By Analiz González
Buckner International
(MELISSA, Texas) — In Reyna and Daniel’s world, there were no bugs, no guinea pigs and definitely no horses.
What they knew was a strict schedule: bunk beds with several children to a room and night lights that went across the edge of the floor like fire flies in the dark. There were no permanent moms or dads. There was only the hope of them.
One day, someone pulled Reyna, 7 and Daniel, 8, aside to tell them that a family wanted to take them home, forever.
“They were given this album with pictures of us and all the animals,” said Chris McKlein, their mother of three years, lifting up the book. “One week later, they moved in.”
The children had been in the foster care system for two years and moved from house to house so often that it took them a while to understand the concept of a permanent home.
“We lived in three houses before this,” Daniel said, raising his arms in the air. “It was hard to go, go, go, drive and go, go go. … I was scared at first. We had never slept alone in a dark room. And I thought we (Reyna and I) would have to move again, but they kept telling us we’d stay until we grew up.”
Reyna was scared, too.
“She was afraid of the dogs,” said Dan Bray, her father. “Now she’ll run up to them and play with them.”
The family lives in a house off a gravel road, with four horses, a guinea pig, three fish aquariums, a frog, chickens and so many cats and dogs it’s hard to keep track of them all.
“(The children) didn’t know you could run barefoot,” Chris said. “Now I’ll come home and Dan has them working on the roof or riding on the horses and doing things they never would have done.
“I think the adjustment was greater for us than for the kids,” Chris added. “You have two kids suddenly. We had a week from the time we met them to the time they came to our house. We were shell shocked. We had been waiting for months and then it was all finalized suddenly.
“I took their schedule and worked on teaching the kids what to do and what not to do. They didn’t know what leftovers were, or Tupperware. And they didn’t know you could make chocolate milk because when you’re feeding a bunch of kids, any chocolate milk will be coming from a bottle. We also had to explain what TV shows were and commercials.”
But Dan said the children were ready to move in with them from the beginning. “We were introduced to them as mommy and daddy and that’s what we were.”
The Bray-McKlein family isn’t perfect, but they tried to reach perfection before allowing themselves to adopt, Chris said. “We thought it’d be easier to go through the process, that we’d just get the stamp of approval. But we realized that we were never going to get things perfect.”
The couple had been married for 15 years before they started looking into adoption because they wanted the perfect house, perfect health and all bills paid off. But they learned perfection wasn’t obtainable and decided to begin the process.
They started with a small adoption agency that ended up folding before they turned to Buckner.
“Buckner had so many more resources,” McKlein said. “We got a lot of personalized attention. We ended up with Buckner through a referral and it was so much more than we expected. Even though it’s a large agency, it’s very personal.”
Bray and McKlein informed Buckner that they were open to adopting children of any racial background. Reyna and Daniel are Hispanic
“In some situations, adopting across racial lines can be hard if the community wouldn’t be willing to accept the child,” McKlein said. “Adoption isn’t just for you. It’s about the impact it has on your child. But it’s never been an issue for us. We never got negative comments.”
Chris said they don’t talk to their children a lot about race. “The question is, ‘Do you want to introduce that concept when they are colorblind. I mean, I see good and bad points of both.”
Despite the difference in heritage, the children are as much Bray’s and McKlein’s as they can be.
“They are ours,” Dan said. “We have quirky things that we do and then they pick up on it and you say, ‘That’s me.’”
A Permanent Home
