Christmas at the Clabos is an open-ended affair. As the first week of January passed and thoughts turned to the NFL playoffs, a tree still sparkled in a corner of their Lawrenceville home and the lights remained strung around an upstairs balustrade.
“It was awesome. So awesome I guess we don’t want it to end,” chuckled Tyson Clabo, the imposing Falcons tackle whose size is also helpful come time to top the tree.
This was a holiday to be marked and savored, the first together for Tyson, his wife, Kendra, and their two children, Alissa, 4, and Ethan, 3. The first of many to be celebrated as a reconfigured family, an uncle and aunt becoming father and mother, the long reach of love proving itself again and again.
Familiar with running the hurry-up offense in his professional life, Clabo, 29, has chosen to do it personally, as well.
He was married to Kendra last February. They had two kids by March.
It’s complicated, but isn’t most everything with family?
The short form of the story: Clabo’s younger brother, Clark, and the woman to whom he was briefly married had two children, 10 months apart. Neither parent showed a willingness or the ability to care for the young boy and girl. Raising the kids was left to Clabo’s mother.
That never seemed a permanent solution. “My mother should be a grandma, not a mom,” Clabo said. Adopting his brother’s children — a long, often maddening process — was the plan all along. That finally became official nearly three months before Clabo reported to Falcons training camp, on Mother’s Day weekend.
Succinctly, Clabo explains why, “They needed us.”
“Now,” added Kendra, “we know we needed them, too.”
Long process
Alissa is a bright, inquisitive girl, say her parents, a girl who loves to play dress-up and be in the middle of any social situation. His folks say Ethan has really blossomed these last few months, overcoming some early, minor health problems. He is a good athlete, lean like his birth father, not built in the hulking mold of 6-foot-6, 330-pound Tyson.
“He didn’t get my metabolism, which is good. Better for him to have to try to be big, it’s better for life,” Clabo said.
So little contact did the children have with their birth parents, “I don’t know that they know we’re not their biological parents,” Clabo said.
“[The birth parents] had a handful of court ordered visits, but there were a lot of no-shows. There was one point where they didn’t show up for six or seven months,” he said. It has been more than a year, he said, since the children have even laid eyes on their biological parents. Attempts to reach Clark Clabo, through his father, were unsuccessful.
Tyson had been in and out of court for years dealing with custody issues and securing termination of rights agreements from the birth parents.
Then followed the wranglings of adoption proceedings.
All along, no matter how convoluted the process, there was an inevitable sense that these children one day would be Clabo’s to raise.
Still a newlywed
Kendra, who had met Tyson more than seven years ago when he played at Wake Forest, knew the deal and embraced it. In fact, the children had often called her “Mom,” long before the title became official.
“She loved them at first sight,” Tyson said.
“There weren’t a lot of ways it could all go down without them coming to live with us eventually,” he said. “We figured might as well go ahead and put all the pieces together — a ready-made family.”
“They are just so loving and innocent,” Kendra said. “They love you unconditionally; it really is a special kind of relationship. They want to be with us every minute, and they want to be like us. That makes you feel good, to know that somebody looks up to you like that and counts on you for everything.”
Somewhere along the line, Clabo lost a brother who he once counted as his best friend. Clark is currently living with their father. “I try not to have contact with him, but sometimes he’ll have my dad’s phone when I call,” Tyson said. “I’m not a believer that you just smile and pretend that nothing is wrong.”
But he has gained an instant full house. What an eventful year it has been for Clabo. He got married, had two kids, his team won the NFC South and will enter the playoffs a week from now as the top seed in the conference. A one-time undrafted free agent who kicked around NFL Europe and three practice squads before landing on the Falcons practice squad in 2005, he was just named first alternate to the Pro Bowl. He has 69 career starts with the Falcons in the bank.
“I was really, really honored to be an alternate. I can tell you, of all the goals I ever set for playing in the NFL, going to the Pro Bowl was never one I set for myself,” he said.
Changing outlook
This fatherhood thing, however, could play havoc with his image. On the right side of the Falcons line, Clabo and Harvey Dahl have carved out a reputation of anchoring one of the more cantankerous units in the league. They tend to block and keep blocking until someone tells them to stop — and sometimes even then they have to be convinced.
But now, introduce children to the scenario.
“They definitely bring out the dad in him,” Kendra said. “They bring out the inner sweetness in Tyson that the world doesn’t get to see.”
“My life has changed for the better,” said Clabo. “I never did anything anyway; I wasn’t a big go-out guy. So, now I get to come home and be a dad and that’s better than coming home and being just some guy sitting on his couch all day long.
“What’s really been good is they’re such good kids. If they were terrors, who knows?”
With the deal, the Falcons also adopted two new fans (at least for now. Clabo, signed this year as a restricted free agent, is at the end of a contract).
Ethan, who would watch football all day if that were an option, is by far the most ardent fan of the two.
“He gets disappointed because dad never scores a touchdown,” Kendra said. “We tried to explain it, but he isn’t buying it. He always asks, ‘Did dad score a touchdown?’ I tell him no, and he says, ‘Poor dad.’ ”
Such an offensive minded kid naturally would take to one particular Falcon.
“Matt Why-an! Matt Why-an!” Clabo said, imitating his boy.
“That’s OK. Matt Ryan’s my favorite player, too.”
Like father, like son.
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