Our Whole Family

Hey, everyone! It's Jessie in Missouri. Things are going great here. The summer heat is not as intense as it was a couple of weeks ago, so Mika is happier at work. Luke is gearing up to go back to school on Wednesday. And I'm loving my new job more than either of my other two radio jobs. We now have eight birds, two dogs, two goats, one little tiger, one iguana, and one guinea pig. (And we're currently searching for a partridge and a pear tree to round out the clan.) We were also recently fostering two other dogs, a black Lab and a black, nine-month-old Great Dane. The Lab went back with its owner for now, and we placed the Great Dane after just a couple of days. I take care of the inside animals while Mika feeds the goats and dogs. Luke feeds the little tiger (with the help of one gentle reminder and one death stare). While the humidity literally puts a damper on things--100% humidity at 105 degrees feels like walking through Mother Nature's Suana--life is still grand in the Midwest.

I just got done reading Krista's post on single-motherhood on her blog. It nearly brought me to tears. As all of you know, I was a single mother from the time Luke was born. I was physically eighteen years old when I got pregnant, but I had the maturity level of a young adolescent. That led to a long series of selfish and often times hurtful decisions. I didn't mature into "something like an adult" until I was almost 24 years old. Motherhood finally kicked in. At that point, I took a couple of years doing some serious, full-throttle introspection. It paid off. A lovely boy moved in down the hall and, as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire would say, "my world got flipped, turned upside down."

You see, in all those years of making thousands of wrong decisions, I had managed to squeeze in one very, very good one. I was not going to introduce my son to a revolving door of men. Mika entered our lives at the ass-end of my two-year quest to... well, for lack of a better phrase, get a grip. So when the time came for me to tell Luke that his new fishing buddy was now my boyfriend, I panicked. There was almost a sense of betrayal creeping up my spine. It had always been just Luke and me. I quickly started to regret that one great decision. But Mika took me by the arm, marched me into my living room, and supported me while I launched a potential chaos nuke into my son's finally-stable world. And it could've easily gone that way had Mika not quickly followed up with his verbal understanding of his limited place in our lives at that time. It was a genius point to make in an effort to sooth the heart of a six-year-old boy, and I found myself astonished at and slightly jealous of Mika's insight into parenting. He didn't have to wait for fatherhood to kick in. It seemed to already be there. And here's the bitter-sweet icing on the top: Mika gave up his opportunity to ever have biological children of his own to be with us.

Three and a half years later I find myself re-reading this post and thinking, "Oh, Mylanta, I won the husband lottery." On August 24, 2007, Mika legally adopted Luke and gave Luke his last name. (The accidental alliteration of the name "Luke Nugent" would be serendipitous should he someday decide on a career in radio...) The anniversary of the adoption is this Sunday. I hope you all will take a moment and think of your brother through my eyes. He is a real-life superhero. He is the kind of man we want to walk into Krista's and Jorel's lives some day.

Also, take a moment and congratulate yourselves on contributing to the molding of the aforementioned superhero. You have all had a hand in our happiness. I hope this post will help you all understand just how grateful I am to you not only for giving me Mika, but for your acceptance of me as Mika's wife and for that of Luke as a grandson, as a nephew, and now as a cousin. No one could've possibly pre-designed a picture so perfect. I love you all very, very much.

I'm sorry for the long post. My emotions were able to overcome me with a late-night sneak-attack. Damn them! Well, at least it wasn't my other personality surfacing this time. That's always embarrassing...

Anyhoo, I love you guys!

Jessie