Just One Day in a Lifetime

If open adoption is akin to marriage, then this is that day you look at your spouse and can't understand why he still chews so loudly when he KNOWS it drives you nuts. So you make up an excuse to leave the house because you just can't take it anymore, but you're pissed because why do YOU have to be the one to leave when it's HIS fault for being raised in a barn? How are you going to get through fifty more years of this if he can't close his damn mouth already?

You want to rip the speck out of his eye already but you don't because you're having trouble getting past the log in your own.

Underneath it all you still love him beyond words.

K and her mom came over tonight. It went fine, on the surface at least. But it left me feeling sucked dry.

I hesitated to post this. But if I'm not honest about this, then what is the point?

We'll talk later. I'm going to curl up on the couch with some red vines.

R's Parents

This will be jumbled (I'm supposed to be working), but I want to write it down for my own memories.

Last night we had dinner with R, his mom and dad, and his younger brother. They brought Puppy a giant mylar balloon in the shape of a turtle. Puppy loved it. We grilled chicken in the backyard and played ball with Puppy as the sun set. R's brother kept asking when we would have dessert. When it grew dark we went inside to play with Puppy some more before they left for home. Puppy got to stay up late and eat blueberries. What a treat!

Puppy was in fine form, smiley and playful. He is thrilled when people want to play with him and rewards them with dimpled grins. At one point I sat with R's mom on the patio and watched Puppy bounce like a pinball between the four guys playing Fumble on the lawn. (Fumble is Puppy's favorite game. You literally just throw the football on the ground, yell "Fumble!" with your arms in the air, then run to pick up the ball. It cracks him up. He could play it for an hour.) It was a comfortable scene; it felt like everyone fit together. Earlier, Puppy had looked up at me, pointed at his first dad and said, "R____!" It was the first time I've heard him say R's name.

Today I am again frustrated by our distance. I enjoy R's mom a lot. Of all the players in Puppy's extended first family I have the most natural connection with her. If we lived closer I don't think we would see each other all the time, but it would be more frequently and more casually than it is now. This was our first time with R's parents in which I felt comfortable from the beginning. Spending time with them is what helped ease the nervousness, so I think that our limited times together probably slow our relationship in other ways, too.

K has strong feelings about R's parents, especially his mom, the result of things apparently said during her pregnancy. I've done my best to learn as little about it as possible, to just interact with everyone on the basis of of how I've seen them treat Puppy. I don't want him to be in the middle of a fight that has everything yet nothing to do with him. I don't ever want Puppy to feel like he has to choose sides, between us and his first families, or between his first families themselves.

Even though I find it easiest to relate to R's mom, our relationship with R's parents has been the most awkward. No one explained open adoption to them in depth or offered counseling or books. T asked them if this is what they expected things to be like two years into the adoption; they said they never expected they would still be able to see Puppy. I think they've struggled to have the good kind of entitlement, the kind that tells them that they have something of value to offer by being involved in Puppy's life. I sense that they worry their presence is an intrusion on our life. They are nervous and unsure at the beginning of our visits, although that fades faster then it used to. They don't like talking about the adoption. I don't know if it's embarrassing, or painful, or weird, or all those things. I just know it makes them uncomfortable. We make a point of bringing it up, not to force the issue but to let them know we're comfortable talking about it and that we care about their participation in it. They kept everything a secret until after Puppy was born, not even telling R's younger brother. I still don't know how much they've told their friends and family. Our relationship with them exists in a kind of in-between space of parks and backyards. They've never really come into our world or let us into theirs.

R's mom shared more with us tonight than she ever has. On the steps as she left, when R wasn't around, she said she is glad now that Puppy is with us, that she didn't think K or R was ready to parent. But she doesn't know how to feel for herself, having her first grandchild not really be her first grandchild in the way she dreamt. She said she checks our family website for new pictures several times a week. She mentioned coming to visit us up north one day.

Watching Puppy last night I was reminded about what a cool little kid he is. He is awesome, he really is. He's confident and adventurous and playful. I saw how much joy he engenders just by being himself. I was also so aware that his adoption is the reason for many complicated emotions for a lot of people. Someday he will become more aware of his own complicated emotions and begin to process them. I know all that will emerge in a way unique to him, that the seeds of it are already there and growing. I do my best to watch and engage when I can. But last night I just wanted him to be in his bubble one day longer, bouncing from person to person with a smile, enjoying the evening and the people gathered to love on him. I don't know if that's wrong or right. I just know I wanted him to have fun with his family for the night, to feel the gain and not the loss.

O, Happy Day!

One of the thing I like about the internet is that I'm often happy for people I've never met.

In the past few weeks, Jill of Knocked Up...Knocked Down and Ms. Pool of The Pool Snapshots welcomed home a daughter and a son (respectively).

These two women each waited a long, long time--in very different ways--for this day. They did it with grace, vulnerability and great respect for their children's first mothers.

I am confident they will both be great mothers and wonderful adoptive mothers to boot.

Click over, browse their (well-written) archives, and leave your good wishes!