Writing while Numb

It's been a while since I've written. It wasn't from a lack of interest in writing but rather a conscious decision not to do so as events unfolded here at home.

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I was making chili and cornbread in preparation for our annual "New Year's Eve Eve" party on December 30th. My wife walked in at 2:30 after a short day at her office. Her cell phone rang. No one ever calls her cell phone but me and I certainly wasn't the one on the phone. She answered, looked shocked, said "you'll need to call us back on the land line so my husband can be on the phone, too."

It was The Call. The adoption agency had a placement for us, a little girl due on March 13th in Arizona. The birth mom, L, wanted a closed adoption, was asking the agency to select a good family and a good home. It was us. After a Christmas tinged with a hint of sadness that there was no child in our home yet, we were about to enter the new year with the prospect of actually becoming parents ahead of us.

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I'm not a superstitious person by nature and neither is my wife. Still, we decided that it might be best to stay quiet about this to avoid tempting fate, angering the gods, or jinxing the whole thing. And so, there's been silence here on the blog for quite some time.

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Of course we told family. There were calls to siblings and the parents we weren't going to see that night. At the party that evening, we told my mother and stepfather that we had a belated Christmas gift for them -- tickets to see Paula Poundstone in Boston in mid-March. I'd bought them as a Christmas present for my wife but we wanted them to have the tickets as we didn't think we'd be able to use them.

"Why not?" my mother asked.

"Because it looks like we'll be in Arizona bringing home our daughter," I replied.

Needless to say, chaos reigned for a while in our house. It felt very very good.

We told some people at work because we wanted to be sure that things were prepared. Due to state regulations, we were going to need to stay in Arizona for two weeks with the baby before we could retrn home. Then my wife was going to go on maternity leave. There was a lot to be done.

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As we moved from late December into January and February, I really wanted to write about the experience -- shopping for a glider, clearing out the guest room and turning it into a nursery, checking Consumer Reports for car seat reviews, and all of the other activities that go into preparing for a baby. But I still decided to hold off. No sense announcing to the world until it was done and we were home.

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L, the birth mom, was in her mid-20s, already a mom to two children, unmarried and trying to complete college, and strongly of the opinion that she wouldn't be able to parent this new child properly. Our adoption contacts in Arizona met her several times and reiterated L's commitment to the adoption. The copies of her medical records all included "adoption" written prominently on all of the pages.

The process progressed. The legal wheels in Arizona and here at home started to spin. We continued to collect items for the baby's room, for life with a child. More people entered the circle of "in the know". We politely put a stop to an initial offer to host a shower for my wife. "If there's going to be a party, it's going to be for me, too!" I said with a laugh in response. "But please, we don't want to do anything until after we're home with this little girl. We really appreciate the thought but not right now."

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The first thing I actually wrote about this anticipated change was a Facebook post after unpacking some stuff we'd ordered:


"OK, so here's a joke. Let me see if I got this right. A priest, a rabbi, and a nun walk into a bar...no, that's not it. Ummm, a blonde, a brunette, and and a redhead walk into a hotel...nope, that's not right either. Oh yeah! A crib, a stroller, and a car seat walk into what used to be our guest room. Oh crap...I'm not sure if there's actually a punchline but we'll hopefully find out in about 5 weeks."


"No," a friend and parent wrote back. "There's no punchline."

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The plane tickets were booked. My lovely wife found a furnished apartment that we'd be able to rent for the two weeks we expected to be in Phoenix. We began to check e-mail and home voice mail more frequently than normal, waiting for the message that said it was time to head west.

Exactly two weeks before her due date, a very sweet plan to have a surprise party at my office was stopped after e-mail invitations had been sent out. "Chris really doesn't want to have a party beforehand in case anything happens with the adoption before it's complete," explained one of my coworkers who knew how my wife and I felt. But the word was out. A few people came by to extend their preliminary congratulations or to tell me about their own experiences adopting (it's surprising how many people we've known for years are also adoptive parents).

With 10 days to go, I was sitting in the office of a colleague when my phone rang. It was my wife and she never calls me on my cell phone when I'm at work.

"L has gone to the hospital and may be in labor," she reported. "But the agency says that she is having doubts, that her family is pressuring her to call it off."

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I'm a writer by trade. My wife is a fantastic writer as anyone who has read her adoption and health blogs will attest. Before this placement, we'd even gone so far as to create a dedicated website to help tell our story to women who sought a loving family for their unborn child. I like to think that we can tell a good story, that we can make a compelling case, and that we can entertain or influence or guide when we write. 


But suddenly, with L wavering, we felt helpless. It was a closed adoption. We'd had no contact with L and she didn't want any with us. We couldn't talk to her, write to her, let her know that we were so ready to provide this child with a loving home, that she could trust us. Instead, we were bystanders and all of the words that we might have used rested unsaid.

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After that shocking Thursday, the next 48 hours were a blur of e-mails and phone calls with the agency and our contacts in Arizona. Finally, we got the word -- L was having contractions but was not in labor; she was home resting; she realized that despite the pressure from her family, including her father who was crying at the hospital, going ahead with the adoption was the right thing for her and her baby. She wanted to know if we could be there to take the baby when she was discharged from the hospital.

Everything was going to be fine.

We continued packing our bags so that we'd be ready to go at a moment's notice, all the while telling ourselves that, yes, L could still change her mind. But the word from Arizona over the following week was still positive -- Yes, L is still committed to this; she realizes it's her decision to make, not her family's; she is convinced this is the right thing.

But there was still that niggling sense of doubt.

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The news came this morning in writing, an e-mail sent from the west coast offices of our adoption agency at midnight our time last night. I fired up my computer for a quick check of the headlines after getting home from spin class. "Unfortunately, I have some bad news..."

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Throughout this entire journey, we have said that until the birth mother tells us "please raise this child" and the paperwork is complete, it is absolutely, without a doubt her right to change her mind and say "no, I'm sorry, but I can't do this. I realize that I need to raise this baby."

I do believe that. I truly do. But damn it, does it have to hurt so much to have to actually prove that they aren't just some trite words on the screen or tossed off in conversation? Is this some cosmic test? Did I really piss the Universe off my with my "priest, rabbi, and a nun" joke?

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disrupt |disˈrəpt| verb [ trans. ] interrupt (an event, activity, or process) by causing a disturbance or problem; drastically alter or destroy the structure of (something)

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The term in the adoption world for what we've just gone through is "disruption." I can't tell if that's intended to be diplomatic, polite, or brutally honest. All I know is that it's true for everyone involved.

I can't begin to imagine how disrupted L's life is right now as she approaches the birth of a child she was prepared to give up until her family weighed in at the hospital and in the days after. I fervently hope she is making the right decision and wish L and her family happiness. This little girl, whom we'll never meet but who had started to take on such a central role in our lives despite our best efforts to stay detached until the adoption was complete, will grow up with her siblings, her mother, and a family that fought to keep her. I hope that passion and love endures. A child should have those things.

For us, we're now 16 hours post-disruption, 16 hours after I read the e-mail and bolted upstairs to my wife who was preparing for work, 16 hours after being told that the plans we'd been making with such joy needed to be shelved for an as-yet-undetermined amount of time, 16 hours during which a numb feeling has settled through us both.

We keep telling ourselves that this is just a bump and that we'll be parents someday. Our friends and family tell us the same thing. I have to believe that because to waver, to doubt the inevitability of becoming parents is just too devastating to contemplate. These things happen. Friends of ours experienced a disruption during their first adoption attempt and they now have two wonderful, lovely daughters.

We aren't the first people to go through this but it's the first time we've gone through this so it's new and raw. It's going to take a while for the numb sensation to wear off, to not walk by the new nursery in our house and wonder about the little girl who is expected to be born on March 13th and what she would have been like to hold in our arms. Instead my wife and I have just been holding on to each other today, a hug or a touch, a kiss, or a small smile to know that we're still here, that we're still together, and that the end result will be a daughter and a wonderful future.

It's just going to take time. I wonder if writing will help.

Halloween

We had a ton of kids come trick or treating to the house tonight. Some were in full regalia, others (the older ones) often in just the barest hint of a costume. Then there was the kid who didn't have a costume but was brazen enough to fake it ("I'm dressed as a skateboarder but forgot my skateboard" he says). I always loved Halloween, first because of the costumes and candy, and then the fun of giving away candy. One of my favorite books when I was growing up was "The Halloween Tree" by Ray Bradbury. I even named my second cat, Pipkin, after the character who goes missing in the book and must be pursued through time and to the edge of death itself by his friends. After the paperback I'd been given when I was 10 finally fell apart a few years ago, I went online and found a hardbound copy signed by Bradbury and bought it.

Last year at this time, we were in the final stages of pulling together our profile and home study materials. We didn't know what to expect but I think we both dreamed that by Halloween this year, we wouldn't just be handing out candy to kids but we'd be bundling a little one up as a peanut or a pumpkin or a tiny Red Sox player. Unfortunately, it looks like we need to set out sights on Halloween next year. I know our profile hasn't been up even a year yet and that many adoptive parents wait a lot longer than that. But seeing the parents tonight walking their kids up to our front door, hearing the kids chant "trick or treat" without even the hint of potential vandalism if we don't hand over a snack sized Twizzler, just makes me wish even more that this would have been the year we could have started the whole costumed kid tradition.

But instead we wait. I wonder if there are any Twizzlers left?

Picture This

I read a somewhat distressing article today in the New York Times about the decline in sales of picture books for kids. It's not all bad, of course -- kids are moving on to chapter books earlier -- but the idea that picture books are deemed too simple or won't help a child develop seems laughable to me. Our house is full of books and quite a few of them are absolutely brilliant picture books. Watching a child read again and again a stunning book like David Weisner's Tuesday or the more challenging Flotsam, you can see their minds working as they build the story in their mind, flipping back and forth between pages, totally immersed. I'm certainly all for moving on to chapter books but even at 41 years of age, there's a joy and a magic in a picture book that will never go away.

Making Strides Against Breast Cancer

As readers of my other blog, Walks in the Marsh, may know, last year my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She fought like a trooper and with the help of amazing doctors, nurses, and medical treatments she beat it (none of us doubted that she would).

The relief at that news was overwhelming for all of us and that's why I'm walking in this year's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer event on October 24 at Roger Williams Park in Providence. Other women and other families should all be given every chance to experience the relief and joy that comes at the end of the fear and heartache that appears when cancer steals stealthily into their lives. I hope to be the father of a little girl at some point in the future and I'd like that future to be one where she doesn't have to fear this particular spectre.

I encourage those of you in the region to come out for this walk. If you can't make it, I hope you'll consider making a donation to support our efforts to raise awareness and funds to support breast cancer research and treatment for our mothers, daughters, wives, sisters, aunts, friends, and coworkers.

Old friends with kids

This weekend, Jennifer and I attended a reunion of Troop 82 Providence, the Boy Scout troop that I belonged to when I was a kid. I hadn't seen most of these guys since we all gathered in December 1988 to mourn the passing of our scoutmaster, Donald C. Dewing. So it was a treat to see them all more than 20 years later, the boys I'd grown up with and almost all with kids of their own. Many were young, 6 or 7 years old, others were in their mid to late teens, and all were welcomed to the Troop 82 family. As we sat on a picnic table at Yawgoog Scout Reservation, Jennifer turned to me and said, "next time we have one of these reunions, we'll have one of our own running around." I'm looking forward to that and is just another reason I'm now eagerly awaiting the next get-together.