Sigh

It's been pretty quiet here for the last few months. After getting a good dose of courage from Barb over at http://www.kaldiboo.blogspot.com/, I decided to try once again to bring BabyGirl's first mom back into her life.
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We texted a bunch of times, BabyGirl sang a Happy Birthday video on my cell phone and we sent it over, Mitzie and BabyGirl have texted back and forth. After a doing this since Thanksgiving when Raoul gave us Mitzie's latest cell phone number, we took the plunge and invited Mitzie and her boyfriend over for dinner. BabyGirl got excited, made plans, cleaned her room (!), created special artwork; Mr. Handsome and I planned a lovely meal. We were all looking forward to seeing them tonight.
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And she cancelled this morning for what seems like a reasonable reason. But still.
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It's so heartbreaking for BabyGirl.
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Her behavior has completely gone to hell and it'll be that way for the next few days as she processes her disappointment and pain. In the quiet moments, we'll get to talking about what's really bothering her, but until then, she's going to be a giant pain as she feels this new pain so acutely. We'll cut her slack because she's got a lot on her emotional plate right now, but we still, nonetheless, have to hold her to behavior standards.
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My heart breaks for the both of them: for BabyGirl who feels rejected and betrayed again, for Mitzie who just can't seem to step out of her own pain and disappointment to reach out to the extraordinary girl she helped create.
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Hopefully, our rescheduled dinner for next weekend will happen. Fingers crossed.

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

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.

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?

Being BabyGirls's mommy is a waste?

On Friday, I chaperoned BabyGirl's field trip. I drove a minivan full of children plus the school's new Marketing/Admissions person, Mar.

Mar’s young, in her 20s, very well-educated (she’s working on a PhD in Educational Policy, has an MS in social work, an MA in history, and is thinking of picking up a JD in her spare time); first-generation American whose parents came from Jamaica; and passionate about children, education, and social welfare. Since Mar’s new to our area and hasn’t made it to that museum yet, I invited her to come with us, and, well, I was assigned to drive FIVE kids and needed another grown-up to manage the chaos.

I like her. She’s young, idealistic, and working hard to meet the goals she’s set for herself to make the world a better place. She reminds me of me when I was her age: focused and driven on education and career.

In the blizzard-slowed hour-long drive, we talked. Mar mentioned that some of her friends are starting to marry and begin families, and that she’s not interested in any of that yet. I reiterated that her focus on education and career are fine (not that she needed my affirmation), then she said that she wonders if, in 10 or 15 years, she might regret not having started a family yet. I mentioned that there are lots of ways to make a family; that it’s about being a parent, not being pregnant; there are children in need of families; and that medical science can work wonders.

Her response? That my point about being a parent vs. being pregnant is poignant but that:

"It seems like putting all the effort into a child who isn’t your own is a
waste."

This, from someone with a Master’s Degree in Social Work and working at my daughter's school, was disheartening and a little alarming.

I don’t think she knows I’m a mom-by-adoption, and I wasn’t about to get into a big discussion on the validity of parenting-by-adoption because the car was filled with BabyGirl’s school friends. But I still find myself getting torqued up about it.

My Rapist

Every week in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, there’s a short piece for the Lives section. On 10/29, the piece was "My Rapist" by Maureen Gibbon. In short, the protagonist deals with the emotional fall-out of reading the engagement announcement of the man who raped her when she was 16. About half-way through, she writes:

After I left at 17, I never lived in my hometown again. When I
returned for short visits, I rarely left my parents’ house. I felt
as uncomfortable and vulnerable as I did when I was 16. But
that was another gift my rapist bestowed—agelessness.
Because I think so frequently of that night in April 1980, my
teenaged self is still strong inside me. Because of my rapist,
I’m forever young.

My daughter’s birthmother, Mitzie, was 16 when she became pregnant, 17 when my daughter was born. We saw Mitzie a lot when BabyGirl was really a baby, before she and Ramone broke up. We haven’t seen her much at all in the last couple of years despite repeated invitations and close proximity.

In an effort to understand her journey more, I emailed a blogging birthmom looking for insight. This blogging birthmom is being effectively shut out of her son’s life by his parents, while we feel like we’re being shut out by our daughter’s first mother. Anyway, she suggested that perhaps Mitzie is kind of stuck in her late teenage-hood, even though she’s nearly 23.

And that got me thinking how much like a rape losing one’s child to adoption might be. There isn’t really a choice in either situation, both are events that stays with the victim for her lifetime, both result in the woman losing a part of her soul.

Yeah, yeah, we all like to say that adoption is a choice. But was it really a choice for her, for them? I’m confident that our agency counsels pregnant women and couples well because Mitzie told me how they had her go to the store to price diapers, formula, clothes, and all the gear babies require. They helped her work out a budget. They helped her sign up for all the assistance programs for which she was eligible and to get a part-time job so she could finish school. They helped her work out a way to ask her mother to help raise BabyGirl, they even helped her to ask Ramone’s mother for help. They explored all the options and angles to make it possible for Mitzie and Ramone to be the mommy and daddy, and I’m grateful the agency made them go through those steps.

But was adoption really a choice for them? They didn’t have any family support—emotional or financial—for raising her, their two part-time jobs and public assistance wouldn’t cover the bills, both families said they’d have to find new places to live. To choose means to select from a number of possibilities; pick by preference. They didn’t have the luxury of a real choice, the decision they made was not their preference. They didn’t choose to make an adoption plan for BabyGirl, they just didn’t have any choice not to.

…Because I think so frequently of that [morning] in April
[2001], my teenaged self is still strong inside of me.
Because of [losing] my [daughter to adoption], I’m forever young.

And sometimes maybe being young means blowing off dates, not returning phone calls, and ignoring the letters. We desperately hope she’ll come back around sooner rather than later. But how hard it must be to look into the faces of the ones who have the one thing she’s always wanted: a family with her daughter.

And how do I explain this to a five-year old who wants to know why Mitzie never comes to see her?