What beautiful children! Are they yours?

Kate Lechtenberg,
Des Moines, IA.

The statement is spoken as a compliment, and the question is asked with genuine curiosity and is often followed with qualifications: “I mean, are you their real mother? Their birth mother?” Together, these six words set off essays in my mind, essays full of my own questions, frustrations, challenges, and poems. But the simple answer is a smile and a word: yes.