Category: Parenting

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Room to Mother: Some Thoughts on Adoption

I’ve been writing this post for about 15 months now.  It’s about adoption and adoption is complicated.  I mean, I always knew that, but I didn’t always know that.  And as time passes and I acknowledge my own naivete on the subject and how that naivete has shaped our own adoption, well, it’s been challenging.

Adoption is a tricky road, more so when you are in the thick of a transition, like we are.  And here is me on a tightrope, writing about adoption, wanting to share an important and viable family situation that is so often devalued or misunderstood, while wanting to protect my son’s story.  His story, not mine.

Like I said, it’s complicated.

So this is where I try to write about adoption in a way that protects my son’s privacy, but also allows me to share my part of the story, too, the mothering part, without falling off that proverbial tightrope.

The things that will guide me in this effort are my son’s sweet smile, his rosy cheeks, his clear, blue eyes and the tiny, intentional kisses he gifts me with regularly now.  Living and thinking about adoption for the past few years has been exhausting, honestly, but when I focus on him, the sweet boy who needs me, everything else clears.

So much of adoption has been ambiguous and an effort.  You find an agency; you slog through paper work and the application and licensing process; you learn the task of finding an expectant mother who wants you to raise her growing baby falls on you and no one else; you find that brave and selfless person who picks you and just hope that she remains firm in her choice; baby is born and he goes home with you and not the woman who birthed him and you both see and know the deep pain attached to that; you feel guilty; you are reminded of the hateful, hateful commenters on the Internet who called you a rich, white bitch, a baby thief, and worse; you try and soothe the soul of the mother who is hurting so, that you are raising the baby she birthed; you can’t; you don’t; you feel more guilt; you reach down to change a diaper or dry a tear or roll a ball and you think of that other mother that is doing none of those things; you feel more guilt and more pain when you should feel joy and tenderness; you bristle when the mom on the playground tells you she thought your son was “yours,” he looks so much like you; you realize the photos of you and your son together, despite him being 18 months old, can be counted on less than one hand, because you unconsciously avoided those photos so as not to hurt another mother’s feelings.

It is too much sometimes.

Adler and boat

For now, I am stepping away from adoption, and yet here I am writing about it.  That is quite the contradiction, isn’t it?  It is, to be sure, but in my head, it makes so much sense.  Words are healing for me, always have been.  Words are how I find my way, and I need to find my way here.

In stepping away from adoption, what I am trying to do is step away from the needs of anyone other than me and my baby boy.  It sounds selfish, I know, but in my gut, my mother’s gut, I know how important it is.  I know it is what both me and my son need right now.

I am making room to mother, without pain or guilt attached to it, because it is what my baby needs.

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Looking at Donna

At the top of our stairs is a digital frame that we got just a few days after Donna died.  We wanted something for the memorial service to show our favorite photos of Donna.  Her little four year old life, from birth to death, captured on an electronic screen.

The photos have never changed.  Several times a week I find myself getting caught up looking at them.  A rest after climbing 14 stairs, a pause before I get on with my day, a memory captured that confirms once upon a time I mothered a daughter.

One of my favorite things when people visit our home is seeing them stealing glances at the photos, or outright just looking at them, unselfconsciously.  Our girl is missed by many. That is a gift.

Donna had one brother when she died.  Now six years old, he was a wee little 10 month old baby at the time.  Each night before we tucked him in, part of our nightly ritual was to stop at this little corner of our home and say, “Night night, Donna!”  At some point that stopped, I don’t know when.

Now she has another brother.  There was no overlap of their lives and they share no biology, as he came to us through adoption, but still, he is Donna’s brother.  The truth is that he looks more like Donna than her brother that shares genes with her ever did.  Our youngest son has the exact same shade of golden hair.  He has the pink pillow lips and almond shaped blue eyes, too.  His smile calls Donna to mind more every day.  People who knew Donna will whisper to us, “He looks like Donna,” as if saying that is a breach of adoption etiquette.

He does look like Donna. That both fills me with joy and makes me ache in equal measure.  When he sits in my lap and eats his morning breakfast of oats with grape jelly, just as Donna did, I am transported back in time when my little girl with her chicklet teeth did just the same.  It is a thin thread that connects my oldest and my youngest. I am grateful for that thread.

A few months ago, while doing dishes — where so many of my most profound thoughts seem to occur — the baby was sitting in his height chair close by nibbling on something or other.  I noticed in that moment that his eyes were on Donna.  His eyes stayed on Donna.  I finished the dishes, I swept, I wiped down the counters.  His eyes never once stopped looking at Donna.

Looking at Donna

Since then, I often pop the baby in his height chair with a few nibbles and roll the chair in front of that screen where digital Donna ages right before his eyes.  His sister’s lifetime passes by while he eats a fistful of Cheerios, transfixed. It is as close to babysitting as Donna will ever get.  I am grateful to see my children together, even virtually.

 

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First Kisses

There are only so many first kisses that a long term married person enjoys in their life. I got one a few weeks ago.  I had been waiting for it, anticipating what it might be like. Often, the anticipation of a thing can make the actual thing feel less than your hopes had built it into.  This was not the case for the first kiss my youngest son gifted me.  It was sweet and a wee bit messy, liquid.  It was joyful and intentional.

When Mary Tyler Baby was just a few months old I remember Googling something along the lines of, “When do babies start to kiss?”  Most of the guidelines left a broad window for baby’s first kiss, anywhere from seven to seventeen months.  On the mothering boards, lots of broads were bragging about their overachieving three month olds who were already planting wet ones on them.  Pffft.

I waited patiently.  I waited impatiently.  I was finally rewarded.  My heart burst into a thousand pieces.

Adler's lips

I don’t write about adoption much.  There are a lot of reasons for that, but mostly because when I am writing about something that extends beyond my own experience, I think long and hard about how my words might impact the other people in my life, including my son and his Birth Mother.  But more than that is the reality that our adoption has just been so much more complicated than I could ever have imagined.   There is not much to say about that specifically, other than I am learning how to put mothering first, before all other concerns and needs that come with adoption.  My son needs that and I need that.

So, blah.  Blergh.  Aarrrggghhh.  Adoption.  For better or worse, getting that first kiss felt somehow like a mothering badge of honor for me.  I was worthy of my baby’s kiss. There was no taking that kiss for granted, I’ll tell you that. Such a sweet and simple gesture from a baby that somehow heals me, validates me, reassures me.  I am his mother, I am his Mom.  No matter how complicated adoption can be, that is our truth.

So three cheers for first kisses.  Three cheers for motherhood.  Three cheers for creating a safe space to mother.  Three cheers for understanding that some relationships ebb and flow.  Three cheers for messy, liquid, juicy kisses from a loving baby boy.

Hip hip hooray!

Happy Valentine’s Day, good folks!