About that oncoming train...

The closer I get to an event, the more anxious I get for it to arrive. And who doesn't experience this? Does a bride lose interest in the wedding as it approaches? Does a new job lose its lustre the week before orientation? Are children ever as wound up with anticipation about Christmas in September as they are on Christmas Eve? (when Christmas transforms from a season of wonders and delight into an endurance event, a triathalon of cooking, shopping and decorating, Christmas Eve becomes the first moment in a month in which a person can sit and breathe, knowing that if it isn't done already, it's not going to happen, but that is not the point here, and I ask, dear reader, for you to remember back to a simpler, happier time, when you were nine years old, wearing footie pajamas, and Christmas was a magical, wondrous time, all thanks to somebody else doing all the freakin' work).

As our homestudy nears its completion, it is natural for our feelings of anticipation to heighten, but when you are adopting, when you are going through the home study process, the important thing to remember is: nothing about you is normal, natural, or right.

Expectant biological parents may refer to their incipient offspring unit by any terminology they please, and everyone coos and sighs over how cute their pet name is (my favorite name, given by friends to their incoming infant: Particle). We have been thinking and talking to each other and friends for months about our approaching adoption, wouldn't it be weird if we didn't have a name we've given to the Kiddo? And there it is, he is The Kiddo. It's an expression of affection, endearment, not specific to any age, gender, or personality trait. And apparently, it's wrong.

Says the therapist: "this is not 'the kid' you're talking about, this is your child." "My child" is, by the way, the only acceptable nomenclature - "my son" is right out. If I say "I don't know him yet, I don't know who he is, what his history is, what he's like, what I'll love best about him, what he'll like about me, or even if he'll ever feel anything toward me but hostility, but he's my son and it is painful to me to think of him going through this holiday season not knowing that there's a real couple out there who wants him and wants him to come home, even if he doesn't fully believe that somebody wanting him is possible" - and that's close to a quote - the reaction is "why do you say 'son?' Would you be unable to accept a daughter?"

So why do we say son? I am a working mother, B is a stay-at-home father, and over 80% of children in foster care have experienced sexual abuse - often while in foster care, at the hands of other children. I trust B implicitly, but would a girl, of any age, who has been abused by men, be well served by being alone with a man for several hours a day? Neither does it seem fair to B, to either put him at risk of a false accusation or to subject him to being the primary caregiver for a child whose anxiety is exacerbated by his presence. Instead, we focus on the positives, that we have a great male role model who could be of great benefit to a boy who has been without one. Says the therapist: "when you explain it that way it's clear that there's logical thought behind it, but when you just refer to your child as your son, it can make people concerned." John Cullum can holler It's a Boy and then turn on a dime when his granddaughter is born and it's endearing; adoptive parents, don't think you can be like normal parents and that will be ok, because you can't and it won't.

The acceptable adoptive parent fully realizes the future relationship that he or she may be denied by a third party before it ever happens, fully engaging with the unknown child, not as a person but as a role. That is, the adoptive parent must envision having a child but not knowing a person; the adoptive parent is fully disengaged from any anticipation of the qualities their child might have, only what behaviors he or she will engage in. Adoptive parents are expected to be like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, knowing nothing about the children they will be caring for except that there are seven of them. Also, instead of meeting the children the day after she's told about them, in this musical, Julie Andrews goes through a six month screening and training montage (even Rocky had a montage!) in which she is expected to remain incurious about and detached from the children she was told about in scene 1.

Do biological parents get tut-tutted if they let slip that they vacillate from day to day between excitement and unsurety about the big event looming in their lives? If they express a hope that infant arrives before this holiday or that anniversary, does this excite criticism? My youngest brother was born one day after what would have been our great-grandfather's 100th birthday. If the standards applied to adoptive parents were applied to biological ones, My father's thought before the birth that it would be nice if Danny arrived on the actual day would raise concern among professionals, as possibly foretokening an inability to bond with his son, should he not measure up to his parent's ideals.

Maybe it's just this particular therapist. When we talked about our feelings about fertility and our lack thereof, I was emphatic that not only do I not endow fertility with feelings of self-worth, I conciously refuse to do so, dating back to long before we had any idea that infertility would be an issue. I explained that, to me, life is full of paths and producing offspring is just one of those paths, one that not everybody chooses, that my choice to adopt is not one that I see as a second choice to biological parenthood, but as an exciting life's work in its own right, that, even if creating a new child is as important, valuable or meaningful as opening a new life to an underappreciated child, that biological parenthood cannot help but be more ordinary, more commonplace, less interesting, less exciting than the path that we are on. I told her that, as I see it now, had we become biological parents, it would have been a hindrance to pursuing something that I now see as my life's mission. Says the therapist (with urgency): "but you can see how other people wouldn't feel that way?" Thinks me: "so the f--- what?"

My G-d, does she want us to conform. She's not in any insurance network and doesn't file claims herself. When I called to set up the initial appointment she was very concerned about whether our insurance would cover our sessions. I told her since she's out of network, the coverage would be minimal and since it's for an assessment, not for therapy, unlikely that they'll cover it at all, but even if that's the case, it doesn't really matter, since she's the person the agency told us to see to get assessed and cleared for adoption and we consider this to be simply one of the costs of the process. This bothered her. She was reluctant to book the appointment without me checking with the insurance company first. And then, at our first session, she wanted to go over it again. Yesterday she seemed to finally give up on the insurance and move on to parking - she had sent an email that said that parking was available in the lot across the street, but come into the building and check with the doorman about which spaces in the lot are ok and which ones aren't... so we just did on the street parking a block away and enjoyed the walk. This was apparently not acceptable. Unsolicited: "Where did you park?" I just found a space up the street. "Because you know, they ticket here if you aren't careful." Yes, I know, I went to the university two blocks east of here and I lived for seven years in an apartment about a mile west. "You don't care if you get a ticket?" I parked a block west of here, where you don't need a permit. "But there's a lot across the street." Yes, I saw that, I decided to park a block away and walk. I'd been driving for an hour and I knew that I'd be sitting in here for an hour and I felt like stretching my legs. "On your way out, check with the doorman about which spaces in the lot you can use next time."

B expresses that as a result of his childhood, he is hypervigilant about physical threats, and that's not his most attractive or engaging quality now, but it's quirky and interesting and when the zombie apocalypse finally gets off its butt and shows up, we'll all be grateful that B has an office stocked with gas masks and geiger counters (both kinds!) Whatever, he's very aware of physicality and works out a lot because he wants to feel strong. Says the therapist: "is a thirteen year old boy right for you? He might get aggressive." Says B: "I'm 220 pounds and an ex-Army Ranger." Says me: "so, in her world, risk awareness increases the risk? It's like, if somebody told her that he's a very cautious driver and always comes to a complete stop at intersections, she'd ask, if he thinks that driving isn't completely safe, why he ever takes the highway?"

I engage life with a sense of humor and an appreciation for the absurd. When people behave offensively or intrusively, I tend give my inner Dorothy Parker a little more rein, redirecting instead of confronting the offensive party. Says the therapist: "your sense of humor can be off-putting. Try to stop, reflect, and control yourself before you make those remarks." I remark on the general efficacy of unsolicited advice. Says the therapist: "that's the sort of thing you should stop saying."

I HATE this process, where everything is torn apart, second guessed, judged, where we live for months in anticipation, not being sure if, in the end, we will be found acceptable by this agency as prospective adoptive parents. We are living a year in limbo. Says the therapist: "you seem anxious and very keyed into what you think are delays, but six months really isn't very long to be waiting. I'm concerned that this child will introduce stress that will cause you to experience anxiety." The snappy comeback I didn't deliver would have made her happy that it was not delivered, if she knew it existed in the first place, which she couldn't because she'd told me to keep it to myself. I think I'm making progress.

Back in the Saddle Again

I really couldn't bear to look at this blog over the past year. It's been an agonizing holding pattern. Looking at the date on the last entry, I realize that it's almost exactly a year to the day after I wrote that that we finally made an offer on a house. And today, we got the notice that we're clear to close! We sign the papers on Tuesday afternoon and start picking up where we left off.

Has it been a lost year? Yes and no. I've had a lot going on at work, and work has been going very well for me, but I don't think that would have been materially different if things had gone smoothly a year ago. It's made a vast deal of difference, for the better, in B's life though. He's progressed a lot with how to deal with stress and how to recognize and cope with his co-dependent tendencies that I don't think would have been as easy if he was trying to parent. During this last year, he actually stated a preference as though it was no big deal. Which was a very big deal.

We got a much better deal on the house we ended up with than we could have on the house we had initially wanted. And we got a fantastic deal on the loan. Financially, this was a very good delay.

Balance that against the guilt from knowing that some kid, somewhere out there, spent an extra year waiting for a forever family. I'm able to be rational about it now, but I suspect that when some kid becomes my kid there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. On the inside.

B has asked for a little time to get settled in before we start the home study, and I can't say no. My youngest brother is getting married at the end of September and we'll have a full house for the week of the wedding, plus we've volunteered to host the rehearsal dinner/backyard barbecue, and B has said that as soon as the wedding is done and behind us that he's good to go to start moving on getting kids home, but he thinks it's a bad idea to compound the stress. And he's right, but I hate to admit it.

That's the drama-light version of this past year. We waited around and worked a lot, then we got a house. The end.

Oh, and there's a new puppy. And she's adorable.

Grumpykins

I've been in pain every time I walk (and quite often when I'm not walking) for weeks now, thanks to this wart on my heel that went ballistic and had to be removed, which meant cutting out a big chunk o' heel. It's the limping that's getting to me, throwing everything else out of whack, straining tendons and joints. I'm miserable and stressed to the breaking point, crying a lot over nothing, insomnia, etc. So, if I'm sounding extra-bitchy... that's why.

The good news is: it's healing. This is not the way things are always going to be, this is temporary, and recovery is on its way. We're focusing on that. The other good news is that the husband that drives me up the wall is also the same husband who has been taking care of me, bringing me things, changing the dvd, getting me food, and just being within earshot whenever I take a shower, just in case I slip and fall... everyone should be so lucky as to have a B like my B.

Security and Personhood

Well this is just appalling.

SAFFORD, Ariz. — Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on — black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt — the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade.

An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.

The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.”

Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.

There's a lot of hyperbole from both mother and daughter in the article - the mom's lawyer calls this "the worst nightmare for any parent," Ms. Redding describes the incident as "ruin[ing] her life" but all the same, this is a clear case of a lack of respect for a kid's boundaries. And I find it worrisome.

First of all, I find it worrisome because these kids won't always be kids. They'll be adults in a very short time, more to the point, they'll be voters, and the people who grew up in this drug war zero-tolerance atmosphere in schools will someday outnumber those of us who grew up in the good old days when the Fourth Amendment applied to everybody.

Once we're out of school, most of us have limited contact with the same degree of intrusive authority that exists in the public school system, and for many people who do not have their dignity systematically threatened it is possible to believe that dignity is an earned state, not a contracted right. This is to say, unless we ourselves have had the misfortune to be the subjects of unjust intrusion into our personal effects, we tend to believe that such intrusions are generally justified and that if you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear from the State.

How much is this compounded when a person has learned to expect throughout their childhood not that an expectation of some privacy, a degree of respect by society for a boundary of the personal, is negotiable in certain specific circumstances where society has compelling reasons, but it does not exist at all. Because certainly, if society can argue that the lack of a record of prior wrongdoing by a 13 year old girl is only proof that the girl hasn't been caught doing anything wrong, then we have entered the condition of the Paranoid State. If that same society allows a 13 year old girl to be strip searched without her parent's permission or even knowledge, in the pursuit of a dose of Advil, then we must conclude either that children's persons are violable by the state, or else that the notion of a "compelling social reason" has been redefined out of meaning. Is it any surprise, when our children grow up in an environment in which they have no rights the State is bound to respect, that they themselves have no respect for the rights earlier generations considered inalienable?

I mention this here because when we talk about kids who have experienced trauma, we talk a lot about boundaries. Children whose boundaries have been violated - either emotional or physical - cease to understand where lines are properly drawn. And so they may flash their private parts because they no longer understand that there is any such thing as a "private" part of themselves. Much of the work of a fost/adopt parent is to help the child re-learn where her appropriate boundaries are. And this is a challenge - how, for instance, do you deal with a child who has experienced sexual abuse and who now refuses to submit to medical examinations? He needs to receive proper health care, but he also needs to feel secure in his own body, and these needs are, for the moment, in conflict with each other.

Medical attention is a case where the only way to administer it is to threaten a child's boundaries; schooling is not another such case. If we live in a country in which the we allow schools to neither recognize nor respect children's boundaries, perhaps our traumatized children are in the right after all. The world works the way they think it does, and we are hopelessly naive to think that a child can survive in it without taking off her clothes whenever and for whatever reason an adult tells her to.

In Which I Relate News of No Importance to Anyone by Myself

The release of Sims 3 has been pushed back from February 20 to June 2.

I. am seriously. pissed off.

Will I be playing Sims in June? No. I will be buying and moving into my first house in June, or getting ready to buy and move, or having just bought and moved and now looking for someplace to sit, and I will be knee deep in the selection and placement process besides. And, while work right now at this moment is pretty lax, we will be paying the price for this wait-and-hurry-up strategy starting around - three guesses - June. There will be Lots Of Shit going on in June. Lots of Very Important Real Life Shit (or LOVIRLS, for short). That is what June is going to be like. February, March, April and the first week or two of May, those are going to be very boring, anticipatory months. Boring, anticipatory months that were going to be whiled away by playing with my new computer game. Which is now delayed until... JUNE.

I. am seriously. pissed off.