I’m still on a book binge as of late, devouring anything and everything. A friend of mine has let me borrow The Time Traveler’s Wife which I have wanted to read for some time but have never come around to doing so. I finished another book last night and immediately picked this one up, excited and curious.
The first few paragraphs in the prologue kept throwing lines at me. Sure, it’s a love story of epic proportions (from what I understand) but these lines spoke to me on different levels.
I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way.
I’ve been there, done this. I’m sure most people have, actually, during a period of time in their lives when time otherwise dragged on and on. While I will admit that my children are growing too quickly, I do keep myself busy for a similar reason. The time between visits is long. Granted, as I come up on another visit, only four months separating these past two, I am very excited. But the months in between drag on and on.
I actually remember giving this advice, to keep yourself busy, to new birth mothers back in the day. I am not particularly sure that I stand by this advice. I understand the concept: keep busy so you don’t have time to think or feel. I wonder if that’s really what we should be teaching new birth mothers. I know that some don’t have time to slow down, reflect and truly delve into their emotional well-being. I wonder though how many would shorten their denial, Kool-Aid drinking period. I wonder if we told them to just take a few weeks and sort through their experience, to really experience that experience instead of shove it to the back of their mind, how many would seek help sooner. A rhetorical question but one to ponder all the same.
I didn’t like “free time” much in the months immediately after Munchkin’s placement. When my now-husband would go off to work, especially before I found a job two months after relinquishment, I would feel trapped by the walls in our apartment. It didn’t help that it was winter, though winter is a favorite season of mine, as I couldn’t take long meandering walks. Though I’d start out each Alone Day with the best of intentions, I’d eventually find myself holed up in our bedroom, curled under the blankets, sobbing into pillows as my breasts leaked and stained my bras, shirts and sheets. The idle time, the time when I had to think and feel and just “be”, was simply too much for me to handle. Perhaps that’s why we tell new birth mothers to keep busy. Perhaps the combination of free time and emotions is too much for any of us to handle. Perhaps reflection and consideration and true self-questioning isn’t possible until time has passed. Maybe hindsight is necessary for some of it. I don’t really know.
And then, another line.
Everything seems simple until you think about it.
I remember how simple all of this adoption stuff seemed prior to actually handing over the baby. In fact, adoption seemed very simple before I knew anything about it, before I found myself unexpectedly pregnant and unable to work due to my kidney disorder. The more I learned, even prior to placement, the more I felt overwhelmed and confused. Of course, our agency did nothing to prepare us, on either side, for the complexities of a fully open adoption. And, really, when you think about the definition of open adoption, it doesn’t sound all that difficult, now does it? “The continued contact between birth and adoptive families after the adoption of the child.” I mean, what’s so difficult about that? Shouldn’t “continued contact” be simple?
Sure. Until you factor in the inherent power struggle that exists even in the undertones of the most successful open adoption relationships. Until you add in the years of grief and loss of the birth parents compounded by any grief and loss issues on the adoptive parents’ part. Until you realize that the agencies don’t often mean that their counseling is available to you whenever you need it or, often times, doesn’t exist at all. Until you find yourself, the birth parent, ready to parent other children and suddenly you question everything about yourself, your abilities, the adoption and the world. Until the lot of you experience your first real big issue. And your second. And your third. Until you, as the birth parent, realize that adoptive parents are not infallible, that they, too, make mistakes, have issues and are generally just as human as the rest of the imperfect world. When you stop to consider all of these things, open adoption doesn’t sound so simple, now does it?
Still, knowing what we’ve been through and not having a clue what awaits us in the future, I am grateful for having put in the leg work. I am grateful for the relationship we possess. I know it’s complicated and messy at times. But I’m really starting to be of the opinion that the most meaningful relationships in our lives weren’t built upon Easy Street. These relationships dwell upon narrow, gnarly paths that we choose to walk and sometimes climb through toward whatever our ultimate goal might be. It’s not always an easy journey, for any family I suppose, but I keep hoping that, in the end, it will be worth it. I’m trying to enjoy the journey, snarly briars and all.
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[No, I haven't seen the movie nor do I particularly care to just yet as I tend to loathe movies. In general. But especially books-turned-movies. It's usually an epic fail for me.]
My name is Jenna. I blog here, 
