6

Another Visit Ends

They just left.

For the last fifteen minutes or so, Munchkin sat on my lap in the rocking chair. I held her to my chest, smelling the scent of shampoo, Spring and childhood in her curls. I felt her heart beating against my chest. I knew that heartbeat. I was the first to hear it. And yet, when I think of it, this is probably the first time that I’ve felt her heart beating against mine.

Those fifteen minutes were probably the longest stretch of time that I have ever held her. As a baby, once mobile, she was raring and ready to go. Being held still wasn’t really enjoyable for her or the person attempting to hold her. Throughout the years, she’s always been quick and busy. This time though, perhaps more than even during our visit in January, she just wanted to hug me. And sit with me. And be next to me. And spend special time with me.

It means the world to me.

And it means the world to my oldest son. As he stood at the window watching their car pull away, he started to cry. I told him that it was okay to be sad and asked him if he had words for what he was sad about. He then put on his Grumpy Voice and said that he didn’t want them to come over ever again. I asked if he was just feeling sad about them leaving. From behind a tearful, less grumpy voice, he said the just didn’t want them to leave when they came over next time. I asked if that meant he wanted them to stay forever and he said, “Yes.”

My heart broke. I feel the same.

It was a good visit. A very busy visit due to my performances. I wish we would have had more time to spend one-on-one with each of them but I’m also glad that they got to see me sing (even if they did attend the night when I had a cough stuck through all of my solos). I figure it will be very similar to D’s wedding in September; it will be a whirlwind of a weekend. It will be good but busy. Just like what I feel this weekend was for us.

I have many more stories. But right now, I think I just need to cry for a little while. My husband, being the amazing man that he is, is coming home from work early today to take care of supper and just let me have my sad moments. (By the way, combining end of a visit blues with the end of a performance blues makes for a very, very weepy me. Wow.) I know I’ll see them again in the near future… but my heart breaks every time a visit ends.

2

Learning with my Boy(s)

I know that it will be Mother’s Day here on the Eastern side of the United States in less than two hours. And I should either be moping or celebrating, as I tend to fluctuate between the two on the (dreaded) day. But, instead, I have a story to tell.

I’ve been talking about things revolving around Munchkin with my oldest son for the past two weeks. They’re coming out to visit this coming Friday. While we always talk about the Munchkin freely in this house, I step it up a notch as a visit approaches. I do this with other things like the day of a t-ball game. He doesn’t transition well because of his personality (which is totally my genetic fault). So, I tend to talk things up in big and exciting ways in hopes of getting him excited for whatever is at hand. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. So far, he’s always been excited for a visit from/with his sister.

In the truck on our way home from the March for Babies in Pittsburgh today, we were talking about things. The conversation lead us to this point.

Me: Well, D is Munchkin’s Mommy.
BigBrother: I didn’t know that.
Me: Yes. Just like I’m your mommy, D is Munchkin’s Mommy.
BigBrother: And she’s my sister?
Me: Yes. She grew in my uterus just like you and your brother both did. So, yes, she is your sister.
BigBrother: *absolute silence*
Me: And I’m her birth mommy.

That was the wrong thing to say. Because that sentence was followed with:

BigBrother: NO! YOU’RE MY MOMMY!

Nevermind that I’m also his brother’s mommy. But obviously the world freaked him out. I tried explaining it over again that D was Munchkin’s mommy-mommy and that I was “just” the Munchkin’s birth mommy. He wouldn’t have it. There were no tears. But he simply wasn’t going to accept that word. At all. So, I went a different route.

Me: Would you feel better if I said I was her birth mother?
BigBrother: Yes. You are Munchkin’s birf-muffer.

And so, in short, he likes me. This is good. When relating this story to D this evening, she let me know that the whole territorial “my mommy” thing is totally age appropriate. I figured it might be but this is my first experience with the issue. I think I handled it well, reassuring him that I am his mommy and that I’m not going anywhere and that I love him even when he’s mad or sad or worried or scared. He kept talking for far longer than he usually does on any one given topic so I know he was processing lots of things that, despite constant talk of his sister, are newer concepts to him as he continues to grasp vocabulary and bigger concepts each and every day.

Part of me thinks this story is cute. I like to be liked! I like to be loved! But at the same time, it catches me off guard. I have always said that I will accept whatever title the Munchkin wants to give me. I have always said that whatever she was comfortable with calling me, I would be comfortable with as well. Unfortunately, I never thought about the age-appropriate processing of my own, parented children and how they might react to different titles and names at different times in their lives. Having not yet lived through the territorial phase, I didn’t really know that children could react so vehemently to the word mommy. I understand it now, having watched his face and heard his words. His thoughts and fears are valid. I accept them and I want him to know that I am here. I will always be here. It’s what I do.

It’s just something in open adoption that I hadn’t quite considered. It’s not that I don’t consider my children when making decisions regarding our open adoption relationship. I do. Very much. I wait to tell my older son about a visit until I am 98% sure it is going to happen and we fall into the two week window. Any longer than that and not only is it too long for him to have to think about but plans that are farther than two weeks away can change more quickly than ones that fall within that two week window. (I, unfortunately, learned this by letting down the Munchkin once. It’s a lesson I won’t forget.) I make decisions regarding visits with their schedules in mind. I encourage my older son to be vocal about his sister when he wants to and I don’t really push it when he’d rather talk about t-ball. But I didn’t ever realize that the issue of titles, one that is so fraught with drama and angst everywhere else in the adoption world, would affect my three year old son on a core level.

I learn so much. Everyday. And sometimes it is through the eyes of a little boy who loves so much and so hard that I manage to find faith in humanity again and again.

9

You Can Dress It Up But It Is Still Sleazy

It’s been awhile since I called out any particular agency on this blog; not since I was all but solicited when I was pregnant with my youngest son. I’ve been kind of out of the loop as to what is going on agency wise as I had been focusing, pretty much solely, on my own healing and the immediate needs of our family. As such, what I came across today likely wouldn’t have been as shocking to me two years ago when I was deep in the mire of dealing with atrocities like it on a daily basis. But with the time off, I all but lost my lunch as I stepped through the disgusting muck of unethical, disrespectful deceptive lies and lies of omission being fed by a new site.

I first happened upon AdoptionFirst on twitter. You know, since I all but live there anymore. Their last public tweet at the time advertised to potential adoptive parents that there were three babies available and to visit their blog. I figured it would be something like the icky child listing mentioned on other blogs a few months ago but I clicked anyway. It is similar and worse all in the same stroke of the keyboard. Instead of advertising the newborn babies, we’re advertising their “birth mothers” by things like weight, height, nationality, eye color and hair color. You know, in case we’re really trying to shoot for that blonde haired, blue eyed baby… which is what they flash past the eyes of everyone on their even ickier website.

I really shouldn’t have clicked onto their website. I had red flags going off in my own head. I knew better. But I did it anyway. I almost cried. It goes against everything I have hoped for, prayed for and fought for since joining the battle for adoption reform. It starts with this:

Get Red Carpet Treatment with Adoptions First

What’s that, you ask? Well, it’s this:

* Round trip airfare from anywhere in the US to Los Angeles, California
* Airport pickup and transfer to your NEW HOME
* Tour of Greater Los Angeles: Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Malibu Beaches
* Housing, Medical, Legal, Shopping and other expenses

And more! That’s all part of their “Birth Mother Package.” No, really, that’s what they call it. And so I shouldn’t have been surprised to see how they describe open adoption on their website.

It is your choice to decide how open of an adoption you are comfortable with. You can choose the family and may also request yearly pictures, and you may also ask us for guidance during the selection process.

While some mothers may choose this path, the point is that this “law center” is not actively telling expectant mothers considering placement that they have the right to request a fully open adoption with visits. Neither our agency. We didn’t know that open adoptions like ours (and Dawn’s) were allowed to exist. We were told letters and pictures. Only. And that’s a semi-open adoption at best. Neglecting to tell mothers their full realm of choices is lying to them by omission. How are these mothers supposed to make a fully informed decision if they don’t have all of the information? Furthermore, with no mention of the fact that open adoptions are not legally binding in all states on their website, I have no reason to believe that they’d be telling a mother that once they had her locked inside their doors.

It gets scarier, of course.

After you give birth, it is our responsibility to make sure that the adoption process is complete and the baby is successfully placed with the loving family of your choice.

Read that again. There’s no mention that the mother has every right in the world to take that child home with her. They simply say, in different words, “We’ll do everything in our power to make sure that the child you give birth to is successfully placed for adoption.” They might as well say, “So we get paid” at the end of the sentence. There’s no concern about the length of time that a mother has before she is even legally allowed to sign the Termination of Parental Rights (TPR) or even a mention of how that time is a minimum amount and that she can take as long as she needs to make the decision she feels is best for both herself and her child. There’s no mention of anything regarding the time she has to revoke her decision. They’re fully focused on placing that child come hell or high water.

Sadly, they really push the “adoption is wonderful” card at the end.

In the end, you get to be able to go on with your life, on your terms, feeling at peace with the choices you made, playing a vital part in the miracle of adoption.

Because being a means to an end in the beautiful miracle of adoption will automatically erase any issues of grief and loss. You won’t miss your child if you have that knowledge, right? You won’t be upset if this agency stomped all over your rights. You won’t feel cheated or wronged when you find out that you have a right to your own legal representation. You won’t feel lied to when you find out that you could have had an adoption that involved visits. You won’t feel deceived when the adoptive family closes the adoption without warning or reason. You will just feel happy because you got to be involved!

I get so discouraged when I find agencies and sites like these. I keep thinking that we, as an adoption world, have made progress. Have we? Have we really taken any steps forward? I mean, logically, I know that we have. I know that there are agencies out there who are actively interested in ethical adoption. I know that there are families out there who are honestly seeking to do the right thing by their child, by themselves and by their child’s adoptive families. I know that there are adoptees out there that are gaining access to their birth certificates and helping others fight the same fight by bringing aboard birth parents and adoptive parents alike. I know that things are happening. I know that we’re making slow progress but progress all the same. But when a site like this shows up on my radar, I take it as a personal assault.

What can I be doing more of to make a bigger difference? What am I “not” doing that could make the difference if I was doing it? Who do I need to talk to? Where do I need to go? And when, oh when, will the changes really start to be evident across the board. When will the whole of society be able to look at a site like that and say, “What the heck?”

When will we see mothers being respected? When will we see adoptive families being counseled about how to handle the difficulties of open adoption without being told, “Well, just close it”? When will be able to see the children honored by honoring both sets of their parents, adoptive and birth, by making sure they are all treated with the most respect possible?

When will I get to stop writing these posts?