Gotcha Day

There's a name for it, in adoption circles. The day the family came. The day everything that had been waiting finally arrived.

Gotcha Day.

I was nine days old.

I don't remember it, of course. But I've thought about it — what it must have looked like. My parents walking in, everything already signed and settled, all the formalities done. And beside them, my brother — two and a half years old, adopted himself at four months from another family. They had come to this path not by design, but because life had led them here. Unable to conceive, they had found another way to become a family. And here they were, doing it again.

They came as a family. And we left as a bigger one.

It was a different time. There were no transition visits, no gradual introductions, no carefully managed meetings before the day itself. They simply came, and I simply went. Though the legal adoption wouldn't be finalised for another six months — that's how it worked then — to them, I imagine, I was already theirs from that very first moment.

They were extraordinary people. Not without fault — no one is — but genuinely, quietly gorgeous in the way they loved. The kind of people who made you feel held without ever having to say it out loud. And my brother, who had found his way to them just as I had, was part of that from the very beginning.

I've been thinking about that word lately. Gotcha. There's something so certain about it. Not we found you or we chose you — though both of those things were true. Just: we've got you now. You're ours. That's it.

Some beginnings are quiet like that. No fanfare. Just a door opening, and a life beginning, and everything falling into place without needing to make a sound.

That was 51 years ago today.

Gotcha. 🌿