’ “100% dedication to this child.” In turn, the block’s commitment to the family, “Has brought a lot people together.”
Many of those neighbors have left their beds early during the holiday to be part of this surprise. A stretch limousine is overdue to glide between the cars parked on both sides of the street. What do you give a nine-and-a-half year old boy during the winter, his mother had wondered? He knows about the long awaited date at the courthouse and the celebratory lunch at the Space Needle.
His mother knew she’d worry all night about whether the limo would be on time. Its delay allows for the arrival of few more stragglers, who are happy they haven’t missed the event, what one will describe later as, “One of those great moments that become frozen in time.”
At last there is the gleaming white hood of the oh-so-long car descending the narrow block, gliding to the curb beside the waiting group. Everything next happens so quickly, huge smiles all around, barely a chance to take a photo of the family before the boy appears to leap into the cave that is the limo’s interior. No time for the driver, dazzling in black hat, suit and striped tie to open the passenger door for them. Three years and fifteen minutes are up: the waiting is over.
The limousine pulls off; it’s the driver’s birthday. In a way it’s the boy birthday as well. He will return home, for keeps, with a new name. The neighbors stand for a minute, watching the car disappear and then begin to regroup, some walking home together, Melanie’s dog, Henry, trembling from the excitement of so many admirers. The dog and the boy came to live on the street at the same time. “Both rescues,” Melanie says.
A little girl still wrapped in a blanket in her father’s arms lifts her head, “What do we do now?”
Later there will be an open house, a weekend-long celebration and thank you to friends, family and neighbors. The father gives an extra squeeze to his daughter. “Now we have breakfast.”
