Eye on the Ball

I was talking to one of my girlfriends over the weekend about the situation we were presented with on Friday (re: the child about to be taken into state cust*ody). I explained that even with our strong commitment to waiting for the “right” situation to come along, it was surprisingly challenging for both of us to say no.

I hadn’t expected that.

I also hadn’t expected how little information they give you before asking you to make a decision. I wasn’t expecting a dossier, for heaven’s sake, but the call pretty much went like this:

SW – Hi! This is (name) from (county) D*C*F*S. We have a child we are looking to place. The child’s name is ____________, (s)he is _______ years old, is (race) and is about to be taken into custody. Well, what do you think?

I couldn’t help it. I threw my head back and laughed.

I had the presence of mind to ask a few questions which she was gracious enough to answer, and then I got on the phone to O. He was nearby and came right home so we could sit on the sofa together and talk about it.

I am so thankful for O and for his level-headedness when it comes to these situations. My emotions tend to take over. It’s not so much about just having a child in the house, which we’ve been working towards for a long time. For me, it has more to do with wanting to help a child who is hurting. That tends to cloud the logical part of my brain. I don’t want to give the impression that O doesn’t have a huge heart and all the sympathy in the world for a child being removed from his/her home. He really does. He’s just better able to keep his eye “on the ball” and remember what our ultimate goal is.

As I said in a recent post, we are willing to wait for a child who is a good fit for us and vice versa.

Now if I can just remember that the next time the phone rings. Eye on the ball.

This is Hard

Just got a call for a placement of a child who is about to be taken into custody. The child has extended family out of state and there is a very slight possibility that they will be able to get here in time to take the child to live with them. Otherwise the child will be in care for at least six months, until Mom can get herself together or until the out-of-state family can complete home studies. It doesn't sound like any possibility for adoption. (Of course, I know that extended family could be inappropriate and Mom could continue to screw up. But there IS family that wants this child - enough to try to figure out how to cross several states in the next few hours to get to the child.)

I called O, and he's speaking to the social worker now to clarify, but I think we're going to have to say "no".

Sounds like a darling child who I'm sure is scared. The "mom" in me wants to take the child in and be as much comfort as I can - to give the child a home for as long as they need it. BUT my head reminds me that we are in this to adopt. We have one room, for one child or two siblings. If we take in this child, we are effectively "off the market" for the possibility of a "forever child" until this story plays itself out.

Ugh - I hate this. I don't want to say no, but I realize that it's the best thing for us, longterm.

I think.

Shit!

Polite Southern Girl

I don't know how many times it's happened in the last week. Ten? Maybe fifteen? I'll be chatting with a friend, family member, or acquaintance and inevitably "THE QUESTION" will be asked.

"So, have you heard anything?"

The answer is always the same - something along the lines of, "Nope, not a word yet."

People's reactions vary. Some are upbeat and positive with a brief word of encouragement and then on to the next topic. It's the people who become solemn, get that sympathetic tone to their voice, and try to comfort me that bug the living CRAP out of me.

They seem to think that our lives are empty and meaningless without a child. Or more specifically, that WE THINK our lives are empty and meaningless without a child.

I try to explain that I am fine - that WE are fine right where we are at the moment. We are content to wait for a child who is a good fit for us and vice versa, even if that wait lasts a year or more. I also mention that if for whatever reason parenthood doesn't happen for us, we are truly content with our life together as it is now.

I might as well have the Charlie Brown teacher's voice.

I'm not sure what it is - if they think that it's all a defense mechanism and that I'm trying to paint a sunny picture even as my heart is breaking, but here have been a few of my favorite responses of the past week:

"Just yesterday my husband was talking about how mad he is at the fact that our nephew and his druggie girlfriend keep cranking out kids when you and O are so desperate for a baby."

"You know, there is always the Big Bro*thers Big Sist*ers program where you could mentor a child. That might fill the huge void you are feeling." (That was my SIL!)

"I am so, so sorry." (Whaaaa?????)

So here it is, in black and white - the things I would say if my mother hadn't raised a polite Southern girl.

I am fine. Really. I am not weeping gently by the phone waiting for it to ring. Believe it or not.

I am not jealous of your pregnancy/newborn/toddler/gradeschooler. At all. I love my friends and family members' kids. They make me happy. Not sad. So don't tiptoe around me. It pisses me off. Know what else makes me happy? Playing with your child, hugging and loving on him/her, and then giving them back to you and going home to my quiet peaceful house and snuggling up on the sofa in O's arms.

I don't want to be pregnant. Even a little bit. I'm 41 years old and I'm not interested in taking the risk. If you think I'm saying that as a defense mechanism, okay. But I'm not.

Walking away from fertility treatments was the best thing I've done on this particular journey. It never felt right for me. It just felt like what I was "supposed" to do. Therefore, I am not envious of your IUI/IVF attempts. I really do wish you luck.

I am not willing to bring a child into my home who is not a good fit for us just to be able to call myself a "parent". That wouldn't be fair to me or to the child. Therefore I am fine with waiting. Really.

If motherhood doesn't happen for me, I will happily live my life with my best friend and the most wonderful person I've ever met. Living in that love is "enough" now. It will always be enough. Believe it or not.

Have I always been this "at peace" with the situation? Absolutely not. It's taken a lot of time to get here.

Do I want to be a mom? Yes. (At least on most days.)

Are there moments when I'm wistful, wishing that we already had a child to love and spoil? Yes.

Do I occasionally wish that O and I had met five or ten years earlier and tried for kids right away? Sure I do.

But hear - really HEAR what I'm saying.

I am happy. Really and truly happy.

And content.

And fulfilled.

Right now.

Today.

There is no reason to feel sorry for me - for us. We are not suffering in any way, shape or form.

My life is far from perfect, but it's good. Really really good.

So take your mournful tone and your ignorant assumptions, well meaning though they may be, and kindly stick them.

THAT'S what I'd say if my mother didn't raise a polite Southern girl.

Now what?

I woke up on Saturday morning and wondered for a second if it had all been a dream – if our home study had actually been approved or if my poor tired brain had conjured the entire thing from thin air as I slept. And then I remembered.

The e-mail – that beautiful glorious e-mail.

I can be honest now and tell you that deep down, I never thought we’d be approved.

Wow, it feels strange to write those words. I never even shared that thought with O, and we share just about everything.

If you were to ask me why I felt that way, my answer would have been something truly eloquent – something along the lines of, “Because we just won’t.”

I couldn’t really expand on it beyond that, but that was absolutely what I believed.

Yes, I went through the motions, pretty passionately at times. I did everything I knew how to do to get our home study completed, but I thought the end result would be the same no matter what I did or how hard I fought.

I’m not sure where that came from. I’m not a pessimistic person. Not at all.

Anyway, I said all that to say this:

When you get an opportunity you never thought you’d have, life is pretty sweet.

My instinct now is to hit the ground running – to try and make up for all the time that was wasted as our file sat on a desk in the state office for over a year.

My idea was to put together a few folders about us. They would include a letter of introduction, the form listing the characteristics we’re looking for in a child who we feel would be a good match for us, a few of our scrapbook pages that show photos of us and our life together here on the farm.

I would then contact our friends in the local foster/adoptive community (meaning in our third of the state) to see if they’d be willing to pass them along to the social workers they know who might be placing children in the future.

I contacted C, who works for D*C*F*S and who has been a tremendous resource for us in this process. She nixed the idea for a few reasons. First, SW’s are very busy and have a tremendous amount of paperwork coming across their desks every day. My folder would likely end up in the garbage. Secondly, because no one has ever done this, the workers wouldn’t have a method in place to file and keep track of such a request.

Apparently the state now has a new computer system in place that lets SW’s access prospective foster parents’ info in surrounding counties to see if they meet the needs of a child they have to place. As for adoption, if a child’s paren**tal righ**ts are terminated and they aren’t being adopted by their foster parents, their information is sent to the state for resour*ce work*ers to place them.

So, C reiterated that sending the folders was not at all necessary, but my thought is this:

Even if most of the folders end up in the trash, all it’s going to take is for one worker to keep it, or for us to pop into their heads six months from now if they have a child to place. even if they don't remember us, they would likely remember the name of our SW who is really well known in the area.

I don’t know.

Maybe it’s my strong desire to be DOING SOMETHING that has me thinking this is a good idea. So once again, I turn to those of you with experience in this area to share your wisdom.

What would you do?

Tra la!

Thirteen months after we had our final home study visit, we got the following e-mail from our social worker this afternoon:

I received the letter from the Sta*te Off*ice of Adop*tion today stating that your home study is approved! You are approved for two children up to age eight. I am mailing you a copy of the letter today.

That sound you hear? My hands on the keyboard shaking with excitement. I truly never thought I'd see the day.

Thanks to those of you who were there all along the way. I absolutely would not have made it through to this point without you. I would have jumped ship long ago.

Right now I have to go get gussied up - I'm taking my husband out to dinner to celebrate!

Tra la!

Happy (Almost) Birthday to Me

A week ago we were in the thick of things with the two kids here. We were both exhausted. Our routines had been upended. My front room looked like a toy store exploded in it. I was finding Cheerios in the strangest places (and continue to do so). I barely had a moment to get to the bathroom, much less sit down for computer time or lay-across-the-bed-watching-some-ridiculous-yet-compelling-Bravo-show time.

By the way, anyone else watch “The Real Housewives of NYC”? I’m loving the fact that the Countess just got royally dumped by the Count. Perhaps now she can get over herself.

Anyhoo, today is the complete opposite. It’s quiet here – so blissfully quiet and my day is my own. A little cleaning, some e-mailing, some sewing (still working on the tree wall hanging for our kids’ room), maybe chatting with a friend later, and lots of taking care of my husband whose virus seems to have become a sinus infection. Poor guy!

My birthday is tomorrow – the big 4-1, and I usually use that occasion to take stock of my life – where I am and where I still want to go, if I’m making the “right” decisions, what I want my next year to look like. And I have to say, I’m happy.

Really and truly happy.

Of course there are things I would change.

I would lose a dress size or ten.

I would be working on the novel floating around in my head.

I would probably have a little one running around our home.

Yes, I said “probably” because there are moments when O and I aren’t sure if we reeeeeeeally want a child in our home. It sounds ridiculous to say, given how much we love kids and how hard we’ve had to fight to get licensed as adoptive parents. (Still aren’t there yet!!!)

Simply put, we love our life together and we had a very small taste of what it was like to add another person to our mix.

Now granted, there were TWO people and they arrived on short notice, heavily caffeinated and sugared-up, to a house that wasn’t nearly as child-proofed as we’d thought. So the first afternoon/evening was a bit harried.

Okay, more than a bit.

But I think our time with the kids was a pretty good representation of what we can expect as full-time parents, and there were parts of it we simply didn’t like.

Most importantly, O & I didn’t get to spend much time together.

We’d wake up and after a few minutes of snuggling and watching the morning news, for me it was all about the kids – getting them up and dressed and filling their little tummies as O got ready for work.

O would come home in the afternoon and by that time, I was ready for a break and would scurry into the bedroom to stretch out for a few minutes, or into the computer room, shutting the door and catching up on the outside world.

At night, we crawled into bed and laid there watching TV, somewhat shell-shocked and exhausted, waiting for sleep to take us. We were ships that passed in the night.

Of course, I know we’d get “better” at the rhythm of caring for kids (errrrr . . . ONE child. Only one.), and would then have more time to connect with each other. We just want to make sure that we never do anything to disrupt or damage our marriage. It’s the number one priority for both of us.

So that’s the source of our hesitation.

That being said, we both miss the kids and talk fondly about them all the time. If their foster parents called us today and said, "We can no longer care for them", we'd take them in a heartbeat.

I guess maybe it’s just hard to be committed in every moment to bringing a “mystery child” into our home. We know nothing about him or her – age, race, sex, situation, likes and dislikes, behavior, etc . . . I think once we have a little face in our minds, and our hearts, our hesitation will fade into the background and we’ll hit the ground running and find a way to make it work.

But the comforting thing is, if for whatever reason it never happens, we will spend happy lives together feeling blessed every day that we found each other.

I already have my birthday gift. I get to live my life with a wonderful man. Happy (almost) Birthday to me.