Oogy The Dog Only a Family Could Love (6 page)

“Congratulations,” I informed Jennifer. “You’re a mom.” Then I added, “It’s twins.”

I hope that I was smiling as I said this, but I really can’t remember. Jennifer shrieked, “What?!” and jumped off the couch as though she had received an electric shock. She grabbed the receiver and started talking to Susan. I mentally drifted away, trying to absorb the information and figure out the next step. At some point Jennifer began to cry. If I recall correctly, she did not stop crying for at least two days.

Finally, Jennifer hung up the phone. Mascara colored her face beneath her eyes like an athlete’s eye black. “They said we can show up anytime after twelve,” she told me, sniffling. “The birth mother is still there. She needs some time to say good-bye.”

I nodded, pursing my lips. “That’s understandable,” I said.

We realized that we needed to get dressed and go to a baby store. We had absolutely nothing in the house for a baby, because in Jewish tradition the
keinahora
says that it is bad luck if you plan for a baby before it arrives. All we had was a room on the second floor painted dark yellow, which was where the baby (one!) was to go, and which held only a tan couch, a set of curtains and a window shade for each of the two windows, and three bare white bookshelves anchored into the wall. We had no baby clothing, no formula, no bedding; we had no books, no toys. There were no bottles, no cribs, and no dressers. We did not have a name for one baby, let alone for two. We had nothing. We were completely unprepared for this. We hugged each other and went upstairs to get dressed.

I put on my tuxedo. How often would I get to be a father and bring two boys home? I wore bright red socks and my black sneakers so people would know that on some level, at least, I wasn’t taking myself too seriously. In later years, the boys admitted that they were very impressed to learn that I treated the event with such significance that I went to the trouble of wearing a tuxedo (even paired with red socks) in order to go meet them for the first time. The tux was a hand-me-down from my dad, whom it no longer fit. Somewhere in there, a circle was being completed, but I didn’t have time to think about this. We called Jennifer’s parents in Bethesda to tell them the news; they said they would pack and arrive later in the afternoon. My own parents were out, so we were not able to tell them yet that they had finally become grandparents. We called our siblings, scattered around the country. We called some friends. We asked people to spread the word that the next day we would have everyone over for an open house. Jennifer called a caterer to arrange for food to be delivered. The real estate agent who had sold us our house, and who had become a friend, ordered two stork signs for us to plant on the lawn to announce the boys’ arrival.

We drove to the closest available baby store. Jennifer went to look at furniture. I explained to the saleswoman who approached me that we had two newborn boys coming into our house and had absolutely nothing for them but an empty room.

“Congratulations,” she said. “You’re on the way to pick them up now?”

I nodded. “In an hour,” I told her.

“Well, to start with, you’ll need car seats,” she pointed out.

She walked me over to a little room off the main part of the store, took a gray plastic car seat off a shelf, and set it on the floor. The inside of the shell contained a padded cushion; a belt and two straps were joined at the center buckle.

“Can you show me how to use that?” I asked.

“Of course.” She knelt next to the car seat. She turned it over and showed me where the car’s seat belt slid through the bottom of the carrier assembly to hold it in place on the seat. Next, she demonstrated how the carrier locked into place on its base when the lever was pushed down and how it disengaged when the handle was flipped back. The handle that locked the seat into place in the car was used to carry the child when the seat was disengaged. She cautioned me that the carriers were to be placed on the rear seat facing toward the back of the car. Then she turned the carrier around and started explaining to me how to place the child in and restrain him. But nothing she said seemed to take.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I’m having a hard time following how this works. Can you show me?” I reached around her and picked up a stuffed animal, a little gray-and-white elephant. I handed the elephant to her to use as a visual demonstration. I needed to see what I needed to do.

“Okay,” she said. “First you open the harness like this.” She pressed the center button on the buckle, which released the shoulder straps. The buckle itself was on a strap located on the bottom of the seat. “Then you place your baby in the seat like this.” She looked up at me to see if I was watching her, then turned her face downward again to concentrate on what she was doing. She put the elephant in the car seat and pulled the buckle up to its chest from between its legs. “You move his little trunk out of the way like so, then slide the clasp back into place.” She lifted the elephant’s short trunk and pushed the clasp for the shoulder straps into the buckle until it clicked into place. She looked up again with a smile.

“Voilà,” she said, raising both hands in a gesture of triumph.

I bought the elephant, too. It was the boys’ first toy. They still have it. I hope that they always will.

We also bought two cribs with mattresses, four sets of sheets, four blankets, and four pillowcases. We purchased several boxes of formula, bottles and bottle liners, clothes, and some more toys. Jennifer ordered a dresser that would be delivered in a couple of days. We bought wipes, diapers, and talcum powder, just enough of what we needed to get started and until we could figure out where it was cheapest to get more. We managed to fit all of this into the trunk of the car. Then we made the twenty-minute drive to Cherry Hill.

We entered the building where the Golden Cradle offices were located and took the elevator to the agency’s suite. Because this was the first set of twins at Golden Cradle in five years, the entire staff had gathered in celebration. Everyone accompanied us into the conference room, offered their heartfelt congratulations, and then left us there, closing the door. Alone together, Jennifer and I clasped hands. We were about to experience one of those moments in life for which there can be no dress rehearsal. We stood staring at the door that had just been closed behind us. What
was
behind door number one?

There was a soft knock and the door opened. Shelly, a social worker who assisted with birth parents and who had flown out to meet and return with the boys and their mother, came in with the babies, one cradled in each arm. The boys were wrapped in white blankets festooned with yellow stars. Shelly was grinning from ear to ear; just about five feet tall, with red hair, she reminded me of a leprechaun.

“Here,” she said. She handed one of the boys to Jennifer. “One for
you,
” she said, and turned, handed me the other boy, and said, “and one for
you
.”

Then she left, closing the door softly behind her, and the staff left the four of us alone for twenty minutes.

I had never before held a newborn child. He was sleeping. It felt as if I were holding a pillow.

The first thing I said to Jennifer was, “Oh, my goodness.”

The boy I was holding had a tiny, wrinkled red face that was so pushed in it looked as if it had been hit by a shovel. His hands appeared shriveled, like little monkey hands. I looked at the boy Jennifer was holding, and he looked exactly the same way. I said, “They’re really funny-looking. I think they look like ET.”

“Trust me,” Jennifer said. Her mascara was streaming down her face again. “They’re beautiful.”

I had no idea how she could tell that, but she proved to be right.

I was not sure what we should do next. They were asleep, so there was no sense in rocking them.

“Okay,” I said to the one I was holding. “Who are you?”

There was not a lot of talking to be done. We were simply awestruck at the sudden sequence of events. We sat on the couch and placed the boys between us and stared at them. Then we switched boys. After that, we each experienced holding both of them. We must have used the word
amazing
eight times. They did not open their eyes, so we had no idea what color they were. They did not wake up. It was inconceivable to imagine the power they now held over us. And there had been a subtle but critically important change within me, although I was not to realize it for years to come. I was no longer afraid of being a father — now I was afraid of not being a good one.

Then Susan and the agency’s director returned to fill us in on the boys’ family history. A brother of theirs, who was three years older than our boys, had been adopted when he was several weeks old and was living in New England.

This time, the birth parents had contacted Golden Cradle three days before the due date to arrange for adoption. At the time they contacted Golden Cradle, however, they did not know that they were about to become the parents of twins. In the sonograms, one of the boys was in front of or on top of the other, and no one appeared to have paid much attention to what was really going on in there. After the first boy was born, we were told, their mother said, “I don’t think I’m done yet.” She was rushed into surgery, and the second boy was delivered by C-section twenty minutes after she had delivered the first.

We also learned that the birth parents initially asked for the twins to be placed with their brother in New England, but the couple who had adopted the boys’ brother responded that they were not in a position to adopt twins. Shelly discussed other adoption possibilities with the birth parents, then flew to their home state a day before the births occurred with the files of several prospective adoptive couples in whom the birth parents had expressed interest. Then, after we were selected, and after the twins had been delivered, Shelly had to scramble to call Golden Cradle to see if Jennifer and I had preapproved twins. The agency would not place twins separately and would place them only with a couple who had agreed ahead of time that they would accept multiple siblings in the event that occurred.

We had been fascinated with the notion of twins for years, ever since an old friend of mine had visited with his three-month-old twin sons. Watching their similarities and the way they interacted with one another even at so young an age revealed a special bond that seemed to add another dimension to their relationship with each other as well as with the overall family dynamic. As a result, we had preapproved twins, but we had never expected that the adoption process would yield such a result.

On the way out of Golden Cradle that morning, Susan gave us a black-and-white copy of a photograph of the boys’ older brother at six months.

“Here,” she said. “This will give you some idea of what your sons are going to look like.”

As it turned out, it really didn’t. Their brother has dark hair and dark skin. Noah and Dan are strawberry blonds. Both are taller than their brother. The three do share gray green eyes, however, and similar builds, lean and muscular.

The boys’ birth mother had flown with them to Golden Cradle and was still there the day we went to pick them up so that she could nurse them until the surrender occurred. She wanted to make sure that she would give them the best possible start in life. We were told that when she was leaving, she looked at them for the last time and said, “These boys are Levins.”

Our visit to Golden Cradle lasted about an hour and a half, and at some point someone took a picture of me sitting on the couch with both boys on my lap. I look stunned. My eyes appear murky, unfocused, as though I had not slept in days. Perhaps I was beginning to crash from the adrenaline rush of the preceding several hours. I had never been jacked that high before, and I could not have had any idea what all of this would come to mean.

On the way over to Golden Cradle that morning, Jennifer and I, for the first time, had begun tossing around possible names. It was kind of like buying a house, involving lots of trial and error until we both could agree on something. We knew we both had to agree, because the results of the decision would be permanent. Very quickly we happily settled on Noah as the name of the firstborn. This was an easy choice because the boys had come two by two. Then, once we had agreed on Noah as the name for boy number one, we agreed that the second boy should also have a biblical first name. That second name proved more difficult to decide upon. Over the next several days, we tried out different names one after the other — Aaron, Adam, Ari, Benjamin, Caleb, David, Eli, Ezekiel, Gabriel, Gideon, Isaiah, Jonah — but we were unable to agree on a name for our second son. None of them seemed to fit with Levin. Until we agreed on a second name, the boys were “Baby One” and “Baby Two” by order of birth. Finally, we settled on Daniel for the younger boy. We could not recall a single Dan we had ever known who was not a stand-up guy. Dan’s middle name, Garrett (which for several of his early years he thought was “Carrot”), was for his maternal grandfather, Gershon. In Jewish tradition, one uses the initial of a deceased person and not the name. Noah was initially Noah Alexander, for no other reason than it sounded nice.

One of the ironies in all this is that the day we received the stork call from Golden Cradle, my dad had gone to the emergency room with severe stomach pains, which is why my parents had not been at home when we called to tell them that they were finally grandparents. These stomach pains proved to be the precursor of the cancer that killed him four months later. He did not get to enjoy our boys for long, but at least when he died he knew he was a grandfather. As the boys’ adoptions had not been finalized at the time of my father’s death, we changed Noah’s middle name to Harte, for Herbert, my dad’s first name.

In their infancy, we color-coded everything in order to distinguish what belonged to whom. All of Noah’s bottles had red dots appended to them. Dan’s bottles had blue dots. Noah had the red blanket and the red socks, Dan the blue. We never dressed them alike. We always made it a point to stress their individuality.