Someone is Missing

As someone who wants children and doesn't have them, I just expect to feel that more acutely on certain days than on others.

On Valentine's Day, I wish for a child to make heart-shaped pancakes and grilled cheese sandwiches for; to take to the store to buy those boxes of little paper Valentines to exchange with their classmates.

On Easter, I imagine how fun it would be to have a child to dye Easter eggs with, to create an Easter basket for; to turn them loose on Sunday morning for an Easter egg hunt.

On July 4th, I think about how nice it would be to have a little one running in our yard playing with our family that's gathered for a barbecue; to scoop them up and head to the river at dusk for fireworks and watermelon.

On Halloween, I long for a child to take out to O's pumpkin patch to choose their pumpkins for us to carve into jack-o-lanterns; to make a Halloween costume for and take trick-or-treating in their Aunt E's neighborhood.

On Thanksgiving, as I'm up early listening to the first of the holiday season's Christmas carols, I wish I had a child to make one of those "turkey hands" for me to proudly display on the fridge.

On Christmas, I daydream about decorating a small tree for our child's room and how they'd love the twinkling lights; about listening for Santa and wrapping presents for Daddy and our child getting to spend the entire day surrounded by family and friends who would love them so much.

(And yes, I realize that those images in my mind are extremely idealistic, but isn't that what daydreaming is all about?)

Anyway, during those times of year I just expect that I will feel my childless state a little bit more than usual.

But it's days like today that are even more difficult because they come out of nowhere.

We're expecting snow. Not a lot, but there is definitely anticipation in the air. I've sent O to the grocery store for milk and bread. We're Southerners. That's just what we do at the slightest threat of frozen precipitation of any kind.

Today I wish we had a child so we could be excited about the snow, looking out the window together waiting for it to start falling. I wish we had a child to wake up tomorrow morning with the news that "It snowed last night!" I wish we had a child hurrying to finish breakfast so we could go racing through our snow-filled pasture and wandering in our woods looking for animal tracks. I wish we had a child to teach how to make a snowman, and to eat snow cream with.

But we don't. Not yet, anyway. So I just do the best I can.

On Valentine's Day I send care packages to my girlfriends who don't have a "true love" in their life at the moment.

This Easter, I am making up two huge Easter baskets for my friend C's daughters. C is not only going through a divorce, but lost her job back in October and has no available funds for things like Easter baskets this year.

On July 4th, I invite friends to visit from out of state and make them a part of our family festivities.

On Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for the yearly autumn leaf drawings sent to us by our nieces in KY and a turkey drawn by our nephew.

On Christmas, I "adopt" as many children as we can afford, try to create magical Christmases for them, and then sit back on Christmas morning imagining their eyes lighting up as they open their gifts.

And tomorrow morning, I guess it will be just O & I, holding hands and wandering around in the field, catching snowflakes on our tounges, and trying to gather enough snow for snow cream. I will love every minute of it but won't be surprised if, at least once or twice, I'm reminded that someone is missing.

That is, if it snows at all.

You never know with our weathermen.

14th time the charm?

I've said it before, over and over, but maybe the 14th time is the charm.

I e-mailed our SW and told her about the child we are interested in - that it's imperative for our home study to be ready when/if the child becomes available so we can at least be considered as adoptive parents - blah blah blah. I asked her to PLEASE send the worker at the state office everything she'll need to review our home study asap.

I got an e-mail back the next day.

Five beautiful words.

"I'll send it this afternoon."

With a smiley face.

For some reason, I actually trust that she will.

But I'm still having O call next week to make sure.

I'm no fool.

Rollercoaster . . . Of Love

It’s been almost a year to the day since our home study was “completed” and sent to the state for approval. The subsequent three hundred some odd days have been the biggest rollercoaster of my life.

Here we are nearly twelve months later and still the worker at the state office does not have what she needs to either say “yea” or “nay” to us as adoptive parents. She’s apparently close, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Isn’t that what they say?

(I never thought I’d use the word “grenade” in my blog, by the way.)

This morning I considered looking back through the last year’s worth of my posts but just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Even as O and I had a wonderful year filled with unforgettable memories, there was this situation always running in the background like really awful elevator music. As it relates to the foster/adoption process, this has been a year of the "highs" of tremendous hope and promise consistently dashed by unbelievable frustration, anger, and pain. Yet hope always seems to rise to the surface when all is said and done.

I’m back in that place – the scary, vulnerable place of hope.

There is a child O and I are interested in. Beyond interested. There’s been no contact with the child’s SW at this point. TPR has not been done, but there is a strong expectation that it will happen in the next few months. When it happens, we want to be considered for this little one. Truth be told, we want to bring the child here to live with us forever and be "Mom" and "Dad".

So I have sent an urgent e-mail to our new worker nearly begging her to get the person at the state office whatever she still needs so that when/if this child does become available for adoption, we are good to go.

Last night I wandered into our child’s room and sat down on the floor. As I wrote about recently, it’s been a place I’ve avoided for a long time. It's just been too painful to be in there.

But this time was different.

I could close my eyes and actually believe that we WILL have a child rummaging through that bookcase looking for bedtime stories one day. I could imagine tucking someone into bed and pulling that bright colorful quilt up to their chin. I could almost hear the slap of little feet running across the hardwood floor.

Yes, this particular roller coaster ride has been horrible thus far. If I’d paid money for it, I’m afraid I’d have to find customer service and ask for a big fat refund.

But here I am, still firmly strapped into the seat and throwing my hands up in the air yet again. I'm willing to see where the ride takes us because wherever he or she is at this very moment, I'm already in love with our child.

Enough

About three weeks ago, I drove to a nearby town where O was working to have lunch with him and my parents. It was a beautiful morning with bright blue skies and the road was perfect for daydreaming a little bit – straight and flat and bordered by miles of farmland. Somewhere along the way, my mind drifted to our hopes of adopting through the foster system. Strangely enough, I hadn’t given it a lot of thought during the previous six weeks, which was the amount of time it had been since I’d last heard from our “new” social worker (J) in our “new” county.

If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, I’m sure that surprises you – that I wasn’t more and more fired up as each week passed without any contact from D*F*C*S. No one was more surprised than me.

I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on with me. “Apathetic” described it perfectly. I simply didn’t care if they ever got in touch with us again. I wasn’t angry at all. I wasn’t outraged or frustrated, even a little bit.

Perhaps I had simply depleted my reserves of emotion, of struggle, of fight.

Perhaps it was that I’d read one too many blog posts written by loving adoptive parents whose homes were continuously held hostage by children whose brains were so organically damaged that they had no sense of right and wrong – no conscience – no ability to love; whose children spewed hatred and anger and violence on whomever came near. Did I really want to take a chance on that becoming our lives?

Perhaps it was the certainty that we’d only dipped our toes into the idiocy that is the child welfare system, and that once we opened our home to a child, we were at their mercy for a good long while.

Perhaps it was the issue that I’ve come up against every now and then these past 18 months. O and I love our life together. Truly. I would venture to say that we are the happiest couple I know. We love just being together, and our current situation allows for a lot of that. We can jump in the car and go on spur-of-the-moment trips. We can turn off the phones and snuggle up on the couch and not be bothered for hours. We can spend Sunday morning in bed watching TV and talking. We can make love on the kitchen floor if the mood strikes us. That will all change if there’s another person in our home. It may be better. It may be worse. But it will definitely be different. Do I really want that?

Perhaps it was simply the busyness of the holidays and then the virus-from-hell that took us two weeks to recover from.

I couldn’t really land on an answer, which is unusual for me. I'm usually a pretty self-aware girl.

After chasing the thoughts around in my head for most of the drive, I finally gave up, looked up at the big white puffy clouds, and said, “God, just let me know if we’re supposed to be doing this.” (“this” being adopting from the foster system)

Two hours later, J (our new social worker) called to ask if we were interested in a 9-year-old boy they were looking to place.

So I guess I got my answer.

I was instantly back in the “game”.

I spoke to the boy’s social worker for about an hour the next day. He has a slight physical disability which didn’t phase us in the least, but there were a couple of things she mentioned that O & I just simply didn’t feel comfortable with. Ultimately we let her know that we didn’t think we were a good match for him. It’s sad, because I know we will provide a good home to any child placed with us and he definitely needs one, but I know we made the best decision.

Then the same week I got a wonderful e-mail from a foster/adoptive mom in another part of my state offering to tell the social workers in her county about me and O. So I spent a day putting together folders with a cover letter, a few of our scrapbook pages with photos of us and our home and surroundings, the form describing what kind of child/children we felt we’d be a good match for, and the letters of reference written by our friends and family. I sealed them up and mailed them off and she’s going to distribute them as kids in her area come up for adoption. Generous, huh?

I’ve subsequently e-mailed back and forth with J, and she’s checking with the worker at the state office to find out what she still needs to review our home study. I’m sure she’ll be happy to get the file off her desk, if nothing else.

I guess the point of this long rambling post is this: I have no idea where all this will lead. Will we end up adopting a child or will we realize one of these days that it’s simply not for us? I have no idea. I really don’t. But what I do know is that we are on the path we’re supposed to be on. And for today, that’s enough.