Loss vs. Loss

I discovered while typing up a Lost Dog sign for our newly missing dog, Beulah, that I was basically describing myself.  "Will be scared". Those words were as much about me as they were about our little dog- who was never found. Sadly.  The grief has been rough, but it's been eye opening as well.

Will be scared.  That's been me, the majority of my life. It's a daily brain + soul arm wrestle between me taking action and the anticipated feared worst-case scenario reaction. Fear has kept me alive yet a handhold out of reach of what I most desire. What is the substance of my fear? Fear of loss. Well, now that I've lost a being extremely dear to me, I'm facing my fear and dunking my head in the bracing water of loss. 

One of the most profound emotional bitch slaps of this whole adoption process came from my husband. This was not domestic violence; he was speaking in his usual gentle, lovely and loving way to me- despite my emotional resemblance at that moment to the Tasmanian Devil. We had just met our social worker- a lovely woman who struck me as someone I might have been if I hadn't lucked into being a neurotic creative crazy person. I could be an adoption social worker, I love kids, families, I love helping people and I can speak quietly if I concentrate hard enough.   Our meeting with her was uneventful enough yet I was furious once she was gone. 

Fury has been my face cream, my shampoo and deodorant since I found out I couldn't conceive without throwing massive amounts of money and other women's eggs at the situation.  I wake up every morning, brush my teeth and am filled with fury at all we have to do in order to tap dance and cajole another woman into giving us her child.

Furious at how we have to turn our lives, our finances, our medical histories and our personal mistakes inside out in order to qualify to pay to become parents. Furious at the birth mothers who haven't called back and even more furious with the ones I have spoken to who have passed us over- despite the truly adorable photo albums I've slaved over during windstorm blackouts and while mourning our lost dog. I'm just plain mad. 

So, to be polite to our social worker and to make sure she hasn't noticed my general seethiness seeping out, I follow her to her car. I wryly joke, to make sure she has no idea how furious I truly am about the four home visits and the interviews we will be subjected to before and after our child finds us... and I honestly can't tell if she likes us or not. Which really ticks me off because my husband and I are not only generally liked, we are well-liked, dammit.  

So, I slam back into the house after watching the calm life of the socially caring person I almost was drive off in her Prius and Andrew looks at me with a wry smile.  "Now that we can't be in therapy, because birth mothers won't give their child to someone who's in therapy, how are you going to deal with your loss?"

Irritated beyond belief about this really annoying fact about adoption, I snark back at him- "What loss?" He pauses for a second- and I can see him wondering if what I just said was a trick question- then he takes a deep, brave breath and says, "Well... your loss of fertility. Your loss at being a mother who gives birth to her baby."

I snorted instantly- it was an intake of air that started as a sarcastic chuckle but by the time the air hit the back of my throat, it was already a sob.  Loss. Oh, right... that.  I was so busy being mad I forgot to be sad.  Despite all the hurdles we have to leap over in order to make room for our baby, I have to make room for the lack of control I have- and the sadness at not being able to make a family with my body.

Then my loss was tripled when dear little Beulah left us. The lack of control over being able to find her and the refusal to give up looking mitigated the grief until it became clear she isn't coming back.  Anger is a veneer for pain, sadness and loss. I'm no longer angry. I'm living in the loss.  It's harder to live inside the loss as opposed to living in the rage, but as my abundantly patient husband might say if he weren't so polite, I'm definitely much easier to live with. 

 

Prayers for Our Pets: Prayer to Saint Anthony to Find What is Lost

St. Anthony, Please bring our Beulah back to us. She was lost on Monday November 21, while being walked in Griffith Park- she was last seen crossing Los Feliz BLVD determined to get home- she was hit by a car and rolled hard, but got up and kept running. She is tiny, strong in body and yet extra frail heart.
Please bring her home, please let us find each other- to love and care for each other and make the other always feel safe, loved and belonged to someone good. Beulah needs to help her deaf sister dog who languishes without her being her hearing aid. Our family is lost without her. Our baby needs her.

Making The Brochure of Us.

This is Kathleen’s first draft for our family resume and our 4 page photo-stocked brochure for potential birth mothers. It’s gonna be glossy and foldable. 

The brochure is for birth mothers to get a quick, clean glance at potential parents profiles... they can browse parents from a stack of brochures provided by the adoption agency. I am not kidding. We really do have to make a pamphlet of us.

Cover Page information- include the following basic information.

Age- Kathleen is 49 years YOUNG and has the Botox bruises to prove it! Andrew is her playful cougar pup, still getting hit on while grocery shopping (by men and women!!) at a graying yet purposeful, manfully erect and mature 46.

Ethnicity- Not much! We are what is globally considered Caucasian; both descended from generations of Irish/Scottish/English/German extremely white people. Our ethnicity can be best described as 50 SPF or higher.

Religion- Well thanks for asking, but no. Kathleen was formally educated like Jane Eyre was in a Catholic all girls school for what felt like decades, (she still gets sweaty when she sees nuns) and Andrew was given faith by Unitarian thought-nerds. Bet you can’t guess which one of us was molested at a church camp at the age of twelve!  Guess again!

Education Level- Tons and tons of useless education (Kathleen excels at free floating useless factoids extrapolated from reading magazines at the gym) while Andrew went on to score a Master’s Degree. Don’t ask in what. Just accept that we’re college educated but our degrees are benign footnotes in lives of struggle and hand to mouth existence. But we got lots and lots of creativity to shower our baby with! If you really want to know how educated we are just ask our creatively well-named pets!!  Pop culture references abound in our well appointed home. And books. We read em. Sometimes. We can read baby books to a baby, which is probably more than you can do, dear Birth Mother.

Occupation?! Glad you asked. Are you sitting down, because this might take a while.  We are both gainfully occupied doing a myriad of things for wealthy people while waiting for the above referenced creative college degrees to festoon us with jobs in our chosen crafts. Sure, now you’re going back up to re-read our ages. Yeah, maybe we should have given up years ago and become substitute teachers, but we didn’t.  And we aren’t defensive about this at all!!  We are super proud of all the skills we have and how well we take care of people. In fact, we are already so good at taking care of people for money that we now want to pay you, dear Birth Mother to let us take care of someone who actually NEEDS our help. Isn’t that just a cool awesome irony? But if you need us to nail down an exact occupation for you, fine- but you might want to look at that uncreative rigidity streak in your personality… it’s not very attractive. Kathleen is a writer who assists a successful children’s book author (free kid books!!) and Andrew is a Production Designer who works as a carpenter but can do lots of handyman-like things. And he fixes computers and cars. Just curious, Birth Mother and Birth Father if you know who he is- what’s your occupation? We’re not judging, we really just are curious.

Page 2

ABOUT US-  include when you met and married, and how you enjoy spending time together, hiking, biking, road trips, etc…

Dear Birth Mother- Are you still reading our brochure? Wow, you are a daring, adventuresome woman, but that’s what got you into this mess in the first place, isn’t it! I bet by now you’re wondering how we met!! Well, we met on account of our failed occupations- isn’t that super romantic?! He was back in graduate school, sporting a serious mid-life crisis soul patch, and Kathleen was recovering from her 45^th birthday, which also commemorated her five-year anniversary without a relationship. Kathleen was cleaning out a garage for a very successful female architect client and placed a drafting table for sale on Craigslist. Andrew answered the ad! As soon as Kathleen saw Andrew get out of his car (he was over an hour late, which is why we are seeking outside our gene pool for offspring) a voice in Kathleen’s head (another reason we are interested in seeking outside our gene pool!) said to her, “Oh, that’s your husband.”  Kathleen had the good sense to not tell Andrew this inner voice report and a week later they had their first date- and Andrew had the cutest anxiety attack. Flop sweating over smoked salmon. It was adorable. We bonded over panic attacks and good meds. He’s sober, she’s not! Can this marriage be saved!? Just kidding! We’re awesome! Four years later we made it official- with a big ass wedding- but that’s what credit cards are for!! Are you the lucky Birth Mother of our baby??? Play your cards right and call us back, Birth Mother!!

OUR HOME- physical description of your home, include number of bedrooms, describe the backyard, community, schools, near beach or parks…

We live in a charming 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom Craftsman cottage in Los Feliz, where the aging hipsters moisturize their fading, regrettable tattoos and baby slings are all the rage.  We are one block from Griffith Park, where we hike and play with our dogs everyday. We love being so close to nature- we haven’t had one coyote attack! Sure that one guy got bit that one time, but the park rangers killed like 9 coyotes, so that’ll teach those mangy bastards!! We only saw four rattlesnakes this summer!! Only one person has died in the park since we moved into our house, but she was Quentin Tarantino’s editor, which is very cool.  We have a lemon tree that makes great garnishes for cocktails. The dogs love pooping around our lemon tree. It’s good for the grass! We have a hot tub, which I know is much better for bathing newborns then the kitchen sink!  Our adorable Maine Coon cat Louise (stage 4 lymphoma) uses the dog door Andrew installed and does her kitty litter business outside, which we love! No more cleaning out kitty litter boxes!! Our wee dog Beulah has a strange predilection for cat poop, so we don’t even have to clean the cat poop! It’s the circle of life!  As for your back yard, Andrew’s car is not up on blocks presently, and we’ve gotten rid of almost all the unwanted furniture! Our kitchen is truly the heart of our home. Folks come over whether we invite them or not and we eat and drink and smoke things and talk all night and listen to music. We binge on gingerbread at 2am and then we get up and take the dogs to the park and swear we will never do that again! We live close to the dog park and the Silver Lake reservoir where more disciplined,annoying and anorexic people run barefoot. Don’t worry, Birth Mother, we don’t approve of barefoot running. We don’t approve of exercise at all.  We approve of sleep. So, keep the baby until he or she is sleeping at least 8 hours a night. Deal?

Adopting Parent Descriptions-  Have your spouse describe your personality characteristics, hobbies, strengths. Or describe yourself in your section. Use a heading that introduces each person, such as “Meet Lisa” or Introducing Lisa”. Be creative.

Be creative?  That’s easy for us! We breathe creativity!!! We shed creativity!  We’re still paying our creativity off, that’s how CREATIVE we are!! Since Andrew’s busy designing the look of our brochure, Kathleen’ll do the writing for the both of us!

“Inside Andrew”- Andrew is a full-blooded M-A-L-E!  He is a Pisces, which means it takes a lot to push his buttons, but Kathleen still pokes away! Speaking of poking, he’s quite the adventurer in bed, but Kathleen is a hypochondriac, so many nights find Andrew alone with the Suicide Girls website. Andrew is very sensitive, which Kathleen ascribes to him being a premature baby. Oh, and he was born prematurely, on top of everything else! He loves fixing things, when he can find them… and his favorite hobby is talking to Kathleen when he is in another room, which makes Kathleen think she’s going deaf! It’s so cute. And he’s sober! Andrew gave up drinking at the tender age of 21, when Kathleen was just ramping up!  He’s a handsome man, and children love him. Gay men love his ass. It’s furry!

“Inside Kathleen”- Kathleen is a generous to a fault, giving, loving, beautiful woman who pretty much stops traffic every time she crosses the street. Men weep at her face and women gnash their teeth in envy of her endless legs. Kathleen has more shoes than you and everyone in your family, Dear Birth Mother.  Kathleen pretends she’s a vegetarian and likes to think of herself as extremely fit, despite the sizing conspiracies that about in fashion. Kathleen talks just enough and never interrupts anyone. She is really successful inside her head and thinks she has a great singing voice. And she hates compliments.

PAGE 4- OUR FAMILY- describe your family values, how you spend family time, holidays, if you go to church, cultural traditions-

Kathleen and Andrew are chock-a-block full of family values! Our dog is deaf and that rocks because we can call her a crazy bitch and she can’t hear us and get hurt feelings.  Our values include staying in for days at a time, nothing that includes church, not wearing make up if we can help it, and lots of pagan celebrating!! Andrew’s part Canadian and we celebrate bleeding Canada of its eligible man populations.  We spend family time trying to remember what we did last night and looking for things in Andrew’s man cave.  On weekends we chase after our deaf dog because she loves stealing our clothes and leaving them all over the yard. Cultural traditions include interpretative dances based the Blue Book, the bible of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Kathleen has been kicked out of four book clubs and started her own club, for writers oozing success and talent and creativity, which Kathleen then tries to destroy. We do go to our local church when they have the rummage sale, but we wait until late on the second day when the prices are SLASHED.

OUR THOUGHTS ON PARENTING - include your outlook on parenting and your experience with children either as an aunt or uncle, mentor, parent, coach, volunteer…

Kathleen and Andrew love kids, especially expensive ones!  We are looking for a unique hybrid, multiethnic baby that will make us the envy of all the other adoptive parents in LA. We want to give our child every advantage in life, and Los Angeles is a very competitive town… so we really want that elusive edge- a deaf, blue eyed Mongolian baby that comes with its own yak herd and can sign in Mongolian and English would be awesome. We’d even adapt a nomadic lifestyle and make our own yurt- eco-consciously, of course!! Everyone else in LA would be so jealous. We would even be willing to learn the cultural aspects of our/your baby- so if you are white and from Alabama, we’ll join the Klan!  If you are black and from Alabama, we’ll learn how to cook pig feet!  We love kids and we really love the idea of raising someone else’s kid and seeing how much of our neurosis we can pass on just through endless contact and relentless rearing. We rock. Pick us, Birth Mother, you won’t be sorry. Until we raise the next Steve Jobs, then you’ll be very, very sorry… but we’ll change our numbers as soon as we get your kid. So there!

Kiss My Ass, Workshops.

If they gave out As for Aggravation level, I'd be getting an Asian A, which is to say the highest A available on the American Grading Chart- which I just made up to sound like something official. 

My ginger freckled Irish fury has been unmatched- not even Colleen Dewhurst or Elaine Stritch or Shirley MacClaine could do indignant, wordy rage better than me, ever since the first adoption check cleared. 

Oh, I've smiled through it all, I nodded, I asked semi-pertinent questions, I even shared deep thoughts and memories I was completely making up- I was an utter trooper- so good at all the SEMINARS, WORKSHOPS and CLASSES that adoption agencies make you do. Transracial Parenting. Parenting workshop. Adoption and You. Seven hours at a stretch in an airless, flourescent-lit room in Culver City. And we have to pay for the priviledge of well meaning social workers to rip the heart out of our precious Saturdays. 9am class in Culver City? All day Saturday? To explore transracial adoption? Smile and nod and go and crack jokes, make small talk and be as bitter as you want on the inside. That's how I roll.

But workshop. I want workshop to be killed as a word unless one is actually describing a shop filled with tools and the smell of wood chips. If there are no half made puppets or unstrung guitars hanging from the ceiling and goggles lying about-- it's not a workshop. It's an airless room with florescent lighting and styrofoam cups.


Since we went through the MAPP training of three months of weekly classes (also in Culver City, which is convenient to NOWHERE unless you call Mar Vista home. And we don't.) when we entered the Foster-To-Adopt scene back in 2010 I immediately believe we should be allowed to skip any and all classes resembling a do-over. We did it. We got the three sets of fingerprints, the TB tests, the CPR and First Aid training so we don't have to do any of that again, right? Wrong.


Of course the morning of the first class I wake up feeling very unwell. I always get sick when I don't want to do something. I refused the bagels they set out to make us all feel taken care of, because I wanted to feel really put out. The other couples all broke my heart- I really related to everyone else's grief at not being able to become parents for free. And there was a Hispanic couple, and a Middle Eastern looking woman and a seemingly white man who was half Mexican so we all shared hilarious and not so hilarious stories about being racially profiled.


Transracial Parenting Class started out pretty dull, earnest and obvious. My resentment glowed like a deep sunburn, especially as I believe I am the embodiment of racial understanding.  I never see skin color, except for the inadequacies of my own rashy rice paper skin as compared to the gorgeous skin of basically everyone else in Los Angeles. Andrew and I are as white as whites can be without being albinos but we are secure in our transracialness. At least we were until the film strip started. 


The film was a documentary interviewing a smattering of multi-ethnic adopted children of white parents. They ranged in ethnicity from Native American, to Vietnamese, to African American and they all had stories of the moment they realized they were different from their super white parents and other siblings. In almost every instance, the white parents kinda blew it. One African American man was fairly blithe and casual about having white parents and for liking Pearl Jam. But he wasn't in the documentary that much. 

Much, much more film was burned on two particular adults who were articulate and so fucking fury-filled in their articulation about how baffled they were to find themselves the one black child in an all white Swedish town in Minnesota, for example. This very dark skinned girl, who spoke about growing up knowing more about lutefisk and Swedish words for snow then anything about her clearly obvious cultural identity said that adoptive parents should ask themselves, "Why are you adopting outside your race? Are you trying to save someone or make some sort of color-blind statement?" In most cases the children grew up to escape their adopted families and dive into their cultures of birth, preferring their own race to that of their 'parents'.

I was shell shocked. I didn't have an answer as to why I was open to transracial parenting, other than wanting to adopt anyone who needs a home. Hell, I have two adopted siblings, an adopted step-sibling and an adopted cousin- and as far as I knew everyone was fine. But then I had to admit I never even thought to ask my cousin or my step sister how they felt being Korean and adopted into white families. I just assumed they were fine and that I wasn't a racist because I never looked at them as different from me.

When I dug deeper as to why I was open (even excited) to a mixed race baby, it was more than for a baby with much more useful skin and hair than mine. It's more than just looking forward to saving money on sunblock.  And I'm not afraid of us being different, we'd just be a family with a story. And we live in Los Angeles. How hard could it be to be a culturally diverse family here?! In Los Feliz we'd be downright popular with our transracial family.  

But what happens when you travel with an other-race baby? Road trips? Questions and stares will abound. I remained undeterred in my thinking but learned how much being the color of the until-now dominant race has made my life easier in ways I will never truly fathom.  So how hard would I ever know it could be for my own child? I could only imagine what must have felt like a parental smack in the face by the African American child who was pissed at me for 'rescuing' her from her own people.


The social worker leading the group then showed us the rest of the documentary, where they re-visited the adopted mixed race kids ten years later. The articulate African American guy was there and so was the angry African American woman with the lutefisk exposure. They had definitely simmered down in the ensuing years. They had made peace with their parents and were grateful for the lives and the educations they had received.  What stuck with me was when he said, "As soon as you adopt a mixed race baby, you are no longer a white family. You are a mixed race family." I was down with that, and appreciated learning it.  My sore throat throbbed with knowledge.


Then there was a game. Games led by Social Workers during workshops are not fun games. Don't let them lull you into a false sense of gaming security. We each got a clear plastic cup and a box of beads- each color of bead was assigned a race- African American, Native American, Asian, White and Hispanic. We were read a series of questions and had to place a correspondingly colored bead in the cup. What is the color of the people you work with? What is the color of your boss? Who are your favorite authors? What color are your neighbors? What color is your dentist? What color is your hairdresser? What color is your best friend? What color are the stars of your favorite TV shows? What color is your favorite movie star? What color is your favorite musician? The point was made. My cup was like tapioca pudding with one yellow, one black and 2 brown raisins in it. Shameful. Harrowing. Gut churning. Depressing. True.


Then we had to talk about how we'd incorporate the race of our child into our lives. Shopping in markets that cater to their culture, going to barber shops for their kind of hair, their culture's language, churches, festivals, restaurants- my betrothed Canada brightened at the idea of learning new foods to cook, or places to explore. We all shared our stories and laughed and none of us made dates to get together, which I was particularly thankful for.


At the very end of class we were all given papers to sign (or not) which would let the Adoption Agency and lawyer know that we had changed our minds about transracial adoption. 


We looked at each other- deep, well-meaning white folk looks- and we didn't sign. We vowed to make more friends of other ethnicities and then we drove to San Fransisco to go to a concert where only white people sang. Except for Carlos Santana. He was the one brown bead in our all-white cup. We're not going to workshop that.

The Give Us Your Baby Book

I didn't realize how hard it would be to sell myself. I've sold myself for most of my adult life, not for profit, of course, and this was the hardest sell after a lifetime of decent, near-big sales, chances missed or blown or just cement-hard luck. Making our life together, which is pretty great, look great not to us, but to a knocked up stranger in Flagstaff, was going to be harder to achieve than I imagined.

I'll make a Mac Book I decided over my second trenti of iced black tea.  Then we met our lawyer- our  lawyer, which are the exact words you catch yourself saying - 'we have to go meet our lawyer' as you wave a diamond ringed hand and you can't help but roll your eyes at yourself... then wonder all the way to the lawyer just who the fuck are you again and was everyone else rolling their interior eyes at you as well? Can you blame them? Isn't that why they are your friends, because you all would roll your eyes at women like you are right now.  So we go to our lawyer, everyone in Los Angeles who can't conceive and want an American-made recycled child goes to him, and he tells me that everything I not only think but already know (because that's how I roll) is wrong.

First, that we have no clear advantage over gay male couples, who, this being LA, are our biggest competitors for American-made recycled children.  Two well off gay men will be our biggest competitors- and yes, we are following the second season of "Modern Family"(thanks everyone for telling us about the GUYBB episode- we caught it) - like strategists planning a battle, over who gets to have a Serena & Lily-inspired nursery.  Andrew is baffled by this fact because we present well. We have good couple curb appeal.  He's at least so handsome and kind eyed he makes me look more well raised than I really was. But you'd really have to stare in my eyes to know just how much I'm deep-pile carpeting.  Not that Andrew isn't just as complicated, he's just better raised.

Other than that, we're both white, blue-eyed and have hair. Who wouldn't pick us to dumpster dive their baby and make a "This Is Our Baby" Book. On a Mac. Very hipster meets West Elm meets Etsy.  We look like we already are parents, of college kids who are taller than us; that's how parental we look.

But, gay men do better with these clearly not too evangelically oriented birth mothers because she will live her life knowing that even though two men will parent her child, she is the only mother that baby will ever have.  See, even me, a virtual man of a woman, is too much like a mother for the birth mother's comfort level.  I get this.  It's mother DNA- it's what makes mothers lift taxis off their trapped babies- it's a fierce little instinct.

But where I do draw the line is that our  Give Us Your Baby Book (GUYBB) has to be tasteless, uncreative and on construction paper. Our Jewish lawyer who does magic tricks to soothe his essential tremors tells us our GUYBB shouldn't appeal to your gay best friends from Berkeley but to a girl in Tennessee who if she ever heard the story of my life, would pray for my devil-soaked soul then burn a cross on my lawn if I ever moved to her town.

Our GUYBB will have to be really DIY and not in an meta- Etsy way- it has to have like unicorn stickers in it.  Our GUYBB must have photos of ourselves smiling and doing certain actions.  No art photos, no looking just off camera, no black and white, no cleavage, nothing that leaves room for interpretation, nothing raunchy or knowing or clever or creative. In other words, not one photo that we have. Either of us.  And we do have cameras. We just might as well have been raised in a Scientology Fort for all the unusable pictures we have.

We have not one boring, smiling at the lens, in front of a Christmas tree or over a Steaming Turkey Carcass photo, with beaming, normal, un-shiftless or stoned looking extras- family and friends. We've been together 4 years, we have families we talk to, we do interesting things and go places but there exists not one single camping shot where we weren't trying to replicate something ironic or represent something creative.  So we have a meeting with our lawyer...

And he rejects all our pored over, carefully chosen photos. We failed GUYBB.  So I shut down but not before hating Andrew with everything I have. It's all his fault.  He and his brothers look nothing alike and they aren't a clingy bunch, so a recent Christmas photo of the three brothers together modeling gift scarves resembled more of a still of three strangers waiting for a bus. 

My family is much worse.  I was a bald baby with merely the promise of red hair and I sobbed before every photo was taken so my eyes were swollen and my eczema was raging in every photo. My mother's eyes were always closed in every single photo to the degree that I have made a Mac book full of my mother's life, depicted with her eyes completely closed.  I'm only upset because I only looked good in the photos where my mother looks like Andrea Bocelli.

Or I've picked a picture where three distant planets are eclipsing and I have the chimera of a hint of cleavage.  Or one where at least one member of family looks like they may pass out.  Or punch the camera.  And not one photo have we picked of us smiling, hugging and both just looking at the goddamn camera. We stare at each other in the lawyer's office. We are complete strangers to each other. I don't know him anymore but I know I hate him.

Our lawyer tells us we need to stage ourselves as a happy, healthy loving normal couple with adoring family members, camping photos that don't resemble Burning Man rejects and decorative, but not too creative, holidays.  If we are to host and throw down, it's gotta look L.L. Bean, not even Garnet Hill. If we look even a little too J. Crew or Anthropologie we might as well try to keep making babies the way most people do, by accident.   And we will never be parents.  And I wonder, do I really want to be a parent if I haven't even managed to look like I've had a good life? Who am I? Not a parent. Clearly.

Then our lawyer calls. They have a birth mother. Please call her. She's due February 1st. Aquarius. That'd be nice. Mixed race baby. Our favorite kind. But she'll need a baby book.

So I go back to the box of photos to find something we can photoshop a Christmas tree or each other into, and perhaps erase some of Andrew's earrings and his pony tail or his conjoined twin he had made and screwed into his head from that Halloween costume.  Maybe we can photoshop Andrew into a canoeing picture over the third Todd? Cut and paste each other into old prom pictures, so we look like we've been together longer.

I sit before the box of my family's life that still smells like the beach house a full year after I shipped it from West Gilgo.  And the more I look at the hundreds of photos the more I realize that Photoshop just might not be advanced enough to make my life palatable to a young woman who's wondering if she should return my phone call and see if my voice sounds like one she might be able to give her newborn to. 

And the more I look I amuse myself by imagining the book I wish I could make- here's Kathleen as a rashy ten year old boy, depressed in catholic all girls school, with her first gay boyfriend, posing behind a sheaf of wheat for art school, snarling into the lens, (art school)  smoking and drinking with the band that was going to be the next Flock of Seagulls, with her blind mother, and another prom, and another prom and another prom, is that the second or third Todd? Here she is with platinum blond boy hair, too much make up, black fingernails or just giving the finger, or in a play, or just drunk, with a 6 foot penis at her bachelorette party.  What kind of birth mother would a book of my honest, entertaining lifetime of mistakes attract?  Would I want her baby? The idea of me trying to prettify my tragi-comic life for a woman who's probably made a few wrong turns herself stops me in my tracks. Now I don't know what kind of GUYBB to make. Can't I just give them a Ikea catalog and say, it's like that, only with more wrinkles.

Would the birth mother respect me more for telling the truth? Couldn't I just tell her we host Thanksgiving and cook for 20 people and have done it now for four years to sold out crowds?  We just didn't bother photographing it because we were actually busy doing it.

But we need to not just live our lives- we have to art direct and stage, and fluff our lives, like baking cookies in a condo we are desperate to sell before an open house- we need to create the illusion or scent of home sweet home.  I'm scouting pumpkins and front porches right now.

We both are now falsely documenting - moc-umenting our lives- running into family photos that no one has motioned me into- here I am grinning like an insane person with my in-laws over the cobbler I made, not for their 80th birthdays but for my god-damned GUYBB so that Andrew can photograph me with them and it. 'Make sure you get the cobbler in it!'  I bark at Andrew.  My in-laws are scared.

Ten people are coming over next Saturday to forge Halloween and Thanksgiving-easy to cram them in one day.  Gonna get Andrew some Dockers. We will look respectable. Dull. Safe. Inviting. Easy to outdazzle. I haven't wished I was a gay man this bad since I learned my boyfriend was gay.

detours become the journey.

So, we got married... which really has nothing to do with our recycled child hunt, in fact it distracted much of our emotional, physical, fiscal and creative energies from the active pursuit of parenthood, but it became the opportunity for our families to join forces with us and meet for the first time. 

But then again, getting hitched in public actually has everything to do with becoming parents.  Foster/adopt parents are very different from birth parents because those of us who can't get pregnant (by accident or even by 'working at it')  we become parents solely and strictly on purpose- and the bureaucracy and paperwork required to become on purpose parents is soul-killing.  So, we got married, not because it was overly important to us, but because it made us more of a family to everyone else... and in doing that it made us more of a family to and with each other. And it ended up being very important. So, the joke ended up being on us.

Canada and I thought we already were family, we felt married from almost the very beginning of our union, but actually standing up and getting married in front of assorted people was surprisingly transformative and powerful to us both. We were humbled by all the love and support we both felt from family members we rarely see and friends and immediate family who have seen us through this courtship, and our first marriages and many other crazy-pants relationships.  

Planning the wedding took most of the year, working out to fit in the dress took the rest of the year, we didn't plan a honeymoon, we really just wanted to throw a big fun awesome kickass party with a harmless ceremony beforehand. We barely registered for anything because we don't really need anything, other than to own our own home and get a kid... any kid at all.

So we weren't even focused on wedding gifts. We decided folks could give us cash if they felt keenly about giving us anything at all- and we'd put it away in a 'buy a house before menopause and wattle fund'.  It was embarrassing to set up a Deposit A Gift cash registry- telling folks to give you money because you got married is not something that makes a great deal of sense to me. And even the money coming in doesn't make it feel less awkward.

We were dealing with setbacks all year with the Foster Agency. We rolled our collective eyes when we got the email from the Foster Agency- "we thought you were so motivated a year ago! Why didn't you finish all the requisite paperwork?" Turns out they either lost our fingerprints for Adoption or they never gave us the right paperwork. They never received our CPR certification from the sexy unemployed actor in the Valley who teaches CPR to wide eyed women who gave up on finding a man to sperminate them.  We dutifully replaced the finger prints and paid for it. Again. Did you know you can get fingerprinted at the UPS Store? Well, now you do.  

Watching other friends have babies and adopt babies was joyful, not upsetting in the least. Maybe there was a little twinge here and there, wondering what our mingled hair, fingernails, eye colors and personalities would inspire in another human being, but we were dyed in the wool foster parents- we drank the Kool Aid and we were proud of being helpless cogs in the underfunded and overwhelmed bureaucratic hamster wheel that is the California Foster System.  

People would ask, 'When are you having your home study?" because they knew the steps as well as we did, after asking for months, "When are you getting your baby?" We even called the agency right after the wedding to find out if they received our prints. They never called back. Oh well. We'd smile and be brave, knowing we had no choice.

Then we received a card in the mail. The game changer.  A beautiful wedding card, with a check for a honeymoon, which was shocking and flabbergasting. Then we read the card and we are still reeling.

It was beautifully worded offer to help us find a child sooner- via the wonders of adoption lawyers.  Canada's extraordinary brother has offered to share his family's great good fortune with us. Basically we were given a blank check to leapfrog over the fingerprinting, the reading up on fetal alcohol syndrome, the home study, the subtle casing of our home, and how we live and how we treat each other, to weed out whether or not we would harm someone else's already damaged child. And all my previous doubts and fears over whether I really wanted a child completely evaporated in the face of actually being able to have some control over how we get one.

For me it was a no brainer. Why stay rooted nobly in one stupidly slow and painful place if you don't have to?  I'm turning 49 in mere days, and in foreign countries we are already too old to recycle one of their kids.  It will take 7 to 9 months if we start right now, if we are lucky. We are still recycling a needy child, it's just a little less completely DIY and a bit more Martha Stewart fancy schmancy.  I strapped my Virgo on and got busy.

I immediately called friends for adoption lawyer recommendations. Within two phone calls I had the guy my friends used and the guy my father used for my baby brother and sister. It's the same guy- the 'only' adoption lawyer in LA- 'everyone goes to him for their babies'.  I figured out how much it could run us (or him) and then ran into the brick wall of Canada's feelings. 

Oh... this is marriage. How you negotiate the gulfs between you is what makes a marriage. Not how you face the stuff you are in agreement on.  Canada needed to process the extraordinary generosity of the offer and he had to give up the mantle of benign goodness that waiting for the system was enveloping us.  There is something emasculating in not being able to easily afford what a sibling can easily afford to give, but we made peace with ourselves and the gift. Our gratitude is boundless and humbling. People are extraordinary if you let them.  We are full of grace as bestowed on us by those who love and root for us.

And we are still staying in the foster system. So... one we'll buy. The other we'll rent... to own.

I hate it when people I hate are right... and I'm wrong.

Part 2 of my precious fantasy, interrupted.  

So, I started a creative writing program at the Foster School campus.  I was TB tested, fingerprinted and interviewed, but not nearly as much as I expected to be. I guess if you aren't yet a hardened, fingerprinted criminal you can work with troubled children until you become one.  I did everything cheerily, knowing it was a 'good thing to do' and until the night before the first class the good thing feeling sustained me until I realized I had nothing to teach. No games, no ideas, no clues whatsoever.  

So I got a stomach ache and decided to cancel the whole thing. It was a terrible idea. I'm no teacher, especially of heavily medicated children who look 9, speak like they are 5 and are in fact 14... I stayed up all night and scoured the internet for writing exercises for children- that was a bust. Most writing exercises were created for children with the basic luxuries of parents, homes, bedrooms, and annoying siblings to write about. So, my partner (an equally over achieving, guilt ridden enabler) made up writing games that avoided the landmines of parents and home. 

We drove there, terrified that some random word like 'rain cloud' would set off a kid into a horrific abuse shame spiral. The most cheerful negative person in the world- the Librarian greeted us like a gallows vulture. She was smiling as she showed us where some kid had busted a window in the library. She beamed at us while relating that it was a good thing no one was hit by flying glass, but I could tell she almost wished more mayhem had been caused. She was aching for stitches and I was kinda itching to help her out with that.

As the kids filed in Librarian grinned at us to not say "no" to the kids as that was most likely to set them off. Soon we were outnumbered with the equivalent of 8th graders. I was stunned that no one sat there with arms crossed, sullenly hating our assumed authority. And then I realized- these kids are hungry for whatever they can get. They don't have the luxury of parents to complain about or teachers to bitch about- anyone who wants to give them a moment's time is okay by them. They all jumped in the big artsy mud puddle as best they could. Until we realized one big thing. They didn't know how to make stuff up. They had no imaginations to speak of.

Foster kids don't have regulars kids' imaginations. They haven't had the time, safety, comfort or well-ordered stability that brings on the sheer boredom which lulls "normal" kids into making crap up so that time passes faster. Of course, as I was to discover- some foster kids lie pathologically, which is a form of imaginative creativity, and an attempt to control their lives, and it's scary.

So, our biggest task was goading the kids into tap into their imaginations. And they really did respond and write. And some weeks we left there sobbing, other times we left ebullient. My Precious  blew us away with her soulful words, her neat rows of self inflicted scars, and her occasional bouts with sickle cell anemia. 

She asked my partner to adopt her- which made my partner and I both have to take long naps after class. The collected heartbreak of 16 injured children is exhausting. Sure, it felt like we were playing Simon Says on the Titanic... what will happen to these kids when they inevitably age out of the foster system? We didn't know and we knew we couldn't take them all home- "Mom, this 5 foot 11 inch two hundred pound African American 14 year old followed me home. Can I keep her?" But we couldn't stop. 

The cheerful negative Librarian kept encouraging us with warnings like "You think you know these kids just because you spend one hour a week with them."  But kept inviting us back week after week. We even made books with the kids. They were so proud of their hand made books. Cheerful Negative Librarian grinned as she told us to be careful to not publish anything as the kids most likely were copying ideas read elsewhere. My partner and I cackled over how horribly consistent Cheerful Negative Librarian always managed to be.

After my Precious made her gorgeous heartbreaking poetry book I  became determined to get her on Oprah- I had visions of foster kid poetry books and college scholarships and even... yes... I dreamt of making Precious my child. My fiance was very lovely as he listened to me go on and on about her- friends were either very encouraging (Adopt her! All these kids need is love!) or they told me I was a hot box of crazy for even thinking of endangering a new marriage with a seriously unwell and self-injuring teenager. "Your fiance wants a baby. You agreed to adopt a baby. Stick to the plan..."

My fiance, who really does want a baby, finally told me he wanted to meet her. As visions of My Precious Blind Side movie played in my head I met with her case worker, in order to become her special friend. I tried not to tear up as I asked how long my Precious might be expected to live with her sickle cell anemia... and was met with a silent wince. 

Now, having seen enough episodes of "Judging Amy", I was prepared for a jaded social worker who was over-worked and a tad indifferent to her clients (who can forget Mariah Carey's harrowing, mustachioed turn in "Precious"?)- but I was not prepared to hear- "She's not sick." 

I stared at the case worker's frogs- she has two mini frogs in a bowl on her desk. "They eat like once a week and I only have to change their water once a month. Easier pets ever." I stammered, "But she just showed me the injection site where she got platelets over Christmas break."  Case worker smiled sadly at me. I must have looked so crestfallen that my Precious didn't have sickle cell anemia. My stomach dropped like I was on a log flume. "She's not sick? But that's great! But she lies and hurts herself and that's not great. But she's an amazing poet. I'm determined to help her--"

Again a wince. A slow, pity-ful wince. (Pity-full, as in full of pity for me.) "Precious is... talented... but she plagiarizes. From Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul." This was now a punch to the gut. Not only is my Precious a pathological liar but her stunning poetry is hacked from one of the cheesiest book franchises ever to darken literature's door... and all I can think is... what does this say about me??? And my taste in poetry???

While I hold my head in my hands, I find out my Precious has cut herself, on her head- 5 stitches. She told everyone she fell in the shower, but that's untrue.  She's under one on one lock and key, which means she is never allowed alone- and I'm given the choice to not pursue becoming her special friend. But I do. My only warning- don't confront her lies. She will flip out.

As my Precious Blind Side child fantasy crumbles, I walk to Target. It's Precious's birthday, and that is the truth.  I buy her earrings and some silver glitter nail polish. I visit her and Darius, her shadow. She beams when she sees me and beams even brighter when regaling me with the details of her seizure, which led to her skull fracture and her stitches. She was proud of her handiwork. I just said, "Wow. Well, I want you to stop having accidents, okay? I don't want you hurt." Precious nodded solemnly. 

"Sometimes accidents happen to me. And I get hurt. It's not my fault." And sometimes love can't fix everything or everyone. I had to admit to myself I was out of my depth. This damaged young woman needs so much more than what I can give. And she may never find it. Her desperation for a family is completely mitigated by how she damages herself with lies and box-cutters.

We sat together and I looked around her 'house' at the bedrooms, the common rooms and the attempts for it to resemble a regular old home. And as Precious painted my nails silver I thought about the mini frogs that thrive on neglect.

a precious fanstasy, disrupted

Am typing this without glasses, at 4 am in Dublin. Waiting for the Advil PM to do the job the Unisom clearly wasn't up to. A sleepgel that doesn't deliver on the zzzzzs is a cruel placebo indeed. So there will be typos. Not quite as majestic a statement as there will be blood, but there might be some of that as well if I don't get some bloody sleep.  But until sleep clobbers me over the head with a felt covered hammer, i will write, without being able to see particularly clearly. Which may be fitting.

Am wandering into dangerous territory, but was already there and my bleeding heart didn't know it.  In my eternal quest for limp, hearing impaired animals to rescue, in between bouts of falling in love with damaged job-averse boy-men, I've always has a soft spot for wounded children.  I have an infallible eye of which I'm dubiously proud. I can walk into any store and immediately spot the most expensive shoe, purse or blouse. I also can walk into a room full of people and attract (and be attracted to) the most inappropriate man, woman or child in the room. And before long we will have become so intermeshed and I will be so incapable of extricating myself that I will have to change my phone number or move to another state to be free.  I'm really not proud of this quality, so forgive me if I sound like I'm bragging.It's a disease and facing it is the first step. So, consider this an over-share, those of you who live by the grace of twelve steps. And for those of you in the program, you'll sense a perverse satisfaction in revealing just how macabre I can be about my own disease- like a sober man who can longingly, lovingly recall his last sip of scotch in almost pornographic detail.

And like any addict, recovering or not so much, we addicts continually throw ourselves into the environment that most enables us to indulge our addictions. Like when I decided, during a particularly nagging bout of unemployment, to assist my mother in her Spanish Harlem Kindergarten class.  To be perfectly penitent, I walked or jogged from Chelsea to Spanish Harlem.  I strode right into her classroom and fell instantly in love with Oscar.  Now, due to overcrowding, I had a delectable choice of thirty or so gorgeous five year olds to fall for- ninety percent of them safely could have been considered at risk youth. But no- not me. I fell for the one child in the room who's mother had died of AIDS, who's father had it as well, and whom most likely had a dimming immune system himself.

He was crusty with dirt, had a cold and was breathing through his mouth. When a five year old's hair smells dirty, that is a child who needed a bath two weeks ago.  I sat beside him, my eyes and heart brimming. I would have pulled him into my lap if it was appropriate. He eyed me through a haze of mucus and unwellness, and he was not in the least reciprocating my feelings.  I was practically not even there.  To him.  Which of course only made me love him more. I went every day to that school and every day I sat beside Oscar, who was haunting my dreams. And every day I had to remind him who I was. That's how much of an impression I made on him. And him on me? This happened 20 years ago. I'm just now getting up the gumption to excorcize the memory. 

One day my mother had everyone draw pictures.  Oscar took one stubby little crayon after another and basically abused a piece of construction paper, mouth open, dirty hands smearing the colors into his shirt, pants, face, desk, chair, me.  When he had done this for some time, I praised his art to the heavens. I went on and on about his eye, his composition, his brave choice of colors and his unerring fearlessness to reveal what few other five year olds would dare to unleash on a piece of paper. Oscar stared at me, unblinking, hearing my praise as he was basically unable to escape me then he picked up a black crayon and covered his art with such determination as to leave me completely speechless.  Despite my pleas, Oscar erased his feeble art.  I left the classroom in tears. My mother gently suggested I never come back to her class.  And I never did.  I didn't have the guts for Kindergarten.

Cut to 20 years later. I'm personal assistant to a children's book author.  She gets a request to visit a foster school campus- where foster kids live and study- in Los Angeles county.  Since my manfriend and I at this point are discussing doing foster to adopt, I ask if I can accompany my boss to the school.  I think it might be edifying to meet children in the system.  It proved to be as edifying as hiring a druggie drunk with sex addiction issues to be Charlie Sheen's sober buddy on a field trip to the Playboy Mansion. 

The school and campus are lovely. Pretty trees bloom. The sun shines. Adorable, colorful kid art festoon the hallways. Teachers smile. Even the library is suspiciously normal- cheerful, full of books and the smell of printed paper.  Then the children enter. I'm done for. One after another shuffle in- we've been prepared. They are medicated or should be. They are victims of parental neglect, abuse, abandonment. Some are victims of worse. 

Some have been fostered and/or adopted and then returned to the system, for murky tragic reasons like having fetal alcohol syndrome and/or for having serious developmental delays that makes the fantasy of them becoming bright, amazing, adaptive, resilient adopted children just that. A fantasy.

So the children's book author reads her stories to the kids, who sit there, hunched, angry, withdrawn and defeated. I stand behind the author and watch the children watch her. They are all far too old to have these picture books read to them. It's soon clear this is the closest many of them have ever gotten or will ever get to having a bed time story read to them. Some never give in, but others melt. They comment on the illustrations as if the drawn moose was an actual creature making the choices the author wrote about.

The kids like the author and I like the kids. They crowd her for her autograph and tell her silly things about themselves, just like regular kids. But it's different and it's sad. They clearly have no one in their lives- they have employees and they have each other. Paid people impersonate their guardians. And other unwanted children are their de facto siblings.  The author couldn't wait to go home. 

I couldn't wait to go back. 

While the author took questions from the kids, and the ones who did speak offered up odd opinions about whether a moose might actually need to wear a cardigan, one girl quietly raised her hand. She was overweight, African-American and while her fingernails were gorgeously done, her forearms arms were covered in neatly arranged scars. She announced she was a poet. She recited a poem about having had a dream where she found her best friend. She didn't know where her best friend was but she knew she had one. She didn't know what her best friend looked like or what her best friend's name was. Then she looked in the mirror. And there was her best friend. 

The librarian, the author and me all welled up at that moment. It was tragic, gorgeous and brief. The author stood up to go, full of emotion she didn't want to have. And a warm feeling came over me. Quite similar to having an egg broken over my head.  

I had found my Precious.

Before anyone could stop me I was emailing the librarian. A week or so later I was back. I started a creative writing program with 2 groups of kids- one group of eighth graders and another group of high schoolers. I'm not writing this to be perceived as noble. I'm as noble as Roseanne Barr in a Hometown Buffet.  

The Advil PM is dimming my lights.

 More on Precious later.