Tag Archives: family

How do we date our future children??

Posted on
5

So far, compartmentalizing and minimizing has kept me sane. I tell myself we aren’t going through all the stages of adoption in one big chunk. First we tackle step 1, then 2, then 3, then 4. One decision at a time. This tactic has proven to be an effective method for me to avoid being overcome by thoughts and losing all function and usefulness in society. But, soon we might face the part that I still can’t quite wrap my mind around—the part about meeting and play dates and sleepovers.

Drew says I need to process this one. I need to think this through and prepare for it, even though this could go a number of other ways, like getting a call that a newborn needs a home, or having DFCS bypass the “meet & greet” stage with a kid who’s immediately ready for a new set of parent figures.

So, here we go.

Let’s think about the moment where I hug them and smell the smell of someone else’s house on them. Not their house. Not our house. And then I will know their faces and names and what the color of their eyes are. And they will know my name. And we will talk about school, or toys, or drawings. Or something. Will they be old enough to talk?

Let’s think about the Friday when their caseworker brings them to our house for the weekend. I open my front door to see them and their little backpacks and teddy bears walking slowly up to our house and my heart will leap out of my chest and I’ll blink back the tears like I’m blinking them back right now.

And then there’s bedtimes. And mac and cheese. And chicken nuggets. How many chicken nuggets are too many chicken nuggets? Or should we have hotdogs instead? And what if they just want to watch TV all day? And what if we take them to the playground and they fall down and break something? And what if we want to take them to the zoo? Maybe we shouldn’t take them to the zoo since it’s in another state. Yes, let’s not get arrested for child-abduction.

What if there are diapers involved? When am I going to learn how to change them? And what time is a three-yr-old supposed to go to bed? And what do we do if they cry all night?

Or if I cry all night?

And what do I do when the caseworker comes to pick them up to take them back to that other house? Do I use all my nervous energy to rush to Lowe’s to buy gallons of their favorite colors?

Or do I wait?

I’m beginning to hate that word.

Don’t knock, won’t answer.

Posted on
25

I grew up at the end of sandy tire tracks that were connected to a few miles of dirt road. If someone drove up on my parent’s property, they were either invited, lost, or doing something illegal.

Now Drew and I live in this cutesy little neighborhood that seems the perfect place for solicitors. And I don’t like strangers. And I don’t like strangers knocking at my door when I am at home not interested in being bothered.

When I was home with a fever I told the lady from the newspaper that we didn’t read the newspaper. No, we weren’t interested in the deal where we could get a few days free and all the amazing coupons, and (when pushed) “No thanks, I think it’s best to save the trees.”

Just recently, I told the lady selling meat that we weren’t eating meat. Which was mostly true. We actually weren’t buying it, but who wants to go to the trouble of defending their household decisions to some uninvited stranger?

The ladies from the church down the street come by sometime, too. So I tell them I know Jesus and am married to one of the pastors in town.

Yes, it’s almost always ladies, and they are about to make me the mean old woman in the house on the corner who shuts the door in their face. They’ve already made me the person who will sit quietly and not answer the door.

Did you catch that? If it’s quiet in the house and they can’t see in my front window (yes, they’ll glance in), then I won’t answer the door.

Just the other day, I asked Drew if we could get a “no solicitors” sign. I’m not sure if they actually exist, so I’ve got a few home-made ideas:

“No solicitors.”

“No solicitors please.”

“Don’t knock, won’t answer.”

“If we don’t know you, we didn’t invite you, and you aren’t delivering a package, then you’re trespassing.”

“Do you want to find out if we own a gun?”

Any tips or advice? What do you do?

Remembering…

Posted on
13

The fire roared and crackled and spat and warmed, soothing me as I thought hard about the last pages. I don’t want it to end, this journey I’ve walked with Sabrina Ward Harrison through her “The True and the Questions.”

My hands and heart are frozen in her last chapter, the one that turns my face to the family that birthed me and then gently tilts my head forward to the family that Drew and I are hoping to create. These pages are soft like cotton on my tender heart, bare for all the wishes and wants that suspend me between two families.

Remembering what it was. Hoping for what it could be. Holding neither.

Staring into the fire, I see the sand fly off the heels of my dad’s 80′s flip-flops and onto the endless trail that would take us to the tea-colored water of the Ohoopee river. This river so shallow and so slow and so perfect for summer Saturdays.

I see myself holding onto the front of his wheeled egg gatherer that crawled down the center of each long and slender chicken house.

I see the sunken stump holes in our woods, filled with straw and leaves—he said the Devil lived down there.

I see the two of us laughing outside the packed and noisy house where I snuck out and we toasted the quiet. Laughing at what I just did. The secret we had that nobody would ever believe. I see us making a memory that I should’ve written down for everyone and no one. The memory I should’ve written down for me.

Replaying memories from childhood to present left the biggest stump hole in my heart. A hole where a moment once stood. A grand moment. A moment worth writing. The moments had passed—uprooted and burned by the years, floating light as smoke rising from that fire. I couldn’t hold on to them.

I should’ve written it all down when it was still a part of me.

Somebody could’ve warned me that adoption triggers “The Pregnancy Panic”

Posted on
22

It’s December. Just a few days into the month. And any day now we could get a letter saying that the State has approved us as adoptive parents.

Maybe we should throw some sort of Letter Party to celebrate. Celebrating is good.

And then maybe we’ll get some official news about some kid or kids out there who need parents.

And then we will want to know more about them and maybe get to maybe meet them.

And we might really get to do this adoption thing. It might be time. It’s December. She said we’d get a letter in December and it’s December which means it’s time to expect the letter and then all the rest will maybe fall into place sometime soon in the next few months or years or something.

It’s time.

It’s time.

it’s time…

oh my gosh are we sure we want to do this and what are we doing trying to adopt and have we lost our minds thinking we can jump from zero children to maybe two children who are old enough to talk and tell us that we are not their parents and we cannot tell them what to do–even though we love them and they are stuck with us because the state says so and the court says so and their edited birth certificates say so?

and what if they both get screaming mad at the same time and what if it happens in the grocery store when it’s me versus them and all the people that can hear them crying “you’re not my mama you can’t tell me what to do!?”

and what if they hate everything I cook except for all the nasty processed foods that Drew and I have sworn off and don’t want to bring into our house because no human being can thrive off of boxes of “it’s the cheesiest” for long before their bones bend and their brains break??

and if we’ve lost our minds then surely our parents think we’ve lost our minds and how do they get any sleep at night when they know from experience that our whole world is going to flip over and we have no idea what’s coming and no way to prepare for it and definitely don’t know what we’re doing or else we would’ve thought twice about this?!??

So I tell myself that this must stop–all this mental madness and heart-pushing panic. It has to stop. It’s unfounded (maybe) and it’s unreasonable (maybe) and it’s late at night and I’m just having an episode where the chemicals get upside down in my brain and it’s better if I just stop listening to myself and try to fall asleep and then I do fall asleep and I’m having a wonderful dream about journaling with colors and papers and glues and letters and words and images and then Drew climbs in the bed and steals one of my (many) pillows and it wakes me up and

yes

it starts all over again.

down in my marrow

Posted on
18

The A/C remained broken. The windows were open. The unseasonably-warm pre-Thanksgiving night wrinsed clean but not so cool by 4am rain.

With each blink of my eyes, I begged the cold air back into the room. And my mind danced over the day’s scenes of waking and journaling and meeting and planning and laughing. And another story about kids who may or may not need parents. We hear these stories often, someone telling us about some kid somewhere or something. Often hypothetical. And often just out of reach.

Like her second-hand mention of those “little blonde girls” that might need a home someday.

I stood in the sun and said without thought: “Well, we’ll take ‘em!”

As always, I dismissed any potential for potential. It’s easier that way. It’s always that way. I placed that mention on the shelf with the others that have come to nothing. My friend and I returned to the casual work of our hands and casual talk about life. Casual. And so the conversation moved on.

But at 4am my mind returned to that warm mid-afternoon moment and then reached back four years to the Wednesday we found out we were pregnant.

Remembering how I shook with fear.

And the Thursday after.

Remembering how I shook with love.

Never have I felt so convinced of anything in my life: I was maternal to the marrow in my bones. That little life inside me birthed a fierce and fiery mama-love in my heart.

It was overtaking.

And I wondered if that maternal instinct will rebirth in me over babies born by another woman… Will I have that same burning “If you hurt them I will kill you” feeling like I had in those days of pregnancy? Will I be so certain to give my life for the sake of theirs? Is that same warm love still down in my marrow, waiting for a reason to be pulsed through every inch of my body?

I tell myself it will, I will, I will, it is. I tell myself that at the handing over of those little lives into the blankets of our hands, I will be so taken with love that I won’t be able to stand myself.

I tell myself that they will be mine and I will be theirs and I will love them with an unquenchable love. I tell myself. And I listen to the rain some more. And I push the covers aside and push away the truth that I won’t really know until that day comes.