Archive for the 'adoption' Category

Dreaming as the Summers Die

Published
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jess
on September 6, 2010
in adoption, family, fatherhood, motherhood and parenting
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An essay by Terri Elders

“Still she haunts me”-Lewis Carroll

I figured something special might be happening that July morning in l948 when Mama appeared in the bedroom doorway, brandishing her boar-bristled hairbrush in one hand, my not-too-faded red plaid dress in the other.

“Skip the shorts and shirt today,” she said, handing me the dress. “Company’s coming for lunch.”

“Who?” I asked, puzzled. I couldn’t think of anybody important enough to wear my Sunday dress for, but I slipped into it, and stood quietly while Mama tugged the brush through my snarls.

I had just turned eleven. No longer in pigtails, I hadn’t yet mastered pin curls. So I wore my hair shoulder length and loose around my face, with bangs that forever needed trimming. Maybe I’d learn to set it with bobby pins before I started junior high that fall.

I waited for Mama to answer. “It’s Nana,” she finally said. “Nana, and maybe Jean.” I looked up sharply. Jean was my “real” mother, and I hadn’t seen her for years. I glanced across the bedroom at my older sister. Patti and I, just a year apart in age, had been adopted by our “real” father’s sister and her husband in l942, when we were five and six. Patti yawned, and then threw me a wink. Nearly a teen, she was more interested in boys than family gossip.

“Can I go over to Jimmy’s?” I asked, as Mama patted my bangs into place.

“Okay. I’ll send Patti over to get you when they get here. Just don’t get too dirty.”

Jimmy lived three doors down and was my best friend. The two of us would climb a towering maple tree to his roof where we would sit for hours, endlessly arguing. I favored the Brooklyn Dodgers and Doris Day. Jimmy loved the Giants and Peggy Lee. I liked Jack Benny, he Fred Allen. Though we rarely agreed, we relished our debates.

A few days earlier we had perched on the roof to watch the July 4 fireworks from the Los Angeles Coliseum. Some evenings we sat up there for hours with Jimmy’s telescope, searching for UFOs. We even argued about the merits of the planets. I favored Jupiter, he Mars.

I’d be glad to see Nana, Jean’s mother, who always wore sweet gardenia perfume and talked about how she conferred with spirits at her spiritualist church. But I barely remembered Jean. I knew my Daddy Al, of course, Mama’s brother, because he visited from time to time. Jean, though, was just a shadowy background figure, referred to in disapproving whispers. She drank, I’d heard. Or she had mental problems, whatever those might be.

She and Daddy Al had married when she was just a teenager, Mama said, and then Patti and I came quickly. Jean just couldn’t manage.

More important to me, I knew she was the daughter of a world famous organist, Jesse Crawford, known throughout the ‘30 as “The Poet of the Organ.” Grandpa Crawford sent Christmas cards with photos. I’d heard that he’d had radio shows in Chicago, and was the featured performer at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. My sister had inherited all that musical talent, but none trickled down to me.

“Jean could have been a concert pianist,” Mama said once. Jean’s brother, Howard, was a musician, too. My taste in music ran more to Vaughn Monroe, than classical. Ballerina was my current favorite that year. I’d hum it all the time, but wished I could play it on the upright. Not fair, I used to think. I was the one with the middle name, Jean, so I should be the one with the family talent.

Jimmy and I argued well past noon until Patti eventually appeared. “They’re here,” she announced, with a smirk and a roll of her eyes. I shinnied down the maple, careful not to tear my red plaid dress.

Jean looked younger than I expected, and prettier, with hair the same dark brown as mine, and freckles, just like mine, sprinkled across her nose. But during lunch she never smiled. Not once. Nana talked of the séances she conducted. Mama talked of how Patti and I soon would be starting junior high. Jean just sat, nibbled at her tuna sandwich, glanced about our tiny kitchen, and looked as bored as Patti.

I wanted to ask if she had seen Easter Parade, my new favorite movie. I wanted to ask where she lived, if she traveled, if she liked to play Parcheesi or Tripoley. I wanted to ask if she remembered when I was born. Which did she like to read, Coronet or McCall’s?

But soon everybody was saying goodbye. Jean gave Patti and me each a hesitant hug. “You girls look great,” she said, the first words she’d spoken directly to us all afternoon. I wanted to tell her that I liked her freckles, but before I could speak, they were all piling into Nana’s Studebaker.

Later that summer, Jimmy’s family moved away and I never saw him again. I, nor anybody else in our family, ever saw Jean again either. She just vanished. Nobody ever knew where she had gone. One afternoon a couple of years after that visit, I heard on the radio that my Nana, Olga Crawford, first wife of famed organist Jesse, had died in an apartment fire at the age of 57.

A few years later I sent for my birth certificate, which had been altered when I was adopted, to show Daddy and Mama as my parents. Astonished, I found my middle name was spelled Jeanne, not Jean. Was this how my “real” mother spelled it?

Grandpa Jesse came to my high school graduation and gave me a Smith Corona portable typewriter that I treasured all through college. Throughout the late ‘50’s, I visited him frequently. He hadn’t seen her since she was in her early teens and was uncertain about how her name was spelled.

I saw Daddy Al from time to time until he died in l992. He had been married to Jean for such a brief time and so long ago. He had neither their wedding certificate nor divorce papers, so couldn’t help me with the spelling.

Across the decades I think of her. Was she Jean or Jeanne? Did she read Hemingway or Fitzgerald? Would she choose pistachio or burgundy cherry if she were at Curries Ice Cream Parlor? Did she ever marry again or have more children? Did I have half-brothers or -sisters that I didn’t know about?

Later, at UCLA, I spent a year interning for Los Angeles County Department of Adoptions while I worked on an MSW degree. I learned about the adoption rules of earlier days, about sealed birth certificates and efforts to protect birth mothers. I also learned why many adult adoptees feel an urge to know, a need for answers.

Even now, in my seventies, I’d like to see my original birth certificate. Every time I sign my name, Theresa J. Elders, I wonder if that “J” really stands for Jean or Jeanne. And I still dream about climbing maple trees…and about my mother’s freckles.

 

“Dreaming as the Summers Die,” will appear in Dream of Things: Saying Goodbye, in October 2010. The Fertile Source is reprinting it with permission of the author.

Terri Elders, LCSW, lives near Colville, WA, with two dogs, three cats and a stable spacious enough for four unicorns, should such an astonishing quartet appear. Her stories have appeared in dozens of anthologies, including multiple editions of Chicken Soup for the Soul, A Cup of Comfort and Patchwork Path. “Dreaming as the Summers Die” will appear in the debut volume of the new Dream of Things series in October, 2010. Elders received the 2006 UCLA Alumni Award for Community Service for her work with Peace Corps. She serves as a public member of the Washington State Medical Commission, and is the current president of AAUW, Colville Branch. Editor Jessica Powers has interviewed Terri over on She Writes. Please check out her comments on writing, adoption, and the mystery of birth mothers.

Missing Children, Helen Todd: My Birthname, A Coconut for Katerina, Children

Published
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jess
on August 16, 2010
in adoption and motherhood
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Poems by Sandra McPherson

 

Missing Children

 “She wouldn’t choose me,” my adopting mother mourned

as if that were a judgment call

an infant could make,

 

intaking information,

christening it evidence, milk or not,

then not being able to name, for months,

 

the nurse, the nipple.  Now,

weanling, teen, ultimately matron,

I choose compassion

 

for the barren,

praying, collegiate wife. 

Mother, by name.

 

*** 

 

“The missing boy

was last seen by their car”-

not what the detective meant.  Beside the car,

 

by the mother,

whatever the child was looking

away from.  With a bucket,

 

toward a thicket.

 

Helen Todd: My Birthname

 

They did not come to claim you back,

To make me Helen again. Mother

Watched the dry, hot streets in case they came.

This is how she found a tortoise

Crossing between cars and saved it.

It’s how she knew roof-rats raised families.

In the palmtree heads. But they didn’t come-

It’s almost forty years.

 

I went to them. And now I know

Our name, quiet one. I believe you

Would have stayed in trigonometry and taken up

The harp. Math soothed you; music

Made you bold; and science, completely

Understanding. Wouldn’t you have collected,

Curated, in your adolescence, Mother Lode

Pyrites out of pity for their semblance

To gold? And three-leaf clovers to search

For some shy differences between them?

 

Knowing you myself at last-it seems you’d cut

Death in half and double everlasting life,

Quiet person named as a formality

At birth. I was not born. Only you were.

 

A Coconut for Katerina

 

Inside the coconut is Katerina’s baby. The coconut’s hair, like

        Katerina’s brown hair.

Like an auctioneer Katerina holds the coconut, Katerina in her

        dark fur coat

covering winter’s baby, feet in the snow. Katerina’s baby is the

        milk

and will not be drinking it.

 

Ropes hanging down from the trees-are they well ropes? Ropes

       on a moss

wall. Not to ring bells but used for climbing up and down

or pulling, I mean bringing. Anchor ropes on which succulent ropy

       seaplants grow.

 

And floating like a bucket of oak or like a light wooden dory,

        the coconut bobs,

creaking slowly, like a piling or a telephone pole with wet wires

downed by a thunderstorm over its face.

 

This baby’s head, this dog’s head, this dangerous acorn is the

        grocer

of a sky-borne grocery store where the white-aproned grocer or

        doctor imprints it

with three shady fingerprints, three flat abysses the ropes will

        not cross.

 

What of it? There is enough business for tightrope walkers in

        this jungle.

The colonizers make a clearing

for a three-cornered complex of gas stations, lit with a milky

        spotlight

at night.

 

              And here we dedicate this coconut to Katerina. We

        put our hand

on the round stomach of Katerina. We put our five short ropes

     of fingers on the lost

baby of Katerina and haul it in to the light of day and wash

        it with sand.

 

Coconut, you reverse of the eye, the brown iris in white, the

        white center

in brown sees so differently. The exposed fibrous iris,

the sphere on which memory or recognizing must have latitude

        and longitude

to be moored

 

or preserved in the big sky, the sea’s tug of war. The tugging of

        water

held in and not clear. Lappings and gurglings of living hollows

        half filled,

half with room

for more empty and hopeful boats and their sails.

 

Children

 She will run to you for love whoever

you are, you who’d forgotten what you look like.

She keeps a book of forms in her arms,

like a fitter exact on waists.

 

And perhaps I’ll have to pull her from

celebrating her birth between your legs

although she is my only child

and good at it and best of all the children

 

you don’t have. You know her face

can’t be yours. But let me become a stranger,

not act myself, beat on the mirror and cry-

she sees I look like her alone.

 

And sticking her face in mine, smearing my

lipstick with her index finger, igniting

the pale mustache, drawing the seeing mirror

of her glasses down oil

 

on my cheeks, she hangs my picture

forever in her head. So that she always

sees to me when I am down

and thinks the way to raise me is

 

to climb aboard me toe for toe, palm

lidding palm so I can’t withdraw

or go out of our single mind

to have another child.

 

“Missing Children” originally appeared in print in Austria.
“Helen Todd: My Birthname” appeared originally in Patron Happiness, Ecco Press, 1979
“A Coconut for Katerina” appeared originally in The Year of Our Birth, Ecco Press, 1973
“Children” appeared originally in The Spaces Between Birds, Wesleyan University Press, 1996
Poetry editor Tania Pryputniewicz interviewed Sandra McPherson about these poems on She Writes. Please check it out here.
Recently retired after 23 years on faculty at the University of California, Davis, Sandra McPherson studied at the University of Washington with David Wagoner and Elizabeth Bishop. McPherson taught for four years in the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, was Holloway Lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley, and conducted several years of classes for the Oregon Writers Workshop/Pacific Northwest College of Art.  In 1999 she founded Swan Scythe Press, a poetry chapbook publishing venture (www.swanscythe.com) with 26 chapbooks in print under McPherson’s direction and two newly forthcoming under Jim DenBoer’s direction.
McPherson’s honors and awards include three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a Guggenheim fellowship, two Ingram Merrill grants, an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and letters, and a nomination for the National Book Award.  She was featured on the Bill Moyers television series The Language of Life. Her volumes of poetry include: Expectation Days, University of Illinois Press, 2007, A Visit to Civilization, Wesleyan/University Press of New England, 2002, Beauty in Use, Janus Press, 1997, Edge Effect: Trails and Portrayals, Wesleyan/University Press of New England, 1996, The Spaces Between Birds: Mother/Daughter Poems 1967-1995, Wesleyan/University Press of New England, 1996, The God of Indeterminacy, U of Illinois, 1993, Streamers, Ecco, 1988, Patron Happiness, Ecco, 1983, The Year of Our Birth, Ecco, 1978, Radiation, Ecco, 1973, Elegies for the Hot Season, Indiana University Press, 1970; reprinted by Ecco, 1982.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A letter to my beautiful daughter, Ana Lucia

Published
by
jess
on August 9, 2010
in adoption, family, motherhood and parenting
. 0 Comments

Nonfiction by Gretchen M. Packer

December 13, 2007 

Dear Ana Lucia,

Hi my sweet girl!  It’s been an exceptionally busy day and every ounce of my being is exhausted.  I just changed you, gave you your pacha, sang an off-key lullaby to you and put you down in your crib.  I’m beat.

Still, I am compelled to write because this day was a monumental one in your life.  For that matter, in my life as well.  I want you to read this knowing it was written today, the day I first laid eyes on your birth mom. And the day your birth mom first laid eyes on me, your Mom.  I hope when you read this, many years from now, my words will convey the enormity of today’s events and the undeniable fact that you are much loved, Ana Lu. 

This was the day I met your birth mother.  Wow.  I.  Met. Your. Birth. Mother. Today. 

Ana Lu, I can tell you with absolute confidence that your birth mom loves you more than you will ever be able to imagine.  I saw it.  I saw it in her eyes, read it on her face and felt it in my heart; she loves you immensely.  Love that only a birth mother can know.
 
I want to start by explaining to you that it’s not typical for the birth mother and adoptive mother to meet.  Typically, the adoptive mother remains in the States while all of this is transpiring.  When you were three months old, I relocated to Guatemala.  I wanted to witness your first roll, the first time you clapped your hands, your first steps. I couldn’t leave you in the orphanage.  I wanted you to know what it felt like to be held while you drank from a bottle so you could feel the warmth of my body next to yours.  I wanted you to hear me sing lullabies to you so you could hear what love sounds like. I wanted to look into your eyes so our hearts could speak to one another.  You are special.  You were not just one of many children in an orphanage.  You have never been forgotten.  You are my baby girl and I needed to be with you.  So one day I was a seemingly normal adoptive parent enjoying pictures of you via the Internet in the safety of my own home.  And the next day I quit my job, packed up my bags, assured your father this was the right thing to do, hugged my friends goodbye and moved to Guatemala.

I moved here about a month ago, to a country thousands of miles away from the familiarity of home, for an undetermined length of time, so I could raise you.  Now I wake up to those delightful little dimples of yours every day. Love that only an adoptive mother can know.

Guatemala is still recovering from a bloody civil war.  It has an astonishingly high crime and murder rate and it is not uncommon to walk down the street and see people carrying guns, being mugged or street fights. Many things here are foreign to me-a country with different laws, a different language, an unfamiliar currency-to name a few.  Before I relocated here, I had never spoken more than 200 words in Spanish.  I had never heard of a Quetzal.  I had never lived without a car.  I had never been the racial minority.  I had never been a mother, much less a single mother.  I was scared when I first moved here.  And the truth is, sometimes I am still scared.  Yet, I will continue to embrace it all to be here with you.  Love that only an adoptive mother can know.

How did your birth mom and I meet?  The Guatemalan government requires any child placed for adoption be brought to a health clinic for mandatory DNA testing.  The clinic performs the test and then takes a picture of the child and birth mother together.  While the health clinic we went to today is nearby where you and I are staying, it is important for you to know that it was not easy for your birth mother to get here.  Here in Guatemala life is much more demanding.  Your birth mom had to take a day off from work, which put her at risk of losing her job.  Bosses frown upon special requests, and this was a special request.  In Guatemala, jobs are scarce and workers are plentiful.  So your birth mother risked losing her job coming to the health clinic today.  Love that only a birth mother can know.

Your birth mom also had to arrange a ride to and from the clinic.  She drove 3 hours from rural Guatemala to the city, waited 2 hours in the clinic, met your adoptive mother and then drove three hours back to her home.  She did all of this for you.  She went through this entire process and consequently heart wrenching experience so that she could place you “officially” for adoption.  So that you could begin your life with your adoptive parents and have all the opportunities living in the United States has to offer.  Love that only a birth mother can know.

Your birth mother and I traveled far for you, Ana Lucia.  And your Papa has as well.  Right now your Papa is living in the States.  He is working to support our family so that I could come to Guatemala to raise you until the adoption paperwork is finalized.  You just saw your Papa for Thanksgiving; he will be back in a few weeks at Christmastime; and then he will visit us every other month for a two-week period for the next four months.  Thanks to modern technology, we can call him via the computer nearly every day; we can see him, and he can see us.  It’s so fun watching him watch you!  He watches in complete awe as you show him your newest trick, rolling from front to back.  And although we are so fortunate to have this technology, I can see in his eyes and hear in the catch of his breath how much it pains him to be separated from us, but it is what has to be for now. 

I digress.  This morning, intimidated and self-conscious about meeting your birth mom, I was comforted by the feel of you nuzzled against me in the Baby Bjorn I was carrying you in.  The health clinic was filled with Latina woman.  Half of the women are birth mothers and the other half are the foster mothers bringing the infants they are fostering to be DNA tested. It’s very rare to have an adoptive mother here at the clinic so mine was the only white face in the crowd.  It was such a great experience for me to sit there, as the minority.  I had to learn to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.  Interesting, huh?  I distinctly remember thinking this is how minorities must feel all the time.  I wonder if this is how you’ll feel as you grow up.  And I wonder if you’ll talk to me about it.  I hope you do. I will do my best to ensure you have Latina role models in your life that you can talk to about such things, but sometimes I worry that may not be enough.

Not being fluent in Spanish sometimes makes things very difficult for me when we go out in public.  I will take Spanish classes once I’m here for another month or so, when I feel more settled.  I plan to speak Spanish to you in the States because it’s really important to me that you grow up bilingual.  But of course that means I have to master it myself first! However, today, there at the clinic, high school Spanish is all I had.  It is what it is, so I spent most of the day nodding and walking in whatever direction someone pointed me. 

I had seen your birth mom in pictures so when she showed up I knew it was her.  She wore a denim skirt with a white top and her hair was pulled back in a scrunchie.  There was a woman alongside your birth mom.  At first glance I thought she was a taxi driver, but after seeing them together it was obvious she knew your mother pretty well.  Having this other woman there was a blessing because she was very outgoing. The woman motioned to your birth mom to sit two chairs down from me and she sat between us.  Your birth mom didn’t make any eye contact with me.

I know your birth mom and her friend were talking about me, but I had no idea what they were saying.  Shortly afterward, her friend turned to me and while gesturing toward your birth mom said, “Ella es pobre.” (She is poor.)  Then she said, “Ella no tiene dinero. Es porque no nena.” (”She does not have any money.  That is why no baby girl.”)  I believe your birth mom had asked her to try and explain to me why she placed you for adoption.

I had you out of the Bjorn and cradled in my arms.  I lifted you upward while looking at your birth mom’s friend in my wordless attempt to ask if your birth mom would like to hold you.  I asked your birth mom’s friend because your birth mom was very shy and was not comfortable making eye contact with me.  Her friend asked but your birth mother declined, looking at her hands.  Perhaps she felt strange holding you in front of me.  I waited a few heavy, awkward minutes, glanced over at your birth mom, and again invited her to hold you.  She declined.  After a few minutes your birth mother looked to her friend and nodded.  She was ready.  So I passed you over to your birth mom’s arms.  At first you fussed, but when she bounced you, you quickly settled and then got cozy in her arms.  Your birth mom looked at you with such intensity, soaking in every aspect of your beautiful face and holding your hand in hers while stroking your little fingers.  That is when you looked your birth mom in the eyes and blessed her with an enormous smile.  Enormous smile!  You are just so beautiful and when you smile, Ana Lu, you light up inside.  That light is contagious to all of us who are fortunate enough to bask in your rays of sunshine.

Your birth mom was visibly comforted.  There was an audible sigh of relief as if it was the first time she breathed since setting foot in the clinic. I saw her soul change.  She was no longer apprehensive or picking at her hands in shameful fretting.  She saw your smile and she was now content. 

She needed you to tell her you love her.  She needed you to tell her you will understand why she placed you for adoption.  Your smile communicated all of that.  And let me tell you, my sweet girl, usually you make us work for your smile.  But today it was as if you knew, as if you knew that your birth mom would have peace in her heart if she could just see you smile.  You’ve always been an “old soul,” Ana Lu.

As you became more comfortable in her arms and she more comfortable holding you, her embrace became tighter and tighter.  I watched as she ran her finger gingerly over the cleft in your chin, your beautiful chin that looks just like hers.  Then she cuddled you into her chest, put her head down and wept.  I watched as your birth mom held you and hugged you one last time.  The pain in her heart ran strong.  It was clear she was savoring these last moments she would see and hold her daughter.  Love that only a birth mother can know.

I felt the pull toward her injured heart.  It was as if an enormous magnet pulled me toward her pain.  I could feel only a part of that pain she was feeling, but was left crippled for hours.  I will never be able to imagine the enormity of the pain she felt today.  Nor the pain she will feel years from now when she knows it’s your birthday and she wonders where you are and what you’re up to.  Just a glimpse of the inherent everlasting pain of a mother placing her child for adoption left me sobbing uncontrollably tonight after we got home.  I cannot begin to imagine the wound left in your birth mother’s heart today after she got home.  Love that only a birth mother can know.

There was a moment when I truly thought I should get up and walk out of the clinic.  I had an overwhelming visceral response to the pain that I sensed among all of the birth mothers in that office.  I felt tremendous guilt for having opportunities that your birth mom and the other birth moms in that room never had.  All because I was born in the United States and they were born in Guatemala.  What an injustice!  I felt dirty and ashamed.  I just don’t understand why we all can’t have the same opportunities.  Ugh.  There I sat in my prim white skirt, black top with matching shoes and you in the Baby Bjorn.  The Bjorn is $120 and while could easily be one months’ pay for many women here in Guatemala.  I had the urge to stand up and convey my respect to this room full of women with tortured, grief-stricken expressions on their faces.  Ana Lu, I wanted more than anything-from a place deep, deep within my soul-to give my sincerest apology to them, to your birth mother, because I am blessed with opportunities.  I thought about running around the room and giving one woman my earrings so she could feed her family for two weeks, giving another woman my sweater so she could feed her family for eight weeks.  I wanted to give away everything.  My necklace, my clothes, my shoes, the baby carrier, anything I had in my pockets until I stood there naked, shedding the skin I felt so dirty in.  The skin that made me feel unworthy of sitting in this room among some of God’s strongest souls.  I wanted to be naked.  I felt I needed to be naked so I could feel an ounce of the vulnerability that I know birth moms feel; the vulnerability as a mother placing her child up for adoption; the vulnerability as a citizen being judged and persecuted by society for the choices she has made; and the intense vulnerability as a woman living in a male dominated culture where it would not be uncommon for them to have to walk this torturous walk again.  I thought if I could give them all that I had, if I bared my body and my soul then maybe they would forgive me for being gifted opportunities that they never knew. 

Maybe if I sent each birth mother in the room enough money to feed, clothe and get medical support for all of the children in that room, maybe I could spread some of the fruitful opportunity I’ve been so fortunate to receive.  Maybe their lives would be different, maybe your birth mom could feel the joy in caring for you that I relish every single day we’re together.  My heart was torn, a primitive response, to a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  My heart ached from the weight of the conflicting moral battle going back and forth in my mind.  I was losing clarity.  I did not know what was right and what was wrong; nor what was destiny and what was irony.  My mind started rapidly cycling through the possibilities, equally rational and irrational.  I want to care for these women and children!  But I don’t have the resources to care for all of these women and children!  But I cannot benefit from such an injustice! But I need to find a way to make things right! But I cannot change the world!  But she’s my daughter and I will not let her go!

And there we have it.

All of my confusion and doubt melted away within seconds as reality pierced my heart like the ease of a hot knife slicing through cool butter. In the end, I cannot change the world.  In the end, you are my daughter and I will not let you go.  Clarity arrived.  As did Destiny.  I whispered repeatedly to myself, “But she’s my daughter and I will not let her go.  But she is my daughter and I will not let her go.”  I reflected on the fact that there are many children in need of loving families and there are many families in need of loving children.  But you-you, Ana Lucia Packer-are my daughter and I will not let you go.  For everyone who wins, someone loses.  And I will have to learn to live with that.  Love that only an adoptive mother can know.

I sulked, sitting silently and cowardly in my chair with my head bowed and tears streaming down my face.  I prayed for strength.  I prayed that the women in that room, especially your birth mom, could feel the tremendous respect in my heart and that they would know that I sat there, humbled by their selflessness and their fortitude.

I prayed to maintain a healthy perspective of you and your birth mom’s future relationship.  I felt many emotions when looking at your birth mom-reverence, gratitude, sorrow, guilt and at times, even jealousy.  I wanted to be her.  I wanted to be your biological mother so that you would know how deeply and truly you are loved.  So that you would never, ever doubt my unconditional love for you.  So that I too would have a chin cleft, beautiful brown skin and speak Spanish fluently.  I fantasized that you were 5 years old and we’d look into the mirror together and I would proudly exclaim, “Mira!  Tienes que de mi!” (”Look!  You got that from me!”).  We’d giggle as we played with one another’s hair and sang songs in Spanish together.  I love you with all of my being and sometimes I just think maybe if you looked more like me you would never ever question my love and devotion.  You would always know that you are my daughter even though when you look at me you see my blue eyes and fair skin staring back at you.  Love that only an adoptive mother can know.

After all the tests were run we took a taxi back to the hotel.  As I sat with you nestled against my chest and kissed your sweet little dark peach-fuzzed head, we were peaceful and content.  I pushed my nose against your head and took a deep breath.  I inhaled your sweet baby smell and giggled.  Then a couple of teardrops fell.  Filled to the brim with gratitude they dropped down upon your little head as I thanked God for choosing me, a completely imperfect person to be your mother.  Love that only an adoptive mother can know.

I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the driver was watching us in the rearview mirror.  When we arrived at the hotel he stopped the car, put his hand on the headrest of the passenger side, turned around and unequivocally declared, “You will be a good mother.” Those six words, from his prophetic heart coupled with his peaceful tone, sent a surge of relief to my core. 

I am sobbing again.  It’s time for me to change into my PJs and call it a day.  I’d like to leave you with one last thought.  Please know, Ana Lu, know that since the day you were born you’ve received love, an unconditional sacrificial love, that some will never, ever know.  You’re cherished, you’re adored, you’re treasured, you’re celebrated.  And my goodness, my sweet Ana Lucia, you are loved. 

Love that only a birth mother and an adoptive mother can know.

Gretchen Packer relocated to Guatemala in November 2007 to raise her adoptive daughter, Ana Lucia. After living together in Guatemala for 13 months, Ana Lucia and Gretchen moved home to the States on December 21st 2008 to join Gretchen’s husband.  Although they miss Guatemala dearly, Ana Lu is happy to be home with her Papa. Gretchen Packer is a Pediatric Nurse and a freelance writer. She lives in Redwood City, California with her husband and daughter.

Taking Care of the Sad Part

Published
by
jess
on May 10, 2010
in adoption
. 0 Comments

an essay by Catherine M. Anderson

After traveling half way across the country in three snowstorms, for over thirty-six hours, I have finally arrived here-outside of this little North Carolina hospital room at 4:30 in the morning. Down the hall I hear two nurses mumbling, and the sound of generic holiday music coming from somewhere. The smell of last night’s blanched peas and meatloaf, mixed with ammonia lingers in the air.

I knock on the door.

I am a thirty-eight year old woman, standing on the threshold of the most important introduction I will ever make. I wait to hear the voice of the twenty-four year old woman who is about to offer me her child to call my own.

Unless she has changed her mind.

“Come in.” A small voice beckons from inside the room.

I open the door too slowly. Or was it too quickly?

There is a bed. There is a broad shouldered twenty-four year old black woman in a hospital gown with her hair pulled back holding a baby in her arms.  Holding my baby in her arms? She is feeding him a bottle sitting up in the bed. The baby is making little content noises. There is a little bureau. There is a nurse call button.

And, now there is a stranger that she read about in a fourteen page bound prospective- mother-profile with color photos, testimonials, and a plan to be an almost perfect parent in her door way.

Is that him? He is so much lighter than I expected. And, she is so much darker.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” she asks, without looking at me.

The door that I just walked in now feels hundreds of miles behind me. I approach carefully, as if I am in the museum witnessing the Mona Lisa for the first time. Only she is breathing, and holding my son.

I sit lightly on the corner of the her bed. His fingers are curled in a ball under his chin. His nose is squished. Her sadness crushes me. Or is it my ambivalence that I belong in this moment with this complete stranger that is pressing against my lungs. I haven’t slept in almost two days. I place the nearly lifeless bouquet of airport vending machine roses on the counter behind her. I notice the stain from the airplane salad dressing on my jeans.

“Can I get you anything?” I ask.

“Do you want to hold him?” Comes out of her more as a command then a question.

Before I can say yes, the nurse comes in to take the baby away for his his hearing test. She does not know how to greet me. Thankfully, she does not tell me to leave even though visiting hours ended hours ago.

“Is the social worker from the hospital here? I have some papers I am supposed to , um, uh. sign.” I offer with forced confidence.

“It is five-thirty in the morning.” The nurse quips. “My shift is about to end. You’ll have to ask the day nurse to see if they can find you what you need. I don’t know nothing about that.” She leaves.

Alone in the room, we decide quickly to part ways so that I can check into the motel up the road, and she can take a shower while they have the baby. We agree that I’ll come back at seven-thirty. I’ll bring Ronda then too, my best friend who made the trip with me.

“Would you like me to bring you coffee or anything when I come back?”

“No. But, have you picked out his name?” she says. “He needs a name.”  From coffee to a name, this is symbolic of the completely different worlds we are inhabiting at this moment.

We had talked about names on the phone from various airports. She wanted Joshua. I didn’t. I wanted Dexter, she didn’t like that. We had left off at Samuel, when we last spoke.

“Sam. Samuel. Samuel Lamoyne as a middle name. The La in Lamoyne is for you, it is usually L-e-m-o-y-n-e, but I want your name to be part of his*.” I take my time with this sentence for once.

“That’s nice. Real nice.” It is the first time she smiles with me.

She gets up slowly and lifts herself off of the bed. I offer my arm too late. She gets her towel, and slippers and waits for me to leave.

***

Back in the little hotel I tell Ronda that I have made a huge mistake. I am incapable of parenting a child. She tells me to get some sleep. She is right.

Less than two hours later, the hotel phone rings. It is the social worker back in Maine.

“The birthmother  needs you to show your joy. She doesn’t think you love her baby.”

***

Ronda and I walk in together. Ronda’s Charlottesville accent, and easy going charm, immediately take over the room. Laughter smoothes out all of our wrinkles. Samuel is brought back in the room. He is awake. He is screaming.

“Come here, Fatso. You’re hungry. Come here now.” His birthmother gently eases the bottle in his little screeching mouth, as I look on carefully.

“Do you want to feed him?” she asks. This time it feels like a request.

“Yes. Yes, please.”I open my arms to receive him, and then scoop him from her as she steadies the bottle. I take over easily.  “He is beautiful. He could not be more beautiful.”

“He is funny looking with his nose all squished up there and all them curls. He scared all other other babies in the nursery ‘cause he’s so big.” She tells us, while straitening out her gown, and smoothing back her hair. “I look a mess. My kids are gonna be here in an hour, I can’t be looking like I need to be checked into a hospital when they come.”

“No you don’t,” I blurt out-looking her in the eyes for the first time. “I am sorry if you did not know how excited I am. I am just having so many feelings that I couldn’t separate it all out. I feel your sadness, and I wanted to respect that. I didn’t want to start screaming about how gorgeous he is-or how I can’t believe that my prayers are answered here in this little bundle of love-when-when so deeply I sense your sadness. Your grief.”

“I just need you to be happy, and let me take care of the sad part, “she tells me, touching his hair. “He’ll be screaming soon anyway, so you’ll need to scream if you want nobody to hear you.”

The next few hours feel easy and important. She gets dressed to go. Then we sign papers. We take pictures. We hug. We take more pictures. I worry that everyone really hopes Ronda will be Samuel’s mother since she is so pretty and funny. But, I am sure that I get big points for having such charming friends.

We meet her three beautiful and sweet and smart children. Her oldest is eight, then three, and the baby, the other baby, is just eleven months. I feel guilty as I feel so much relief that they all appear so healthy, present and normal. We share stories with her sister, and listen in as she tells her father over the phone that I am there, and everything is OK.

It is time to say good-bye.

Before they leave, she and I take a few minutes alone with the baby. I hand him back, and ask her to think about what she would like for him in the world, and to tell me why she has chosen to place him with me. When she is ready to do that, I will come back in, and tell her why I am ready to welcome him into my heart, and life.

It takes only a few minutes for the door to re-open.

“I love you, Fatso. I love you. I know Miss Catherine here will love you too. I know she’ll give you everything you need because she told me she will. I want you to be happy baby, and listen, and be good. You make me proud, baby. Mama L loves you.” She kisses him, and places him in my arms.

* Although I have included two letters of her name in the story, I have chosen to withhold the entirety of her name here, to protect her identity.

Catherine Maryse Anderson is a single parent head of a transracial household. She is a poet, literary salon hostess, and public school language arts humanities teacher in Portland, Maine. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Hip Mama Magazine, Adoptive Families Magazine, and on Love Isn’t Enough (formerly Anti Racist Parent), My Brown Baby, Color Online, and Adoption Mosaic Blog and newsletter. She has been featured on the Mixed Chicks Chat podcast , writes for Moms of Hue  and blogs at MamaCandtheboys.

Stitches

Published
by
jess
on March 22, 2010
in adoption and birth
. 0 Comments

by Catherine Zickgraf

I’m sure I took a nap when I got home.
I don’t remember the nap, just
the strained stair-climb to my bedroom,
me holding my mother’s wrist, my hand
with IV holes bandaged over.

Stitched at the birth canal,
the cut had relieved such pressure,
but I heard the scalpel
sink in its five-o’clock position.

Nothing hurt like that cut, and blood
was still dripping from the stitches.
The nurse had stocked the room
with smelling-salt pellets
for the next time I passed out
on her bathroom tile.

At the time I believed
the old tale that infant males
don’t feel their circumcisions.
Lies can dull pain, but anesthesia
is better.  So much suffering
caused by doctors and scalpels.

The nurse swished through the door
and reached for him.
It’s time for the circumcision.

We know that’s what the adopting couple
would want.  A fourteen-year-old, of course,
has no right to be a mother.

  

Catherine Zickgraf quit law school to be a writer.  Let’s hope it pans out.  You can find her blog at http://myspace.com/czickgraf.

Her writing has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, and Bartleby-Snopes.  She also has work forthcoming in GUD Magazine and A cappella Zoo.

Womanhood, Fertility, and Identity

Published
by
jess
on January 25, 2010
in adoption, family, fatherhood, infertility, motherhood, pregnancy and sex
. 1 Comment

by Jessica Powers

In college, my best friend once described her hips as “child-bearing hips.” She knew back then that she wanted children and, indeed, now has six beautiful and healthy daughters. 

Me? I didn’t even know what hips were. Literally. If somebody had provided me pictures of two headless bodies-one male, one female-I wouldn’t have been able to distinguish the outline of hips on the female body.

A boyfriend once pointed out a transvestite, then said, knowingly, “You can always tell the difference between a woman and a transvestite. A transvestite lacks hips.”

My response? “Huh?” The transvestite looked like a perfectly beautiful woman to me!

***

I was never one of those women whose overwhelming desire in life was to have children, what some childless men and women have sneeringly referred to as a breeder.

Motherhood was simply never one of my goals.

One of the reasons I left organized religion, in fact, was the emphasis it all too often places on motherhood. I always felt devalued as a woman in the Christian church, and it never comforted me to have my feminist concerns pooh-poohed with a well-meaning, but completely off the mark, comment like this: “But women are completely valued in the church. There’s nothing more important than motherhood. That’s the most important role in life, male or female.”

I heard a preacher one time say that he was sick and tired of hearing people say that God doesn’t value women. “God chose a woman to carry his only begotten son,” he said. “That should prove how valuable women are! They’re more valuable than men!” (I didn’t have the guts to raise my hand and ask if he actually thought God would have chosen a man to give birth to his only begotten son, which would have truly been a miracle….but I definitely thought about it.)

Whenever I heard the emphasis on motherhood in sermons, I wanted to ask: If women are valuable because they are mothers, what happens to a woman’s value if she’s infertile? Or if she can conceive, but her body is incapable of carrying a baby to term? If women are valued precisely because they are mothers, does a woman cease to be valuable if she is unable or unwilling to contribute to the ongoing human gene pool? And are women to be valued for nothing else? Can’t they be valued as scientists, artists, educators, and healers? What about being valued because we’re funny, smart, thoughtful, or we make a good friend?  

I never got around to asking those questions. I just stopped going to church. I was tired of crying all the time, tired of fighting people with stupid ideas about what constitutes a person’s value.

I’d go as far as to argue that this strong correlation between motherhood and saintliness, and the conflation of our value as women with our fertility, can be labeled as spiritual abuse.

A person is valuable because of who they are, not because of the fertility-related identity role(s) they assume in life, roles such as wife, mother, grandmother. A woman should never be valued simply because of her ability to conceive and bear a child, just like a man should never be valued simply because he produces viable sperm.

So why do so many women’s self-images founder on their ability to conceive and bear a child, to successfully raise functioning members of society-at-large?

***

I never thought of myself as a slow learner, but when it comes to parenthood, I’m definitely a late-bloomer.

Throughout my twenties, I was grateful that I didn’t have children. The life of an artist is hard enough without adding babies to the mix, I thought.

When I first got married in my mid-twenties, my husband (now ex) and I planned to remain blissfully childfree. I hadn’t anticipated, then, that my biological clock would kick in with a vengeance as I approached thirty. Suddenly, to my surprise, I wanted kids. Oh, not the goobery, snotty-faced, diaper-rashed babies that grow up into delightful, creative, intelligent young people; no, as I approached thirty, I suddenly realized that I’d be thrilled if my children could emerge from my womb, already 10 or 11 or 12 years old. Talking in complete sentences. Potty-trained. Relatively independent already. You know, little adults.

This was an impossible dream, of course, unless I was willing to adopt an older child and deal with the potentially debilitating emotional problems they might have-always a crapshoot.

In lieu of heading down that path just yet, my husband and I have recently been trying for the flesh-and-blood variety, a normal baby conceived in the normal way pushed out of a normal vagina at the normal age of 0 months’ old. I guess I’m willing to subject myself to sleepless nights, poopy diapers, and sore breasts so I can get that pre-teen, teenager, college-student, and adult child I long for down the road.

But even as I embrace my identity as a woman “TTC” (a popular internet acronym that stands for “trying to conceive”), I still vacillate in my desire for children and it has to do with that fragile thing called identity.

There is always one solid reason for me to give up on the idea of motherhood: my identity as an artist. I’ve worked hard to get to the place where I am. I write five or six hours every day, and then teach college writing classes and run my small literary press on top of that. Recently, I’ve started working as a writing coach, and offering private writing classes in my home for children, teenagers, and adults. I easily put in twelve hours a day. It’s hard to imagine how I’ll balance all of that with motherhood.

It’s when I contemplate the vast gulf between what I desire to do with my life and the reality of raising children that I begin to wonder if I really want them.

Yet just when I think I might be “okay” with foregoing the pleasures of parenting, I realize I’m still captive to the idea that being a woman means being a mother. Intellectually, I know that this is a false belief. Emotionally, somewhere deep inside of me, I still believe that to live a full life, experiencing the full range of human emotions, requires adopting the role of parenthood, however your children come into your life.

Why the hell do I continue to associate my value as a woman with my fertility?

And so, I’m on the verge of giving up, of saying, “No more. I don’t want to try to get pregnant any more. That doesn’t mean I’ll try to prevent pregnancy, but I don’t want my life to be dominated by cervical fluid, basal body temperature, and that period that comes late but inevitably comes.”

It’s true that I’ve only been trying for eight months but I’m already tired of the emotional roller-coaster. Twice, my period has been a week late. In those days when I think I might be pregnant, my mind jumps to sugary fantasies of what it’ll be like, and I’m overwhelmed by the I can’t wait-ness of it all.

And then the disappointment sets in when my basal body temperature drops, menstrual blood arrives, and I discover that I’m not, after all, pregnant.

I wonder how women do this over and over and over? You know, those women that try to conceive for years and years and years? Those women that go to heroic efforts, spend all sorts of time and money, all in their quest to have a child?

I don’t think I can keep it up.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m willing to give up on the so-called “fullness of life experience” b.s. I was just blathering on about if it means some emotional sanity.

I’m fortunate. A few days ago, as we were having yet another discussion about my on-again off-again desire to get pregnant, my husband looked at me and said, “You are my world. I don’t need anything else.” And we once again talked about what we will do if we don’t get pregnant-move to South Africa or Mozambique, to the Caribbean, to Ecuador or Argentina or Brazil, or maybe to all of those places for a few years apiece. Or we could take in foreign-born foster children, generally teenagers by the time they make it here after spending years in refugee camps.

Without children, the world is our oyster.

But still, it all comes down to this crux issue: What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean for me to feel valuable as a person?

We all, we all, need to learn to value ourselves apart from these roles we assume in life. For me, that includes the role of artist. If I replace motherhood with artist, am I really any better off? I’m still valuing myself by something that is transitory, fleeting. We don’t achieve immortality through our art. Nor do we achieve it by bearing offspring.

As I move forward TTC, or not TTC, I hope I can learn to value myself as Jessica with no titles attached to my name.

***

Last November, I had a dream about motherhood and identity. In the dream, I was in a house, surrounded by women I know who have young children. I wandered from person to person, but I couldn’t relate to any of them. In fact, I felt inferior as I talked with them-there was a sense in which all of them had experienced a part of womanhood that I lacked, and so we couldn’t connect. I felt, well, robbed.  And even as I tried to interest them in non-motherhood-related topics, I realized what I was doing: they seemed to think I was inferior because I wasn’t a mother and so, subconsciously and nastily, I was trying to turn the tables by demonstrating that I’d had an interesting career and had traveled to so many exotic locales and done so many interesting things that they would never do, encumbered as they were with snot-faced babies and dirty diapers.

 Eventually, not liking that dynamic one tiny little bit, I separated myself from the mothers with babies and went to another part of the house. There, I was joined by my many African friends, and we discussed Africa, and politics, and health, and religion, and we ignored the issue of motherhood. Though many of my African friends are also parents, I felt none of the distance I’d felt from my mother-friends, who were treating me as though I was less of a woman because I wasn’t a mother.

I woke up and felt a moment of grief, like the dream was telling me I’d lost my chance at motherhood, that I’d traded it in for Africa and my writing.

On reflection later, I realized that of course, I have never given up my dream of motherhood-until the last few years, I didn’t have a spouse with whom I could have children. Instead, the dream was speaking to me about my hidden desire to be a mother as well as the obvious calling on my life to Africa and as a writer. My desire to have it all.

It was also reminding me of this unassailable truth: While all the other women in the room had chosen motherhood first-and let me add, they are all young women I admire, who have made the choices they wanted to make by choosing children over career, at least for the time being-I had chosen it second. And ultimately, I found myself in a room with the people I had chosen: Africans.

It was a revelation.

As I embark on this next stage of my life, trying to get pregnant, I’m constantly filled with doubts. Sometimes I wonder if motherhood is what God intends for me, or even if motherhood is something I want to add to my mixture of things I’ve already chosen (or that has chosen me)-Africa and writing. Sometimes I feel desperate to be pregnant, now, and sometimes, I secretly hope I’m not pregnant, so that nothing needs to change.  In fact, I worry about how motherhood will prevent me from doing the things I feel I’m supposed to do, in Africa, as a writer-those vague, hazy outline of things that make up my future. I’m still waiting for the clarion call from God, the angel of the Lord appearing to me in a dream, the way he did with Mary and Joseph, and telling me, “This is what you’re supposed to do. I’ve arranged everything for you. It won’t be easy but at least there’s no doubt about it.”

But that’s too easy and, in all likelihood, false. The path that God marked out for Mary and Joseph must have seemed hazy and uncertain to them. It is only clear in retrospect, when written about as a narrative, a narrative that brooks no other possible paths.

I wonder how fearful and frustrated Mary and Joseph must have felt as they walked down that road, wondering all the time if they could veer in a different direction, or if they even wanted to, or if this was really the path they were supposed to be on and if they weren’t just fooling themselves.

I wonder how much of this path I’m following I charted myself, and how much has been charted for me.

I suppose I’ll never know.

And, at least some of the time, I’m okay with that.

 

Jessica Powers is the author of The Confessional (Knopf, 2007), a novel that explores racial tension and school violence at an all-boys Catholic high school on the U.S.-Mexico border; editor of Labor Pains and Birth Stories: Essays on Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Becoming a Parent, editor of The Fertile Source, and publisher of Catalyst Book Press.

Chosen

Published
by
jess
on November 2, 2009
in adoption, birth, motherhood and pregnancy
. 0 Comments

by Ann Whitfield Powers

After the fertility drugs fail, I spend hours lying with acupuncture needles crisscrossing my abdomen. I drink stinky tea, take BB shaped pills, and stand on my head after sex.   Nothing works.

As Patrick turns five, Tom and I decide to adopt a baby.  In interviews with the adoption agency staff we reveal more about ourselves and our relationship than we’ve told our best friends; we put together a family photo collage Norman Rockwell would envy; we craft a one page Dear Birthparent letter; and we write a hefty check.  Finally, we are “in the pool,” ready to be considered by birth parents who are looking for the right adoptive family for their birth child — this, the new trend in domestic adoption.  The birth parent(s) pick the adoptive family, not the other way around. Now, all we have to do is wait.  

Seven months later, we’re still waiting.  We have not received a single call, not even a “screening call” to see if we might be interested in a special needs child.

Each month the agency newsletter announces that three or four families have adopted, and five or six new families have been added to the waiting pool.  There are now over sixty waiting families.  My early confidence is badly bruised, and sorry thoughts start to hound me.  

 

*

 

Late one Friday afternoon, I come home from teaching and force myself to hang up my coat and slip off my shoes before I head to the answering machine.  No messages.  Then I see a note scrawled on an envelope: “Adrienne from the adoption agency called.  Please call back to set up a screening. Not urgent.”  The not urgent is underlined. 

Out the kitchen window I see Patrick and his nanny, Nisey, playing in the backyard.   I slip back into the living room and dial the phone number, my heart racing. Please let Adrienne be there.  It’s 4:45 on a Friday afternoon. I can’t stand the idea of waiting through the weekend to get the details.

She’s there! Her voice is warm and upbeat. “I want to know if you and Tom would like to be presented as potential adoptive parents to a birth mother named Laura.*”

Yes, we would,” I say quickly. 

Adrienne laughs.  “Well, there are a few complications you should hear about before you decide, but the good news is that the baby is already born, and the father is out of the picture — well, deceased, actually.” 

“Oh, that’s sad,” I say hesitantly.  Our adoption agency is all about keeping kids in touch with their birth parents, but because tracking down birth fathers and getting them to sign over paternity rights is often a sticking point in arranging adoptions, a dead birth father could be seen as good news. 

I walk back into the kitchen to check on Patrick and Nisey.  They’re crouched in front of a flowerpot, intently poking something with sticks.

“And you should know that Laura does have a history of struggling with addiction. She has been honest about using a bit during her pregnancy.”

I take a deep breath. “Okay,” I say.  I return to the dining room table, sit down and take up a pen. “Tell me.”

“Laura drank two to three beers a night, not every night certainly, but more often than not, and smoked pot for the first six months of pregnancy. She also says she did meth and heroine four times.”

I scribble: 2-3 beers; meth/heroine 4x.  Adrienne talks on as I try to decide how bad those numbers are.  In the adoption world, an occasional drink — unthinkable when I was pregnant with Patrick– is no big deal.   Of course, Laura drank more than that, but it doesn’t sound like she was a raging drunk.  The drugs worry me too, but the use is low.   I’m not ready to quit yet.     

“After that she went through a treatment plan and was definitely clean and sober at the end of her pregnancy, because she was incarcerated.”   

“Incarcerated?”  

Adrienne doesn’t completely understand the story behind the incarceration, but it has to do with a series of fights between Laura and her boyfriend — not the baby’s father, but the boyfriend after the baby’s father died — that ended up with assault charges and both Laura and her now “ex” boyfriend in jail.

A stillness opens in my chest.  My sister had an abusive boyfriend once. An image of her trashed apartment — broken glass, fallen computer, bloody floor — flashes for a second.  She took years to get out. Briefly I volunteered in a domestic violence shelter where most of the women I met were trapped in that cycle and didn’t show any signs of being able to break free.  Do I want to start a relationship with a woman who is stuck in a DV dynamic?  I can’t focus on this question now. 

“Tell me about the baby.”

“Laura went into labor three weeks early and had a c-section. The baby had to be resuscitated, but was fine within minutes — with her Apgar Scores all nines. After three days in the hospital recovering with the baby, Laura went back to jail and the baby went to foster care.” Adrienne’s voice lowers: this is an unfortunate event, the separation of baby from mother. Then she picks up again.  “But the baby is doing well. She is five weeks old now.”

I smile. A girl.  “No signs of fetal alcohol syndrome?”

“No, nothing.  She looks good.”

Adrienne assures me that Laura has been diligent in pursuing the open adoption.  If the state agrees to this adoption — which they may or may not do — they will most likely restrict our contact with Laura, probably to letters and phone calls, or an occasional meeting in a public place. Laura understands this and still wants to go ahead.

“Adrienne, I think we will want to be presented. Let me check with Tom and get back to you.”

I hang up the phone, look out the window, catch Nisey’s eye and hold up a finger — one minute.  She nods.  I dial Tom’s number.

“We got a screening call,” I announce without saying hello.

“Oh really?”  He sounds curious but cautious.

I summarize the situation: a five-week-old baby girl, two to three beers, four meth/heroine incidents, incarcerated, clean at the end.   There is a long silence at the other end of the phone as Tom absorbs this information.

Finally he says, “Well, it’s a little iffy, but nothing you said makes me feel like slamming the door shut.  If she picks us, we can find out more, before we commit, right?”

I smile. “Right.”

“Okay, then,” he says. “Let’s do it.”

I call Adrienne back, but the office is now closed.  Yes, I say to the answering machine. Yes, we want to be presented.

I skip out to the backyard where Patrick and Nisey are now digging in the dirt.  I squat down, pick up a stick and join in.  “Are we going to get a baby, Mama?”  Patrick asks.  I smile.  He doesn’t miss a beat. “Maybe,” I say, tousling his hair.  “Maybe we are.”

*

 Dear Ann, Tom & Patrick,

I’m Laura, Destiny Jo’s  mother, and I hope you will be her mother soon too (and father and big brother)! Destiny was born on 02/03/04 (Kind of a cool birthday) three weeks early by C-section and weighed 5lbs 7oz. and she is beautiful, and I’m not just saying that because I’m prejudiced. She really is beautiful. 

We have been chosen. Adrienne tells me Laura looked at six families and picked us.  I am giddy, smiling, swaying to a bebop tune in my head. Adrienne provides the details on where we go from here.

There is a hearing in a week where the state Department of Human Services (DHS) will tell a judge what they plan to do with the now six-week-old baby.  DHS has in the past agreed to arrange private adoptions through our agency but these particular staff people have been noncommittal, verging on evasive.  Adrienne has sent a letter to the judge requested time to speak at the hearing.  Meanwhile Laura is sending us a letter, telling us her side of the story.  If the hearing goes well, we’ll go meet Laura and — if we like each other — finalize the deal.

I was the youngest of seven children . . .my brother Jack, the only one of us to graduate from high school, nicknamed me the wild child and I guess I have been pretty wild.  Mainly due to the fact that my parents were alcoholics I didn’t get a lot of real parenting.  But my mother gave us all a lot of love and my dad is responsible for the abundance of quick wit and humor than runs in our family.  And believe me we’re a funny bunch.

A week later Adrienne calls with good news: Laura’s attorney just told Adrienne she doesn’t need to come down to the hearing. He talked with DHS and they say they’re willing to facilitate this adoption!  Adrienne wants to hear it from the DHS staff person herself, but at this point it seems that if we want this baby, she’s ours.  We could go meet Laura next week and get the baby a few days later.  DHS may require us to jump through some hoops, but Adrienne is hopeful that we can move quickly.

We could have a baby in two weeks.  Oh my god. I’m in the middle of a semester of teaching two college classes.  I couldn’t quit at this point.  My mother has always said she’d come for a month to help, but right now she’s out of reach on a two-week kayaking trip.  Do we even own an infant carseat anymore? Our son is five, and what baby gear we haven’t given away is buried deep in the basement.

I talk to the chairman of the English department and tell him we might be getting a baby soon, but promise I won’t quit.  We brainstorm possible approaches — cutting an assignment, reducing days of teaching, making the final optional. It turns out he and his brother were both adopted. He turned out well enough, he says with typical modesty. But his brother has had problems. He looks at his schedule and offers to take my Wednesday classes.

My father died when I was fourteen and his death was really hard for me.  I rebelled at the whole world when he died and found solace in drugs and alcohol and sex . . . which of course led to me having my first child at the age of 15.  I quit smoking the day Derek was born and nursed him for 13 months. When he was three and a half I signed over custody to his dad’s mother, since we weren’t getting our lives together very well and couldn’t give Derek the stability a kid needs.  Anyway, I grew up fast and hard and went to jail when I was 18 and made a career of that kind for several years off and on.

On Saturday, instead of grading papers, I dig out baby gear from the basement.  I wash the dusty covers of the bassinet, the bouncy chair, and the swing.  I wipe down the railings and set it all out in the backyard to dry in the sun.  Where is our old infant car seat? Oh damn, I loaned it to my stepbrother and his wife in Montana.  Should I call them and ask them to send it back? Are we really getting this baby?

Patrick helps me assemble the bassinet. We set it up in a corner of the dining room and lay a gauzy green cloth over the top. That afternoon he plays big brother and tucks his Curious George monkey in the bassinet.  Now, each time I walk by the bassinet and look through the green gauze, I see the faint outline of a little figure inside.

Adrienne gave me the names of parents who have adopted kids with drug and alcohol exposure, and she suggested we call our pediatrician. The first parent I call is empathetic and reassuring: her child is turning out fine.  The pediatrician is another story.

“Oh, Ann, that’s a lot of exposure,” the pediatrician says immediately.  “And you know she’s underreporting. Believe me, I know. They always underreport.”

I sit down on a dining room chair.  Her voice is hard, jaded.  She seems to be implying she has extensive experience with lying drug addicts.  The adoption agency has warned us that many people are quick to vilify birth mothers.

“Yeah, maybe,” I agree reluctantly. I rest my elbow on the table, head propped in my hand.

“The baby may be fine now, but problems often don’t crop up until kids get into school. With all that exposure you will see problems. At the very least she won’t be the brightest bulb in the bunch.” 

I frown. How crass. And is it really inevitable?

“But you should expect to see ADD, learning delays, hyperactivity.  You could be spending your days taking her to special ed classes, psychiatrists, neurologists. I mean, some people are ready to take that on.  But don’t adopt this baby unless you’re willing to deal with a lot of challenges. Are you ready for that?”

I see. She’s on a mission, bringing hard truths to a naïve mom.  Telling it straight, hitting home.  Silently, I resist. Yes, some of this might come true.  But all of it?

“No,” I admit. “That’s not what we want.”

There is an awkward pause, and then she starts in again. “What is the mom in prison for?”

What can I say?  “Assault.”

“Assault? Oh, there you go. Oppositional defiance disorder. Maybe drugs in the house as she gets older.   And think of your son: what will it do to him to have this problem child in your house?”

My back goes rigid.  I stand up to hang up the phone.  “Well, that’s a lot to think about.  Thanks so much for your input,” I say trying to keep the acidity out of my voice.

“Thanks for thinking of consulting me,” she responds in a kinder tone.  “If you do get that baby, I’ll do my best to take care of her.”

I am shaking as I hang up the phone.  I hate her. I hate what she said.  It’ll be a cold day in hell before I take another child to see her.  She was horrid, jumping to conclusions, generalizing.  And then I am sobbing, because she might be right.  Worst-case scenario, I have to face it, she might be right.  And she understood my question better than I did:  I was really asking her to tell me the baby would be fine. I lean my forehead on the cool wood of the dining room table and cry.

Ten minutes later, I pull myself up, find the adoption file, and pull out the fact sheets on drug and alcohol exposure. Moderate drinking, defined as a drinking less than two drinks a night, creates a teratogenic risk of “none to minimal.” Laura reports drinking  more than that — two to three beers most nights — but not close to the six drinks a night required to get into the moderate to high risk category. There seems to be plenty of gray area here. I’m not sure what teratogenic means, or if there are other kinds of risks, but I’m not going to accept this pediatrician’s blanket statements of doom.

My American Heritage dictionary doesn’t list the word teratogenic. The Encarta Encyclopedia tells me that a teratogen is a “substance or agent in the external environment that can induce deformities in a fetus.” Teratogen is from the Greek teratos, which means monster; and genes, which means born.  So, to put it crudely, we’re looking at the chances that the child will be born a monster. But she’s already born and looks fine. Do teratogenic risks include developmental problems that crop up later? I will have to do more research.

That night, I call two more families who have adopted kids exposed to drugs, both say they adopted knowing they could face some special challenges, but so far, their children are fine.  A friend calls to say she checked with her pediatrician who insists the post-birth environment makes a huge difference in an exposed child’s development.

My mother died in July, then Destiny’s father died in August when I was two months pregnant with her.  Then I met Joe who is a woman beater.  But I saw the pony tail and thought well there has to be a pony in there somewhere under all that shit, so I started shoveling.  Well, I got my shovel broke and my heart broke too and still no pony. 

Anyway I did stab him in the neck, which only goes to show everyone has a breaking point. Even though the doctor’s report says it was a superficial wound I guess I came within an inch of killing him.  So initially I was charged with attempted murder and assault II.  I plea-bargained down to assault and am now paying my debt to society: 16 months. It would never have happened except for all the abuse I’d enjoyed and me being pregnant and all hormonal. I usually always control myself better.

Usually always?  What does that mean?  On the rare occasion she does act violent? Great.  Then again, if I had an abusive lover, I might just stab him in the neck too.

Anyway I feel a lot worse about the drugs I did while I was pregnant than I do about the assault. I did meth about four times and heroin twice and drank beer and smoked marijuana about half a dozen times. But I was totally clean the last month of pregnancy.  I’m so thankful Destiny was born clean and is not affected by the drugs.

These aren’t exactly the numbers Laura reported to the adoption agency, and the adoption agency via Adrienne, reported to us. Laura shrunk the amount she drank quite a bit. At first it was two to three beers most nights, now it’s half a dozen beers the whole pregnancy.  And I thought she was clean and sober for the last three months, not just the last month. Still, normal enough, to underreport when you know what’s at stake.  And the baby is healthy. 

Please don’t let my past or my current situation intimidate you because I’m really not a big, mean, dumb, stupid head! I’ve just had a constant battle with addiction and I’ve made some poor relationship choices.

“This too shall pass.”  Peace Out!  Love Life and Laughter,

Laura

I call Adrienne. “We got Laura’s letter,” I say.  “I like her.  But I notice there was a discrepancy between what she told me and what she told you about her drinking.”

“Well, actually the discrepancy is getting bigger,” Adrienne says.  “I just got the reports from the rehab center, and the first time she went in for an evaluation, in August, when she was two months pregnant, she self-reported she was doing meth every day, 1-2 grams, and had done heroin 3x the previous week.  She didn’t sign up for the rehab program at that point.  Four months later, in December, she did check herself in, and those records describe her as a self-admitted alcoholic.  So, I don’t know. It looks like there may be more exposure than we originally thought.”

I wash dishes, vacuum, water plants, numb from the weight of the news.  Up until now I thought there was a chance, a reasonable chance, the baby would be normal. How can I hold on to that hope now? 

And I worry about Tom’s reaction. He’s never felt the need for a second child, not in the gut-level yearning, no-rational-arguments-are- relevant way that I do. He’s hung in through this long process as a supportive husband, a willing participant.  He’s been interested and curious, but not fundamentally in need.  He feels the price of parenting more keenly than I do: the loss of free time to go mountain climbing, money to travel, or the simple pleasure of sleeping through the night un-interrupted by a crying baby.  He is going through this for me, but he has his limits. And this news will push him way over those limits. Even if I decided I was willing to take on the risks these numbers seem to suggest, I don’t know if I can ask him to do it.

When I give him the news, Tom says simply, “That’s not good.” 

“No,” I agree, “it’s not.” 

We look at each other silently.  Slowly I realize neither of us wants to be the one to pull the plug. 

“This isn’t what I envisioned,” I venture.

Tom gives me a wry smile and shrugs in agreement.  

After another long silence, Tom asks, “What exactly does it mean, to have that much exposure?” 

A weight lifts off my chest.  He’s willing to consider it.  Together we look at the literature on drugs and alcohol the adoption agency gave us, detailed in terms of teratogenic impacts but silent on issues like learning disabilities. We definitely need to learn more about what it might be like to have a child affected by in-utero exposure to drugs and alcohol.

We both surf the web and bring home printouts of news releases from an alphabet soup of agencies and journals: National Institute on Drug Abuse, Journal of American Medical Association, American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse.  Through my college’s interlibrary loan system, I request books on fetal alcohol and drug exposure, adoption of at-risk infants, and studies of children who were exposed to drugs in utero. 

The next few days are a blur of obsessive reading, long phone calls with friends, family, people I know who have adopted, and pediatricians who specialize in developmental rehab; debates with Tom, and side conversations as I pick up and drop off Patrick from pre-school.  The things people say:

“It’s like you’ve been told you have a Down syndrome baby, but you can walk away from this one.”

“What will it do to Patrick?”

“Maybe you were meant to raise this child. You have the resources, the skills.”

“I was adopted. I turned out fine.”

It’s the meth you need to worry about. Meth makes holes in your brain like Swiss cheese.”

 ”Alcohol is the biggest concern.”

“My husband’s adopted.”

“Destiny? Like Destiny’s Child, the band?”

“You know you will get picked again.  You can walk away without feeling like you’ll never get a baby.”

“You should talk to the Handle Institute, they can really re-wire your brain.”

“I have a patient who is adopted from Russia and he’s a fruitcake.”

“If she does end up having problems, she’ll be lucky to have parents like you.”

 

When I had thought I might still have my own biological child, I had picked the name Sophia Grace as a girl’s name, symbolizing wisdom and grace, two things I would like to give my child.  But it seems cruel to give a baby who, as our pediatrician says so charmingly, won’t be the brightest bulb in the bunch, a name that means wisdom.  But we need a name other than Destiny. Laura knows we might rename her, Adrienne assures me.  At the grocery store I buy a booklet, What Shall We Name the Baby?  Only after I buy the book do I realize I’m planning on moving forward with this adoption.

Finally the library books come in.  Adoption and Prenatal Alcohol and Drug Exposure: Research, Policy and Practice, published in 2000, is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Each chapter is by an expert in the field; it’s heavy with in-text citations, endnotes, and reference lists.  In her introduction, Madelyn Freundlich of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute says:

Research on the effects of prenatal alcohol and drug exposure has occurred in two distinct phases.  The first phase of research began in the 1970s and continued through the early 1990s.  Findings during this phase were by and large pessimistic, with an emphasis on early neurological damage among the children prenatally exposed to drugs or alcohol and predictions that these children would be unable to function normally intellectually or socially.  Beginning around 1993, the tone of the research shifted, as longer-term studies showed dramatic variation in the outcomes for children prenatally exposed to substances.  It became clear that there were many cases in which children, despite histories of prenatal substance exposure, demonstrated normal long-term development. (2)

 

Doctor Richard Barth of the University of North Carolina conducted an eight-year longitudinal study of 233 adopted children, 121 of whom had been exposed to drugs in utero.  In his chapter he outlines his study methodology and results in great detail — reminding me of my forgotten work as research assistant for a sociology professor, whose project was rife with uncertainties and imperfections.  Barth’s study also isn’t air tight, but his results are specific and telling.

 At the study’s eight-year mark, 78% of the drug-exposed children had no physical or mental disability, 70% had no developmental disability, 54% had no learning disability, 58% had no emotional/behavioral problems and 69% were in overall good health. But in the next chart, at the same eight-year mark, 86% of the children were medicated for ADHD and 56% were learning disabled. 

Finally, only 19% of parents said their child had been difficult or quite difficult to raise.  I can’t help but smile. Maybe the other 81%, those who say raising their child was not difficult, are the parents of the 86% who are medicated. 

No matter the discrepancies and contradictions, the bottom line for us is clear: we should only accept this baby if we’re willing to deal with some learning disorders, hyperactivity, and ADD.  I know I am still largely ignorant about the day-to-day reality of the challenges involved, but I think I can do it.  I know I can.  Is this a naive little-engine-that-could optimism?  A blind desperation for a baby, any baby?   I could do it, probably, but at what cost?  And what about the impact on Tom and Patrick? Could I be pushing our family into conflict and angst?  I waffle and agonize, one day set to go for it, the next resigned to giving up.

Then Adrienne calls with bad news.  It turns out the state is not willing to facilitate a private adoption.  When they said they would work with the adoption agency, they meant they’d allow the agency to present a family as one of several families they would consider, but they’re doing the picking, not Laura. And they won’t even set up the committee that decides who gets the baby for another six to eight weeks.

“Six to eight weeks?”  I sit down, the breath knocked out of me. No baby in two weeks.  No rush to reorganize the end of my semester, no phone call to Mom for help. As Adrienne talks, I gaze at the bassinet in the corner of the dining room.

They have an internal process they have to go through, to, among other things getting a DNA confirmation of paternity. And I suspect, terminate Laura’s parental rights.

“Six to eight weeks?” I say again.

Adrienne is incensed that the birth mother’s wishes are of no interest to DHS.  I’m incensed that although there is family who would adopt the baby now, when she is seven weeks old, the state is insisting on a long, drawn out, and probably expensive process which will result in the baby not being placed for at least two more months. Crucial developmental milestones are being passed; opportunities to bond are being lost. 

“Wait a minute,” I say, turning away from the bassinet.  “Who told you DHS was willing to facilitate an open adoption?”  Laura’s lawyer.  “And when exactly did he tell you this?”  The day before the hearing.

Of course. How could I have missed it? Oh, I knew Adrienne should have gone to that hearing, but I didn’t want to be pushy.  When did I get so cautious, so wimpy, so stupid? 

“We were misled, Adrienne — purposefully misled — all of us, that lawyer, you, me. I’ll bet money that DHS never had any intention of facilitating an open adoption for Laura.  When they heard you had requested time to testify; they kicked into gear. They called Laura’s lawyer and said that it wasn’t necessary, they’d be happy to cooperate with you.  It was a ploy to stop you from speaking to the judge and making a pitch for something they didn’t want to do.” 

“Yes,” says Adrienne. “My supervisor and I have spent some time discussing whether I should have gone to that hearing anyway.”

Yes, I think to myself, I’ll bet you did. 

Adrienne says we can continue to stay in the process and be the family the agency nominates for consideration by DHS, in six to eight weeks, but she would understand if we decided to call it quits.  If we did stay in, we’d also stay in the general adoption pool, still be seen as a candidate by all the other birth mothers out there. 

I say we’ll stay in. What’s to lose?  We’ll have to fish or cut bait later, but later we’ll know more, and we’ll know more about the baby, too. 

“Oh,” Adrienne adds, “DHS also told me that recently the baby has developed tremors.”   

“Tremors or seizures?” Tom asks. As a lawyer, Tom represents parents of kids poisoned by thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that used to be included in multi-dose vaccines.  He’s read reams of medical reports on children’s regression into non-verbal, seizure-intensive lives.  He’s spent hours listening to clients overwhelmed by the heartbreak of watching a child regress, and parents struggling to find answers, a cure, or at least some way of coping. He’s watched at least one marriage fall apart in the process.

“Tremors can be part of withdrawal, a process that is short-lived,” says Dr Saj Budden, a pediatrician at Legacy Emmanuel Hospital’s Child Development Rehabilitation Center. Dr Budden has been a saint, returning my many phone calls, talking freely for half an hour at a time. Even now, two months after birth, even if the baby showed no sign of heroin or meth in her blood at birth, tremors could be withdrawal.  Drugs move out of the blood much more quickly than out of fat tissue, as in the brain. She recommends we request an MRI and more information on the baby’s head’s growth rate.  She confirms that as the child grows older, we could easily see learning disabilities and hyperactivity, but she stresses that many, even most, of the children she sees function quite well in society, once they get extra help. 

After Patrick is in bed, Tom and I talk it over.  I’m relieved to hear him articulate a position pretty close to my own: he’s willing to take on some developmental delays and learning disabilities, but scared of antisocial behavior and violence. 

Dr. Budden says the biggest physical reactions are hyperactivity, short attention span, and poor impulse control.  But because the children can’t process information well, have trouble extrapolating; sometimes they can’t read the social clues. So, they can sometimes become social misfits, sometimes withdrawn, sometimes angry and violent.  “I can’t promise you that won’t happen,” she says.

Tom and I talk. And talk and talk.  Tom is done talking long before I am, but, trying to be a good husband, he sits and listens as I process.  What’s the down side of staying in? For one thing, I’m a wreck. I’m tense, worried, neglecting my responsibilities.  The English department chairman has a saying on his door that catches my eye each time I walk by: “It’s not the getting and the spending; it’s the toll that hope takes.”   

And what about Laura?  What if she thinks we’re with her for the next two months only to find out right before the committee meets that we’ve dumped her?  She would feel terrible, betrayed.  What if there is another family, Laura’s second choice, who would maybe feel fine about the risks this baby poses?  Are we unfairly cutting them out?

I call Adrienne and tell her we’re thinking of pulling out.  We’re pushed over the edge of our comfort zone on the alcohol, the drugs, Laura’s own background, and the uncertainty of DHS’s process. And we want to minimize the disappointment and hurt Laura feels at this rejection. Doesn’t it seem better to do it now than later?  Yes, says Adrienne. She’s appreciated our attitude and our willingness to go along with the process, but it really has dragged out and been uncertain and increasingly difficult, and if we want to pull out it would be better to do it now and let Laura get on with the next step.

So. I hadn’t really intended to finalize an ending, just to talk it over, but there doesn’t seem to be anything left to ponder.  “Okay,” I say. “I guess that’s what we should do.”  Then there is an awkward moment as I realize I may never speak to Adrienne again. “Well, goodbye,” I say.  “Nice to get to know you, if only over the phone.”  It’s odd not know how it will all turn out.  Adrienne says to feel free to call if we want to check in and do that kind of processing.

After I hang up the phone, I wonder what will happen to little Destiny.  Will she be all right? I hope her foster family will adopt her and she will be just fine, or, if not fine, at least mainly happy.  Maybe I should have had more courage or more strength or been more willing to take risks.  I wonder what her destiny is. I will always be a little sad that she wasn’t part of mine.

*

Two days later, I call Adrienne.  I can’t stop thinking about little Destiny.  Has she told Laura that we’re pulling out?  If not, could we wait a bit?  She hasn’t told Laura and is willing to wait.  I say please then let us stay in a while longer, even though it probably won’t work out.  Probably not, Adrienne agrees, but we can stay in as long as we like. I hang up and feel better; at least Laura won’t feel abandoned by us, just screwed by the system.  I suppose it’s easier for me too. It’s easier to let the system screw up our chance at adopting this baby than to face the fact that we said no to a baby.  Am I avoiding honest self-assessment? Am I cheating? Maybe so.  And yet, in all honesty I feel back in the game. If by some miracle it does work out that we can adopt this baby, I will want to adopt her.  Despite my belief in informed decision making, quality research, and clear thinking, I’ll want to adopt her not because of certain facts or statistics or available resources, but because of faith in the mystical side of life, the belief that some things are meant to be. In short because of her name, a name I don’t even like.     

* Note: The birthmother’s name has been changed.

Ann Whitfield Powers is currently working on a book about coming late to motherhood titled “Isn’t Forty Kind of Old for That?”  Her fiction and creative non-fiction have been published in Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers; Literary Mama; Oregon Literary Review; and other literary journals. She lives with her husband and two sons in Portland, Oregon.

Under the Northern Lights

Published
by
jess
on October 19, 2009
in adoption, family, infertility, pregnancy and sex
. 0 Comments

A Play in One Act

by John Ladd

Characters

(In Order of Appearance)

 

Jim

Marie

 

SETTING

A motel room.  It is divided into an ante-room, that is at center-stage, and the bedroom that is, conceptually, off beyond stage-right.  The ante-room has the usual amenities including a table with two chairs as well as one particularly special feature- and is one that the audience cannot see- a north-facing, one-way glass wall and ceiling both of which are covered by imaginary drapes on imaginary drawstrings.

 AT RISE

            Enter from stage left JIM and MARIE at the door to their room.  JIM unlocks the door, reaches in and turns on the lights (the house lights come up.)  JIM and MARIE enter the ante-room carrying and pulling their travel luggage.

 JIM

                  (entering the room)

            Well, here we are.

                         [MARIE follows JIM into the room.]

 MARIE

                        (sitting down, exhausted)

            I can’t believe we’re finally here.

                         [JIM puts the luggage down and, similarly exhausted,

                        sits down in the other chair.]

 JIM

            I know- I didn’t think that it would take this long.

 MARIE

            So, we’re in Anchorage.

 JIM

            No Fairbanks.

 MARIE

            That’s right, Fairbanks.  And, what is so special about Fairbanks?

 JIM

            You don’t remember?

 MARIE

            Jim, honey- I know why we’re here, but, specifically- there’ve been so many

            places for so many unique reasons.

 JIM

            It’s the northern lights- that’s why we’re here.  They’re said to be a powerful

            fertility aid.

 MARIE

            I see- that’s right- I’m sorry, I forgot.  I’m just hungry, thirsty and tired. Continue reading ‘Under the Northern Lights’

Every Silver Lining

Published
by
jess
on July 27, 2009
in adoption, birth, family, motherhood and pregnancy
. 0 Comments
by Cherri Randall

There is a new girl sitting in the circle, and Marcy takes some kind of perverse delight in seeing if she can scare them off or get them to cry on the first day.  The counselor never arrives earlier than fifteen minutes late, which means Marcy has ten minutes.  She could almost run off the veterans, so a rookie hardly stands a chance.  Marcy takes one glance at the new chick, which means she sees everything it would take a normal person several moments to absorb.  The new chick is some kind of walking advertisement for Gucci and Armani and smells like real Giorgio, not that imitation stuff in the yellow bottles from Wal-Mart.  The thing that will set Marcy off will be the new chick’s nails.  They are perfectly manicured and they’re real.  They aren’t thick enough to be acrylic.  Marcy is a nail biter.  Sometimes when everyone else is bawling or screaming the counselor will get this look on her face like she wants to tear her hair out.  Marcy is never part of the fray.  But once in a while she will be biting her nails, and sometimes it will be so bad she can’t get them to stop bleeding.

”Did you guys hear about the kid in South Carolina?”

One thing the group knows about Marcy is that resistance is futile.  They will be assimilated.  Nora looks at Marcy.  “What happened?”

MORE HERE

The Birth Mother

Published
by
jess
on July 20, 2009
in adoption, birth and motherhood
. 0 Comments

by Kelsey Rae O’Callahan

Editor’s Note: The birth mother is often the forgotten (or deliberately ignored) story in the adoption triad.  We’re pleased to be able to offer something in this ezine to help rectify that.

When I held you, your face

red and your hair matted,

small curled up body slick

with the effort of being born;

you screwed up your face and cried,

softly, your voice quieter

than I had expected, your expectations

lower than I had hoped. You gave up

MORE HERE….