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The New York Times
Parenting
A Reason to Take the
Early Bus Home
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Dith Pran/The New York Times
Thad Hayes, left, and Adam Lippin with their adopted
son, Daniel Luke Lippin-Hayes, 3 ½, at home in Montclair. |
By MICHAEL WINERIP,
nytimes.com on the Web, August 19, 2007
MONTCLAIR, N.J. -- EIGHT years
ago, when Thad Hayes gave Adam Lippin his phone number, he was thinking of a fun
night out in Manhattan, not a family. But life takes surprising turns.
The two hit it off, and not long into the relationship, Mr. Lippin mentioned
that he wanted children someday. Mr. Hayes, now 51, is a nationally known
interior designer based in New York City. He worked long hours, then
headed to the gym, rarely arriving home at his Greenwich Village apartment
before 9. “I wasn’t thinking about children,” Mr. Hayes says. “I
thought I was capable of talking anyone out of anything.”
But Mr. Lippin, 43, who owns Atomic Wings, a small restaurant chain, wasn’t
fooling around. He couldn’t really explain why he wanted children, he just
always knew that he did, and periodically, as the relationship grew serious,
he’d bring it up. “I never said, ‘I’d leave you if we don’t have a child,’
” he says. “I just said, ‘I have a strong desire.’ I pressed the
issue. Thad wasn’t against it.”
“Yeah,” Mr. Hayes says, “I wasn’t against it. It just wasn’t in my
consciousness.”
In 2002, they bought an apartment together that had a second bedroom. “A
lot was unspoken,” Mr. Lippin says.
“Definitely,” Mr. Hayes says. “But this place had a cute little extra
bedroom on the street. We were thinking — ”
“We were like a straight couple not trying to get pregnant, but not trying not
to get pregnant,” Mr. Lippin says.
That year they found a lawyer who specialized in doing private adoptions for
gays. It took them eight months to get certified by social workers and the
courts. Then they composed a packet including a letter and photos meant to
win over potential birth mothers. “There were lots of pictures of us with
our nieces and nephews,” Mr. Hayes says.
“Lots of women and children surrounding us,” adds Mr. Lippin, who says that
straight couples do the same, but that being gay, they probably emphasized it
more. With the lawyer’s help, they placed ads in small newspapers around
the country. Mr. Hayes’s full name is Jude Thaddeus Hayes, and the ads
were signed “Jude and Adam.”
“It was ambiguous on purpose — like Jude could have been a typo that was Judy,”
Mr. Lippin says. “The advice we got is, ‘It’s a numbers game, get a pool
as large as possible and then explain.’ ”
In the fall of 2003, a 40-year-old pregnant woman in upstate New York contacted
them. She had four children and was living with her boyfriend, the unborn
baby’s father. “She laughed when we told her about the Jude thing,” Mr.
Lippin says. “At one point, after we’d known her for a while, she said to
us, ‘I hate people who hate.’ ”
At an upstate restaurant, Mr. Lippin and Mr. Hayes met her, her boyfriend, her
four children, her mother and her half sister. “It was a big table,” Mr.
Hayes says.
The baby was due around New Year’s Day, so instead of going to the tropics for
Christmas, the two stayed in New York awaiting a call. “We went to about
20 movies in a week,” Mr. Hayes says. “Just to keep our minds off it.”
The baby was late, the call not coming until the frigid winter night of Jan. 13.
Waiting at the hospital, Mr. Hayes was so nervous, he couldn’t decide if he was
hot or cold, and took off his long johns and then put them back on three times.
“I was a mess,” he says. “I was very amped up.”
The family had told hospital officials that two men were adopting, but someone
had failed to tell the doctor. There were so many people in the delivery
room that when the doctor arrived, she asked who the father was. “They
said, ‘That’s the father, and that’s the dad and the daddy,’ ” recalls Mr.
Hayes.
“This doctor didn’t miss a beat,” Mr. Lippin says. “She looked at me and
Thad and said, ‘I get it.’ ”
On Jan. 14, 2004, at 11:22 a.m., a boy weighing 6 pounds 11 ounces was born.
Mr. Hayes cut the umbilical cord; Mr. Lippin took off his shirt and cradled the
infant on his bare chest.
New York law requires a delay of several weeks before an adoption is made final,
to give the mother time to change her mind. That afternoon, when she told
them she wanted to be alone with the baby and her other children for five
minutes, they worried. “After six minutes, I said, ‘Adam, it’s been six
minutes,’ ” recalls Mr. Hayes, and the two went back into the room. By 7
that night, the birth mother had left the hospital and the two dads had a room
on the maternity ward.
They named him Daniel Luke Lippin-Hayes, a good-sized name for one so young, and
made up a ditty they sing to him about Daniel Luke Lippin-Hayes being a little
boy, not a law firm.
Since then, it’s been pretty much the same old parenting story of city singles
pairing up, having children and moving to the suburbs.
Daniel is 3 ½ and — surprise, surprise — his parents didn’t have a clue how much
their lives would change. It’s mostly just work and Daniel now. Mr.
Lippin gave up teaching a yoga class. Mr. Hayes shortened his workday and
his visits to the gym. “I was 10 pounds lighter — actually 15 pounds —
before Daniel,” he says. Eight years ago, they met up for their first date
on a Friday at 10 p.m. Now they catch the 4:30 express bus together to Montclair
and are home by 5:15 to take over from the sitter.
They moved here for the old reasons — they were tired of the city and felt the
suburbs were better for children. Most summer nights, the three go to a
local pool or park and eat a picnic dinner.
Thursday is dads’ night out, usually dinner and a movie.
Daniel doesn’t understand yet that having two daddies is not par for the course.
He calls Mr. Lippin Dadda, Mr. Hayes Daddy. Growing up in a prosperous,
liberal suburb, he has play dates with kids who have straight parents and with
other kids who have two daddies. “In the beginning we worked at having him
see other families like ours,” Mr. Lippin says. “Now it just happens.”
He says in the world they move in, “I really don’t have any stories of
discrimination.”
Daniel Luke Lippin-Hayes may not be a law firm, but he is a regular chatterbox,
telling a visitor about his cars, his planes, his tools, his Thomas the Tank
engine. As an only child, he gets lots of attention. When he wakes
from his nap, he asks for tiger-bear (“We couldn’t tell if it was a tiger or
bear so we called it tiger-bear,” Mr. Lippin says) and Dadda hurries off.
After the three had dinner on a recent rainy evening, Daniel put on his new
dragon boots and went out in the backyard to splash in puddles.
Mr. Lippin would like to adopt another child, but says Mr. Hayes doesn’t want to
and “I won’t force it.”
As for Mr. Hayes, he says, “I’m ready to stop. I mean, there’s always that
little window. It’s not completely shut. ... ”
E-mail:
parenting@nytimes.com
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