Everyone loves this story of our adopted daughter – and it is 100% true.
6 years ago my wife and I were struggling with infertility. We had tried everything and could not conceive. We instead opted to adopt. We signed up with an adoption agency one August. Several months later that same year – in December, we took a vacation to New Mexico. While visiting one of the Native American Pueblos in the gift shop I saw a figurine of a mother with children climbing all over her. Back home, at the advice of our Adoption Agency, we had already begun to put together a nursery – he said it helped to get us into “parent mode.” I took the figure to my wife and said “I want to get this and put it in the “baby’s room” – maybe it will bring a good vibe.”
So I took the figurine to the counter and asked the guy if he was the artist who made it. He said no, “but I represent the artist.” So I said oh, then can you tell me what this figure represents? He said its the “Storyteller” that each tribe has a woman that relates the tribes oral history to the children. I said “Oh – I thought when I saw all the kids on her – it was some kind of fertility figure – my wife and I can’t have children and we are trying to adopt – and I thought this might help find us a baby. Not wanting to lose the sale I suppose, he said – “Well it can do that too.” So there I was about to take out my wallet, when from behind a beaded curtain in back of him steps out this old Indian who looks like the Medicine Man straight out of “Central Casting”, long gray hair, weathered, wrinkled face, beads, etc – and he looks right at my wife and me – and says “I overheard what you were telling my Grandson, and I sense a goodness in you – I am going to pray to the Great Spirit to send you a baby.” Needless to say we thanked him and bought the figure and put it the nursery when we got home. That was December 2002.
Flash forward a few months to February 2003 – and we get a call from our adoption agency that they have a “very pregnant” Birth Mother in their office who has selected us to adopt her child – but we have to ask you and your wife one Question – “she is Native American – do you have any problem with that?”
A few days later, on February 14th, Valentines Day no less – the child that we had no doubt was destined to be our daughter was born – we were there in the delivery room – and we named her Lailee Natane Goodman – Natane is a Native American word for “daughter.”
TRUE STORY!!!
