I spoke to someone a while ago who wanted my ginormous fake breast, but I am a terrible blogger and have apparently misplaced the email.
Will you please email me again so that I can send this treasure out to you without any further delay?
My apologies for being such a knucklehead, and HAPPY SATURDAY everyone!
What name is given to the person raising your children’s siblings?
It’s a question I’ll soon have to face, as my little ones’ birth mother is in the preliminary stages of planning for the placement of the baby she’s now carrying. I am so grateful that she’s taking this route as opposed to the one she drifted into the past two times. Perhaps having two babies sucked into the maw of The System finally convinced her of the wisdom of thinking ahead.
The process can be as relaxed or rapid as it needs to be. I’ve heard of birth mothers making plans with our agency during labor, but as this case will not come to fruition for a few more months N can take her time in choosing who will raise her child. She’s already filled out leaning towers of paperwork which describe her physical and emotional background in as much detail as she’s able (and willing) to provide. All of this is sanitized of too-revealing details, collated into a report and passed out to a number of families who are already licensed and open to the possibility of raising a child like the one N is likely to bear.
(In this particular case the child will almost certainly have pale skin, which means that a larger group of hopeful parents will queue up than did for her first child, whose racial make-up was unknown until birth. The insanity of this bit of adoption maneuvering hits me once again as I observe the process. I’m astounded that anyone who wants a child badly enough to go through the adoption process could care what color its skin is. And all over again I feel guilty that I got the light children instead of a couple who would only take ones like them.)
Several families will look at N’s information and decide if it’s a situation they’re interested in pursuing. Some no doubt will quail at the thought of parenting a child whose birth family features generations of mental illness. Others will blow past that information with not nearly enough consideration. And a few will want to know more. This is where I get to be useful. “Can they call to ask you questions?” the caseworker asked me recently.
“How much can I say? How much should I say?” I asked in return. Anything you want, came back the answer. No laws of confidentiality exist to bind or advise me. I was on my own.
In due time I received calls from two couples considering whether or not to submit their profiles to N. In no more than twenty minutes I’d formed an opinion of them (and they’d no doubt done the same of me) and I found myself full of unreasonable hope. These people could end up in my family, I thought, and it was impossible not to sort them, rank them, list out their pros and cons. But I don’t get an opinion on who N chooses. As hard as it might be I’ll need to keep my big flappy mouth shut while N sifts through the information and makes a decision.
Once she does, then we can work on what to call each other.
Over the past several months ownership of the medical practice my family uses has been in transition. Previously it was part of a large regional group; now it’s owned by a multi-state corporation with strong ties to the Catholic church. Thus far the new management has brought about no perceptible changes but for one: Every hallway, every exam room, every office and (presumably) every janitor’s closet is now adorned with a crucifix.
Somehow we’ve managed to stay out of the bathrooms at our visits so I cannot report on the proximity of these icons to the toilets. I should have checked. Next time I will.
Trapped in an exam room for an eternity thirty minutes (made bearable only by the fact that I was accompanied by my delightful middle child, the one whose easy-going nature makes it seem less necessary to schedule time alone with her) I had ample opportunity to ponder the crucifix’s place in the universe. I wondered (not for the first time) about the genesis of such a gruesome symbol.
How might the world be different, I wondered, if instead of Christ’s body, broken and abused — or even the bare structure of that torture — we looked each day upon a different symbol, one which brought to mind less of Christianity’s magical side and more of its practical application. A hand made whole. A single finger touching the hem of a garment. Five loaves and two fish.
But I guess the magical beliefs are where it’s at for those who decide this kind of thing. Without them, any old do-gooder could waltz right into heaven, and God knows we wouldn’t want that.
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There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thoughts.
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If you don’t feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn’t very vital.— John Irving
It’s not easy admitting envy of your best friend’s children.
She was the same age that I am now when we met. She terrified me; more accurately, I was wide-eyed in intimidated admiration because she so clearly had it all together on every front. Over the thirty months during which F and I worked in the same building we bonded over the love of perambulation as exercise, the practicality of carpooling and the ability to integrate the word “plethora” into everyday conversation.
At twenty years old and with no deeper understanding of abuse than a slug has of its own salting, sudden painful stabs of envy for F’s children even then caught me by surprise. We visited one day in her kitchen as she marshaled her daughters through homework (their enthusiasm was tepid at best) and the preparation of dinner (spaghetti, from a box), unable to understand what it was that made the very atmosphere in her house different from my own but knowing that I craved it.
I observed from a distance as she raised children alone while working full time and studying for a terminal degree. Later I saw her fall in love with and marry a man raising his own large family completely alone. It was hardly a fairy tale. Daughters from two families integrating themselves into one house (and one small-town high school) proved almost fatally difficult; there were times when F thought the teen-aged fractiousness had damaged relationships to the point they’d never heal. And yet over and over again I watched F do something I never saw in my own family: No matter what hare-brained decisions her children made (and oh there were a few), no matter what trouble they got themselves into, I don’t think she ever stopped loving them. And while they surely felt from time to time F’s fury, they never wondered if she loved them. Never.
They’re all adults now, all happily enjoying careers and children; and like everyone who knew no life before cell phones and CDs, they are all on Facebook. More specifically, they are all on my Facebook. I watch the messages fly back and forth between F and her children, the sisters who once would have been happy to rip each others hair out. I love you, they tell each other. So thankful for my family, they write, followed by tiny heart symbols and multiple clicks of the “like” button. Call me tonight, please; I need some advice. Will you watch the kids this Saturday? Mom, can you bring me those pants? We miss you, they say to the one recently relocated out of state. Only ten more days ’til you come home!
No one counts the days until I come home.
I write this on a morning when simultaneous demands from a failing parent and a child embroiled in a work-related crisis prompted a late-night phone call from F. She couldn’t come visit me today, she said, already on her way in one direction after having dispatched another child to aid her sister. Can I help, I asked, but they’ve got it all covered. Their family is complete. They need no more hangers-on. As much as I might wish that F was mother as well as friend and mentor to me, that’s just not the way it is.
I can learn to mother well, but the chance for me to be mothered well has long since passed. This is the bitter envy made even less palatable 500-odd words later.
