Laughter and Forgetting

adoption, again

I am somewhat surprised that I am compelled to talk about adoption...again. While I have always had opinions on the matter, it have spent a lot more time thinking and writing about it since I started this blog almost two years ago.

This weekend I read a book called Love in the Driest Season. At it's heart, this book is about adoption and parental love, but it is also about how Robert Mugabe has fucked up Zimbabwe, about the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and about man's twisted cruelty towards other men. It's about how unfair life is. I couldn't put it down.

The author, a journalist for the Detroit Free Press, and his wife were volunteering at an orphanage in Harare, Zimbabwe as the AIDS crisis created thousands upon thousands of orphans. The infant that eventually becomes the couple's daughter was left abandoned by her mother at birth in the high grass in a nearby small village. The tiny girl is not found for a day, and when she is, ants have crawled into every possible orifice. The baby weighed a little over four pounds. By the time she was discovered, the mother was long gone. We never find out whether the mother had AIDS, or had been left a widow by AIDS, or was beset by any number of other problems that are rampant all over Africa.

To summarize very briefly, The baby girl almost dies multiple times, and then finally starts to thrive under the care of the journalist and his wife. During the time that the couple is fostering the very sick baby, something like 18 infants die in the orphanage where she was originally taken. It is crystal clear that the girl would have died had she remained in the orphanage and not been moved to a fostering situation.

Adoptions by non-blood relatives are extremely rare on Zimbabwe, and it is only by luck and the advocacy of an ethical adoption coordinator amidst an otherwise bureaucratic morass, that the family is able to get out of the country before Mugabe made foreign journalists full-on enemies of the state. It is worth noting that if the political climate had not been going to hell in a handcart, the family would have stayed indefinitely in Zimbabwe.

You cannot read this book and feel grateful that this adoption was possible - that among a sea of dying, orphaned children, the love of the two parents triumphed over petty prejudices and lazy bureaucrats.

Before I read the book, I was surfing some anti-adoption blogs and websites last week. After a while I just asked myself why I was doing this to myself, I was getting so frustrated. So I just stopped reading them.

Here is the wall that I run into; How can you be AGAINST adoption? I understand that you can be against your own adoption experience. I can understand that you felt unfairly coerced and manipulated into giving up a child, or that you had a negative adoptee experience because your parents did most things wrong. I can understand that you don't want to personally take on the complications of adoption. But how can you be against adoption philosophically? There are children that need homes, there are parents that will adore them. Not all of those parents will be good, and all will be flawed. But there are a lot of mediocre parents out there, most of them biological. Adoptive parents are no different than anybody else, except they are usually not hardened criminals due to the screening that they have to go through. And as we know, a lot of hardened criminals do have children biologically.

Being against adoption is kind of like saying that what is wrong for you is wrong for everyone else. Everyone is unique, every parent and every child. Every adoption will have it's own unique outcome, as does every parent-child relationship.

It's my biggest beef about the Christian Right. We must accept Jesus Christ as our Saviour, or else we are wrong. And the Christian Right believes that their views on abortion, or gay marriage, or prayer in schools is what should be the law of the land, whether we believe in it or not.

But I digress.

It's not that I am a Pollyanna about adoption. I do believe in adoptee rights and the rights of biological parents. I believe adoptees have the right to any available information that exists. I believe that totally closed adoptions are wrong, but I also believe that there is a huge area in the middle.

In my own case, I do not believe that I was adopted into the best possible family. My mother was flat-out crazy for God's sake. I know that my biological mom was not coerced into giving me up. She was being pragmatic. She was getting rid of a problem; She was a good girl and abortion was illegal. She once told me (in a very kindly way, mind you) that she would have had an abortion, had they been legal. I don't know that my bio-mom made the right decision. She did end up later marrying my birth father for eighteen years, and had another daughter with him. I do know that that my adoption has been intensely painful and complicated for her. But it is the decision that she made at the time, with the information that she had. And that decision made my life what it is. The burden of a nutso mother and the gift of a kind, caring and gentle father. It is my life, and I am who I am because of it. I suppose that it is because I am happy with who I am that I have no issues with my adoption, nor with adoption in general.

I believe that people can blame too much on their parents. I believe that adoptees can idealize what blood ties mean. I know I did. I will not deny that knowing my biological family was undeniably a watershed event in my life. But I am not my parents; not my biological parents, nor my adoptive parents. No matter how much we identify with family, we are our own miraculously unique collection of cells, and we will have different experiences and different beliefs and different relationships than they did.

I believe that blood ties can be strong. I believe that love ties are many times stronger. I believe it is better to focus on what can be done, rather than errors that have been made.(And I'm not talking about suppressing or ignoring the past, just putting it into perspective and context.) I believe that we are ultimately responsible for our own happiness. I believe that adoption is imperfect, like all things in life.
But I also believe that adoption has it's own special mysteries and gifts. And fortunately for me, I know about some of them.

Adoption is not a yes or no issue. It's a reality that can be negative, positive, complicated, imperfect, intense and beautiful. Usually all of the above in equal measure, as "Love in the Driest Season" describes so well. So I will never understand how it can be distilled down to "anti-adoption", as though it is ONE WRONG THING. It just doesn't make sense.

I've had some pleasant, non-bitchy, anecdotal posts that I've been thinking about. But I don't feel like like writing them today. My husband and son have been in bad moods this week, and so have I. My son's had a cold, I've been premenstrual, and my husband, well... it seems he's been premenstrual too.It didn't take much to push me over the edge today.

I go to a pilates class on Tuesday's when my work schedule allows for an extra long lunch. It's a small, semi-private class, with a maximum of four women.

One woman is an OB nurse in her mid-thirties. Another woman is a 44 year old who had a baby through IVF 17 months ago.

The third woman is an unemployed 26 year old, who has been married for a year and half to a lawyer who is twelve years older than she is. They travel a lot, she's dressed really well, and they remodel expensive houses.

I've tried not to judge this woman. I've said to myself. Just because she fell in love with a rich(er) guy doesn't mean she's superficial, doesn't mean she's not interesting, or not thoughtful. And in fact, I do not think she is a gold digger, I think she is appreciative that she doesn't have to work (except to supervise remodels), She is not loud or garish.

HOWEVER, there a few things that have been red flags for me. First of all she wanted to move out of her urban neighborhood to the the full-on suburbs, because "everyone stared at me around here" (The Pilates studio is in the same neighborhood as her old house.) I wanted to suggest that it was perhaps that she is gorgeous, twenty five years old, and has a huge, beautiful, and clearly natural set of breasts.

I should also point out, that even though she lived in a very exclusive neighborhood, it did adjoin the mostly black and immigrant part of the city. Frankly, I think she was getting some appreciative comments from the brothers in the neighborhood and couldn't handle it.

I do think it entirely possible that the suburbs boast more fake boobs per capita, so maybe she won't stand out as much there. Whatever. I am just suspicious of young urbanites that want to move to the 'burbs without any specific reason (other than looks on the street.) I hate the suburbs, but at least I can understand reasons like "better school districts", "community pools", or "lots of families" for moving there.

She grumbled a little when she and her husband had to lower the price of their house from 825k to 795k. She whined about realtors coming by unexpectedly. She just seemed a little...spoiled. But still, she is pretty down to earth, and she doesn't have any irritating mannerisms, or an obnoxious voice. I'm really working on not being judgmental.

Okay, so she's never heard of Roxy Music. She was a toddler when Avalon came out.

I'm just so effing PMS crabby today it wasn't going to take much to send me over the edge.

When I got to class today, she was talking about her in-laws who were in town last week. I asked if she got along with them. She said "it's weird, they are just so much older that they feel more like grandparents." How old were they you may ask? In their mid to late fifties. I laughed and said, "For crying out loud, I'm practically in my mid-fifties." She looked shocked. I said, "I'm kind of kidding, but I'm not THAT far away, I'm old, I just turned 42." She said "Well, you're younger than my mom!" I responded with way more volume than I intended to when I spluttered out, "Jeezis, I sure hope so. I would have been about twelve if I was your mom." (It turns out that I would have been fifteen after I did the math. But who's doing the math?)The OB nurse was cracking up behind her. I must admit that it was pretty funny that she actually thought this was a compliment. It's a new one for me, who usually gets "You're kidding! I thought you were about 35!"

So then she says, "Well my mom was young. She's 46. And she has a THREE YEAR OLD!!" Her eyes started rolling and she couldn't contain her snickering. I said, "Your mom has a three year old? (Yet another 43 year old success story to mock me.) "Yes," she said through her snickers "You CAN get pregnant in your forties!" Yeah, no shit. I HAVE been pregnant in my forties. I told her that too, and didn't bother to explain what happened to that pregnancy. Let her wonder. I doubt miscarriage occurred to her. She probably thinks I had an abortion.

I know what you're thinking. She's only twenty-six, and everyone is like that when they are twenty-six. But I wasn't, truly. I remember meeting a 42 year old when I was about that age that recently had given birth to a baby through what seemed like heavy-duty infertility treatments that I was not well-versed in at the time. I do remember thinking that she seemed old to me, and I do remember thinking that I didn't want to be "that old." But I also distinctly remember thinking, "Good for her! It's great that she was able to have a child with her second husband, I'm glad that fertility resources were available for her." I know I didn't think it ridiculous, or humorous in any way.

This twenty-six year old has just been coddled and protected and not well-educated either emotionally or academically. She's oblivious, and she's bugging me. Trophy wife.

Nothing but positivity over in this corner of the world.

sneak attack

I am so not okay. One would think after all this time I could be okay. That I could be even blase, that the sneak pregnancy attack would be like flies against my infertility armor.

So why does it hurt so much? I had dinner with some friends last night, mom neighbors and a couple of women from my original newborn group. They invite me to these things and I go, but I don't really have that much fun. It's a little boring. Most of them don't drink, which sadly, is a little bit of an issue for me. I'm a moderate drinker, but having a "girl party' without a glass of wine or two is just not as much fun.

So I didn't think about it when I was the only one that ordered a beer. Fortunately, another friend showed up a half hour later and ordered a glass of wine so I didn't feel like a complete pariah. I did think that one of the women, Alice, looked pregnant, but she was sitting down, with a table in front of her and she tends towards a rubenesque figure normally. In passing, and almost inaudibly, one of the other women commented that keeping the kids occupied this summer was going to be difficult "with three." Not "with a newborn" or "with no sleep." I looked at Alice and thought that she must be pregnant. But Alice didn't respond to the "with three" comment. And nobody else said a word about it. No one asked her about her pregnancy, not once did she comment on weeks or due dates, or how much harder having three might be. So I thought, "Well, maybe Alice is just getting chubbier." I hadn't seen her in three or four months. I thought I had misheard the previous comment, or perhaps a cousin was coming to stay for a while this summer.

It wasn't until almost two hours into the dinner that Alice mentioned that she couldn't eat any ice cream because of the diabetes. Gestational diabetes. She's due in less than three fucking months.

How much of an ass did I feel like now? Everybody had been dancing around the elephant in the room and I didn't even know it. I blurted out that I hadn't realized that she was pregnant and sheepish reddened faces cropped up around the table.

How come it's so much worse to be treated like a child? Yeah, it hurts. And this one hurts especially because Alice's middle son was born a month before my first miscarriage was due. I remember how hard it had been to see her expanding belly and thinking, "I should be that pregnant." With that first miscarriage those pregnant bellies were the most excruciating. And now Alice, who turned 40 a month after she got pregnant is having a third. A girl. She's a year older than when I had my first miscarriage and the same age as when I had miscarriages two and three.

But would I rather have known and have it be a topic of conversation at dinner? Yes, yes, yes. It's much better to included than to be protected. To be treated as an object of pity immediately puts one on the outside. This is group I don't even particularly want to be a part of, and I still felt like shit.

I was particularly annoyed with the one woman in the group whom I see regularly. She's from Japan, and consequently excruciatingly polite. I know with 100% certainty that she has consciously avoided mentioning this little fact to me. If she only knew how much better us infertiles and habitual miscarriers do with a little warning. It gives us time to adjust and put on our game faces. Having a six-month fetus crop up suddenly in the middle of dinner is inordinately worse.

I came home and cried like I haven't cried in a long time. Everything seemed so dark. My husband hugged me and said "I'm sorry" and "I wish I could make it better," and I wanted to scream "You could let me try one more time! We could start adopting! It takes a long time!" But I didn't. Because there really is no magic pill. I don't know if I could get pregnant. I know that if I could I would likely miscarry. I know that if we adopted, this kind of pain would not evaporate. But Chris (at barefoot and... - I'm too lazy to link) is right when she says that it can be more depressing to not try, then to try and fail.

Yes, on some days, I am not okay at all.

42

I turned 42 yesterday at 11:28pm. The time period before my birthday has been hard these last few years, as the fertility window gets increasingly painted shut, until it cannot be budged open ever again.

This time in my life has been filled with all kinds of illness and sadness. There is of course, the four miscarriages that I can't seem to shut up about, augmented by my mother-in-law's two bouts of cancer, the second of which will be almost inevitably fatal. She turned 70 last month. There was also my dear father's less serious bout with cancer (if cancer can be less serious). He came close to death due to pneumonia from his low white blood count, which was then followed by his ever-escalating Alzheimer's/dementia. He is 77 now. More peripherally, was the death of my (estranged) mother due to breast cancer the day after her 73rd birthday, and the death of my biological father last year, a week after his 62nd birthday due to lymphoma. I hardly knew the man, but he was so young, and I will never meet him again. Unless my sister told him, I don't even think he knew that I had a son.

But things could have been a lot worse. So much worse. For that I am thankful.

The strange thing that has happened to me lately is that all of the above has made me appreciate how much time I have left, rather than how little time could be left. I COULD die tomorrow or next year or in ten years, but I could also live to be 90. Old age is entirely possible, even likely for me because every single female in bio family has made it to their late eighties, and many have made it well into their nineties. My life may not even be half over. Or it may. But since I don't know I might as well keep setting new goals for myself, and not sit back and feel "safe." Because safe is a crock. The best laid plans can end in a train wreck - and my reproductive history is a testament to that.

So my goals for the near and not so near future are as follows:

•Get healthier. Eat better, practice yoga more, be stronger. I actually am in okay good shape now and am by no means overweight, but I want to be one of those 60 year old women that people always point as a role model for taking care of yourself.
• Have another career. I actually like my job right now. I work for a good company, I'm paid well, and my bosses appreciate my work. But I am not passionate about it. It's advertising for God's sake. I'm not exactly making a positive mark on the world. If I started a new career at fifty, I could have and eighteen or twenty year career, which is not even as long as I've been doing my current work.
• Have another kid. Okay, so it's a goal. You don't attain all your goals. When I told my husband this, he shook his head sadly and said that he couldn't go there again, the fear and anguish of trying again - IF I could still get pregnant. It has been over a year since my last miscarriage. But I would adopt, and he is more willing to talk about that possibility now, although only in the most theoretical terms. Unfortunately, this is a horrible time to adopt. My husband is unemployed, and while that is temporary, he is also reevaluating his career and looking for new direction. His mother is battling terminal cancer. His father will need a lot of help if his wife is gone. I am making this a goal because I still want it as much as I did three and a half years ago, when my nightmare began. And I don't care what anyone thinks anymore. I don't care about the age difference with my son. I don't care about being an older parent. If I've said it once, I've said it 100 times, my grandmother was 46 when my dad was born. I figure that gives me until at least 44 or 45. These days you're not a REALLY old mom until your over 50 (see Geena Davis and Angela Bassett.) I just like kids and being a mom. And I like the idea of adopting. So, there it is.

As part of my new view on life. I've realized I need to change my perspective on this blog. I cannot be a full fledged member of a club that is filled with those struggling with infertility and recovering infertiles. I am neither these days, and the isolation I feel when I read some blogs now is totally contrary to the feeling of relief when I first found this little corner of the world. And frankly, my readership has continued to diminish, along with the drama in my life. I will still write about infertility and adoption, because those are issues that are close to my heart. But I am going to change my contacts list to "old" friends and the few blogs that I read on a regular basis. Please do not take it personally if you are no longer on my contacts list. This is about me Moving On.

(By the way, Heidi (Lost and Found) if you read this I would love to get a password to your blog! I could email you, but I thought I would put it out there, while I was thinking about it.)

I am also going to incorporate some memoir stuff into the blog. Memoir sounds so pretentious, it's really more like rambling on about myself, mostly for my son. I always thought it would be great to have in writing my Dad's childhood and personal history. He was always such a great storyteller, and now that he can tell stories no longer, I feel that lack of something written more acutely. So interspersed with my rantings, I'm going to start writing some essays about my life. I figure that the sheer threat of an audience will make stick to my task.

So, um, see you around, I guess.