Figuring out discipline, routines, and fun

THE PARENTS: Michael Galvan, 32, and Keighan Gunther, 29, of Germantown

THE CHILD: Jordan River, 7, adopted Aug. 10, 2022

HIS NAME: At first, Jordan wanted to borrow a middle name from his classmates; then the couple learned from paperwork that he’d already been named “River,” perhaps by his birth mother. “He heard it and loved it,” Keighan says.

They’d been dating for two weeks when Keighan tried to break up.

The two got together at the nudging of a mutual friend, a party-loving guy who said half-jokingly, “You’re both really boring. I think you guys should go out.”

Keighan was a precocious 19 then; he’d graduated high school early and was attending college in Denton, Texas, where Michael was in his second year of graduate school in international relations.

Their first date was at an Italian restaurant — ”the worst food I’ve ever had in my life,” Keighan recalls — followed by ice cream, a walk, and an animated conversation about Michael’s passion for Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.

“He was so endearing and so sweet, so interested in listening and getting to know me,” Keighan says. Meantime, Keighan’s ambition — along with his emphatic desire for marriage and a family — impressed Michael.

Still, Keighan felt underwhelmed. “I was used to fiery, big sparks” in relationships, he says. “With Michael, it was a quiet buildup.” When he proposed ending their courtship, Michael said, “Let’s give it a month.”

“At the end of that month period, I was so in love with Michael,” Keighan says. “[I realized] this guy gets me more than anybody else does. I can talk about anything. He brings out the best in me.”

After a year together, Keighan wanted to adopt a cat, but he was too young to sign the paperwork. Michael agreed to be the official adopter, though the cat would live with Keighan and his housemates.

“We got the cat to my house, and she immediately went nuts, destroying everything, crawling up walls,” Keighan says. “I started crying: You can’t leave me alone with this cat.” Michael agreed to stay the night. He never left.

“Prior to living with Keighan, I was an aloof and shy roommate,” Michael says. “One of the things I really love about being with Keighan is that we can be quiet and alone together. It was a smooth transition.”

Keighan, raised in Texas, had always dreamed of moving to the Northeast, “someplace where my identity isn’t frowned upon.” Michael had the same vision. When the two landed jobs in the Philadelphia area, they saw it as kismet and moved in January 2015.

That year, Michael worked on Jim Kenney’s mayoral campaign and told some coworkers that he and Keighan were thinking of getting married. “They took the reins and got us a marriage certificate, found us a judge, a place for the reception. We took the El from City Hall to the Independence Beer Garden. It was the most Philly wedding.”

They wed on July 15, the day in-between their birthdays. Michael hoped to emulate his parents’ long-lasting partnership. Keighan relished the political statement of saying, “This is my husband,” along with the assurance of hospital visiting privileges and other benefits of married life.

They wanted children — but only after they had a house and stable jobs with health insurance. In early 2020, an information session about foster parenting at Philadelphia Family Pride quickly led to conversations with caseworkers from the Department of Human Services (DHS) and Turning Points for Children, a nonprofit agency that has a foster-to-adopt program.

The couple filed their paperwork within four months, then waited … and waited. A year went by. “We thought: It’s not happening. There’s no child out there. I guess we’ll just go backpacking in Europe and be the gay uncles,” Keighan says.

Last summer, they got a call: a new caseworker from Turning Points, telling them that one piece of paperwork was missing. It turned out the document had never been filed. A month later, another call came. “We think we have the child for you,” the caseworker said.

It was a 6-year-old boy named Jordan who’d been in foster care most of his life; he hoped for a “forever family” that included two parents and a dog. “The worker said, ‘Can you guys do it in 24 hours? No? How about 48?’ We rushed to IKEA to try to get his room together. I was almost crying in the aisles,” Keighan says.

They got a week’s grace period when Jordan’s foster parents decided to wait until a summer school program ended before transferring the boy. He arrived with a couple of bins, two or three bags, and a bicycle. He loved the dogs — a corgi named Cornelius and especially Chronos, a black Lab mix. He was delighted by the bunk beds, the bathroom he wouldn’t have to share.

“I remember thinking: What are the rules on toothbrushing? How do we handle snacks? What do we do for lunch?” Keighan says. As for Michael, “I was figuring out how to do discipline, positive reinforcement, setting routines. But one of the coolest things about having Jordan as a fully formed 6-year-old was that he has his own personality. He’s such a sweet little kid; intrinsically, he just wants people to be happy.”

At the same time, Keighan says, there is still so much they don’t know. “Jordan was his own person, but we had no context for his entire life.”

When he arrived, he couldn’t recite the alphabet. Some morning drop-offs at camp went smoothly while others erupted in tantrums. “We didn’t have a relationship to be able to comfort him,” Keighan says.

What they did have was commitment to the boy who now reads whole children’s books, who wakes them each morning with a starfish jump on their bed, the child who won’t stop twirling in circles even when Michael warns him repeatedly that he might topple.

“I grew up trying to be in control of everything. There’s nothing that teaches you that you are not in control like a 7-year-old: I’ve told you to stop spinning a million times, and you don’t. I just need to be there when you fall.”