Kevin has known, from the time he was old enough to have a basic understanding of what it meant, that he was adopted. Neither Alex nor Rachel remember life without him; he was, from the day we brought him home, their baby brother. As they’ve gotten older there has never been an instance of one of them verbally slapping him with anything remotely like, “You’re not my real brother.” Alex is as protective of Kevin as he is of Rachel, and he has been since the day he got his first look at his newest sibling and started calling him Bebin. (Alex had a few speech issues for his first 5 years; he was 3 before he stopped calling Rachel “Pickle.” But that’s really apropos to nothing.)

I took the kids shopping for school clothes and supplies yesterday and somewhere in the midst of it all Kevin wondered out loud how tall Alex had been at his age, and when did I think he was going to catch up to his big brother? In his young eyes, if his brother was six feet tall at not quite fourteen, then sooner or later he would grow just as much. Right?

Kevin’s birth mother is barely five feet tall and I don’t think his biological father is much taller. He’s never asked anything specific about them before, and had no clue; genetics, however, are not the stuff of which ten year old boys ponder, and all he was focused on was his sibling bonds.

Even Rachel, he pointed out, is kind of tall. So is Mom, she’s almost as tall as Alex. So when, he wanted to know, could he expect to stop being so small?

I have expected questions about his birth parents, and I’ve been prepared to answer them. Char and I armed ourselves with as much information about them as we possibly could (his birth mother is Char’s much younger cousin; long story short, she was only thirteen when she became pregnant with him. It isn’t exactly an open adoption, but she gets updates about him through Char’s father and has seen pictures.) We knew what we would say to him if he asked why his mother didn’t love him enough to keep him. We felt confidant that we would be able to assure him that he is every bit as much ours as his brother and sister, and that we love him the same.

I didn’t expect his first real difficulties to be about his physical size. I tried to explain to him that because of his biological background he probably would never get taller than Rachel is right now, and I waited for his understandable outburst.

What I got, in the middle of a crowded McDonald’s was, Well, that fucking sucks!

No, I didn’t get on his case for it. Alex and Rachel both started laughing and I simply didn’t care about how horrified anyone else might be.

I also did not know what else to say to him. The odds are not in his favor when it comes to height; I’ll be surprised if he reaches 5’6” but I also don’t want him to feel slighted because of it.

Alex told his little brother, “I’m probably going to hit six-five or six-six,” and that’s when I nearly lost my temper. It mattered to Kevin, and I didn’t want Alex rubbing salt into an open wound. But before I could say anything he continued, “You don’t want to be that tall. Dad won’t even admit he’s taller than six-three because that would make him a freak. I’m gonna be a freak.”

Rachel chimed in with, “I might get taller than Mom and for a girl, you just don’t want to be that much taller than all the boys. If you get to be my height, you’ll be normal, Kevin.”

Girls, Alex added, are going to love you. You won’t be too tall and you won’t be too short, and they already think you’re cute.

By the time we finished lunch, Kevin was mostly pacified. I do, however, expect the questions to start rolling in, but now that I understand they might not be what we expect, we have a whole lot more to think about.