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“People struggle with the lack of verbal bonding,” one caseworker told me.
As if love only counts if a child can say it out loud.
I gently rolled it back to him.
He paused, looked up, and studied my face. Then he rolled the car back again.
That was our first conversation.
I adopted him three months later.
Noah didn’t talk, but he communicated in a hundred other ways.
He would slide drawings under my coffee mug when I looked sad.
He would sit beside me on the couch, like a quiet anchor. He would tap my wrist twice when he wanted to hold hands.
It was our secret code.
Walks after dinner. His stuffed dinosaur always lay on the left side of his pillow.
People always asked, “Do you love him like he’s yours?”
What they really meant was: “Do you love him like you gave birth to him?”
I loved Noah with a fierceness that scared me sometimes. The kind that makes your chest ache when you imagine anything hurting him.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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