The need for a “Little brother the same colour as me”.

This summer – 2015 – when D and I were enjoying a holiday in the Highlands of Scotland, I thought of the times we took all our children to Scotland. This year, D and I stayed in houses but in those long ago days we always camped. I don’t think we ever met any other mixed-race families, although we certainly met many families with lovely red hair.

We enjoyed local Highland Games a few times

           and on one occasion, enjoyed watching a rumbustious raft-race. I remember the great atmosphere of excitement and competition in both kinds of events.

The children usually made friends on the campsites. They were wonderful holidays – as indeed was ours this year.

This is a picture of our first tent. Five of us slept in it. My father lent it to us, although we thought that he had GIVEN it to us. We realised our mistake when we told him we had sold it and bought a bigger tent. Fortunately he was OK about it. Phew!

Sam was always a happy even-tempered little boy. He was adored by his big sisters. I don’t remember any arguments between the three children, but evidently – being normal children – they were quite capable of teasing and annoying each other at times. I suppose D and I had simply not been present at such times.

It was at the end of a holiday in Scotland that we heard Sam utter a heartfelt wish that jet-propelled us into seeking another child to join our family.

As I remember, Lucy and Anna had been paddling and playing in a sparkling brook. Maybe Sam had been trying to build a dam – or a separate activity. Anyway there must have been an argument and we suddenly heard him exclaim.

“When we get our little brother-the-same-colour-as-me, you’ll SEE!”

D and I both sat up. This was a shock. It didn’t sound like our even-tempered Sam. However, he had a point.

We had always intended to get a little brother the same colour as Sam. We both wondered where time had gone. Sam was now aged six. Why had we left this so late?

We knew that the climate of opinion about interracial adoption had been changing over the intervening years. Many people were against such adoptions, which made us feel a bit strange. We could understand many of the arguments against inter-racial adoption and yet Sam had always seemed happy, had been such an integral part of our family and when he was born, he definitely needed a loving family to adopt him. We also were fully committed to bringing him up to feel proud of who he was, a Black British person.

We did not know whether we had left operation ‘little brother’ too late. We did not know whether we would be approved once again as would-be adoptive parents.  We resolved to look into the situation as a matter of urgency as soon as we returned home.