WEST PALM BEACH — The weather outside the Palm Beach County Courthouse was as bleak as the mood often is inside, but the line of families filing through the lobby doors looked like a Christmas parade.
Children wore colorful dresses and tiny bow ties while the adults balanced gift bags and fitful toddlers over the crooks of their arms.
Many had been there before, often for stressful meetings in family court, where the children they loved languished in limbo — no longer in the care of their biological parent, but unable to be formally adopted by a new one.
That changed Friday.
Officials transformed the sterile courthouse cafeteria into one with music, cupcakes and a wandering magician who pretended to steal children’s thumbs as grown-ups awaited the moment they would become in law what they had long been in fact: their parents.
Judges finalized the adoption of 21 children ranging in age from 11 months to 16 years old Friday. Similar celebrations took place across the U.S. as part of National Adoption Day, held each year on the Saturday before Thanksgiving to raise awareness for the many children waiting to join their forever homes.
There are 37 children waiting in Palm Beach County and more than 100,000 across the U.S., according to ChildNet, one of the local child-welfare agencies that helped to host Friday’s event.
“I know many of you are keenly aware that, at times, the adoption process is painful and makes you want to scream,” said Bailey Hughes, who along with her husband, Josh, was honored at the ceremony for her years of fostering and adopting. “Rest assured … it’s well worth the fight.”
Even the judges savored the joy of National Adoption Day
The marathon of adoptions began on the 11th floor of the courthouse, where criminal cases are held — often home to the sounds of families fracturing. On Friday, even the most stoic of bailiffs grinned as judges helped put families together instead.
“Are you ready?” asked Circuit Judge Kathleen Kroll, one of the five judges who oversaw the adoptions. She rubbed her hands together. “You don’t have to be quiet in the courtroom right now. This is exciting!”
Cynthia Rodriguez, 39, and Nicole Miller, 37, a married couple from Palm Beach Gardens, sat where the attorneys normally do, their soon-to-be sons in between them. Behind them all, their blended families cheered.
“Adopt them kids!” a young man shouted.
The first time Damion Kingsley, 14, and his 12-year-old brother, Darryl Bent Jr., visited the couple’s home, Darryl emptied his backpack into one of the bedrooms and left his things behind once it was time to return to their foster home.
“This is my room. I’m coming back here, right?” Miller said the boy asked, his possessions littered about. “We’re coming back here, right?”
He was right. It took eight months to get to this moment, but fewer than five minutes for Kroll to make the adoption official. Damion and Darryl swayed in their seats while their newly made mothers reaffirmed to the judge that they would love and support the boys to the end.
They’ve begun the long process of adopting Damion and Darryl’s two younger siblings, 5 and 8 years old, too.
Most adoptions in Palm Beach County take 10 months, but some run far longer
In Palm Beach County, it takes about 10 months from the moment a judge terminates a biological parent’s parental rights for them to be awarded to the adoptive ones, said Lauren Fuentes, the regional executive director of Children’s Home Society of Florida.
The waiting period for Darryl and Damion was just shy of that, but for others, it can be much longer. It took almost two years for the court to finalize 64-year-old Grace Mayato’s adoption of her infant grandson, Anthony, in a courtroom adjacent to the brothers’.
Anthony was born during the pandemic with heart murmurs, swollen kidneys and asthma, Mayato said, and his biological parents weren’t able to care for him. Mayato stepped in to help, having already adopted her daughter’s first child, 11-year-old Jade, in 2015.
“It’s just a real joy to have them, to be able to do for them,” said Mayato in the courthouse cafeteria. “Especially for this little special-needs guy, who has so much to bring.”
Technically their grandmother, but now legally their mother, Mayato, who recently moved from West Palm Beach to Miami, said she modulates between the two roles: firm at homework and chore time, but lax where she can be.
“Four cupcakes, Jade?” she asked then, incredulous for a moment as her daughter hurried past, balancing four mini-cupcakes on a paper plate.
“Yep,” Jade called back over her shoulder. Mayato gave an exasperated shake of the head and went back to cooing over Anthony, for that moment, at least, in grandma-mode.
He learned at 39 he was adopted. At 55, he adopted a child himself.
Two-year-old Aaron Morrison-Zinn was among the final children adopted Friday. His fathers, Mark Morrison and Ted Zinn, who split their time between New Jersey and Palm Beach County, beamed in the courtroom as their son babbled to the judge.
The experience might have been surreal to Morrison, who at 39 found out that he was adopted. The news came as a shock, he said, and he grieved for what felt like time lost with his biological family.
Zinn already had an adult son and granddaughter by the time Morrison, now 50, proposed the idea of adopting a child themselves. Could he love someone else’s kid? He didn’t know.
He got his answer within minutes of meeting Aaron for the first time.
“Aaron grabbed me and hugged me and started patting me on my shoulder,” said Zinn, 55. “And I promised him: ‘I’ll never give up on you. Me and your dad are going to get you. We’re going to give you the best life possible.'”
No experience prepared him for his new son calling him ‘Dad’
Their path to adoption was an arduous one, and at no point did it feel like a guaranteed outcome. They said they checked their mailbox each day, afraid there would be a letter inside informing them that their bid for Aaron had been denied, and he had been awarded instead to the other family that loved him, too.
“That poor family got the letter,” Morrison said.
He and Zinn remain close with Aaron’s biological and foster families, both of which intend to stay in the child’s life. They met with the other family that vied for custody of Aaron on Saturday, so that they can also be in his life if they’d like to.
“I never thought in a million years I was going to experience this,” Morrison said. “To hear him call me ‘Dad,’ or just to look at me to ask me to fix something. Just to have someone look up at you — it’s an amazing feeling.”
Aaron, worn out from an afternoon spent charming the grown-ups, had already begun to quiet his babbling when he was carried out of the courtroom on a hip — his father’s.
By: Hannah Phillips
Originally posted by Palm Beach Post
