How 1 day of the year in my courtroom renews my hope in humanity
“The world is on fire!” my friend called to tell me.
My friend of 30 years talks often about politics — foreign, national and local — and the social and cultural situation we find ourselves in.
And yet ... Nov. 18 was National Adoption Day.
Eighty adoptions were finalized that day at the Juvenile Division of the Maricopa County Superior Court.
Adoptions brought tears ... and BB-8
I had the honor and privilege of finalizing two of those adoptions. One was the adoption of a sweet 8-year-old girl (and her stuffed rabbit, Hoppy) by her grandparents.
The ceremony was emotional; the grandmother teared up from the second she entered the courtroom, and the tears spread to everyone by the ceremony’s end.
The second was an adoption of a 4-year-old boy by his foster parents. That adoption was particularly heartwarming because the parents belonged to a Star Wars cosplay group.
R2D2, BB-8, Princess Leia, the Mandalorian and various storm troopers and other characters from the movie franchise all came to witness the event and to welcome the new addition to the extended family.
You can see the joy in everyone’s faces in the photo. (That’s me holding the light saber!)
Why we must celebrate adoptions now
The fact that the adoptions occurred amid the turmoil in the world is significant for two reasons.
First, most obviously, the adoptions provide the reason that defending the Western ideal of civil order and society — militarily, diplomatically and politically — is essential. Without this order and society, creating and protecting new families just won’t happen.
Second, and more fundamentally, these adoptions attest to the resilience and optimism inherent in human nature.
No matter how difficult and dire the circumstances, these new parents believe that they will improve the lives of the children they are adopting, and they will confidently strive to do just that.
Wars and crises, however threatening, will not dent their optimism and their effort.
I am reminded of an episode of “All in the Family.” (For the young folk, that was a television situation comedy in the 1970s, with Archie Bunker, a bigot, his “dingbat” wife, Edith, their daughter Gloria and her liberal husband Mike, humorously addressing critical political issues of the day.)
Gloria wants to have a baby, but Mike refuses because the world is in a terrible state, with pollution, political corruption, discrimination and wars rampant. Mike changes his mind when he finds a quote from the British journalist Alistair Cooke (or, as Edith refers to him, “Alice the cook”):
In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby.
The world is a mess, but we can make it better
The parents who adopted children on National Adoption Day chose to fall in love and bounce their babies on their knees.
We live in uncertain times. That’s a cliché, I know, but it’s a cliché because it is universally and always true.
In our lifetime, we’ve lived through the 9/11 attack, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, and many other crises that have gotten lost in the myriad other crises.
My parents lived through the Great Depression, the polio pandemic, World War II, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, Watergate and the Civil Rights protests. Their parents lived through their own world and national and local crises before them.
And none of those crises deterred them from having my parents, or my parents from adopting my older brother and me.
My friend is undeniably correct: The world is on fire, and we face terrible problems that we need to resolve. Who knows whether we will resolve them effectively for the better?
But the 80 adoptions that occurred on National Adoption Day assure me that, at the very least, the lives of the children adopted will be better than they otherwise would have been, and that hope and optimism will not die.
May the force be with us!
Randall M. Howe is vice chief judge of Division One of the Arizona Court of Appeals. Reach him at randymack30@cox.net.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Adoption brought 80 Phoenix children love in their forever homes
