Life Lessons from the Adoption Trenches

If you are an adoptive parent, or are thinking about taking the plunge, there are no doubt a few things this unique life experience will soon teach you that weren't mentioned in the instruction manual, if there is such a thing.  You've heard the horror stories (then they took the child away...) and the miracles (they were on the waiting list like three minutes!) and the complete nonsense (now that you're on the waiting list, you'll definitely get pregnant!), but still you have no idea what you are in for until you've lived through it, and everyone's experience is different, even if they've adopted more than once.  But here are a few strange truths most adoptive parents discover along the way:

• People really do mean well, even if they are nosy, ignorant, and have no concept of tact, at least most of them do.  I am not sure which is worse: people that think they know everything about adoption because they know someone who has adopted or they read an article once or the people that ask really awkward questions, loudly, in front of 57 strangers.  Your entire life story and that of your kids is now fair game to any and all comers, at least as far as they are concerned.  And just wait until you start getting advice about every aspect of the process and even parenting tips from people who have never adopted or even had kids.  Just think of it as another exercise in patience and a chance to develop your social skills on the topic, just try not to physically hurt anyone.

• No matter what you tell them, there are just some people that will never 'get it,' and insist that their ideas, opinions, or stories hold water, even if they have no basis in reality or applicability to your situation.  Don't waste your time or frustration on these people, just smile and nod then change the subject or find a convenient excuse to leave the situation.  Then go home and have a good laugh.

• You may feel like a criminal, a scoundrel, or have an overwhelming sense of guilt; for some weird reason, adoptive parents are sometimes viewed and occasionally treated, I hope unwittingly, by certain individuals, as if they lingered on the shady side of virtue.  How dare you 'take' a child away from its real parents!  You are not a kidnapper, no matter how that grumpy nurse or overly zealous social worker make you feel.  While the circumstances surrounding the adoption, whatever they be, that sunder a child from its biological parents are certainly grievous and sad, they are by no means your fault or illegal and no one should be making you feel that they are.

• You feel like you could work for the FBI or some other top secret agency after all the paper work, interviews, and background checks.  You really begin to wonder why everyone else can just go to the hospital, pop out a kid, and go home, no questions asked and why you still have to stand in line at the airport in your stocking feet after all that?  Shouldn't you at least get a card that says 'All Clear' or some such?

• Social workers are human too, and most of them are not out to destroy your chances of parenthood.  And yes, they will undoubtedly find something questionable in your life history that will make them question your fitness for parenthood, but after enough remedial classes, counseling sessions, and reading assignments, you just might make the cut, maybe, I hope…relax, you'll be fine.  Just try to relax and get through the home study, which is about like saying 'relax' to the person about to undergo a colonoscopy.  They tend to be a jumpy lot, and rightfully so as they are responsible for placing a child in a new family, but they do tend to flinch and gape at things that most other people hardly notice.  Let's just say I never mentioned that our son slept in his carseat the first four months of life as he absolutely refused to sleep in his crib.  Had he been our biological child, it would be an amusing anecdote, but as a recently placed adoptive child, our social worker might very well have had a heart attack and we'd be reading a stack of books on SIDS and flat-head syndrome and none of us would get any sleep for the next four months, which is obviously the far better alternative.

• You will occasionally be jealous, frustrated, and feel sorry for yourself as you go through life, especially if you have suffered through infertility along the way, and nobody will understand.  You are not a horrible person, you are human.  Becoming a parent is a desire wired into your very soul and when you watch others, especially those who abuse or neglect their kids, do so with ease, such a reaction is quite natural.  This does not mean you should wallow in the sensation or allow it to influence your behavior for the worse, but it will happen.  Baby showers/announcements, expectant friends, the maternity section at your favorite store, Mother's/Father's Day, any holiday except Groundhog's Day, stories about abused/neglected kids, unhelpful comments from friends/family/strangers, did I mention Gender Reveal Parties?, and a plethora of other triggers all seemingly designed to ruin your mood/day are lurking just around the corner.  And while you learn to deal with the grief, even after you adopt, it will never quite go away.

• Wherever they came from, whatever their age, nationality, gender, or whatever, they are and will always be your kids and could be no dearer had you borne them yourself, even if it wasn't 'love at first sight,' which it never is.  Even when they 'hate' you and pine for their 'real' parents; every parent puts up with this, biological children just don't have the convenient option of flinging their birth parents in your face, but they'll find something else with which to batter your emotions.  Welcome to parenthood!

• No matter how awful, dreadful, tedious, and expensive, no matter how hard you swear it won't happen again, it just might.  This parent thing is kind of addictive.

Pigs and pearls

Do not give dogs what is sacred, neither cast your pearls before swine lest they trample them underfoot and then turn again and rend you.  Matthew 7:6.

I've never liked working with pigs, while they are intelligent and can be agreeable creatures when they choose to be, many of them have a nasty side and woe betide anyone caught in the pen with them at such a time.  They can become downright vicious, and some of the larger specimens can reach several hundred pounds or more in weight, most all of it muscle.  I was supposed to catch a little pig and treat some minor ailment, but he scooted away and dashed into a pen containing several large sows, which were barking at us in agitation, needless to say, the little pig made good on his escape as I was not about to go into the pen with those angry sows.  The verse above uses a very powerful metaphor, but it warns not of pigs, but of people.  Swine can only rend the flesh, people will break your heart.

This was a very hard lesson for me to learn, being by temperament very tender hearted and wanting to please everyone, which in my foolish idealistic head, I somehow thought possible!  But life has taught me otherwise.  Are we to be hard hearted and callous towards our fellow men?  Certainly not, but there comes a time when we need to quit doing everything we can to help or please someone who sees no reason to change their behavior and even throws your good intentions scornfully back in your face.  We must be wise with whom we entrust our hearts.

Reupholstering an office chair

This is the best office chair in the world, except for the flaking/cracked fake leather and a seat worn nearly to the padding.  Being the cheapskate er economical person that I am (and loving this chair), I really had no wish to buy a new one.  So the answer was simple: google.  You can even learn to do surgery online (not recommended, but possible), so why not recovering an office chair?  I found a couple examples online, borrowed a staple gun, bought some unassuming black outdoor fabric (I wanted something in an obnoxiously blue pattern but my husband has no flair for the exotic), and got to work.  Every chair is different, so a step by step tutorial is certainly not helpful, but I took the beast apart enough to recover the arms and seat, secured it with the staple gun, then reassembled (yes, it was a bit putzy and annoying) but the results speak for themselves.  Not bad for $10.

Second chances

It's different this time, but then, it's not.  The ache, the longing, the impatience, the hope, the despair, the excitement, and yes, the fear are all there: old friends, good and bad, that haven't changed a whit.  Will it happen?  What if it doesn't?  What if it does?  What if there are complications?  I suppose every adoptive parent struggles and communes with these same emotions, be it the first or the fifteenth time.  But I wonder what it is like for 'normal' people, if there is such a thing.  The last time I went through this wait, I was working more than full time, suffering from a medication reaction that left me feeling like I had the flu 24/7, and was still suffering under the assumption that I had had a 'normal' childhood when in truth I was so emotionally battered from constant abuse that I couldn't even admit it to myself.  Mix that in with the stress and emotional turmoil of a first time adoption and you can imagine the fun.

The adoption itself went fairly smoothly, though I thought it was a pretty rocky process at the time, but that was because of me, not so much the prevailing circumstances.  I had such a longing to be a mother, the wait drove me to distraction, but I had no idea why I was so desperate, it wasn't as if I had wanted kids or a family all my life.  As far as I knew, family life sucked, but thankfully there was something deeper, wiser, that knew better than my ignorant self at the time and left me open to the idea, even if I did not understand why.  Now, on the downward slope of dealing with my abusive past (I hope), having experienced the joys of an actually happy family, and dispensing both with my career and physical maladies, I find myself waiting again.  I am not nearly so desperate this time, having a child and family already, but the ache, the longing, and the impatience are still there.

But what I wonder is, how much of this longing is tangled up in my grisly past?  How much is hope for my family's future and how much is the desire to right past wrongs?  I never knew happy families existed until my own was established.  I did not know how wretched was my childhood.  Seeing my son's joy and wonder and excitement as he discovers each new day is enough to break my own heart (formerly rather cynical towards all such things) with sheer joy.  How much of this longing for a family of my own is based not in the hope of the future but in the heartbreak of the past?  What is it like to come from a 'normal' family and have relatives, particularly parents, that rejoice with you?  What is it like to wait when your heart has not been broken and trampled underfoot and then pieced carefully back together yet is so fragile you fear it might break at the slightest touch?  I guess I'll never know, but I am glad to have this chance to be a mother again, when my poor brain isn't fogged with the horrors of the past or the distractions of the present.  A second chance at life and love and joy, something I could not even begin to imagine as a little girl, unloved and unwanted and sorely reminded of that fact on a daily basis.

Cultural taboos

Have you ever noticed how all the evil villainesses in the fairy tales are always stepmothers and never the female biological parent?  It seems there is some sort of cultural taboo, even in our own crazy modern world where the very definition of family has gone topsy turvy, against speaking or thinking ill of your mother.  A father may be abusive or a jerk or abandon his family and no one thinks to doubt the tale, but what happens when mommy is the villain?  Those nearest and dearest to you make excuses or don't believe you or think you are exaggerating.  And you know what?  They are probably right, after all, a mother couldn't possibly do that to her child.  So I'll just go back to blaming myself, hating myself, and knowing that I deserve it; it's not her, it's me.

But mothers are as human as anyone, having a kid doesn't magically make them goddesses, above mortal failings.  After we brought our son home, he was crying and wouldn't be soothed and I remember sitting down with him and crying too, because there were such strange feelings swirling in my heart that I could put no name to.  It was at that moment I realized what a mother's love was and was nearly in a panic that I had never felt it from my own mother.  What was wrong with me?  But it wasn't me, it was her.  I've spent my entire life blaming myself, making excuses for her, and pretending everything is okay.  I've quit pretending, I've quit blaming myself, but how do I talk about this to anyone?  Even those closest to me did not believe it at first, of course, I hardly believe it myself.

It is both freeing and desperately sad, for I look back at my blighted childhood and every special day that wasn't and wonder what it might have been like to have a mother, a happy family, to surround me and celebrate with me.  I can't bring back the past, but I no longer need to let her cast her dour shadow over all my future celebrations.  It is strange to grieve for something that never was.  I will never cry at her funeral, but I will mourn now for the mother I never had.  It is easy enough to explain grief when a loved one has died or you've suffered some other obvious loss, but how do you explain this sort of pain, this sort of loss?  Because it isn't possible, I'm sure your mother loved you, it was only a misunderstanding, right?

No, it was not and I am only finally admitting it, even to myself.  And it won't take much to push me back into that fog-shrouded mire of self-doubt, self-loathing, and knowing that above all mortals, I deserve to be most miserable because I am so awful even my own mother can't love me.  Do your sisters, wives, daughters, and friends a favor, if ever they tell you that their mother was abusive: believe them, support them, listen without judgement or giving banal advice, just listen and believe it is possible.  It is time to stop pretending.  It isn't your fault.  No one deserves this, most especially a child at the hands of their mother.  But there is also hope, healing, and a future, whatever your past, but the first step is admitting it and to stop blaming yourself.

It's Tradition!

During our first adoption attempt, our social worker kept telling us the importance of creating family traditions; I heard what she said but filed it away under 'things not vital to sanity at the moment.'  Now that the object of that first attempt is approaching his third anniversary of being legally our son, that bit of advice seems far more important.  We grabbed lunch with my in-laws at a pizza place after the court hearing finalizing our adoption and have not really celebrated Finalization Day since, mostly because life was crazy and up until this point, our son really didn't care one way or the other whether a certain day was 'special' or not.  Now that he's old enough to appreciate that fact, it is time to party, or so me thinks.

My family didn't really celebrate anything growing up, not because it was proscribed religiously or for anything half so interesting, but tragically because family, and we kids in particular, really weren't all that important.  It was certainly weird when I married a man whose family celebrates everything, except maybe Groundhog's day.  Birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Anniversaries, Mother/Father's day, you name it, it all mattered.  Comparing my childhood to that of my husband, there is no question that celebration and joy are far better than anything I experienced growing up and I definitely want that to be a part of our family tradition.

But how do you celebrate an adoption finalization?  Baby showers and weddings are all pretty straight forward, as are graduations, birthdays, and various holidays.  I'll just have to make it up as I go along.  First we are going to put on coordinating clothes and take a bunch of silly family pictures; green shirts anyone?  Then we'll spend the day exploring a scenic natural area (in said green shirts) and then stop for lunch at the same restaurant (same restaurant, different town) wherein we celebrated the original finalization.  Sounds like a dream come true for a three year old boy!  Viva la tradition!

Wisdom

We were at a wedding dinner with lots of little kids running around, and as we're trying to adopt again, I asked our son (currently 3) if he wanted a brother or a sister.  After a thoughtful pause, he glanced at the cake table and said solemnly, 'me want dessert.'  Can't argue with that!  I should have asked if he wanted white or chocolate cake.