Chapter 7 – Surprise, Surprise!
It was nice having Sonja home with me literally every hour of the day. It was time for football to start up again. This would be my third season since we were married and I realized that Sonja was not taking my being away for so long in the evenings. I suggested that she come to the practices and run laps with me and the players at the end of our scheduled outs. That time eventually extended into coming into the gym and lifting weights. The players gathered around one day when I was spotting Sonja. My wife at 4' 11" was extremely impressive on the weights as one of the few individuals who could bench press their own weight.
A couple of days into the pre-season we were approached on the device by a freshman player. Since I worked with the varsity, I only knew his face. He asked for some pointers and Sonja coached him through the moves as I spotted him making sure everything remained safe. They made their own friendship and I noticed several days later that Malcom sought out Sonja to run his laps as well.
As the season wound down, the team began to plan for the awards banquet. I had reviewed the award nominations and noticed that Malcom had been selected by the coaches as "Mr. Hustle." A couple of days before the banquet Sonja crossed paths with him in the weight room. "So your parents must really be proud of you" Sonja told him. "I don't have parents Ma'am. I live in foster care. "Well they'll be coming right?" "I doubt it ma'am. They think football is waste of time." "Well", Sonja asked, "would you mind if I come as your 'parent'?" I bet I could get Coach LaSalle to sit with us as well". Sonja said his face lit up like a light bulb.
Sonja indeed sat with Malcom as a proud momma bear. She shocked him as he returned to his seat after receiving his award by hugging him and planting a kiss on his check. The poor boy turned beat red but I swore that I could see a tear come to his green eyes. Sonja continued to meet up with him in the weight room as the off season began. She invited him over for a Saturday college football game which became a regular habit. He ate with us at Thanksgiving allowing me to display some of my culinary prowess.
I won't say that my wife was sly, but having been a bachelor my entire life, I didn't quite catch on to the fact that I was being set up. Sonja had encouraged me to take Malcom with me on a fishing trip for an entire weekend. He seemed to blossom surrounded by my group of male friends who were more than willing to teach this young man everything they knew about fishing in one weekend.
He raved all the way back to the foster home about each of my friends. We had been invited to go to the ranch of one of the men to ride horses. Malcom stated that he had never seen a horse up close much less rode one. It was another great weekend.
Sonja somehow discovered that Malcom's 16th birthday was in a few weeks. She called the freshman football coach and found out the names of some of his friends. He was just stunned when he walked in to the house for a Saturday afternoon basketball game with me and was surprised by many of his team mates and his two closest friends from high school.
I looked up during the party and noticed that Malcom had disappeared somewhere. I walked the grounds and found him out of sight of the house. "What's wrong son? Why aren't you in there with the guys?"
"I just needed a minute coach. This is the first birthday party that I ever had. It was a lot to take in."
I pulled him close and let him cry his big man tears. "Thank you so much for caring about me." We walked back to the house side by side.
Malcom caught a ride back to his foster home with one of the other players while I helped Sonja clean up. "That was wrong of you 'City Mouse'."
"What? What are you talking about Chris?"
"Sonja did you know that that boy had never had a birthday party before?"
"No honey, I had no clue. He doesn't talk a lot about his personal life so I have just kind of shied away from personal stuff."
"So why was it wrong?"
"Because it broke my heart to have him cry on my shoulder with gratitude."
I made an appointment to meet with the boy's advisor at the high school the following Monday. He was able to tell me a little more about Malcom and then gave me the contact information of his foster family. I went to see them one Saturday afternoon when I knew that Sonja and Malcom were attending a school science fair.
It seemed that Malcom's mother abused him as a young child. He had been in foster care for 13 years. This was his fifth foster home in all that time. I could look around and could see that the house was clean and the Johnsons seem like nice people. I finally broached the subject about him being adopted by them. Oh no, Coach LaSalle. We could never adopt a black child. I tried to keep a disciplined look on my face even though I was struggling.
I could smell dinner as I walked back into the house. I heard Malcom yelling at the players on the TV screen. We had a great dinner as Malcom ate like he always did – like a starved child. He was bigger than some professional football players. Sonja drove him back his house while I washed the dishes.
"You were awfully quiet at dinner Country Mouse." Sonja says when she returned and sat down beside me on the sofa.
"I had a lot on my mind."
"Like what?"
I filled her in on my activities of the past few days. "Look Sonja. We got into this marriage late in life. Even if we had wanted to have a child, we wouldn't have wanted to have had an infant. While you may think that you have been 'slick' about it, you have done everything in your power to bring Malcom close to my heart. I want to tell you that have succeeded. So what would you think if we had Malcom come live with us?"
"Well, Chris isn't it kind of hard to get a foster care license?"
"Sonja, no honey. Not as a foster child but as our son. We have plenty of room here and plenty of love to help him grow into a fine man. Cade already asks about his 'nephew' when he calls."
"Oh Chris" she says as she rushes into my arms. "So where do we start?"
"How about I call Rachael on Monday and see what we need to do."
Rachael referred me to a lawyer who specialized in private adoptions. Because Malcom was a ward of the court, it was explained to me that the petition could move quicker.
We had arranged for Malcom to be with us for another Saturday afternoon basketball game.
"You know Malcom that Miss Sonja and I married late in life. I had a lot of challenges with my father as a kid and actually even after I grew up. I knew Sonja back then and she helped me through some of that pain. For years I volunteered at a hospital in New Orleans visiting sick children. I would walk away each Saturday overwhelmed with their suffering and the pain that I saw in their parents. I knew then that I always wanted a son of my own. But, but…" at that I started to choke up and realized that my throat was closing up.
"What coach is trying to say Malcom" Sonja jumped in. "We think a lot of you and we would like for you to consider allowing us to adopt you as our son."
I'm not sure who cried more – me or Malcom. He was just stunned.
"Oh yes" he was finally able to say. So what happens now?" He asked.
"Well we have to have what they call a 'home study' completed. Fortunately for us both Sonja and I have recent FBI background checks so we are cleared on that front as far being investigated and not found to be a 'liar or a cheat'. They will speak with the three of us individually, then my wife and I and then the three of us together."
"Okay, that sounds great coach."
"Oh, and Malcom, because our backgrounds are clean, we can petition the court at the same time to have you placed temporarily in our custody as a foster child."
"Are you kidding" he exclaimed in joy.
The next few weeks were spent painting and decorating Malcom's room. I held my nose as he pasted his Georgia football poster on his wall. I realized then I had a lot of work to do to convert this young stallion to my way of thinking.
The first thing that we did was go shopping for clothes. Malcom was allocated money for two new pairs of shoes and a few changes of clothes a year. In all that time he did not remember having a real pair of pajamas. Sonja complained that this boy needed a new pair of shoes every few months. He grew two inches before his seventeenth birthday and two more his senior year. He towered over both Cade and I and often joked that he could pick Sonja up and dunk her like a basketball.
It was the little things that kept us surprised. No one had ever taken care of his ethnic hair. I think he was embarrassed at first when Sonja took him into town to an African American beauty shop. The owner took a look at his hair and showed him to properly take care of it. After that I took him a barber shop to teach him to care for his facial hair and get a routine haircut. It was an educational experience for me because I had no idea how his curly hair tended to cause more hair bumps than my own beard. One of the workers in the shop teased him about looking the old movie star Jason Momoa and that he would have to soon beat the girls off with a stick.
Being with us also improved his physical fitness. He ate smarter. He could soon also bench press his weight. Sonja decided to go back and pick up some hours at grad school forcing him to sit down with her at the 'study table'. Any guest in the house also had to bring books from the classroom or a library until 9 p.m.
While the guys like to park their butts in front of the gaming systems, Sonja stocked up on board games and playing cards forcing interaction between all the guests. The pool table and ping pong table were a source of constant conflict. There was a time that I thought about putting them away until Sonja finally ferreted out the two trouble makers and banned them for a semester from the house.
By the time the bedroom was finished, we had filed the petition to adopt and got a court order placing Malcom in our custody. Six months and one day later we went to court to finalize the adoption. Malcom's new birth certificate arrived two weeks later. Armed with the birth certificate, we went to the social security office as a family and got him a new social security card with the name Malcom Charles King LaSalle.
Having a teenager in the household was interesting and life changing. The house was rarely quiet. Either the second TV was on or the basement was full of teenagers. While we made a number of new family traditions, my favorite was to hold an open house every fall just after the first football game. We invited some of Malcom's friends and their parents over. I asked Malcom to help Sonja and I identify other teens like him that were either on the fringes or in need of a good friend.
We invited both the police chief and sheriff over in their civilian clothes. Sonja and each of the two officers made sure to isolate every young woman who was present and convey that they were there for them with anything that they might need. After a game of volleyball or basketball scrimmage, one of the officers would address everyone together about drag racing, driving while drunk, bullying, parental abuse, sexual harassment and sexual assault. I made it clear that while they were welcomed in our home, drugs and alcohol were not allowed at any time and that pool safety was always a priority.
Out of our event came the idea for the buddy bench at the high school. Atleast one student leader sat on the buddy bench each day before school and at lunch time. Any student wanting/needing a friend was welcomed to sit on the bench and be welcomed by the other students sitting there. It was very popular and the faculty members wondered why they didn't think of it first.
We added a small weight set in the basement for Malcom and Sonja to use during the off season. My son and I made good use of the trails that Cade and I had walked out decades before. I thought him how to safely hunt. We had great fun building new hunting blinds together up on the hill tops and near the creek. Sonja never took to any of the animals that we caught and frowned her nose up even at the smell of the game while I was cooking it.
I was old and Malcom was also too old to change his stripes. It broke my heart when he signed a letter of intent to play at Georgia. Now being over 6 feet tall, he clung to being a tight end in college. Lucky for him that like the former pro basketball player Dennis Rodman, he grew three more inches his freshman year at Georgia. Redshirted his freshman year, he was able learn to work with the new found height and those big feet to become a premier player for the team. Running up the hills on the farm made him focus on his footwork to insure that he didn't step into some pot hole and helped him to keep his balance while accelerating up a hill. That skill served him well as he ducked and dodged defensive players while skirting the sidelines on a long distance run up the sideline.
While others talked about him declaring for the draft his junior year, he said "dad, the ball games are fun but I'm tired of getting hit all the time. I know that momma wants me out the game. She doesn't want me hurt and I have to admit that I have been concerned at seeing what is happening to some of the players after more time in the pros. I was talking to Coach Walker the other day and he asked about me to consider coming back to coach the receivers as a graduate assistant and stay on to teach Mathematics."
After graduation Malcom asked if he could move into momma's old house. The three of use spent many hours repairing and painting it. He wasn't there that often anyway as a young stud, but I heard that he thought he needed to stay close for a while since we were starting to get up there in years.
He married his college sweet heart and they had a child in the first year of their marriage. Sonja became a fixture on the other side of the property when they were in Alabama. I'm not sure why Olivia didn't tell her to get out. I finally realized that they had created a bond of their own. Olivia's mother died suddenly her junior year in college. Sonja reached out to comfort her. Sonja amazed me at how she continually kept her mother's memory alive without any hint of jealousy. In fact it was Sonja who suggested that they add the name Grace to their short list of names for a girl. Grace was joined by twin brothers three years later. The boys were as different as night and day.
I returned late one Saturday morning to pick up Sonja to go meet Malcom and his kids for Grace's tenth birthday. He had brought the kids back to see the deer and visit a couple of his old high school buddies. "Come on 'City Mouse' get a move on it"! I finally walked into the front room and saw Sonja sitting quietly in her big chair. "Sonja come on they're waiting for us." There was no movement and my heart was suddenly filled with fear. My Sonja was gone I realized as I fell to my knees never wanting to get up again myself. How could I live without her? How could I have been so stupid to have wasted all those years apart from her? It was Malcom who found us with me too paralyzed to move from the floor. This time it was me weeping in the arms of my boy as we mourned her loss together.
