Matthew’s Hero

I was driving to my parents’ house, and I was nervous. The reason was right behind me, nestled in a car seat. My adopted baby son Matthew had come home with us just a few days before. Now we were taking him to meet his grandparents.

He was eight months old, with a shock of feathery black hair sticking straight up. The hair was the giveaway. Matthew was a beautiful boy. But he didn’t look a thing like my husband, David, or me. Both of us were southerners, born and bred. Matthew was from Korea. That was the problem.

My father, Sonny, had been an Army sergeant in the Korean War. What exactly that meant, I never quite knew. It was something involving a medical unit, something about unloading wounded men from helicopters and preparing them for the doctors. I didn’t know because he never talked about it.

He would answer whatever question I put to him, but only that question, and with as few words as possible, speaking barely above a whisper, averting his eyes. He’d worked as a house builder after returning from the war, then as a land developer. He was a stoic man, never cried, and I probably saw his emotions mostly when he played guitar, which he did beautifully.

The war came right up, though, when I told my mom we planned to adopt Matthew. She called me a short time later. “Teri,” she said, sounding apprehensive, “I don’t want to worry you, but I thought you should know.

When I mentioned to your father that Matthew is Korean, he got a little upset.” I was quiet. She went on. “Now, I calmed him down, but he was saying things like, ‘I had to fight those people. They killed a lot of my friends.’ I told him that was a long time ago, but, well, I thought you should know."

The drive to my parents’ house was 90 minutes from the small country town where David worked as a Methodist minister. I spent every one of those minutes thinking hard and praying.

Matthew was like a sudden and unexpected gift dropping into our lives. I have a disease called lupus, which makes it dangerous to conceive a baby. For a while I was reconciled to that. I earned my music degree in college and led a high school choir, and David and I had our hands full with the church.

Not until my mid-30s did I begin to feel something was missing. We tried a state adoption agency, but everything about it—the paperwork, home inspections, background checks, the number of people ahead of us on the list—suggested we’d never get a baby. An international agency told us basically the same thing.|

And yet, a year later, both agencies called out of the blue with offers of baby boys. Christian came first, from the state agency. He was deaf and mute, and we accepted him immediately, and loved him.

The international agency called three months later. “We have a boy from Korea,” they said. “His biological mother is schizophrenic, so we’re having trouble placing him. Will you take him?” They didn’t say so outright, but I sensed that Matthew might go to an orphanage if I didn’t say yes. I answered with barely a thought.

God, please make that the right decision, I prayed as David cut the engine on my parents’ drive. We unbuckled the boys, and my mom appeared at the door, gasping with delight at Matthew’s alert, curious face.