When the Eight-Year-Old Boy We Were Adopting Came Home With Everything He Owned in a Black Bag—Then My Missing Brother’s Watch Fell Onto His Bed

A child’s poverty or instability should not become a gratitude lesson.

We bought him clothes because he needed clothes.

A suitcase before summer camp because he needed luggage.

Not because:

No child of ours will ever carry a trash bag again.

That sentence might make adults cry.

Oliver would have rolled his eyes.

Good.