Some days are just (almost) perfect

Last Saturday, we had "family reunion" on the big kitchen calendar. My Norwegian/Swiss relatives are in Wisconsin, Mr. Handsome's Romanian/Jewish kin are in south Jersey. Nope, not our sides of the family, we were going to a reunion of our daughter's multiracial/African American/Eritrean side of the family, most of whom we'd never met.

What a treat it was. It was so great to have all these folks take one look at BabyGirl and exclaim, "We know who made you! She's written all over your face!" They're right, too. BabyGirl has Raoul's smile, but everything else is Mitzie. So many folks knew her from the photos proudly shown around by Mitzie's dad, one even asked specifically about a particular dress she wore in one (which made BabyGirl beam because it's her favorite dress e.v.e.r). The only thing that would have made the day perfect would have been to have Mitzie there herself.

When we got into this open adoption, I was terrified of the whole thing, the uncertainty, the unknown, the fear. But, we were certain that open adoption was the best for our child so we held our breath and jumped in. Oh, how glad I am we did. I am so thankful that we didn't let ourselves be overwhelmed by the fear of the unknown, that we trusted that tiny voice that kept telling us we could do it, that it would all be ok in the end because that's what's best for BabyGirl.

On the way home on Saturday, I watched BabyGirl in the visor mirror. She sat silently, lost in throught, and smiling to herself. When she seemed to be less in her own thoughts, I asked how it felt to be with all those people who are her relations.

"Good, Momma, it feels really good in my heart."

That's all I need to hear. I can't imagine not letting her have this in her life because I was too afraid of it.

Sometimes it's just overwhelming

I know I've been gone for, like, months. I'm the Marketing/Publications manager at BabyGirl's school and trying to work with her home has been challenging. But I'm not here about me. I'm here to ask for prayers/thoughts/good wishes/karma for friends.

My best friend's dad had been in hospice at her home until his death a month ago. As an only child with both parents now dead, she's feeling lost and alone. Her husband, an active alcoholic who hasn't lived at home with her and the two kids for over a year, waited just one week after the funeral to inform her he wanted a divorce. She's a mess.

Dear friends of ours were part of the Pfizer debacle here in Ann Arbor and had a forced relocation to San Diego. In theory, San Diego sounds great, but they and their 3 kids are living in an 800-square foot two-bedroom rental because they can't afford to buy anything until the wife is working again. She's a nurse-midwife who was just hit with a personal lawsuit over a birth outcome that didn't go as well as anyone wanted; the investigation firm hired by the CA hospital said she never graduated from college or nursing school. They're stressed, far away from everyone who loves them, and nothing but nothing has gone right for them with this move.

A dear, dear friend has Fifth's Disease, normally not a problem for small children, but potentially very serious for adults with potential auto-immune complications. It appears her immune system will be affected and she may end up with lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.

About two years ago, a college friend, Jackie, died from ovarian/uterine cancers leaving her four children motherless. Her husband, another college friend, is an itinerant pastor. Before she got sick, they served as missionaries all over the world and were beginning to explore returning to Africa for a multi-year posting. He and the kids were turning that dream into a reality with a placement to George, South Africa and they were fundraising in preparation for a fall departure. Their house burned down last weekend taking with it the albums, photos, and momentoes they had from Jackie.

So, here I am. First real post in a long time and I'm asking for something from you. Please keep Pam, the BabyCatcher, Kristen, and the deTombes in your thoughts. Thanks.

School starts again Sept 4 and I'll be back more regularly after then.

Open question to the adoption community

Our former adoption agency has invited me to be one of the prep group speakers.

For parents by adoption, what do you wish someone had told you before you adopted?

For firstfolks, what do you wish prospective adoptive parents knew?


For better or worse, I want to know. Bring it on.

Another quickie

BabyGirl's school doesn't do report cards, they have portfolio-based assessments, instead. Here's BabyGirl's page from her human body unit. Mind you, these are dictated verbatim by Kindergarten Teacher Extraordinaire. The artwork is original.

Quick quote

Our fridge got very, very sick last Monday and the repair guys couldn't come out until last Friday, leaving us without a fridge for those five days. Refrigeration has been a common topic of conversation at our house, needless to say.

My mom, who grew up on a farm in Wisconsin during the late 1930s and early 1940s, told BabyGirl about not having a fridge when she was a child. Grandma shared about her ice box and the Ice Man coming to deliver ice every couple of days. More exotically, her aunt didn't have an ice box but rather had a trap door in the kitchen floor that led to a small root cellar into which cold items were kept.

BabyGirl's comment:

Well, isn't that something! My teacher doesn't even know about that and
we've studied the Middle Ages.

(The fridge blew a $40 part that has to be ordered so I bought a little dorm fridge as a stand-in until the big fridge gets repaired in a few weeks. Inconvenient, but still much cheaper than a new fridge!)

Rats!

Just when I thought I was laying low enough, I went and got employed. This is totally getting in the way of reading blogs and goofing off (and doing laundry and cleaning up the dust bunnies that are about to unionize under my bed and having a snack ready when BabyGirl comes home from school).

I'm afraid I've got to step out for a few more weeks. Wouldn't you know it, right when Mother's Day is coming up and I've got a lot on my mind and heart about it.

Work is filled with putting out fires left by my predecessor (Mar, the woman who wondered if it was worth the effort to parent a "child who wasn't her own," see below) and in figuring out a plan to get BabyGirl's little school back on marketing track.

Happy spring!


(Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to be asked and, in this dreadful economy, any job is hard to find. Ask my brother.)

Paragraphein rocks it out

We've always told BabyGirl that adoption is one of those things in life that's both happy and sad.

While we're happy that she's in our everyday family, we're sad that she's not in Mitzie or Raoul's everyday family; we're happy that she has us as her everyday parents, we're sad for her that she doesn't get them as her everyday parents; we're happy for us that they asked us, we're sad that they were in a position in which they felt they had no choice but to ask.

We always try to make it ok for her to have conflicting feelings about our adoption, that both feelings are true and honest, even if it's confusing to hold multiple conflicting emotions at the same time. Life is like that: conflicting, confusing, and legitimate.

Paragraphein expressed this dichotomy eloquently. Go check it out. Read it slowly and thoughtfully. It's worth your time.

http://paragraphein.wordpress.com/2007/04/28/relinquishment-vs-adoption

mixed up order

Oooh, go look for the Family Tree Assignment. I just posted it but it's showing up as the second one. It made me cry happy tears right in her classroom!

All unsettled

This whole VirginiaTech/BabyEvelyn/AJ'sGrandmom/UnemployedBrother thing has me completely unsettled. I'm not sure why, but I've decided to take all of the books from my office and put them in boxes. Then I think I'm going to rearrange. I don't know. For now, I just want to get the books down and cleaned out. And there are a lot of books. A lot.

The thing is, I have no place to put the multitude of boxes so rearranging around them will be very difficult.

What was I thinking? This is just crazy of me. The thing is, going through this exercise isn't making me feel like I'm in more control of my environment, just dusty.

The Family Tree Assignment

I knew it was going to happen sometime in BabyGirl's education, I just didn't expect it to happen in kindergarten. This month's theme at school is Trees. You know, trees: types of trees, identifying leaf types, ecology, growing seedlings, Earth Day, leaf prints, etc.

I just didn't expect they'd cover family trees, too.

Knowing this school, it doesn't surprise me, but I wasn't prepared for it. I didn't have an opportunity to do the adopted-family-tree talk provided by Adoptive Family Magazine, I didn't get to research e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g there is to know about family trees and adopted families, then try to get my 6-year old to understand it all. In fact, I didn't even know they were doing family trees until I walked in earlier this week.

Of course, BabyGirl handled it all with her usual aplomb without my coaching, angsting, or interfering.

Right there, in the leaf portion of her tree, she had four circles--labled Mom, Mom, Dad, and Dad. Off to the side were BestFriend and her husband, below us grown-ups were BabyGirl, BestFriend's two kids, and my parents. My favorite part, of course, is how she showed from whence she came.

I like this Nike ad re: Imus

From the Sunday 4/15 New York Times, Sports section page 5.
Mostly white space, small Nike swoosh in the bottom right corner, about 12-point type size, all left justified.



Thank you, ignorance.

Thank for starting the conversation.

Thank you for making an entire nation listen to the Rutger's team story. And for making us wonder what other great stories we've missed.

Thank you for reminding us to think before we speak.

Thank you for showing us how strong and poised 18 and 20-year-old women can be.

Thank you for reminding us that another basketball tournament goes on in March.

Thank you for showing us that sport includes more than the time spent on the court.

Thank you for unintentionally moving women's sport forward.

And thank you for making all of us realize that we still have a long way to go.

Next season starts 11.16.07

Heavy heart

Oh, this whole tragedy surrounding Baby Evelyn weighs me down, it fires an anger so intense I don't know what to do with it, it makes me ache in so many ways. I wanted to post on it as part of the blogger blitz but the weeping kept getting in the way. I know the fear and the pain her prospective adoptive parents are going through, but I also know what the right thing to do is, and keeping Evelyn certainly isn't it. I know how much they want to pack up the car and leave, no forwarding address, no cell phones, to just disappear with this child whom they love deeply and intensely. I have no doubt they'd die for her, just as any parent would. I know how much they want to believe that what they're doing is "in her best interest." I know how hard it is to lose the child(ren) you thought you were going to raise forever. My heart goes out to them. But the whole situation is just so incredibly wrong. It never should have gotten to this point. The child must be returned to her family now. Period. End of discussion. But the tears will go on for a long, long time.

AJ's grandmother invited me to get together with her in early May. She says she has lots to share about him, about how she'll be taking guardianship of AJ's older sister, about how my little man's life is a hard one. She said that AJ's mom apparently always intended to reclaim him once he was sleeping through the night, that she'd planned to do that with his sister. I'm afraid of what she has to tell me, I'm afraid I can't not go. I'm afraid of the pain I know I'm going to feel.

My brother is still unemployed and his little girls are getting that haunted look in their eyes because they know something's up, something big and bad. His last bout of unemployment lasted a long, long time.

So many things are weighing on my heart, I feel old and heavy and tired tonight.

Don't bother with me today

Go read here.

http://newflowerblooms.blogspot.com/2007/04/on-grieving.html

It's better said than I could say.

Abebech, my hat's off to you on this one.

A Girl Like Me

Vote for A Girl Like Me at http://www.cosmogirl.com/entertainment/film-contest-vote. As the white mom of a multiracial Eritrean/AfricanAmerican/Cacasian girl who, at 5 told me that white princesses are more beautifuler than brown princesses, this video hit especially close to home.

And let's help get this woman a $10,000 scholarship while we're at it.

Go vote. All the cool kids are doing it.

*******UPDATE********

There was this on the cosmogirl voting site:

"CosmoGIRL! and Take Action Hollywood announce our Film Contest finalists.
"We have determined that the online voting has been corrupted as a result of one or more instances of tampering with the voting process by users. As a result, none of the online votes will be counted, and we will submit all three of the semi-finalists to our panel of experts for final judging and selection of a winner."

What's up with that?

Good news and bad news

Good news first:
When we got back from 2nd night Seder last night, there was an unexpected, pink, sparkly package on the porch for BabyGirl.

Would you believe Mitzie and her boyfriend had stopped by with a gift? You should have seen the look of pure joy on BabyGirl's face when we read the card. Heck, you should have seen the look of pure joy on my face when we read the card. BabyGirl hugged the card tight to her heart and said, "This is absolutely definitely going in my treasure box." She's absolutely definitely right.

But wait! There's more! There were two messages on the phone, one from Mitzie and one from Raoul, wishing BabyGirl a happy birthday.

When we did a little birthday gig last weekend with BabyGirl's best buddy, Lulu, who was born on April 1st, I said my own wish as the girls blew out their candles, and this momma's wishes come true.


And the bad news:
My brother, one of the legion of working poor, was laid off yesterday. His wife is a hair dresser who works part time, he was a technical writer. They have two young daughters, 4½ and 2. He was given $3,000 which would cover his COBRA medical coverage for 5 months. The contract technical writer he helped hire a year ago got to keep her job because she costs less than a salaried employee.

He went through a spell of unemployment just before my sister-in-law found out she was pregnant with their youngest, but managed to find a contract job that turned into salaried. He said he was just beginning to feel like he could breathe again, and now he got kicked in the gut. Again.

My brother is one of the nicest guys I know. He's also one of the smartest guys I know but he was always hampered by some severe learning disabilities. Of course, we're old enough that schools didn't know from learning disabilities when we were coming up. He spent most of his school years being told he was stupid and that he didn't try hard enough. He even had his 2nd grade teacher tell him that he didn't deserve to have survived his 1969 open heart surgery because her daughter didn't. He did some college but didn't finish.

Nothing, nothing has ever come easy for him, and yet he's still one of the nicest guys I know. It was just starting to look like life was smoothing out for him a little and now this. They have no financial cushion, they have no retirement funding, and I'm sick to my stomach with worry for them.

It just breaks my heart.

Happy Birthday, BabyGirl

At 7:35 this morning, the time of her birth, after BabyGirl came in to my bed for morning snuggles and I sang Happy Birthday to her, we talked about Mitzie and Raoul.

We talked about how they were happy she was born, but sad that they weren't ready to be her everyday mommy and daddy. I told BabyGirl that one of the things I think is the most special about April 3rd is that Mitzie and Raoul were her everyday parents on that day; they were the only mommy and daddy she had right then.

I've deliberately not asked Mitzie or Raoul about their hospital experience because I want them to be able to tell it to her, I want it to be their information to give to her rather than something she learns from me then confirms with them. I told her what little I know about her birth (6 hours of labor, 7:35am, 12 days early). I told her April 3rd is their special day, and that April 4th is special to me because that's when we met.

BabyGirl, in her wonderfully perceptive way, said, "I'll bet Mitzie didn't want me to come out and be born because then she couldn't be the mommy anymore." I told her she just might be right about that, and that some of her may always want to crawl back in to keep being Mitzie's baby. And wanting that, I told her, is totally ok. Then she got bored with me and wanted breakfast.


Mitzie and Raoul are heavy on my heart today. Knowing how much I miss AJ gives me only the littlest hint of how hard it's got to be for firstfolks. And missing him can be crushing.

Early April is hard

BabyGirl turns 6 next Tuesday, April 3.

It's a milestone I both celebrate and mourn because 6 means she's getting big, and it means she's not a little girl anymore. It's the end of an era. And because we've stopped trying to increase our family, I'll never get to parent a little girl again. Ever. She's done being a little girl and I'm done being the mom of a little girl. While I truly look forward to being the mom of a big girl, it sure was pretty great being the mom of a little girl. I celebrate how really cool she is, her curiosity and imagination, and what a neat kid she is. I can't wait to see more of who she's becoming.

And AJ turns 2 next Friday, April 6.

That's a milestone I can only mourn. It's another birthday we'll never celebrate with him, it's another year that we've missed him, it's another reminder that he's not our son.

BabyGirl said she wants a brother or sister for her birthday instead of gifts because a sibling "would be the bestest gift ever."

I think I'm going to go cry now.

Go figure!

The day after I posted about changing our wills, guess who popped up. Mitzie!

I'm actually relieved because she indicated that she's feeling stronger and wants to be more involved with her daughter and with us, and that means we can set aside our will-change for now. Not that I want to avoid making any decision, I just didn't want to make that decision.

She said she went back to the agency for a counseling session and that it's helped somewhat. My heart goes out to her: just a few years after BabyGirl was born and she was beginning to really deal with that loss, Mitzie's big brother was killed in a hit-and-run accident by a retired Detroit police officer who then fled the state. WHAM! Another loss of a significant person in her life. She didn't really deal with either loss and that's made involvement really painful for her.

She said she's going to continue with counseling and that she's working toward reuniting with BabyGirl. I can't believe how happy I am that she'll be a part of our everyday lives, that BabyGirl will know her deep in her heart, that Mitzie is beginning to work with the losses in her life. Mostly, I'm just tickled that those two will have each other.

See? I'm not that great after all.

A while ago, the Queen of Spain's son was asking about death http://queenofspainblog.com/2007/02/26/go-to-jail-go-directly-to-jail/#comments. She'd just had an operation and was in the hospital for a few days, her child developed a vague feeling of anxiety about death and being left alone. She asked for advice.

BabyGirl was experienced with the concept of death after we lost 5 loved ones (she even invented a song that went "when you're dead, you're dead, but your sprirt stays to looooove us"). We've talked about death a lot. I told the Queen what we do at our house, one thing was to make sure our wills are up to date and to let BabyGirl know that we've talked with people who have promised that she'll never be alone, that she'll always be taken care of, and that the judge knows about these plans. (BabyGirl is familiar with the importance of the judge from having to go see a judge about losing AJ, so we just went with that rather than explaining wills and trusts and attorneys.)

Back when BabyGirl was new, after she was legally our child, we wrote our wills so that her firstfolks would have, for lack of a better phrase, right of first refusal, should Mr. Handsome and I kick it. Mitzie first, Raoul second, then our dear-heart amazing-parent friends third (who are already as committed to openness as we are so there's no chance that BabyGirl and her firstfolks would lose each other). When BabyGirl was little-little, we thought this was right and appropriate that they would have the opportunity to raise her.

But we're not so sure about that anymore. Raoul, absolutely. He'd make a great full-time father for her--for any child lucky enough to be his. He and BabyGirl have a close relationship even though he lives down South and we're in the Midwest. Heck, he even flew up specifically join her on her first day of kindergarten! We have no qualms about him having the opportunity to be her daddy. We're confident that, if he chose to take on the responsibility, he'd be great at it.

Mitzie, though, not so much. We'd hoped she would have pulled her life together a little more by now. We don't see her often, she doesn't answer emails/calls/letters, invitations are ignored, and BabyGirl is not really comfortable with her. Despite living less than a mile from kindergarten, Mitzie was a no-show for first day of kindergarten pick-up.

I'm to the point now that I'd like to amend our wills to revoke her opportunity to be the mommy, because I'm not comfortable with this near-stranger, who is our daughter's firstmom, raising her. We don't know her values or plans, employment is sketchy, and we just don't know her like we know Raoul. Of course, our wills will always state that Mitzie and Raoul will always have open contact with them, no matter what.

Nonetheless, am I being a bad open adoption parent, or a good mommy? Can the two be reconciled in this case?

"For my two moms"

There's been a lot of conversation on the blogs I read about what to call the various parents in an adopted child's life.

I've chimed in occasionally with what we do here. BabyGirl calls Mitzie and Raoul by their first names and says that they're her birthmom/dad or her firstmom/dad. I admitted that when she said they're her "real parents," I had a bit of a wobbly feeling. That one hit a little too close to home that, indeed, she didn't grow in my uterus and Mr. Handsome's sperm didn't kick-start my egg.

But, I added. It's not about me. It's about her processing her own story of how she came to be and how she came to be a part of our family. We've always believed that, as parents, it's not our job to do what's easiest or most comfortable for us, it's to do what's right for her. Period. Have I always been successful at living out that credo? Not always, but with regard to her relationship with Mitzie and Raoul, yes. I'm trying to remember that she's only 5 and she's doing her best to figure out some mighty big ideas. And if she wants to call them her real parents, I'll adjust and learn to celebrate that, too, because, after all, they're as real as we are.

So yesterday morning, she came charging into my home office with two folded pieces of paper saying, "These are for my two moms." She made beautiful portraits of us. Mine is hung up already and we put Mitzie's in the mail right away. I know she'll cherish it as much as I cherish mine.

Mitzie, with her lovely hugs-and-kisses top and a crown.

Me, a floating head.