The Posse

We spent eighteen months waiting to be chosen.  We wanted to adopt a baby and no one had yet chosen our family. The wait proved to be long, frustrating and challenging. But during those difficult months, we gathered a posse. Early on, I wouldn’t have used that word, but ‘posse’ explains how it works. ‘Posse’ is the Medieval Latin word for manpower of the county; a search party. In our quest to adopt, we had deputized family, friends, friends of friends, acquaintances and strangers. At six o’clock on Monday, February 6, 2012, Missy, our social worker called to say that the birthmother of a baby boy, born just after midnight, had chosen us to be his parents.  At that moment, our posse needed to be saddled up and ready to ride.

Missy also had a list of instructions. Dave and I were each on an extension. I had a pen and took notes on scraps of paper. Dave handed our six year old biological son Sam an IPOD to keep him busy. We squirreled ourselves away in the computer room. We heard a knock. Dave opened the door, Sam asked, “Are we adopting a baby today?”

At that moment, I realized how thoroughly unprepared I was for this adoption. After eighteen months of anticipation, all I saw was several pages of scribble and a series of treacherous steps to climb before we could claim our baby. I knew from listening to adoptive parents that between now and then, minds might change and funds might be unavailable. I wanted to have an answer for my son that would be confident and reassuring but not definite; something along the lines of, “We’re heading in that direction” or “We have a ways to go”. True to my husband’s steady and faithful hand, he bent down, looked Sam straight in the eye and said: “Yes”. He said it as much to himself as he did to Sam. We said, “Yes” to this baby, whatever we had to do. Sam returned to the living room and his IPOD.

After we got off the phone with Missy, Dave made phone calls to our family. I tried to organize the notes into a working agenda. How could we get all this done before tomorrow? I had written down what Missy said and added circles and punctuation in a lame attempt to highlight the important pieces. As I reviewed it, every step along the way seemed hazardous.

                                         

ü  Come up with fees tomorrow!!!!!

ü  Name the baby before 8pm. That name will appear on the adoption papers. The birthmom wants us to use the name Zion. Zion?!?

ü  Buy a birthmom present. Birth mom wants open adoption: 2 visits a year; letters and photos every month. Missy said maybe a picture frame? Photo album?

ü  Get a goodnight’s sleep :(

ü  10:30am tomorrow go to Adoption Star. Bring Cashier’s checks (the amount circled several times in my notes along with the breakdown). Sign the papers.

ü  12:00pm go to the Denny’s near the hospital to meet birthmom. Google Maps?!?

ü  1:00pm meet the baby at the hospital. Meet the baby. Meet the baby.

If we managed to get all this done and no one changed their mind, we would meet our baby boy. How many times had we been on the precipice of getting a baby? There had been seven miscarriages and maybe 20 profiling opportunities? Too many theoretical babies. But, this one was not theoretical. He was lying in a bassinet at the hospital and we had been chosen. We just needed to get all our ducks in a row and get to him by 1pm. I wanted to jump in the car, race to the nursery and scoop him up. Missy had emphatically told me that would jeopardize our chances. He seemed so close only an hour’s drive away but I had to remember, minds might change and funds might be unavailable.

The Zion Conundrum – Name the Baby

Our nieces who live across the street rushed through our front door with their mom, Dave’s sister, trailing behind. They waved scraps of paper. In such a short time, Caeley and Sophie, age thirteen and eleven, had compiled a list of names for their new baby cousin. They yelled out “Trevor” and “Mom likes Parker best”. Dave, who was on the phone with his brother trying to figure out how to get the money, tried to shush them. He was dealing with the inner sanctum of our posse. We had deputized a chosen few first. They had the greatest stake in our mission because the adoption meant a grandchild, nephew or cousin. The girls ignored their uncle Dave. “Christian”, Sophie suggested. Sam excited to finally be included put the kibosh on every one of the names on his cousins’ list. He proposed ZeeZee Zion. Dave tried again to quiet them. He needed to hear his brother’s advice on the money.

We are a working class family and keeping large sums of money available is unrealistic. In most adoptions, the adoptive parents meet the birthmother while she is still pregnant. Dave and I had falsely assumed it would be the same for us. It was our intention to borrow from his 401K and that takes a week to process. A week seemed a mere blip of time in the adoption game. Wrong.

Adoption agencies do not operate on credit.  Unlike Popeye’s Wimpy who will gladly let you pay Tuesday for a hamburger today, adoption agencies want their money before you get the baby. Dave’s brother, who had the funds available, wanted to wire the money but the amount was too large to do via Western Union. He was willing to drive all night to meet Dave halfway between here and Virginia Beach to hand off the cash; we would pay him back when the money from the 401K came through. That strategy was proving impractical given our time constraints.

Dave hung up the phone and joined us. He said, “Henry”. And I said, “Only if we can call him Hank”. This is how it went with Sam’s name. He wanted something traditional and I wanted a nickname, but both of us had to agree on both names. It took 5 months to agree on Samuel/Sam. Now we had no time and the additional complication of fitting whatever name we liked around the name Zion. Because I am a history nut on Western Expansion, the name was intriguing. I suggested, “Utah” for Zion National Park. Dave rolled his eyes. He searched online to find out what Zion meant, “The World to Come”, so fitting. We decided to go with the Western theme and Dave came up with a real cowboy name, Caleb Zion. We’d call him Cal for short. Caeley loved it, “That’s what they call me at school.”

Babies R’ Us aka Space Mountain

It was 8pm and we needed to get to the store before it closed at 9. I had kept a few essentials from when Sam was a baby: car seat, crib, changing table. I kept them in my Mother’s attic. My sister-in-law had a cradle that had been passed from brother to cousin and back again. But, we needed supplies and the birthmother present.

Babies R’ Us seemed a shop of horrors to me. I had avoided stores like this for years. After 10 years trying to make babies appear, I learned to fear baby stuff. My aunt sent me a silver baby rattle. After the first miscarriage, I pulled a blanket over my head, held that rattle in my fist, cried and didn’t stop, for a long time. I didn’t buy a single item for my son Sam until I was seven months pregnant. I bought him a hat and leather baby shoes. Now, I keep them in a shadow box as a remembrance.  We spent so many hours and days and months waiting on pregnancies and then later profiling opportunities. Birthmothers never chose us but that didn’t mean we hadn’t chosen them—our profile was always out and about. All those theoretical babies and I never got to push their wee arms through a sleeve or diaper their bottoms or shake a rattle as their hands reached for it. Baby things were the stuff that kept my grief going. That’s why I was so unprepared.  And now we had been chosen but this baby could just as easily pass from real to another one of my theoretical babies. Minds might change; funds might be unavailable.

So I did what I always do when faced with anxiety, grief, and uncertainty. I detach from my thoughts and emotions. I space out. And then when I can, I rely on other people, my posse in this case.

Dave, who usually has enough focus to sustain us during these times, was on the cellphone still trying to figure out the money with our mothers, his brother, sisters and brother-in-law. He had one hand pressed to his ear and the other pulled packages of onesies into our cart.

I looked at the basketful of stuff. So haphazard: a changing table pad but no cover; cradle sheets, no mattress; 24 onesies but only one outfit. It was February in Buffalo. My mother had rescued some of Sam’s clothes’ from my many trips to donation centers. I hoped she was in her attic pulling together baby stuff.

I wandered away and found the aisle with the frames and photo albums. I turned one over and over in my hand. Picture frames and albums usually hold treasured memories. Would the birthmother want to display his picture? How could I know?

I texted Megan, a person in our posse with a lot of know-how.  I met her on Facebook through a friend of a friend. She had adopted her second baby a few months prior. She helped me consider the complicated issues of biracial adoption and trans-racial families (meaning a family comprised of more than one race). Through discussions with Megan and others, we had opened up our adoption possibilities to include biracial children. Not any one adoption story would be the same as ours, but through them I would learn how to navigate.

The baby awaiting us in the hospital was African American and Latino; we are Caucasian. The gulf between discussing biracial adoption and becoming a trans-racial family seemed to widen with each step we took toward the baby. In keeping with my coping strategy, I detached from the thought. I did not want to lose my footing now. My cellphone beeped with an email. Megan wrote, “WHAT!!!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!! … Okay, People sometimes get a necklace with the baby's birthstone. And those necklaces are very modest, beautiful, and run around $125. I thought it would be a special gift but I left a gift receipt in there in case she wanted to exchange it for cash. Will you please call me tonight if you have ANY questions about birth mom protocol or anything like that? So so so happy for the soon to be 4 of you!!!!!”

The birthstone and receipt seemed right: practical, commemorative, and less complicated than the frames and albums. The jewelry store had already closed. Buying the present would have to wait until our already over-booked morning. Our goal – 1pm Meet the Baby seemed to be getting farther and farther away.

A Good Night’s Sleep L

I tossed; Dave turned. I wandered down to the computer to seek comfort from my Facebook friends (many of whom live in other time zones or are insomniacs). Much of the posse was formed there. When I create our profile, I had appealed to my FB friends to edit it and then they helped with several revisions. Initially, I put in numerous pictures of Sam because I thought that would say to prospective birthmothers, “Proven Parents”. My online community disagreed. They said a birthmother would read, “You already have a kid to love.” I changed our profile based on their suggestions.

I knew I couldn’t yet broadcast our news (minds might change; funds might be unavailable). I longed to hint. I felt like they deserved to know. Many of them were there from the beginning. Maybe if I talked in code…

The next round of people we gathered into our posse guided us through the homestudy. They had enough of a past with us to vouch for our future. The posse expanded when I had to fill out a background check that asked for every place I had lived for the past 25 years. On Facebook, an ex-boyfriend and ex- roommate volunteered to drive around Seattle to help acquire 16 years’ worth of addresses.

Later, the posse grew larger when we tried the “private tract” adoption process. Private tract is the “six-degrees of separation” form of adoption. We tried on our own to locate a possible birthmother. The people on our Christmas card list received our personal adoption materials to give to OB/GYN doctors, school guidance counselors, priests, whoever might know someone who might know someone who might be putting a baby up for adoption. I rallied my cousins’ friends on Facebook. They peppered their college campus health centers with our flyers. No leads came from this effort, but unwittingly we had told our story so often that we widened and deepened our associations and connections.

Even though I tend to over share, I didn’t that night on Facebook.

In the Car and on Our Way

The next morning, my mother and sister/brother-in-law drained their respective liquid accounts. They rushed to our house to give us two cashier’s checks. It was a loan. When the 401K came through, we paid them back. Their quick action and generosity overwhelmed me. Minds might still change but the funds were available.

We were in the car on our way to the mall before our meeting at Adoption Star. As we approached the exit to the mall, we did a quick time check. Too late. Shopping would wait until after our meeting at Adoption Star and before we met the birthmom at Denny’s. I knew her name now. Missy had faxed the complete Birthmother Profile. Rachel the birthmom had been honest, very honest and yet I still didn’t have a sense of her. I tried not to project into the future. If I was going to get through this day, I had to take it one minute at a time.

10:30am Meet Missy at Adoption Star

The staff at Adoption Star surrounded us with hugs and congratulations. I had gotten to know so many of them during our wait. I looked for Lynnlee the intern who had brought our profile to the hospital. The mother had asked for childless families. Lynnlee had insisted on bringing ours “just in case”. I wanted to find her, give her 10,000 hugs, and run back to these smiling faces. The director Michele stepped forward to shake our hands, she said, “I’m superstitious so I’ll save my congratulations for when the adoption is complete.”

Minds might still change.

My heart sank but before I could dwell there, Missy ushered us into her office. She had stacks of legal documents on each bore the name Caleb Zion. We had named him and yet he wasn’t yet ours. It suddenly felt like we were making him up as if this were all a dream. I kept thinking if I sign those papers, maybe he’ll materialize. Too little sleep. Too much stress. Standing on the brink of transformation, events become surreal.

We signed the papers and handed over the cashier’s checks. The fairy tale Rumplestiltskin came to mind.  All I could remember of it was the princess made a pact with a hobgoblin to spin straw into gold so she could meet her prince and have her baby. If a hobgoblin had appeared to me in those 18 months of waiting and said, “You must spin straw into gold for all eternity”, I would have agreed. The desire for a child to love and raise is profound.  And for some of us, making children appear is a crazy-making challenge. I felt at times that I would do just about anything.

The last group I marshaled into the posse was my answer to pacts with hobgoblins. Rather than give in to despair, I began to seek connections. I grew up in Oregon. I contacted many of my classmates on Facebook. One of my old friends, Deb, had “liked” the Adoption Star Facebook page.  She now lives in Brooklyn and adopted her daughter from Adoption Star nine years ago. Her daughter was born in Buffalo and they were coming for a visit to introduce her to her birthplace. We set up a date to have lunch and later, Sam and her daughter played in the park. Deb was the first person to tell me an adoption story that happened on a moment’s notice with all the accompanying panic and challenges. At the time, I thought “Oh that won’t happen to us. We live here.” Now, I was relieved to have her story in my archive of adoption stories. Our mutual friend, Lisa, who now lives in Hawaii had also adopted. During the past several months, Lisa and I spent hours on the phone and email. She told me about her two failed adoption attempts. From her, I learned to be wary.  In high school, Lisa, Deb and I would cross Main St. to have the fifty-cent hot lunch at Lincoln Elementary School. Sometimes I imagine time travel: I meet up with the younger me, Deb and Lisa. I tell them that we will meet and connect again and will share something more than a cheap meal. I wonder if we are drawn to people because of some unconscious understanding of the future. I don’t usually fall into the trap of “meant to be”. Life, it seems to me, is a series of choices. However, if physicists are correct and time isn’t as linear as we perceive it to be, wouldn’t choices forge a path into the future that winds back into the past? Maybe I started rounding up my posse back in high school.

As we were leaving Adoption Star, Missy asked if we had spoken to our lawyer. Financially, I hadn’t wanted to retain a lawyer until an adoption seemed possible. I started to feel that panic and then I remembered my old suite-mate from college Kelly had thought to email me the name of a good attorney. The number was still on my phone. The posse had our back once again.

The paperwork at Adoption Star had gone so smoothly, we had time to go to the mall and buy the necklace with the birthstone as Megan had suggested. Then, we were on our way to meet the birthmom at Denny’s.

I thought that might be the end of our need for a posse. But for a long time after, a friend or a family member or a complete stranger who knew someone we knew would appear with support, advice, a helping hand or a gift for our new baby. I was astounded by the outpouring of kindness. I’ve surrendered to the outlay of generosity. Dave and I believe the best pay-back is to be a gun for hire. We posse up for other hopeful adoptive parents.

Waiting

     I sit in my chair and pick up the loose scraps of paper. I should have a journal set aside for these notes but when the social worker from Adoption Star called, I scrambled for whatever paper I could find. Dave had just finished reading a story to our five year old son, Sam, and tucked him in. We never have this conversation in front of Sam. He's too young. I wait for Dave to settle on the couch.

       I ask, "Are you ready?"

      He’s ready.

      I shuffle through the papers nervously. I want to begin at the most difficult part: "she's bipolar" or "she smoked crack." I want to begin there because I want to hear Dave say, "That's okay. The baby will be healthy. This birthmother will choose us. We'll meet her. We'll have a baby very soon."

      But my husband will never say those things. His reassurance will never be so unrealistic. We don't know if the baby will be healthy. We don't know if the birthmother will choose us. Based on previous experience, we probably won't meet her. Even though I long for reassurance, I trust him implicitly. I know my husband’s strength and wisdom doesn't derive from false hope for future outcomes. Often, in order to deflect my incessant need to over dramatize and my cravings for reassurance, he'll tease me, "Tomorrow will be colder; we'll have to work harder; And we'll be more miserable." His absolute refusal to bank strength in a rosy future is reassurance in itself. Strength should come from what we have here and now. I know this.

      I begin to tell it to Dave just as the Social Worker told it to me. I'm a stay at home mom so I field all the calls from the agency. Every few weeks, sometimes less/sometimes more, a social worker calls with a "profiling opportunity". A certain order to them reigns. She tells me about a birthmother who has put together an adoption plan. Her plan has to align with our grids which we filled out as part of our homestudy. The grids speak to race, physical needs and circumstances. We have a varied grid so we are open to many situations and in the position to enjoy many “profiling opportunities.” Once we hear the profile and accept, our profile is then shown to the birthmother. Our profile book is a scrapbook of our family life along with information about our health and finances. She looks at our profile along with the profiles of eight or nine other hopeful couples; from these she chooses the couple she wants to raise her baby. We have never been chosen.

      As Tom Petty sings, "The waiting is the hardest part"

      A few months ago, a new social worker called and she bumbled a bit through the "profiling opportunity". At that moment, I realized I had received so many of these phone calls I had absorbed the template.

      And so the phone call begins...

            The birthmother's name is Chelsea, Jasmine, Dominque, Amber; she's 32, 13, 23, 41; she’s due in 2 weeks, next month, in October, April, she's in the delivery room; she’s Caucasian, African American, Hispanic; she lives near Albany, in Florida, Indiana, Niagara Falls; the birthfather is unknown; not the birthmother’s husband, wants nothing to do with the baby, agrees to the adoption plan, incarcerated; the birthmother is in college, has an 8th grade education, received her GED while incarcerated, she works at a pizza parlor; she has three children who do live with her (or don't live with her), she has another child who is 10 months old and twins on the way;...

      At this juncture, the social worker tells me the challenges and difficulties the birthmother is experiencing. Most of these challenges have already been listed as acceptable in our grid but over some of them, I get a twinge of anxiety.

            ...she smoked a joint on New Year's Eve, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, smokes 4 cigarettes a day, smoked crack in her 6 month, drank heavily before she knew she was pregnant; drinks two cans of soda a day; she is on Medicaid; covered by her parents’ insurance, she has just started prenatal care in her sixth month; the baby is a girl, a boy, she doesn't know, she doesn't want to know; she wants a closed adoption (no contact), she wants a semi-open adoption (letters and photos through the agency only), she wants an open adoption (once or twice- a- year visits).

      We have only passed on two profiling opportunities: extreme drug use and pervasive familial mental illness. Nothing about that was easy. One of the social workers reassured me with, "You do not want to look over the shoulder of your child waiting for the worst to happen." 

      As I sit and tell Dave about our latest profiling opportunity, he knows I have already said yes to having our profile sent on to the birthmother. In the past, I have only delayed the process for the two difficult profiles.  We've discussed and considered endlessly so we are on the same page. Our nighttime talk serves to keep him apprised.

      I try not to take the fact that we haven't been chosen personally. But how could it not be personal? The birthmothers must not be choosing us based on our personal history. Every couple months, I arrive at the office of Missy, our primary social worker and I lament: I'm too old; we don't make enough money; we have a biological son; I offended the birthmother social worker (considering we had never actually met, this was a bit of a stretch).

      Missy has propped me up, told me that often families with biological children have to wait longer. She has repeated the Tom Petty lyric, the waiting is the hardest part, so often I think she must tour with him.

      After I finish telling Dave about this profile, he asks a few questions but eventually shrugs and says, "we'll see," and turns on the TV.

      I attempt to watch with him but my imagination has been fired up. I've been given just enough information to have this latest birthmother spring to life like a character in a novel. I have to remind myself that whatever character emerges, she is fiction. Whoever this birthmother turns out to be, I can’t create her from the words of a social worker.

      I hear Sam at the top of the stairs, "I'm scared."

      I bolt up to get him. It’s selfish but I am relieved he’s up, I need comfort too. Sam is my reassurance, my strength in the present. It came as a surprise to me that Sam is a liability in the adoption process. If I were a birthmother, I would want an older brother for my child, especially a Sam. I realize I'm ridiculously partial but it got me thinking, "What if I were the birthmother; who would I choose?"  A couple week ago, I called and asked a social worker to send me the paperwork the birthmothers fill out for their adoption plans. I decided to locate a time in my life when having a baby would have been exceedingly difficult. And then I used those circumstances and I filled out the forms. I wrote a profile just as a social worker might.

      Sam and I stand at the threshold of his bedroom, "I think there is a monster under my bed. Look at the shadow."

      I peer in the darkness and a shadow emerges from under his bed. I turn on the light,

      "Poof, it's gone," I say.  

       I pick him up.

      "Are monsters pretend life or real life?” I ask.

      "Pretend life, but the shadow is real life."

      I have created two bins for him to sort the world: real life and pretend life. I'm happy to play Frankenstein with him but I don't want him to think we'll find Frankenstein under the bed.  "Shadows can be scary because we don't know what is making them. But mostly it is just a trick of the light."

      We look under the bed: only dust bunnies. I flip off the light. We snuggle into bed and I wait to hear the easy rhythm of his breathing. I am glad for the dark room and the chance to visit the shadows that lurk in my head. I let my imagination go back to my past.

      There was a time when I was 26 that I believed I was pregnant. I was in what I thought was a long term, committed relationship. I went to school; he was in a band. We lived in an apartment that befit our circumstances. The pregnancy scare changed us. As we factored in a baby and all that goes with it, the lights went out on my relationship. My once fun, affectionate, loving boyfriend began to ignore and mistrust me as if I were trying to tug his dreams out from under him. I reacted to him poorly with moodiness and resentment. This was my profile: 

            

     Her name is Lesa; she's 26, Caucasian; due at the end of October; she's 5'5, brown hair,    brown eyes; she's a waitress; she attends college and studies writing and theater; she's not married; she and the birth father recently broke up; he questions paternity; she lists no other possible fathers; he agrees to adoption; he is Caucasian; she drinks one latte a day; she drank three beers before she knew she was pregnant and three or four times afterward but no more than two drinks at a time; She has been experiencing depression and anxiety and has so in the past but, has never been medicated for it; she has been receiving prenatal care since May; her parents are divorced; she has a younger brother with allergies and eczema; each of her grandfathers had heart attacks, her paternal grandmother had breast cancer, all of her grandparents are still alive; she is interested in a semi open adoption (photos, updates, emails through the agency); she is willing to meet the adoptive family one time.

           

            The social worker's impressions are that this birthmother is very emotional at this time but committed to the plan since she has no means of supporting the child on her own.

      I felt my life was unraveling. We were no longer the young couple committed to their artistic pursuits, believing in each other and putting aside our dreams of a family until a more realistic time.  The scare made me realize how much I wanted to have a family; it made him realize he was no where near ready.

     As parents for my baby, I know I would have resented any supposedly well adjusted, happy, stable, hetero couple who would have at their disposal the raw details of my unhappy, troubled life while all I got to see of them were their vacation and wedding photos. I would have felt competitive with any woman my child would call "Mommy". I don't know if I could have sat through a meeting with her.  I probably would have picked a gay male couple because I wouldn't feel so threatened and their beneficence would be easier to receive. I picture myself looking through profile books and focusing on backgrounds to see where these couples lived. It would calm me to envision my child growing up in a clean, well-lit, tolerant place. This mattered to me because my apartment since the pregnancy scare had begun to look shabby, lonely and ill-fitting the needs of a baby.

      I also know that once my family found out about my situation, if one person had come forward with financial help, I would have given up the adoption plan without a look back. I would not have considered who might be hurt by my decision—sometimes life presses so hard on you that it's difficult to think of others.

      When the pregnancy scare was over, my relationship was over. I moved out and in with my mother, started therapy to figure out was next.  And then I waited for a man who couldn't be scared away by a pregnancy. And I found one who couldn't even be scared away by fertility issues. Oh, how I've learned to wait.

      I did consider using other times in my life where a pregnancy would have been difficult. If I had been 16 and pregnant, I might have chosen someone like me and Dave ~ people who like bright colors, wear hats, and play in the snow. At age 32, I might have chosen a happy suburban couple to give my child the supposed ideal. At any age, given the option, I would have chosen a couple with a kid. I would want my child to have a sibling. I want my son to have a sibling now.

    What did I learn from doing this exercise? The choices birthmothers make are probably circumstantial just as it would have been for me. I was surprised to discover that a painful episode that happened (and ironically didn't happen) so long ago could come so quickly to the surface. Real and sometimes even imagined babies can rock worlds. I can try to sympathize with a birthmother but I'd have to live in the midst of her circumstances: in her home, inside her dreams, with whomever it was that impregnated her to truly understand. At least now after doing this exercise, I see more clearly my part. All those laments to Missy about my age, our income, and the offended social worker represent the mental and emotional tax on an expectant-adoptive mother in waiting mode which is what I truly am.

     All I can say to a birthmother is, "Dave and I are a devoted couple. We'll provide a loving home for your baby. We don't judge because we've led imperfect lives. Please choose us." And then we wait for one birthmother whose circumstances meet ours: Maybe she'll choose us for the hats, or our son, but more than likely she'll choose us for something I can't possibly foretell.

     I kiss my sleeping son's cheek. I waited such a long time for him to arrive and I hate waiting. But by now, I am a pro. I know about the shadows that creep out from under the bed, the tricks of light and dark, the way my imagination takes off into the unknown, scary territory regardless of whether it's fiction, fact, or recreation. Such are the challenges of waiting. But after many, long, difficult years of waiting, I gave birth to my boy. And if Sam has taught me anything, it is that nothing in pretend life measures up to real life. The years of despair and worry pale with the reality of my little family. Life with Sam has surpassed our imagination and life with our next child will do the same.

      I steal out of Sam’s room and tiptoe down the stairs. My husband has fallen asleep on the couch. I take my notes and stick them into a journal I have tucked away in the sideboard. Next time the social worker calls, I hope I remember to use it.

Moments

So much as happened since my last post and so much of that has been challenging: my grandmother died, I’ve been struggling with some family members subsequent behavior (and to be fair, they, mine) and my uncle’s fiancé Mitch (as we call her)  was diagnosed with blood cancer. Even the good stuff, such as Dave is in the last year of his R.N. degree or that we are in the adoption process, is challenging. But as I looked through the pictures for the blog, I realized that I have been allowing the big stuff to usurp the memories we had along the way. This summer Sam learned how to swim, play soccer, and shoot a bow and arrow. Every week of the summer, we spent with our cousin Claire and Co. at the West Seneca Parks Department tie-dying shirts, running obstacle courses, and making 25 cent crafts. Most every event included a cousin (or alternately Sam went with his cousins) to the beach, Renaissance Festival, Fantasy Island, the park, Erie County Fair, the zoo or to see Toy Story 3. An essay I wrote was published in the anthology Voices From the Herd: An Anthology For Buffalo, NY; I entered my first photo contest and those pictures were shown in a local gallery. I hung out with my Bestie Shannon on Keuka Lake. We laid in the sun, drank vodka, played scrabble, gossiped and watched bad movies as if it were 20 years ago and we didn’t have a care in the world. Later in the summer, Dave, Mom and I rented a cottage (and Uncle Billy rented a dock) at the South Buffalo summer bastion Sunset Beach. We had a great time launching toy torpedoes, throwing Frisbees, building sand castles, punching waves and entertaining our buddies. And then if we hadn’t drunk enough of the South Buffalo kool-aid, Billy’s friend offered us one week at his cottage free! 


Even in the midst of the difficult times, I witnessed rare moments: As Sam and I were playing Jaws and stalking Mitch and Danny along the shore, I noticed that while some people have adventures in far off places, my uncle was having his walking along the beach holding hands with his love after a round of chemotherapy. And at the hospital with my grandmother, her family paraded through her room to say their final goodbyes and then I watched as she passed away. And so I say, still in the fray of our challenges, God, it’s good to be loved and to have such memories.


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We're Adopting!!!!

The home study is complete. The slide show above is of our Profile Book. This book will be shown to birth mothers. If one of them likes it, then we get a call to “come on down and be the next contestant…” We still have work to do. And so, I keep my head down and focus on the next bit of business in front of me. I don’t often allow myself to future trip about the baby; I have Sam for that. He’s already lined up my mom to babysit the baby during all his future birthday parties because there will be lots of swords and he doesn’t want the baby to get hurt--next bit of business: rent a 12^th century castle for Sam’s birthday party ;-). At his preschool, I noticed that one of his classmates had taped a photo of her family to her cubby, I asked Sam if he wanted me to put a picture of his family on his cubby. He replied, “Not until the baby comes because then everyone will be in it.”

If you would like to view the pages bigger, click here http://picasaweb.google.com/SamBones148/AdoptionProfile# or mouse over the slide show and then click on the round Picasa logo at the bottom of the viewer. Or if you would like more information about the agency we're using visit our agency's website AdoptionStar.

Grandma Betty

Because so many of my favorite people are well over the age of 60, my wisdom on death should be shored up and ready to flow from a veritable font onto the heart and mind of my child. But, when it comes to death, I’m far more petulant than wise. My reactions surprise me. When I saw at the wake that so many people were mourning my grandmother with much the same gusto as I was, I wanted to scream, “She was a bit of a hussy—don’t you think?” When had I needed to be my grandmother’s one and only? She did have this conspiratorial way that made me believe we were part of a covert cooperative in which she always had my back. Who knew she was so loose-lipped?


And before I could quell that reaction, Sam reported that people were telling him that Grandma Betty was in heaven or with Jesus. Instead of reacting as I hoped—grateful that others were offering my son comfort during a time when I was too busy to do it myself, I had to stifle myself from saying, “Who the hell told you that?” I wasn’t ready for her to be whisked away to the beyond with people beyond our knowing. I wanted her here in this time, in this place with these people. I had lapsed into my own unreality. If nothing else, death makes the real, unreal.


At her house, Sam took a cookie tin and filled it with candy, a sparkly earring, her cigarette case, a pack of smokes and a Betty Boop doll. We dug a hole in her backyard and put the tin there. I wanted the family to gather for when he covered it but this was his service. He asked his dad if they could bury the tin together. They did.


These days, Sam tells me about Grandma Betty, “She’s in Pretend Life with Grandpa Hawk.” He’s repeating back what I told him. Pretend Life is where I psychologically deposit all that can’t be encountered. A place to happily frolic in the imaginary. For instance, Harrison Ford is a Real Life actor but Indiana Jones who lives in Pretend Life can discover treasure. I didn't tell Sam about Pretend Life solely to make my grandmother mythical; rather, I needed (probably more than Sam) somewhere for her to exist to which I still have access. Sam speaks of her with such calm and comfort. I know I had little to do with that. It's as if the comfort he’s found and offers flows serenely from a font. And if I had to guess who helped him shore up that comfort…I might have to admit that it came from a covert cooperative; I did notice when Gram took a cookie from that tin, she gave it to him with a conspiratorial wink.

The In-Laws

On New Year’s Day, while Sam napped in the backseat, I sat in the front waiting for him to wake. We were outside of my father in-law’s house where my in-laws had begun to gather to celebrate the day. I busily texted New Years’ greetings to my friends who lived far away and then I leaned my head against the car window and imagined where I would spend New Years if I was on the other end of those texts—at the 5 Spot eating brunch with Phyllis recounting the previous night’s misadventures. My head was so full of years past that my eyes had a hard time adjusting to the scene before me: The snow layering the rooftop; my sister-in-law and her husband hurriedly ushering their girls from their car into the house. When this millennium began, if I had seen them on the street, there wouldn’t have been a whisper of recognition between us.

Now, we are family who happen to live across the street from each other. My husband Dave bought our house years before we met and he bought it because it was across the street from his family: His older sister Lisa, his brother-in-law Matt and their two girls—Caeley and Sophia. He rescued it from auction, gutted and reframed it, intending to make it into his bachelor pad. When we met, it was still gutted.

The summer we were married, Matt, Dave and I worked hard to get it prepped for drywall. The day before our wedding, I swept, vacuumed, and wiped away as much of the drywall dust as possible. I put a blanket down on the bare floor, an aero bed on top of that and candles along the fireplace. This was to be my surprise to him: Even if it wasn't ready to move in, we would have our first night as husband and wife in our home. I figured I had everything we needed. But then Matt, our best man, left the reception early, and went to our house to install a toilet.

Dave and I crossed the threshold of our new home and right behind us trooped in Lisa and the girls who were on their way to join Matt in the bathroom. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

It only took a little while for Matt to scoot his family out the door. As Lisa left, she gave an embarrassed laugh and said, “I guess you don’t want to spend your wedding night with your sister.”

When I didn’t have to creep around the backyard and was safe and warm inside (Matt had remembered to leave us toilet paper), I laughed at the previous scene. It had a sort a Screwball Comedy ring to it, so to speak. But to be honest, I worried about what it might bode for my future.

No one who knew me at the beginning of this millennium would have pictured me living “happily” across the street from my in-laws whoever they turned out to be. I tend to be overly clannish when I’m not being Greta Garbo-ish—I do so like to be “alone.” But regardless of my peculiarities, the in-law relationship isn’t exactly without its innate difficulties. You are instant family yet family seems to be the antithesis of “instant” unless you are a newborn. You might hope for friendship but shared interest and values aren’t guaranteed even with your spouse let alone his/her family. You are expected to participate in the very inner sanctum of someone else’s rituals and relationships yet even the Masons let you in on the rules before you head off to the meetings. There’s a reason so many Dear Abbey columns begin with “My mother-in-law/my daughter-in-law”.

I know my in-laws put up with me because I do love their kids: the two across the street and the rest. I’ve loved the trips to the maternity ward to meet Jim and Ann’s cuddly newborns. This particular in-law relationship—the in-law Aunt, I had written into my experience.

My Aunt Julie taught me how to be a good “aunt in-law” by being a good one. She baked bread in the morning and then made fried baloney sandwiches with spicy mustard in the afternoon. She was always game for a hand of 500 Rummy. And then when my cousin Brette was a girl, Julie let me tease and spray Brette’s hair, then dress her in “new wave” clothes as if she were my own renegade dolly. Julie was different from the rest of my family but it was her difference that made her dear.

For the first year or so I was married, I would tell myself—focus on the kids, the rest will come.

And it did. With every successive miscarriage, my mother-law-law, a retired nurse, would arrive at my hospital bedside, gently nudge her son aside, cradle my face in her warm hands, and look me in the eyes until I felt loved down to my bones.

Even with that, I’m sure that my in-laws probably thought I was difficult, prickly, and obstinate. And I must admit I’ve never had such a sudden and profound need to run across the street to do laundry as I have had at a few of the birthday parties—small living room, a cacophony of kids, and not a glass of wine in sight.

But then came Sam.

When he became mobile, one of his favorite destinations was the sun-porch to yell for the girls across the street. He’d toddle to the window, climb up to the sill, beat the screens with his small fists, and with a Marlon Brando intensity would yell, “Aeley” and “Ophie”. And then as he got his feet under him, he would run at Lisa in that wheeling, head first way that made me think he’d smack his head on the pavement. He had complete trust that Lisa would be there to scoop him up and she always was. His absolute trust in her made me look from him to her and there I saw the love that wasn’t just written into her experience but into her family.

He is her brother’s son, the continuation of her family, hers. And suddenly I felt a little less anxious. No matter what happened to me or Dave, there was someone who would take Sam in as her own, not as a charity case or even out of sense of duty or out of friendship to me but for whatever may come. And for an anxious new mom there is no better gift than someone loving your baby with that kind of devotion.

I realized I had arrogantly believed these relationships were about me, had something to do with my preferences, my likes and dislikes. Sam and Lisa had their own thing going on and I could get on board or not. How could I resist such easy love?

In an unlovely sense, it’s a little like Matt installing that toilet—it wasn’t in my plans, but wow what a relief.

On New Years day 2010, Sam awoke from his nap. Even before his eyes were open, he was freeing himself from his seat belt, asking if his cousins were inside, and excited to spend this day, this year, this decade with our family.

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Speech Therapy

Perhaps I should have known it was coming when Sam said to me, “the gelagen seet got caught in the acheen.”

One day while picking Sam up from school, Miss Melissa, Sam’s teacher at the Mouse House, stopped me before I wrangled Sam out of the door. She stopped me to tell me that she thought Sam needed speech therapy along with some occupational therapy (to hold his pencil properly). Sam is young for preschool just making the cut off with a December 22nd birthday so I had already decided to wait a year before sending him off to kindergarten (plus, I don’t want him going off to college at 17 years old).

Miss Melissa didn’t know any of this and I was going to tell her after she finished talking but she was geared up. I wasn’t worried about what she was saying as much as I felt for her. I could tell that her favorite part of her job wasn’t telling a mom that her Perfect Patty is imperfectly pronouncing her p’s and q’s. She had the forced calm of someone at street level with a bullhorn gently trying to talk someone off a ledge. Maybe it was because of that and because she was telling me all the services would be free and provided at the school that I suddenly felt like the author David Sedaris’s mom. Whenever a teacher came to her home to tell her about David problems, she promptly offered the teacher scotch after scotch. I almost said, “Well Dear, if it doesn’t cost anything and I don’t have to drive anywhere, bring it on. And by the way, do you drink Dewers?”

And maybe I’m a bit cavalier about it all because my friend Shannon’s son Conor has been going to speech therapy for years and it seems such a fixable problem. Recently she asked Conor’s speech therapist if her daughter Emma could get speech therapy too. Emma sounds as if she grew up on the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port. But the speech therapist told Shannon, “Oh we don’t do Rs until the age of 8.” I guess Rs are much more sophisticated and perhaps a bit more optional than other letters. If you roll the R in Regatta you might not get asked back to Martha's Vineyard.

I knew it would be easy to get Sam to comply just by saying, “Conor has a speech therapist too” (Conor being the arbiter of what is permissible—in Sam’s head). I began to wonder and worry though when my brain had started decoding. How often is he misunderstood or not heard? I decode so quickly and very rarely need to say to Sam, “what was that?” or “can you say that differently?”. When he had said “the gelagen seet got caught in the acheen” it sounded exactly the same to me as “the skeleton’s feet got caught in the machine.” Ouch.