But once we were back home and the boys were asleep and the calm settled down and around, I picked up the phone to call Dee back. She had texted a Happy Mother’s Day message earlier in the cacophony, and I wanted to return the sentiment.

She was busy with JD and reading, so we exchanged a quick “Happy Mother’s Day” and “I love you,” and then she handed the phone off to the Munchkin. After the “hellos” and “how are yous?” and “did it rain all day theres?,” a slight pause happened — as does when talking to children on the phone — and she said, “Happy Mother’s Day.”

I had a brief moment where I had to stare at the corner of the ceiling and blink rapidly — but instead of trying not to laugh, it was to keep from becoming a complete blubbering mess on the phone with this amazing, fabulous, best little girl ever. Once I composed myself, the conversation continued as you might imagine with some “thank yous” and “I miss yous” and “I love yous.” Then she asked to speak to my husband so she could tell him Happy Birthday. He also had a moment. She is, quite honestly, the best little girl on the planet. I don’t care what you say.

There are little moments along this open adoption journey that stand out as big, important things. Maybe not to the rest of the world, but to my heart. My daughter told me Happy Mother’s Day.

I can count this year as not only having survived, but having enjoyed Mother’s Day. That, in itself, is a huge milestone.

BigBrother was climbing on a toy talking to one of his girl friends. She adored him and had been adoring him all week. Oblivious to her batting eyelashes and general admiration, he treated her like he treats all of his friends: with incessant chatter. She mentioned something about her brother and something about LittleBrother.

There was an audible pause. I looked up from my reader, my eyes hidden behind my reflective glasses. I saw him; he was searching her face, trying to see if she was open to what he had to say. I heard his intake of breath.

I braced myself against the tree.

“I have a sister too.”

Another pause.

“She lives far away though. She’s older than me.”

My heart simultaneously swelled with both pride and anxiety. Look at him! Listen to him! But… but. What would this nearly five-year-old girl say in response to that? In their years of knowing one another, she had never seen nor met nor heard of this alleged sister. I started running through the list of questions she might ask: Well, why isn’t she here? Why does she live far away? Does that mean you don’t love her? I thought of pointed things she might say: No you don’t. She’s not real. Quit making up stories.

Instead, this little girl looked at my son and said, “That’s cool.” And then launched into a lengthy discussion about climbing trees.

I exhaled, loudly. I wasn’t even aware that I had been holding my breath.

His very first experience putting himself on the line about his sister went well. It went better than well. His words were accepted at face value. They were not questioned. They were not dismissed. He has a sister. She lives somewhere else. And that’s okay.

(Though it made me question why adults can’t be as accepting as children.)

I was so happy for him. It could have gone differently. It could have gone poorly. But instead, he now has the belief that people will accept his family for what it is… which won’t always be the truth, but it’s better to start out the game thinking the best of things than the worst of things. He doesn’t have reason to doubt himself, his sister or me. Yet. That will come. In time.

Before I went back to reading, I smiled at that beautiful little girl. She will forever stick out in my mind as the first child BigBrother told about his sister. She will forever stick out in my mind as the shining example of how we should react when we’re told about adoption or other non-traditional family situations. I then shot my son the sign language for “I love you,” which he returned before he tried to tell the little girl that she should be careful climbing the tree because she could break her leg and she’d have to go in an ambulance and did she know that his daddy works in an ambulance and a fire truck and on and on and on as he chattered her precious little ear off… sharing his life without fear.

This morning, over breakfast at our little table, BigBrother asked a question.

“Do you think Munchkin will ever come to camp with us?”

Mind you, I had consumed some coffee before he woke up but not enough to deal with in-your-face grief and loss. I took another sip of coffee.

“Well, probably not, buddy.”

He took another bite of cereal, staring out the window.

“But why not?”

I stared out the window too. No one was out and about yet; the morning “up-and-at-em” bell hadn’t even sounded yet. I stared at a cottage across the sidewalk. I watched a hummingbird make its way to my mom’s flowers that she has planted along that side of our cottage. I looked up at the sky and wondered when this heat will break. I looked at anything but my inquisitive five-and-a-half year old.

“Well, different families have different things that they do in the summer. Munchkin is going to Canada soon to visit The Squatch’s parents with her family.”

Another bite of cereal.

“But isn’t the Munchkin part of our family too?”

I told you that I hadn’t had enough coffee for this conversation.

I looked at him. Big brown eyes looked back at me: my eyes, her eyes, his eyes. Another sip of coffee.

“Of course. She’s your sister and she always will be. But they’re busy in the summer like we are. You know, like we haven’t been home much at all this summer? With vacation and trips to YiaYia and Papau’s house and Nina’s house? And camping trips? And now we’re here at camp for ten days. It’s good to be busy in the summer.”

More cereal. More crunching.

“I just think she’d have fun at camp with us.”

More coffee. More inner breaking.

“I know, buddy. Me too”

You see, when we took the boys to see Disney on Ice, our oldest son exclaimed, “This is DISNEY WORLD! I LOVE DISNEY WORLD!” And he keeps talking about how he went to Disney World. Who am I to rain on the kid’s parade, you know? I mean, look at the kid’s face:

We have prolonged this white lie because they don’t watch television with commercials, including the Disney channel (I know, I’m a horrid mother). Eventually he’s going to figure it out, tell his brother and then our jig will be up.

Alas. I’m running with it while I can.

Enter a conversation the Munchkin had with Dee last week.

Dee asked Munchkin and JD if they wanted to go to Disney World again with their female cousins. JD replied in the affirmative, but Munchkin had other ideas.

Munchkin: Well, I do want to go to Disney World, but not with my female cousins.
Dee: Who do you want to go with?
Munchkin: It’s a secret, but they’re boys.
Dee: Munchkin, we don’t really have any friends with boys.
Munchkin: Mommy, they’re my brothers!
Dee: Oh, duh.

Dee said that sounded fun and “maybe next year,” referring to 2012.

Well, you see, I have been hoping and slowly planning to take the boys when they are 4 and 6, which will be in 2012. My husband isn’t 100% in agreement with next year as he really wants our youngest son to remember the trip. But I’m working on him. I think he’ll be most grumpy that we’ll likely have to forego our annual beach trip to go to the real Disney World. I’m sure he’ll ask if we just can’t go to another Disney on Ice type thing.

Uncertainty on the exact “when” of it all, I cannot explain how exciting it feels — in the deepest depths of my core — to know that I’ll be taking my sons (and my husband!) to Disney World for the first time … with my daughter and her awesome family present. I get excited just thinking about it.

Of course, as it’s a year — or two if my husband has his way — away, I need to make sure my kids believe that they’ve been Disney World. So hush up, will ya?

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But what can you do, right? I mean, you could go ahead and take a later flight. But what if that flight had octuplets? Right? So we all sucked it up and waited to board the plane.

I had the joy (a term I use loosely) of standing behind two younger men while waiting for our section to load the plane. I call them younger not just because of their looks — they did appear young, but so does my husband — but because of the way in which they spoke. Their slang, their references and just their general vernacular. They were also geeks, of course, talking about CES events. So, yes, I had the joy of standing behind two young male geeks.

I wasn’t exactly eavesdropping. Early on in their conversation, I even chuckled at something they said regarding CES and all things geekery. They knew I was listening, and it wasn’t as if they were speaking in hushed tones.

Soon their conversation turned toward the subject on everybody’s minds: The babies. They talked about the worries on everyone else’s minds. Noise and long flight and all that jazz. And then they started making jokes about the family. And asking questions  and making statements that kind of made me see stars — and not the good kind.

Young Geek #1: “I mean, what do you do? You’re in there for the sonogram thing and the nurse tells you there are six. Can you, like, point to four to get rid of? Do they do that?”

Young Geek #2: “You could just give five of them away, like for adoption, right?”

You can imagine what my face probably looked like and envision the smoke seeping from my ears. I didn’t say anything. But I wanted to.

I wanted to tell them about the crazy hurt of infertility and how no parent wakes up one morning and things, “Gee, I think I’ll just take fertility drugs and endure IVF in hopes of having six in one pop.” And I wanted to tell them that, yes, selective reduction does exist and no parent chooses that route without an agonizing internal back-and-forth. And for those that don’t choose that route, the ones who carry them all, it’s not as if it’s a big freaking trip to the circus. It’s dangerous; it’s life-threatening for all at times. And as for the men and women who choose to place babies for adoption, it’s not an afterthought or a, “Gee, I don’t really want this baby” shrug-off. It’s also agonizing; a lifetime of grief, of loss, of wondering, of missing a piece.

But I also just wanted to get home, take off my work clothes, find my jammies and sleep in my own bed. So I kept my mouth shut, gritted my teeth and sat somewhere far away from the young geeks.

I’m sure those two young geeks won’t think twice about the words they exchanged. Until maybe, someday, they’re dealing with crap of their own. Maybe they’ll find themselves unexpectedly expecting with their partner and someone will suggest adoption and they’ll flip out. Or maybe they’ll have trouble conceiving and face the world of fertility drugs. Or maybe their partner will be on bed rest due to a crazy complicated pregnancy in which it simply isn’t certain if the babies — or the mother — will survive. Maybe it will be all there on the line and they’ll remember, just for a moment, those insensitive comments.

Maybe not. In fact, I hope not. I wouldn’t wish any of those things on any person, even young geeks.

But I sure do hope they learn to use quieter voices while waiting in airports. I mean, even I talk quieter than that, dudes, and I’m loud.

We were eating our supper, talking about life at random. Somehow we got on the topic of when he would be a daddy. He told me that he wanted to have four kids: three boys and one girl. (As an aside, my youngest son told me that he was going to have “all of the kids ever” when I asked him how many. Win.) The conversation then turned to names.

Me: Well, what would you name your kids?
BB: Well, I’m not sure about the boys.
Me: Oh? What about the girl?
BB: I’d name her Munchkin* because I need two Munchkins in my life.

I smiled and bit my lip to hold back the tears.

No words. The kid all but silenced me. Thankfully my youngest son then piped up with some name along the lines of super heroes and they got to giggling about having kids named things like Ironman and Buzz Lightyear. I sat there in a bit of awe, amazed at how easily he vocalizes things that we adults keep inside.

This is actually a departure from a previous conversation in which he was going to name his daughter after a girl he had a crush on. This is new, this wanting to name a girl after his sister. I know it will change. And then, later, will become a topic of rolling eyes and, “Oh, mom.” And then a phase of, “Pfft, I’m never having kids!” And then, when it actually comes time to name a child, there will be the compromise that exists between partners. The likelihood that he will both have a daughter and then name her after his sister is rather slim.

But I’ll always remember the conversation and how it made me feel.

A part of me, a small part that I don’t really want to address right now, wonders if this is a small vocalization of an internal grief and loss issue. And, really, it probably is. But — and this but counts for something — the fact is that he’s allowed to vocalize such things. And he knows that I’m here to talk about them. And if he so desires, we can call. Or video. Or, heck, hop in the car and make the heck of a long drive. I do worry about how the relinquishment of their sister makes them feel on deeper levels, but we talk about her and her family so much, that I don’t really fear that they will be unwilling or unable to tell me when they need to. Or, I hope that I provide them with a safe enough environment for those discussions. I think I do and that I will. (Ditto for my husband. Big thumbs up to him.)

__
* = He obviously said her name, not Munchkin.

I have been asked loaded questions in my day, but none quite so heavy.

It is not that I think he should avoid parenthood because he is a birth father. I am not dooming him to a life of childlessness because of everything that happened. I was just as big a part in the decision to relinquish as he was… or, if I’m honest, I was a bigger part of that decision. He signed the papers, yes, but I was the driving force. And I am an amazing mom to my two boys. I would have fought — tooth and nail — anyone who tried to tell me that the relinquishment of my firstborn made it impossible for me to be a good mother to any subsequent children. I’d still fight tooth and nail.

But still, the question hit me hard.

He never asked me that question when I was pregnant with the Munchkin. Granted, I started in with the adoption plan shortly after my 18th week of pregnancy once I had been placed on bed rest after my kidney surgery. Perhaps he never had a chance to get to that question. Maybe I switched gears to adoption speak before he even had a chance to grasp that he had helped create a life and was, in some way, responsible for the outcome. I don’t know why he never asked me that question.

I don’t know why he has chosen to ask me now, even before he and his wife have conceived a child.

But it hurt me in a place that I didn’t know still bore scars. My immediate reaction was deep and visceral and full of anger and fury and rage. If I was a throwing person, I would have thrown something, breaking it simply for the release. To see the shards of glass as a visual representation of how I once felt and how I suddenly felt all over again. Thankfully, I chose not to say anything for a few days. I recognized my anger as something deeper within myself, tied to my guilt and shame and sense of utter failure. I quieted up for most of the week, unable and unwilling to discuss what I was feeling with anyone.

He has apologized for everything that happened back then. I have forgiven him. But I tiptoe around real discussion with him during our infrequent bouts of contact. I discuss my career, what the boys are doing, the constant desire for a vacation and a nap and other such simplistic bits of conversation. When I was pregnant with my first son, I couldn’t have imagined asking him, “Do you think I’ll make a good mother?” Then again, I hadn’t forgiven him at that point, so maybe that makes all the difference. I suppose I am most taken aback by how easily he asked me such a loaded question, as if he didn’t even recognize how it might pierce the deepest, darkest parts of my soul that I keep hidden from almost everyone at all times.

The truth is that most people who ask the question — will I be a good parent — are usually those who will be fine. Questioning one’s ability and gauging readiness is important. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s a sign that good things are happening in the head and the heart. I have no reason to believe that he wouldn’t be a good father.

I just wish he would have asked that question seven years and one month ago.

As they were finishing up their oatmeal this morning, I went over a list of rules for the day. No arguing. No whining. Do what mommy tells you the first time she tells you to do it. I explained the order of our day. A little cleaning. My shower and getting ready. Them getting dressed. Newspaper. Bank. Farmer’s Market to pick up some Red Raspberry Chipotle salsa to take to Dee. Grocery store for a few snacks, some of which I will break my health rules for in hopes of keeping two boys happy on a seven hour drive. Home. They can play while I work on this gig that I have going and simultaneously finish packing up the little things like the little cooler and the backpacks. Then a quick stop to say goodbye to Daddy at the fire department and OFF WE GO!

LittleBrother looked down at his jammies shirt and said, “Do you think [she'll] like my shirt?”

Yes, honey, she will.

I really like to avoid crying and whining at all costs.

I was tucking my oldest son in bed earlier this evening. We were saying our evening prayers. He got to the Munchkin and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I told him.

Me: We’re going to visit the Munchkin soon. We leave next Friday.
Him: We ARE?!
Me: Yes!
Him: Will we get to STAY there?
Me: Yes!
Him: *thinks* Can we stay for TWO WEEKS?
Me: We can stay for THREE DAYS!
Him: WOW! THREE WHOLE DAYS!

I will now have to fight the “are we leaving yet” and “is it next Friday yet” and all sorts of other questions from him starting at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. Shortly after, he’ll tell his younger brother the news and I’ll have two little hands pulling on my summer skirt asking me when we’re leaving to see their sister.

It’s worth it, of course. The joy on his face is something I want to remember forever.