I am the mother of two adopted children. I also have five other children. We forgot who is adopted in our family. Our older adopted child is Allen. He was three days old when we got him. Our younger adopted child is Ken. He was two days old when we got him. I breastfed and homeschooled both of them. Both of them are part African-American and part Caucasian.

Since neither of them has ready access to the internet, I will have to tell their stories.

When Allen was a few months old, he shared a bedroom with his older sister Marti. Every night, Marti would climb into his crib, and put her arm around him, and they would sleep like that. When we got Ken, he had a problem they call failure to thrive. We never figured out what caused it, but when he was two years old, I put him on a diet of raw foods, and he started to grow, and he is now over six feet tall. When Ken was tiny, often Allen would ask me to breastfeed him, and about ten minutes after he finished, Ken would ask, but I didn't have much milk. On Allen's second birthday, I took him on my lap, and I said, "Your brother Ken needs my breast milk because he is having trouble growing. Often, you come and drink my milk, and then he comes, and there isn't any left. Would you be willing not to take any more milk so he can have it?" And from that day on, Allen never asked to breastfeed again! That is the kind of love we have in our family.

Allen is the most talented musician I have ever known personally. When he was thirteen, he came to me and asked to have piano lessons. Our piano had been damaged in the flood, so we prayed for a piano, and that very week, a close friend gave us her organ. She didn't know about our prayers. Within three weeks, Allen was able to play the Prelude in C from the Well Tempered Clavier, by Bach. A year later, he asked to study the violin, and because we couldn't afford lessons, he found a woman who was willing to teach him. He took four lessons from her, and worked on his own, and a year later, he started to study under the woman's teacher. Within two years, he was playing standard string orchestra concert repertoire with Tucson Junior Strings. Then he started to study the trombone, and his teacher asked him to start a swing band. So Allen went out and located 24 high school level jazz players, a director, and a place to rehearse, and kept the group going, and after a semester, the group played three swing pieces at a citywide jazz festival. Then Allen learned to play viola, and he was offered a full-expense scholarship to the New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida. He also took up conducting. While he was in Florida, the voice department got ahold of him, and he began to sing bit parts in opera with no voice training. He is now studying voice at the University of Arizona, and recently won an encouragement award in the Metropolitan Opera competition. His musicality is incredible, and he is just as expressive visually as he is musically. People love to come to his performances.

Ken had trouble learning to read, but he did learn; in fact, he learned so well that he can now read medical literature. He became interested in being an Emergency Medical Technician as a teenager, and was active with both the Civil Air Patrol and Explorer Scouting. After he left home, he began to work in care homes for the elderly, and I am aware that he has saved at least two lives. He got his training and his license as an EMT, and is now working part-time for the local fire department. He is also caring for a severely disabled teenager. He plans to open a care home for the elderly himself, and recently bought a house. He has a special talent with his hands, and has just the right temperament for the type of work he does. That kind of temperament is rare. In addition to these achievements, Ken has earned a recommended black belt in taekwondo. And he played trumpet in Allen's swing band. Ken likes a challenge. He is one of the most levelheaded and responsible people I have ever known.

Our family continues to be incredibly close. Both of my sons understand that if they want to find their birth family, I will help them, but they also understand that it is up to their birth parents whether or not they are reunited. Both of them are thankful to be alive, and very much pro-life. Not only that, but our family has learned to have complete tolerance for people of other races. Both of the adopted boys married Asian women, with our blessing, and they were also completely accepted in our family.

Please let your baby live. If you cannot care for her yourself, let her be adopted. Adoption is a wonderful thing for a child. Adopted children are just like any other children. They can appreciate the sun, and the wind in their faces. They can love and be loved. They can make a wonderful contribution to the world. And if you want to see them again, you can.

I just want to thank both of my sons' birth mothers for letting us make them part of our family. It has been a pleasure to raise them, and they are a credit to you. I wasn't responsible for their incredible talent. That came from their biological parents. I just offered them the opportunity to develop it. Both of them have made our family very happy, and have made the world a better place. Thank you!

Pat Goltz pgoltz@nexiliscom.com