Coming up for Air

Swearing under my breath I ran back to the apartment from the truck. I was already running late, but there weren't any better options. The present had slid off the seat and torn the wrapping paper. Certainly Festus wouldn't mind, but I would. I grabbed the tape from the dining room table, locked the door on my way out, and ran back to the truck. I pulled my phone from my pocket and sent a text informing Ms Scarlet that I would be late.

A little better than twenty minutes later I was standing on Ms Scarlet and Prof Plum's front porch. The wrapping paper had been easily repaired. Ms Scarlet greeted me with a hug. Instead of the usual upbeat greeting we normally exchange this one was tinged with concern.

"How are you doing?" she asked. The tone of her voice and non-verbal communication made it clear what she meant. It was the kind of inquiring you hear in a hospital waiting room. There's no condemnation, judgement, or expectation in it. Instead there was concern and love.

We quickly moved on to having our evening. Highlights included Festus trading off between chasing and being chased by every adult in the house. His refrain became "we should run as fast as we can". We continued to play and chat. Before dinner Festus opened his belated Christmas present. It was a hit. As the evening wore on Festus was alternately sweet and surly. No one was particularly surprised by this and everyone handled it well. Despite his occasional surly grunting or silence, there was still an important development in my relationship with my son that night.

When we were playing he made an unusual choice in sentence construction that only a young child would think to do. He talked about being chased by "my mommy". He said he should be picked up by "my daddy". He laughed when proclaiming he was going to "get my *******". My name became a title. More importantly I became someone he chose to claim as his own. It was clear and distinct. He knows my name because he knows and wants me.

After Festus went to bed the real conversation began. I had sent Ms Scarlet and Prof Plum an e-mail explaining the barest facts of what had been going on in my life. Chief among those are the split with Athena and her desire to pull back from seeing Festus. This visit was the first time the three of us had seen each other since November. There was a lot of ground to cover. We glossed over the broader topics, which left time and energy for the real issues at hand - our relationships. We talked about my relationship with Athena, their relationship with her and her family, my relationship with her family, and how all of this related to the little boy who was asleep upstairs. Initially I was nervous. I didn't know what to expect which always puts me on edge. As the conversation deepened so did my comfort. When the conversation was wrapping up I realized how much I valued the two people I'd just spent my Sunday evening with.




Beyond my relationship with Festus I appreciate having Prof Plum and Ms Scarlet in my life. It's great to have a friendship with two people who are so, well, adult in their relationships. They're responsible, well adjusted, grounded individuals with good heads on their shoulders. It's strange to understand that I had to be reminded of that. They bring the qualities that make them good parents to their friendships and family relationships too. The reasons I felt they would be excellent parents for Festus are the same reasons I like to spend time with them.

I'm glad I was reminded that I don't visit just to see Festus. I visit to see my family members that live in that household, all three of them.

Social Workers Need Help Too

A while ago I received an interesting e-mail. It was from a gent who was representing a graduate social work program at University of Southern California (USC). Here's what he had to say:

Father of Festus

I hope this message finds you well. My name is ******* **** and I work in Community Relations for MSW@USC, the web-based Master of Social Work program at the University Of Southern California. I was reading through your blog Statistically Impossible and found some great posts about your experiences with open adoption. We recently published an inforgraphic, "Adoption in America," and thought it would be a great fit for your site.

http://msw.usc.edu/mswusc-blog/adoption-infographic/

The infographic highlights various details about the adoption process, including those involved; it also contains comparative adoption statistics from other countries around the world. In addition, the graphic provides resources for people hoping to adopt and/or social workers interested in pursuing a career in the field.

Given your connection with adoption, I thought that this infographic would resonate well with your audience and networks! If you'd like to share it on your website, please visit our blog or find the image directly, and also feel free to share this with your social networks via facebook and/or twitter.

If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to reach out to me, I'd really like to know what you think. I look forward to connecting in the future and sharing ideas.

Thanks,
****



I've removed his name in respect for his privacy. The infographic he referenced was this:

I took a while to chew this over. There were a lot of things that bothered me. In fact I was troubled enough that I didn't consider responding for a couple months. I couldn't bring myself to offer a useful critique. After a while I realized that if I didn't reply my frustration was useless. The information presented would go unchallenged. Yet another opportunity for a first father to communicate directly with those who shape the adoption experience would be lost. I replied thus:

Hello ****,

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to reply to your e-mail regarding the infographic your department put together. Looking at the infographic I've noticed arena's in which the information appears either fuzzy (not specific enough to provide functional data) or is presented in a less than optimal fashion (word choice problems). I hope you'll forgive me for focusing on the negative aspects rather than providing positive reinforcement. The truth is there's a lot of good information here. But I don't want to keep you stuck reading this e-mail. all day. So, on with the feedback:

The infographic preamble is likely to cause some controversy. It is mentioned that adoptions have increased 15% since 1990. What is the cut off for the data? For the sake of clarity it would be good to see that data presented within a spread of a specific perio od time, for example "adoptions have increased 15% from 1990 to 2008". Similarly the discussion of providing children with "happy and safe homes" and "bring[ing] joy to those longing to raise a family" tips the hand to a decidedly positive spin on adoption. If the goal is to promote adoption this makes sense. If, on the other hand, the goal is to provide relevant data to interested parties, this indicates a lack of impartiality that may make the data suspect. There are plenty of people who write about adoption that would ignore this research as pro-adoption rhetoric based on this belief.

Terminology issue - referring to all children with non-traditional parent relationships as "orphans" is a significant problem. I don't know any adoptees who describe themselves using this term, and it has very negative connotations for any members of a first family. In general the term orphan specifically carries the connotation that a child is separated from their biological parents by death. I strongly urge that this term be replaced with something less emotionally charged.

The preamble for "The Parents" again seems unnecessary and potentially inflammatory. It isn't really possible for an infographic to appropriately investigate the reasons people have for wanting to adopt children, just as it cannot thoroughly investigate the reasons parents have in placing children with adoptive families. It may be best to leave these attempts to explain motives out of the infographic.

The breakdown of demographic data for adoptive parents is interesting and very clearly presented. I would, however, be very interested in seeing correlative data. What percentage of parents adopt due to infertility or same sex coupling? How do those demographics relate to choices between domestic and international adoption?

The information and resources at the bottom of the graphic are a nice way to wrap up the ideas presented. They do a good job of presenting the information without hitting emotionally charged trigger words.

Thanks for sending this along to me. I hope the feedback is useful. If there's anything you'd like to follow up on, or that I didn't present clearly, please contact me again. It's important to me that information like this, and communication about it, be as clear and deliberate as possible.

Cheers,
I am



The data presented in that inforgraphic is potentially useful. Unfortunately it is filtered through inflammatory language and ideas about the adoption experience that are simply untrue. Future adoption professionals are being taught that it's okay to call everyone who was ever adopted an orphan. The graphic above was the work of a graduate department. This is coming from people who are a thesis away from entering the field. Bad social workers aren't born; they're taught. In order to change the opinions of adoption workers we must also change their education. For many that means educating them about our experiences. For some that means teaching their educators.

The quality of a person's education can dramatically alter their professional development. A high quality education (in this context, one that humanizes everyone touched by adoption) can also enhance personal development. Conversely a poor education does not degrade personal worth. Low quality education can be mitigated with high quality corrective experiences. It is the experience and education that need correction, not the person.

It is possible to confront an idea without confronting the person espousing it. The idea and the person are separate entities. For example, the infographic above presents ideas that are hurtful and ignorant. The people who put it together didn't intend to hurt anyone. They did a lot of work to pull together information and present it in the most useful way they could. Those efforts deserve affirmation. They also need redirection. A little more reflection on the humans represented in the pie charts may have resulted in something profoundly useful and respectful. It is not a character flaw that caused the students to take a misstep.

Even social workers make mistakes. They aren't bad people. They just need enough quality information to make better choices next time. That information has to come from people like us. If we don't tell them what's wrong, how systems fail us, what needs to change, and why it's important to respect every adoption experience, no one will.

The Open Adoption Interview Project 2011: Mrs R tells all

I had the opportunity to participate in the Open Adoption Interview Project this year, and was surprised to discover that one of the 124 participants had specifically requested to interview a birthfather. The unusual woman in question is the host of R House. We had the chance to exchange a few e-mails and get to know one another a bit. I suspect, indeed I hope, this exchange will continue. It appears we both have more questions on our minds that we could wedge in to this first interview. Presented here, transcript style, is the interview for your reading pleasure.

For more of the interviews, please visit the list.

**********************************************************************

Care to introduce yourself to the readers? Tell us a little about yourself, your family, and how long you've been involved in adoption.

My name is Lindsey. I go by Mrs. R on my blog sometimes, not all the time. I am married to a therapist. I have two toddler boys who were both adopted domestically as infants. We are very close with their maternal birth families. We have met and dined with birth grandparents with and without the birth mothers. We have been in their homes, celebrated holidays together, gone on vacation with a few, had them come and stay with us for several days and have a strong texting relationship. :) We are friends with some on Facebook. I send update packages every month to all the birth moms and a package a couple times a year to the birth grandparents. We were recently reunited with our oldest son's birth father through Facebook and we have gotten to know some of his extended family. It makes my heart happy. Another birth father has told us that he is not ready to have a relationship with us but we told him the door is always open.

I have been personally involved since 2007.

You mention in your blog struggling with why you can't participate with the Lord in creation. Has your faith, or your faith community, imparted any feelings about infertility or adoption that were hurdles for you? On the flip side, has there been anything related to your faith/faith community that made you feel parenting through adoption was somehow less worthy than parenting a child you conceived?

Yes and no. I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We are kind of notorious for having large families because we are taught that children and families are a gift and a miracle. When I was little, I loved to listen to my mom tell us how much she loved us and that we were her most important work. It's empowering to feel that you are someone's prized work and joy. I am very lucky to have been raised in that environment. I grew up thinking that, just like my mom, my children would be my most important work. When we were diagnosed as a couple with being sterile, that dream took on a new shape. It would be a harder dream to reach and sometimes, it felt impossible. Meanwhile, we hear talks and quotes from Church leaders saying things like, “It is a crowning privilege of a husband and wife who are able to bear children, to provide mortal bodies for these spirit children of God.” (Source.) For a barren woman, these kinds of things are hard to hear even though they are true. It's hard to realize that a crowning privilege of being a human being is being able to create life ...and for whatever reason, that is not something that my husband and I will get to participate in.

That said, I've never once felt like raising my children who happen to be adopted was any less noble. I may not have have the privilege of creating their bodies, but I do have the privilege of teaching them and loving them and helping them have an appreciation for life. As someone who cannot create biological children, I think I am even more sensitive to how much of a literal miracle it is that I GET TO be a mom. It wasn't a right for me. It wasn't easy. It came at great heartbreak and sacrifice by their birth families. I am reminded of that every day.

Your family presently consists of you, your husband, your two children, and open relationship with three of your children's birth parents (both mom's and one dad, with an open invitation to dad #2) with the strong possibility of adding a third child to the mix (with first family relationships TBA). First off, do I have this right? Secondly, can you speak to your desire for a larger family? Do you have a target for how many kids you'd like to raise? Have you ever had misgivings about continuing to adopt?  If no, allow me to confront you with a new query - many people call very loudly for adoption reform related to coercing mothers to place their children. This can create a morally/ethically ambiguous area for adoptive parents. How do you see the relationship between this ambiguity and adopting multiple children?

You got our family dynamic down right. In reality, I cannot believe that there have been two (and possibly three) women who have chosen to have a child, break their own hearts and place that baby with us. When I think about it long enough, I seriously am shocked that adoptions ever happen. We worked with an agency in our first adoption and had an adoption profile through their website. Our oldest son's birth mother found us through that site, we flew out to meet her and her family, we loved each other, she placed with us 6 weeks later. Our youngest son's birth mother is actually a dear family friend of about a decade. She confided in my brother-in-law that she was expecting and wasn't ready to marry the father but wanted her son to have a mom and a dad that were married. Several months later, she told my brother-in-law that it was too bad that my husband and I weren't hoping to adopt again because she wanted to place with our family. He told her that he would call us and we said that we would love to get to know her better if she'd like. We met again (under new circumstances, obviously) talked to her dad, flew out to visit her mom, her and her family and in the end--she did chose to place with us. With this third little that we are hoping to add to our family in the new year, the expectant mom has been a blog reader of mine for quite some time. We flew out to visit her, had a fantastic time and fell in love with her spunky personality and huge heart. She is a great example of fortitude in the face of hardship.

My point is that we only sought after adoption, so to speak, with our first son. In the other two situations, their birth moms sought after us.

Do I have a specific number of children that I want to have in my home? No, I don't. Would we love to welcome more children in our home? Yes! If we felt good about it, the expectant parents felt good about us and it all worked out.

As for reform, I am not a bandwagoner. In order for me to join a movement, I have got to feel the personal fire for it. As for coercion in adoption, I don't have very much experience with it. I am sure that it happens, I feel that it is horribly wrong, but I just don't have the experience necessary to call for reform and know what I am talking about. I will leave that to those that do know what they are talking about.

I am, however, passionate about open adoption and adoptive parents keeping their promises. That is a movement that I can get behind and do advocate for.

 Why did you ask to be paired with a birthfather for the interview project? Give as much or as little depth as you wish.

 I wanted to interview a birth father mostly because I don't know much about the birth fathers of my children. They have each chosen the level of their involvement (or lack thereof) and although I remind them several times a year that we are open to building more of a relationship ("Let me email you some photos." "I have a video that we made of our summer vacation that I would love to send you." "We would love to meet up for dinner in the near future." "I have a holiday package with some drawing from your son that I would love to send to you."), I have yet to experience any interest. For me, this is devastating. I guess I just wanted to learn a little more about what it would be like to have a birth father that chooses to remain in contact. It is something I am not really educated in.

**********************************************************************

Thanks to Lindsey for her openness and honesty. If you are curious you can see my side of the interview here.

Silence in the Absence of Conflict

I've been ignoring life in Blog-land for some time as other concerns have taken priority. Those concerns, not surprising to anyone, are my finances. This is bitter-sweet news because it points directly to something very important.

Life as a birth father has become normal life.

Or perhaps I should say this; life after the adoption of a child can feel just as normal as life before the adoption of a child.

In recent months I've been focusing a lot of attention to getting my financial affairs in order, developing plans for some cottage industry style enterprises, strengthening my relationships with my family, and continuing to support Athena as she prepares to re-enter school in yet another step toward her eventual career goals. Athena and I have continued to visit Festus, Prof Plum, and Ms Scarlet. All of those relationships continue to grow. The funny part is that I haven't been thinking about those relationships as much recently as I had the year previous. That's actually very important as it indicates that I'm not working as hard to have those relationships feel successful. At this point they typically feel successful without much effort. It seems stress doesn't enter that sphere unless there are other complicating factors. There have, in fact, been complicating factors but they were handled with compassion, open communication, a bit of mutual confusion, and in the end worked out smoothly. It's really nice to feel like my friendships with Ms Scarlet and Prof Plum are a source of stress relief.

There have been several visits with them that I haven't related here. That has a lot to do with going nuts at work. More than that, however, is a loss of urgency in those visits, conversations, and connections. After more than a year it feels like the foundation for real relationships have been laid and we now get to enjoy some of that hard work. As life continues there also continue to be new complications. I've come to the conclusion that if one waits for life to "calm down" before considering it normal s/he will be waiting until death. That said, I think we've hit as close to "normal" as we're going to get. It feels good. It feels like we've found the light at the end of the tunnel and it wasn't a train after all. All four of us were putting a lot of faith in that faint glimmer. The days when I forget how hard it had been are the days I feel like I'm holding a winning lottery ticket.

It's tempting to say that I've found a good life after adoption but that isn't accurate at all. The growth I had to do getting into adoption in the first place is largely responsible for where I am now. I have found a good life in adoption.

Timeline - An innacurate account off the top of my head

As requested here is a rough timeline for the series of events pertinent to my adoption story. There are two important notions to keep in mind while reading this:
1) Athena still has he calendar from the year of her pregnancy. I don't have it in front of me. I may mix up a few things here and there. No promises on 100% accuracy. I'll try my best.
2) I'm posting this because a reader requested it. I really do take everyone's input seriously and respond directly. If you have an idea, question, or anything you'd like to share with/say to me I'm all ears.

About 2008 - This year I found myself living with a couple (one a good friend, the other his partner at the time) in a house 44 miles from work. Two years post college I was 25 years old. I had been hired at the university in August the previous year. Athena was living with her family and continuing to struggle with Crohn's Disease. Not a fan of major surgery and a lifetime of steroids she was attempting to control it through diet and Traditional Chinese Medicine (herbal decoctions, tinctures, and the like).

February 2008 - Athena contacted me via an art website to commission a piece. It was quite complicated, I was a bit lazy, and getting adjusted to 60 hour work weeks for the first time. It took months or working and revision.

July 2008 - Athena and I met for the first time. The intention was to hand off the piece or find all the niggling details to revise that couldn't be expressed properly over e-mail. We walked better than 12 miles talking and stayed up all night staring at each other. I was in deep smit. I also moved into my brother's empty house. He moved to LA and asked me to watch the place until he could find a renter.

August 2008 - For reasons I'll not get into, I moved out of my brother's house. Significant family strife involved.

September 2008 - Athena and I started talking about moving in with each other because we suck at being apart. The hunt begins.

November 2008 - We moved into our first apartment. I dubbed 2008 "the year of the move." It was also Athena's first move. I was old hat at changing homes and had some difficulty understanding what's so hard about it. Removed head from sphincter and attempt to be supportive.

December 2008 - Athena's health declined. Stress went up. December 27th we get the big news. Stress went up more.

January 2009 - By the end of the first week we'd told both our sets of parents. In the middle of January I decided therapy was a good idea for me and started looking for services. By the end of the month I'd found a therapist and start weekly sessions. Somewhere in there is the visit to the Pregnancy Counseling Center.

February 2009 - We'd settled on adoption and had concluded that extra-familial is the only way to go. Adoption within either of our families felt too messy to consider. I believe this was the month we found Catholic Social Services and started working with them. Lots of reading and crying ensued.

March 2009 - Ultrasound with terrible, terrible, terrible doctor. Immediately transferred care to midwives. Athena's Crohn's symptoms were dramatically reduced.

April 2009 - I was put on seasonal leave at work (annual four month lay off without the benefit of collecting unemployment. My stress about money sky rocketed). Athena and I began crafting the birthing plan. Touring the hospital was a significantly traumatizing experience which lead to the realistic fear that Athena would run away into the woods to deliver the Visitor. Alternative plans started hatching.

May 2009 - Ultrasound with the awesome tech. First positive hospital experience! Midwives found in Athena's home town associated with a private birthing center. Athena and I read piles of prospective adoptive parents profiles at Catholic Social Services. After reading the 11 that fit our initial screening criteria we took three profiles home. There were two that really struck us. One that seemed too good to be true in most respects, with a couple significant reservations. One pretty damn good without much to question. One was a ringer. Just in case. I read each profile at least twice every day for the following ten days. Clawing my way away from depression I managed to celebrate my birthday.

June 2009 - We scheduled a meeting with Ms Scarlet and Prof Plum. Once they're back in town we met. The significant reservations were all flipped on their heads in that conversation. Each concern became a boon. We exchange e-mails and start working out times to meet for dinner et cetera. Athena transferred prenatal care to the midwives in her home town. We became half time residents in her parents' home (practically speaking) for the check ups.

July 2009 - My brother asked that we consider him and his wife as adoptive parents. In the discussion I told him we'd already considered it and laid out our reasons for not going with intra-familial adoption.

August 2009 - We wait-wait-waited. Half way through the month I resumed work. Athena's due date was August 29th. We were praying the Visitor wouldn't show up on her birthday, the 31st.

September 2009 - The Visitor arrived! He went home with Ms Scarlet and Prof Plum from the birthing center. I took a week off work to help care for Athena at her parents' house. The labor was long and difficult. Athena lost a lot of blood and was structurally unsound for some time. After a week I returned to work, leaving Athena at her parents' house to continue her recovery. On the drive home I talked with both of my brothers for three hours about why they were not parenting Festus and why asking for custody now was inappropriate and disrespectful. Athena stayed with her parents for two more weeks before returning to the apartment with me. It was one of the most difficult times in our relationship and in my life.

October 2009 - Visits with Ms Scarlet and Prof Plum continued. Contact was a little weird at first, and somewhat stressful. I often felt, in the early visits, like I was going to a job interview (if I didn't dress right, impress them, make everything easy and pleasant, they'd decide I shouldn't be a part of Festus' life and cut off contact. I didn't really believe it, but that's how it felt). We confirmed that Athena's Crohn's was in full remission.

December 2009 - Athena's family joined us for a visit to Ms Scarlet, Prof Plum, and Festus for the first time.

January 2009 - I terminated treatment with my therapist.




Fast forward to the present. . .




Contact with Festus, Prof Plum, and Ms Scarlet continues and is getting better all the time. At this point I consider them friends I would enjoy spending time with regardless of an adoption agreement. My family still hasn't seen Festus. That continues to be difficult for me. Athena's health remains better today than it had been at any point since Crohn's first manifested. Her pregnancy, in a very real and literal way, saved her life.


Today Athena and I are still together, still living in our little tree house apartment (there's a bay window surrounded by trees. It's quite lovely). We're making plans for our future and long for a dishwasher.

The Sonless Father

***Please forgive any grammatical or spelling errors. This is an insomnia inspired post and has not been proof-read. Editing and re-posting may occur by Wednesday***

Recently Athena and I visited Ms Scarlet, Prof Plum, and Festus along with Athena's immediate family. Festus wasn't too sure about that many tall people staring at him but he eventually warmed to the idea. That was almost entirely due to Ms Scarlet and Athena's dad playing with and generally distracting him. All in all it was a pretty good visit. There will be more written to recount the events of that later. I bring it up now because it was shortly after that visit that I began thinking about the terminology I use to describe my relationship with Festus.

If you've read many of the other posts on this blog you've no doubt seen me refer to him as my son. I've also referred to myself on numerous occasions as his birth/first-father. What I am wondering is how accurate these terms are. In the abstract sense what do these terms mean? Am I his father? Is he my son?

In a very real and observable way the answer is no. I am not his father. Festus doesn't live with me. I am not responsible for his rearing. He won't grow up calling me "dad" and I'll never be the person he reluctantly turns to in adolescence when things feel out of control. When establishing his individuality it won't be me he's differentiating from. That also means it's me he didn't identify with. These are facts I'm coming to terms with, sacrifices I've made. It may seem strange for this to come up given my primary reasons for choosing to place him with an adoptive family. To reiterate: since childhood I've known I did not want to parent. That knowledge, unfortunately, doesn't mean these sacrifices are without pain. Quite the opposite. They hurt a good deal. While these specific thoughts may not hurt me as much as a person who fully desired to raise his/her child I believe these circumstances do compound my sense of guilt.

Feeling guilty and selfish is something every first-parent experiences.

I've been staring at that sentence for several minutes. Attempting to continue, I've tried out a dozen different follow statements to continue the paragraph. Each time I re-read that sentence a part of me becomes paralyzed. If I open this up I don't get to close it again. I may not get to sleep tonight if I'm honest about this sense of guilt and shame. The truth is that's the deadliest part of the adoption experience for me. It's not the sacrifice, the uncertainty, nor even socially endorsed ostracism. Shame. Despite my best efforts there are still parts of me that wish I could take back the last two years. The strange thing is the degree of compartmentalization. I feel no shame or guilt at all when I see my son. I wouldn't change anything in those moments. All the shame I experience is internalized. I'm ashamed for. . . what? I don't know why. Do I wish I had made different choices? No. Do I wish I had handled Athena's pregnancy differently? Only in rare instances and those usually related to doing dishes or feeling overwhelmed. So why this sense of shame? Because secretly I feel I was intensely selfish in my decision.

I feel selfish because I didn't sacrifice myself and my life for my son. I feel shame because I believe I was selfish. My guilt is compounded because of the circumstances that lead me to place my son for adoption. I didn't do it because I could not raise him. I did it because I would not raise him. That statement is my mental flog. It is rare that it does so but when the self-flagellation takes hold it is more than cantankerous. It is sinister and ruthless. There is nothing anyone can say to me that is more dehumanizing, cruel, or torturous than what I tell myself already. This is one arena in which I feel comfortable saying I speak not only for myself but for most, if not all, first-parents.

All this because I am not a father.

But what of my son? Is he, in fact, my son at all? If I am not his father how can he be? Here is where things get strange and language shows how utterly incapable it is of accurately representing reality. Festus is my son. Just as I am not his father he is my son. It is observable, objective, and real. His hair is starting to curl like mine. There are similarities in facial structure and the build of his body. For eight months (remember, we didn't find out Athena was pregnant the moment Festus was conceived) Athena and I cared for him the best we could. I must say the best we could was damn impressive. I'm very proud of how we responded to his presence. We completely rearranged our lives to aid every aspect of Festus' development. I cannot think of a single aspect of our daily lives that did not directly revolve around care for him. At the end of those eight months I was weary beyond my bones. I hadn't anything left to give. I was completely tapped out. I gave Festus all the help I could muster and I am dedicated to continue doing so until my death.

I am not his father but he is still my son. Prof Plum is his real father. Ms Scarlet is his real mother. He is my son. He is Athena's son.

Open Adoption Roundtable #17

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It's designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. You don't need to be part of the Open Adoption Bloggers list to participate, or even be in a traditional open adoption. If you're thinking about openness in adoption, you have a place at the table. The prompts are meant to be starting points--feel free to adapt or expand on them.

More of the Roundtable

I'm new to the roundtable notion, but here goes nothing:

The question at hand, courtesy of Susiebook, is what I wouldn't like to tell the other members of my adoption triad? Or what would I rather not know about them?

Unfortunately this is just a wee bit awkward as a fellow member of my adoption triad is also a blogger. However I think I can honestly answer the question without saying everything that I'm trying to keep private. In short I'll be talking around what I'd rather they not know.

Honestly there's only one thing that comes to mind when pondering this question. I consider my family. I don't want the other triad members to know how the adoption plan and current adoption relationship effected the relationships I have with my immediate family. I won't get into the gory details in part because I don't remember enough of them to be accurate. Here's the basics:

Be sure to keep in mind this is a reductum absurdum.

My family never spent much time listening to me. It wasn't until my brothers (I'm the youngest of three) moved out of the house/state together that I had much of a voice. My parents said they never felt like they got a chance to know me before that happened. I was 17 at the time. By most accounts they were a bit late. Remembering that I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that no one believed me when I consistently affirmed my desire never to parent.  Needless to say they were dumbfounded when Athena and I told them we were looking into adoption for Festus.

The following nine months were the most tumultuous of my life. Unfortunately Athena was already six weeks pregnant at that time. It wasn't the pregnancy that was difficult. It was my family. Both my brothers and parents did their best to support us through the process. That meant pretending nothing was going on. It became clear our conversations and actions weren't being taken at face value shortly after Festus was born and went home with Ms Scarlet and Prof Plum. My family chose that as the appropriate time to ask why Festus hadn't been placed with one of my brothers.

I'm already getting more specific than I meant to. The point being my relationships with my family will never be the same. There has been a lot of healing in the pursuant year, but they'll never be the same. The unbridled confidence in the trust and support of my family is gone. I love them. I'm enjoying spending time with them again. They are not the comrades I thought they were. They don't "have my back" as it were.

That's what I don't want my triad to know. I don't want them to know the growth I underwent in the adoption rent me away from my family. I don't want them to know how lonely I feel. I don't want them to know the sense of hurt, disgust, and bewilderment I carry. I don't want them to know because secretly I want my triad to like my family. If my triad likes my family then maybe I got it all wrong. I want to be wrong about them. I want the last two years to be a series of misunderstandings and miscommunications gone horribly wrong. If I'm wrong they didn't hurt me and they didn't ignore me. If I'm wrong they listened to me.

More of the Roundtable

A Great Visit

When first making the adoption plan for Festus with Ms Scarlet and Prof. Plum the question of how often to visit came up. Pretty quickly we settled on getting together once a month and an incidental contact that may happen in between was a bonus. Athena and I figured that we would want to see Ms Scarlet and Prof. Plum that often just to get a chance to have some kind of relationship with them before the actual placement. We never scheduled a regular time in the month for us to get together. We're all busy people and Prof. Plum has to travel a fair amount for his job. Similarly, in the regular school year, I have to work weekends sporadically so establishing the third Friday of every month just wasn't practical. It's worked out quite well. I don't think we've missed a month yet and the visits have continued to become more and more casual. Then came our visit at the beginning of June.

The wine, in truth, wasn't entirely to my taste. It was a little more acidic than I'm used to, which is strange for a lover of Chilean wines to say. That's the only negative thing I can say. It was a wonderful evening. Athena and I had the chance to see Festus crawl for the first time! He had been crawling for a while, we simply hadn't seen him do it before. He was very happy to show off this new accomplishment for us. Festus was quite the little showman that afternoon playing his musical instruments and grunting excitedly. For the first time in a couple months he seemed happy to spend some time interacting directly with Athena. The previous two visits he wasn't too happy about sitting with anyone who wasn't mom or dad. His coy glances made while chewing safely on Ms Scarlet's shoulder were very cute, but not as satisfying as the toothy (all four of them) grins we got this time.

But the best part was talking with Prof Plum and Ms Scarlet. There was, naturally, a fair amount of chatting about Festus and his latest fascinations. Some of the best conversation that evening, however, was about life in general. It felt less like an agreed upon child visitation and more like two couples getting together for dinner. I can report happily that we, all four of us, enjoy each others' company. Are we to the point where we call each other to make spurt of the moment plans to catch dinner? No. Do I think it's possible to get there? Yes.

It feels like the "hard work" of spending time with each other is really paying off. The awkwardness of the first getting-to-know-you conversations is melting away leaving friendship in its stead. Little by little, brick by brick, minute by minute, we're building a friendship of peers. We're building a family.