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.

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?

What to say?

A couple of times a year, I handwrite a loooong letter (10-15 pages) to BabyGirl's firstfolks filling them in on the mundane and every-day details of her life. Everything from her current fascination with fairies and princesses to how we selected her kindergarten to her favorite colors and how she fills up time during the day. I take notes over time to make sure I get the details right, and I try to help them to feel like they're a little more involved in her parenting.

We keep the original in BabyGirl's memory box and send copies to her firstfolks. No one else gets to see these letters--not that there's anything incredibly private in them, we just want the letters to be special for just her firstfolks, not some big distribution list; after all, if they'd been able to be the mommy and the daddy, they'd already know this stuff. Right?

It's about time to get going on a new letter. I wonder what, specifically, firstmoms and firstdads would want included. I have no idea if anyone other than me is reading this, but I'd love to hear ideas from the firstfolks out there. What would you want to know?

Thanksgiving--the good part

Putting on a traditional dinner this year seemed too overwhelming to me. So I didn't. Instead, we ordered up six pizzas, made a big salad, and had pie for dessert. One of the beauties of this plan is that we could invite lots more people, spend lots less money, and I could actually enjoy it rather than be exhausted.

Ever since BabyGirl came home, I've always had this dream of a huge Thanksgiving dinner with our family--all of it--around the table. Invitations have been made; her first families never showed. This year, I didn't have the heart to deal with BabyGirl's disappointment since her first mom was a no-show at a special school day just a few days earlier.

With the switch to the pizza idea, I felt a little better about trying one more time. We issued invitations and didn’t let BabyGirl know.

And a miracle happened:

FirstDad came. We got some time to show off school work and for them to have some quiet together. FirstMom, her dad, and his girlfriend came. And FirstMom’s boyfriend, too. It was a little awkward for FirstMom and FirstDad to be together again, but they did it for BabyGirl.

And BabyGirl got to sit on the sofa between them, all snuggled in, and getting loved up.

And one of my grandest dreams came true. I am so grateful to them, for so many reasons.

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?