In and Out of Jeopardy

In and On Jeopardy


You become a parent long before you have a child. I have done more than my share of chronic parenting, with damaged animals, men, friends and complete strangers. I wasn’t even especially hellbent on being a mother, especially a single mother, but when my sister got picked to be on Jeopardy, I discovered just how much my mother-leakage was beyond my ability to stanch and cauterize. Truth be told, I was a parent before I really knew I wanted a child.

Little Sister or LS, lives in CT with her husband and four daughters, who blow me away consistently with how unbelievably awesome they are. My nieces were the first truly unconditional loves of my life, because from the moment I laid eyes on each of them, I had no choice but to love them without question for the rest of my days. My nephews fall into this category as well, but they came well along after my first two nieces, who hooked me into the whole 'babies create immense love, duty, family and belonging' concept. Despite how much I love my sisters and their offspring, I still wasn't one of those "I gots to get me a baby!" kind of women, which is probably why I became a mother only after my lady parts quit the scene.

Back to Jeopardy, the game show (as opposed to the quality of endangerment). LS, a Ph.d. in clinical psychology, who defended her thesis between baby one and baby two- was already impressive to me. She married her college boyfriend, went on to graduate and then post graduate school and had her first child while her husband was in law school. Not one of these things ever occurred to me at all. A real education with 3 degrees aimed at helping others. Married by 25. To an actual person. Baby before 30. "What?" and "Why?" was all I could think as my beloved LS just went about amassing degrees and having kids. She had a plan, and it was called a life. I had no plan, hence no life.

She was too busy raising her four delicious daughters to actually therapize anyone else. But people needing therapy sorely need people like my LS because if how she raised her four divine girls is any proof of her abilities, she could heal the world. Not only that, but since she is also a major musical theater fag like all the rest of us in the family she routinely kicks ass at Jeopardy. Her daughters convinced her to audition. The bummer was when she got on. Jeopardy (the game show) films in Los Angeles.

LS is many things. A flier is not one of them. She regularly drives thousands of miles to avoid having any part of herself leave the ground. We have all tried everything to get her to fly, to no avail. And the irony of being a clinical psychologist who is terrified of flying is not lost on her.

When it became clear to the whole family that LS was not going to go on Jeopardy unless she could be live-feeded (fed?) from from her couch in Ridgefield CT, and we kinda figured Alex Trebeck wouldn't go for that, someone came up with a crazy solution.

As I was the only un-encumbered person in the family which means I didn't have a child or husband, or a real job, or a life, it was cooked up that I would fly to New York, get to Ridgefield, pack up LS and fly her back to Los Angeles and get her to Jeopardy then force her to fly back home. Yes, we were traveling first class, but to a deeply phobic person first class is still on an airplane, which has a nasty habit of flying around 30,000 feet above LS's comfort zone.

I found someone to care for my damaged but hanging-in-there cat. Flying to NYC first class was great fun, except that while waiting to board, an older man tried to chat me up. His best way of impressing me while bragging that he was in Los Angeles for 'show biz meetings' was to gently put down my actual writing job, which while at Disney, is show biz speak for 'sweat shop pay scale'.

I was happy to pre-board with the other first class passengers, if only to get a break from this man and his need to impress someone, anyone at all. I tried to bury my face in my People, but managed to look up and see my unwanted friend squeeze his down coat past me and sit in coach. I felt awful for him, when in fact he truly deserved the cosmic slap. The flight and ride to Ridgefield was jaunty. I was happy to see my family, if only for a few hours and had a host of fun ideas for LS and me to make the flight pass easily.


By the time I got to Ridgefield, LS was white knuckled and barely able to speak. My cargo pants full of fun ideas melted in the face of primal animal fear. But LS's strength, her daughters, was also her weakness. She worked and still endeavors, to not have her girls witness her fear. She doesn't want her phobia to influence her girls' life choices. So, as long as we never left her alone, I figured we, as a group, were going to get her on that damn plane. If only all of us could have flown with her, in a big unrelenting group hug, it might have worked. We got her packed and her bags in the car. The hard part was her good bye to her girls. She sobbed and hugged her girls as if I was going to air drop her over Afghanistan.

I faltered. Why put her through this, drag her onto a plane, for a game show hosted by an arrogant Canadian? But her daughters wouldn't hear of it. They wanted to root for their mom on TV. LS was sweating, pale, weeping and shaking, but she walked out to the waiting Town Car and got in. On the eternal ride to JFK, I tried to woo her with candy from our childhood that I had hunted down. She just looked through me, then peered back out the window, as if I was the Death Row nun walking her to her noose. What do you say to pure fear? Nothing as I recall. You can't feed fear, either. Fear might seem to have an appetite, but it really doesn't.


We are not an affectionate family. Sure, we hug, but not tightly. We kiss, but lightly and on the cheek. We say "love you" and leave off the far too intimate"I". I tried to hold LS's hand and while it felt wrong, the only part that felt worse was her letting me. She endured my hand in hers the way she was enduring her anxiety- by surrendering to the horror of her fate. I let her hand go. It seemed the less cruel thing to do, since I couldn't promise her we weren't about to crash and die.


We made it through bag check, security and waited to board, quietly for our plane. I snuck off and bought every cheesy gossip rag I could find, in the hopes that chuckling at the personal or professional demise of random unworthy celebrities would give LS's fear a bit of a holiday. It didn't work. She steeled herself and contained herself, as if trying to keep me from catching her infection of grief and anxiety.

Once on the plane the attendant offered us endless glasses of lovely California wine. Since I was ragged, drained and worn from dragging poor LS to her fate (and couldn't help but wonder- what IF we really actually do crash?! Good thing I'd be dead or I'd never forgive myself for killing my sister) I guiltily drank heartily. I begged LS to drink with me, but she refused. I offered her Xanax, Ambien but she had her own pills and refused to take them. I wondered if it would be rude to take one of her relaxants and decided it would. The plane barely heaved during take off, but LS felt every gear shift and and exhale from the cockpit. She grabbed my hand and squeezed as hard as she could. This is a woman who gave birth four times. She knows how to squeeze a hand. I drank with my free hand.

I offered to test her with Jeopardy questions. No. Fun candy from our childhood? No. Warm wet washcloth to gives oneself a whore's bath at one's first class seat? No. More wine? Not for her. More for me.

To take her mind off death, I opened People and searched for a story that I might read aloud to amuse her. To my horror I opened People precisely and accidentally to a story about famous people who pretended to serve in Viet Nam. And there was our father. In the story. Now I was nauseous, from eating fun candy from my unfun childhood, drinking by myself, pretending that LS's fear was just a simple feeling, and the realization that our famous but messed up dad's messings were famous too. Suddenly, in the emotional playpen that being suspended in air in a long metal humming iron lung, with 300 other lives in limbo caught up with me. And while we didn't crash, I did. The failings of other people, even the randomly famous, suddenly filled me with deep whirlpools of woe. So I continued to drink, knowing that LS wouldn't approve. At least me drinking would take a fraction of her mind off of her imminent tragic demise.

After five interminable hours of lovely first class that I was hard-pressed to enjoy due to the window seat full of agony to my left, we landed artfully and subtly. LS turned to me, "That was so fucking turbulent!" It wasn't. We never felt like we left the ground, but I just nodded. At least we were on the ground and I would get my now numb left hand back. The color only returned to LS's face once we left the plane. What I didn't realize until later was that LS was already scheming how best to get back home to CT without ever stepping foot back in LAX.


Our other sister greeted us, excitedly at LAX. LS had nothing good to say about the flight- actually she had nothing good to say, period. Older sister, or OS, cheerfully reminded us that we made it there alive, as if that was 99% of why people fly- to not die.

OS had lots of fun plans for Pre-Jeopardy make overs for LS. And that's what we did. Eyebrow shaping at Anastasia, clothes shopping at The Grove, Burke Williams for facials, massages, and Jacuzzis. But not once did it occur to us to watch Jeopardy. Perhaps if we had we would have known what we were to be exposing poor little LS to.


We drove onto the Studio Lot and were separated from LS- who went off to join the other chosen few, the brave and happy contestants. We sat in the studio audience, which was the approximate temperature of a meat freezer. I stared at the Jeopardy stage and became paralyzed with fear. This was awful. This was cruel. This Jeopardy Game Show stage was designed to intimidate even the most sober and confident trivia buff.

The big light up subject board was a good 50 to 70 feet from the Contestant podia. So, since everyone watches every single episode of Jeopardy on TV, the second you are on a massive stage built from ice and steel and the big light up board is 800 feet away and the buzzer is the size of a hummingbird's eye- you are designed to look stupid next to Alex Trebeck, who has all the answers on cue cards but acts like he knew it anyway. Aside from those three areas, the rest of the stage was plunged into gloomy blackness.

Alex's podium was between the subject board and the contestants, and we learned, among many other horrible facts, that if a contestant hits their buzzer before Alex finishes reading aloud the question, that if you are even remotely intelligent, you can read in more than half that time, if you buzz before he finishes speaking, you get locked out of being able to answer. No wonder Jeopardy seems so easy when one is lolling on their couch or in their bed- it's all so close and warm and safe on TV. Of course everyone thinks they have what it takes, because when one is eating ice cream in their pajamas they think they can do anything. And they can't. It's designed against you in person but shot and edited to make you feel smarter at home. Devious game show trickery.

They tape about 5 shows in a day. Which means, yes- Alex Fucking Trebeck works one whole day a week. He can kiss my Long Island Ass. I've never hated a game show host more. And I know it's not his fault, but I need a good scapegoat and he'll do. The rest of the day was sheer and utter hell.


LS was picked via some strange, unholy lottery to go in the 4th or 5th taping. We in the studio audience were expected to watch all the games taped that day. We soon realized that LS and all the other hopefuls were going up against some young, chipper, eager and paper-white Mormon who was on an eleven game gosh darn winning streak that must of had Joseph Smith tap dancing in his grave. Oh wait, Mormons don't dance. But they sure know how to hit a goldarn buzzer.

I was wracked with fear and loathing. After all I put my poor, sweet LS through to drag her here, and have a Persian woman spray paint eyebrows on her forehead, all just to compete against Ken Jennings, the winningest slice of Wonder Bread in Jeopardy history. Of course this dude is good at Jeopardy- he's never had alcohol or Diet Coke, so his memory is that of a 14 year old who reads nothing but Encyclopedias all day long. For fun. Not only that, but he had 11 other chances to master the far away board, to understand how to wait for Trebeck to finish his question and he knew how to ring that god damn bell. And the cold and the dark of the stage held no fear for him. He was invincible. It was excruciating.

I sat in the audience the way LS sat in the plane. Completely horrified and utterly terrified about basic human survival. I turned to OS and said, "We are dragged our sister out here, I tortured her on a five hour flight and now we sit here and watch her get thrown to the Mormon Lion?" It's a televised public spanking. It's being caned in public, with hair and make up. It's barbary dressed up as daytime TV. I fully became my sister's mother at this point- aching for her hardship, fighting the urge to run up on the stage and pull her away, freeing her from the heedless bloodshed of trivia jousting.


To her credit LS gave it her best. She even beat Ken Jennings in the Final Jeopardy question but he had amassed more funds in previous rounds and, just like a Utahan bet cautiously, so even in losing, he still came out ahead. I will never forget the final question wherein LS cleaned his already Swiss-clean clock.


"The Shakespearean Romance characters whose names are also used in the International Civil Aviation Organization's Alphabet." Ken said something stupid like Othello. Third Place Guy who had walked around all day with a Bic pen he held like a buzzer (or like Bob Dole) said something like "Smokey The Bear". But LS knew. "Who are Romeo and Juliet?"


This final question combined her vast love of theater and her deep hatred of all things Aviational. Even as my heart broke, I was proud of her. Just like a mother. And it sucked. I hated not being able to save her and protect her. But it was her shot. It was her Jeopardy, her preferred form of putting herself in harm's way. And it was hers to win or lose. I might have preferred a turbulent plane ride, but I couldn't use my fear to erase hers. I had to sit back and let her be in and on Jeopardy. I had to watch her lose and then I had to force her back on the plane to take her home to her waiting and proud family.

Driving home, trying to erase the image of LS's sobbing face as she walked alone to her gate and her imagined but still painful demise, I finally understood why Hockey Moms run onto the ice to attack mean players, why Stage Moms exist and what having no boundaries feels like. As a parent, you can't take away their pain, you can't make them pass the test, nor can you make their team win. You just sit on the sidelines with a grim smile and crushed juice boxes.


A smart mother recently said to me, "Prepare your children for the path, not the path for your children."

No wonder it took me another ten years to become a mother.

Botox for my Babymama

I got Botox before meeting my Babymama. Andrew shaved his gray beard off and came perilously close to using Grecian Formula on his chest hair. I just went right ahead and dyed my hair and Juvedermed the hell of out my mug.  We live in LA, and basically it's harder to live here and scrupulously avoid plastic surgery then it is to give into it.  Letting yourself just age naturally and letting your hair go gray is like choosing to live in LA and eat toast.  No one does that. 

All my other potential Babymamas broke up with me before I could even make or mail them a "Give Us Your Baby" Book.  And I could hear the exact moment in their voices when they emotionally hung up on me, even though we kept chatting uncomfortably for a few more minutes.  And the more I could tell they were over me, I became the ex-girlfriend or that AOL customer service person from purgatory (which is worse than hell because it's limbo forever)- I simply and cheerfully wouldn't let them break up with me.

They all would be super-friendly or wary but trying to be nice until they asked me how old I was.  And I could hear in their silence they were just waiting for me to finish ranting about what a "young 49" I am. I knew that in their young, pregnant minds, I went from sounding fun and energetic and exotic because I lived in LA to having a wattle, a tight perm and wearing taupe pantyhose with my Easy Spirit pumps. Basically, I became their moms. Or older. Because in every other place in the world, I'm far too old to be a first time mom.  
 

After each birth mother passed on me, my lawyer would explain why they didn’t want to pursue a relationship with me.  Three of them went with gay couples.  Heather went with Christians, Cresta changed her mind and wanted to keep the baby.  After seven birth mothers dumped me, I ranted to our adoption lawyer that I was going to lie about my age. I was going to shave off eight years. 41 sounds reasonable, kinda cool and on the hind end of still being young-adjacent.  Our adoption attorney strenuously encouraged me to not do that.  And he is the boss, or more like the coach, (not unlike Burgess Meredith in "Rocky") in this awful, painful process.

Let me paint the full picture here. The adoption lawyer puts ads in Pennysavers, Thrifty Nickels, Classifieds and free local papers in the states that allow him to. “Loving Professional Couple looking for child to adopt.”  If a scared and knocked up girl happens to see that ad, she calls our lawyer, who interviews her, then if she sounds straight and determined, puts her through a rigorous (hopefully) screening process to make sure she really is pregnant and not just trying to get a new roof from some desperate people with a little money saved up. 

Once the birth mother produces medical records, sonograms, photographs, and completes an exhaustive eleven page personal history, the lawyer calls his clients and says, “I have a potential match for you.” It is much more like matchmaking than like babymaking, but it’s how families are made when sperm and egg just aren’t up to the task.   

Then I’d have to screw up my courage and call a complete stranger and politely try to get them to give me their kid.  It’s pretty much as awkward and awful as it sounds.  Top that off with knowing you are competing with around five other couples, as the lawyer calls all his clients to tell them that he has a potential match for them as well.  So, not only are you trying to win over a most likely traumatized and terrified young girl, but you also have to beat out adorable gay couples who actually like Disneyland. See you on the ice, Tonya.

But this Babymama didn't get distant on the phone when I told her my age.  Maybe it was because when I said I was 49, I paused, stuttered and coughed out the truth in such a way that she might have thought I said 41.  But she didn't ask me to repeat myself and I didn't volunteer to, so we moved on. 

She had a feathery, quiet voice that sounded like it was used to not being listened to. She sounded much younger than 21, and had a slight lisp.  And her two children were screaming and playing in the background.  I was even annoyed by the kids screaming and playing and laughing and begging for her attention while I was trying to impress her with what an awesome mother I'd be.  

Now that I think about it, her kids probably helped her think I said I was 41, because they were making such an unholy racket.  I suggested she call me back at a better time but she said there was no better time. Her kids were always with her. And she didn’t have a job. In hindsight, her noisy kids probably helped her think I said I was 41.

I had been given a great hot tip from a friend who had successfully and happily adopted with our same lawyer. She told me to wait to call the babymama, because the other adoptive hopefuls probably all called as soon as the lawyer gave them the phone number, which was first thing in the morning.  Imagine these girls being inundated with phone calls from six or seven hopeful adoptive mothers. The lawyer told me I’d have to be the one making the phone calls, because the birth mothers didn’t want to talk to men at all. Unless they were gay men. 

Being far too used to not getting what I want, I didn't see each new bio-mom as an opportunity to become a parent. I saw each new young woman as the hurdle I would famously shatter my pelvis on, and live on in infamy as representing the tragedy of defeat in the title sequence of "The Wide World Of Sports". 

I wish I could say I waited to call Bio-mom because I was listening to my friend’s advice. But mostly, I dreaded calling another woman just to be rejected for my age. So I waited.  And then I ran into my ex-husband who was expecting his second child. Not that I’m competitive, but seeing this man who dumped me now with almost two children inspired me to give less of a shit about being rejected.  

I called her in the car on the way home from work.  She and I awkwardly, but calmly chatted for my entire commute home, through me unpacking my car, getting in my house, kicking off my shoes and socks and sitting outside on the back porch with a glass of wine. We spoke for well over an hour. 

She asked if I wanted a girl because that’s what she was having.  My arm hairs stood up as I told her a girl would be delightful.  She asked if my husband was okay with the baby being black.  I told her he was more than okay with that and resisted adding how sad my husband is that he never got to bang a black chick.  So this would be almost as good- that was the joke I was swallowing with my wine.  

 She said she wanted a closed adoption. She didn’t want to see us or meet us. I asked if I could still send her a book about us, so she could see how we looked and lived. I was determined to make this goddamn book for one birth mother, because we had spent the entire fall staging Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas to take photos of ourselves to sell ourselves as perfect, stable, fun, loving and parental, just missing that one pesky ingredient- a child of our own. I had the color photos, the glitter, the glue sticks and the construction paper all at the ready- all I needed was one mildly interested Babymama.

She said she thought I was the one, because it felt so easy to talk to me and because I didn’t sound all judgy and tense and weird.  I instantly pitied the five other women (or gay men) who called her within minutes of each other this morning.  She told me her mom would have to talk to me because as she said, my mom and I are in this together.  I tried not to get my hopes up but stayed up until 2am making a fantastic “Give Us Your Baby” book while drinking a bottle of wine.  I Fedexed it to Akron.

Her mother called me the next day. Her mother is 7 years younger than me.  We chatted, had each other cracking up a few times and she said it. “You’re the one.”  After Babymama saw our “Give Us Your Baby” book, she wanted an open adoption.  She wanted to meet us. And to know us. And to stay in touch. All of this was fine with us.

And when we found out the baby was being born in a month, we had to get 5 months of adoption paperwork completed and processed in Ohio and California in three weeks. Babycare classes were taken, fingerprints, medicals, water safety classes, and income taxes, income statements and a battery of Social Worker visits, compounded by huge, down payment like checks being written. By us. We were stressed, exhausted, and looking for a house to move into at the same time, since two weeks before meeting Babymama and deciding to date, we had been given notice to move out of our house.  Landlady’s daughter had been relocated to LA, and wanted her house back.  So we were dating a babymama, and looking for a house at the same time.

So, right before we left for Akron, we looked at ourselves and found ourselves wanting. We were terrified that we’d fly to Akron, meet babymama two days before the baby was due and have her reject us as being far too old for her baby.  We underwent makeovers not unlike what Dorothy and her Yellow Brick Road compatriots endured before meeting the Almighty Wizard of Oz.  We had our metal buffed, our straw restuffed and I got my face shot so full of Botox and Juvederm that my frozen faced MedSpa technician inevitably hit a blood vessel outside my lower lip and I looked like I had been popped one good by my drunken husband who had warned me not to ‘keep it up, see what happens.’

The bruise was so deep and black and defiantly ringed with a brilliant puce areola that it scoffed at mere make up concealer.  Short of going to an undertaker and begging him for wound filler or bullet hole filler, I tried every cover-up and concealer in existence.    Making matters worse, friends repeatedly threw dinner parties to toast us on our big exciting journey. We might return home to LA with a whole other person.  But I might want to try a little concealer first.  Concealing facts and nasal-labial folds was what had gotten me into this pickle in the first place.

We met Baby-Mama and her mama and her two children in the Red Lobster in Akron.  The saddest, weakest meeting hug ever took place right inside the front door. None of us wanted to be there, doing this.  I’m sure she didn’t want to have or give up this baby. Nor did I want to charm her into doing it.  But the ice had to be broken and the baby raised somewhere and by someone.  To call it awkward and painful and shy is an insult to just how shy and painful and awkward it was. 

Dressing for this first face to face was so difficult that I basically wore everything I had packed.  I was shivering so I pretended I wore too many clothes because I was cold.  They were scoping us out as much as we were scoping them. When I mentioned that I had gone to art school Babymama looked at me for the first time in the eyes. “I wanted to do that” was all she said. Then she texted someone. She did that a lot. Her phone rarely left her hand. I understood. Texting is the umbilical cord of the truly shy.  And the truly young.

Preemptively, I blurted that my dog had accidentally head butted my mouth and that’s why I was black and blue.  They stared at my bruise, which they hadn’t seen until I told my tall tale.  The four year old boy punched the booth cushions and showed us his muscles.  Babymama took many calls during dinner. Her mother was conversational and tried to keep it light and fun.  Then we discovered that Babymama hadn’t told anyone, including her father that she was pregnant. She was hiding under layers of clothes, using winter as a cloak.  

But her four year old son had guessed. Maybe that’s why he was punching the booth cushions. We were baby poachers, coming for his little sister.  Her 2 and a half year old daughter obliviously chattered to herself.  I tried to impress her by drawing a cat on her kiddie menu. She eyed the drawing and then eyed me, not happily. 

I begged for dessert and the check. It was just too hard to keep it light for so long- tiptoeing on the tight rope hundreds of feet above what we all really wanted. Which was not to be here. If only my ovaries had worked and hers had taken the day off- we’d never have to be making the smallest talk ever in a Red Lobster in Akron.

But as luck or someone who some people call God (but who I see as more of a huge 8 year old boy with a magnifying glass and an ant farm, a sense of humor and a bit of a sadistic streak) would have it- her ovaries went into over drive, despite her birth control implant device and despite all my years of spending hard earned money and so much time on birth control and pregnancy tests that I probably never needed, she was having a baby and I wasn’t. So here we were. Sitting across a tiny table crammed with corn bread and crawdaddy pizza bites, eying each other daintily and wanting dinner and labor to be over. 

It was to be the beginning of a beautiful and painful and life long relationship. With a whole other person being the only thing we have in common. My bruise would heal. Would hers?

Dear 19 subscribers

To all you kind 19 of you and you know who you are - I am continuing the blog about the messy, uneven, pock marked and un-curbed road that comprises becoming a parent, when your own easy biology won't do it for you. I need for me, not you, dear 19 subscribers, to spell out what actually happens when you are put in a clear and easy position, due to the many large checks you write, to take a baby home and hopefully adopt this child.

You become their parent long before they become your child. If you can live with this inequity, you can too become a parent due to an ad placed in a Las Vegas Pennysaver. It does happen, just like bad back seat sex... which also results in a cute but drooling and gassy baby that may or may not be raised by its biological parents....

After 33 years and thousands of dollars invested in birth control, I realize that I will never get back those hundreds of hours reading Spanish language versions of Self Magazine in Planned Parenthood offices.  I protected myself assiduously against what never occurred.

And yet, oddly,  I am a mother.  It still stuns me to think about it.  She is there, napping on my sweatshirt. My daughter who is gaining a pound a week and as much as that makes me feel like a foie gras farmer, it is something I am proud of. I am the proud renter (rent to own, in this case) of a 2 month old girl who legally belongs to an anonymous random legal guardian pro litem in Ohio, who just called me to chat about for about ten minutes regarding her baby in my care. The chat went well. It only cost us $350 dollars. And it inspired me to want to have similarly pricey conversations where I got to send a bill.

In about 6 or 8 months the adoption will be finalized. And she will be as much ours as if she came out of us.  I'm going to blog backwards now, wherein I cover every harrowing hairpin turn from that fateful day on January 9th where a bio mom in Akron picked me to be her babymama. And she became my babymama.

And we are still babymamma-ing. Back and forth, with advice, love, baby pictures, tragedy, poverty, struggle, polite questions, boring weather talk, LOL, bad news and sadness. I try not to transmit my guilt at taking her baby and she tries not to make me feel her pain. She is careful to call the baby what she named her at birth and I am careful to never call the baby what I named her, after birth.  Via text, of course. 

Next blog- death and birth. In that order.

the next 24 hours...

After our dark night of the soul ended we entered the limbo of 72 hours. All you can do is wait, Trisha, our nurse of the 7am to 7pm shift, advised.  Fuck waiting.

When waiting to know if your life will go one way or another, with a child you already crave and adore and care for; waiting 72 hours in a hospital room is no worse nor better than waiting 127 hours for help in a hole in the ground with your arm dying trapped underneath a rock. Having to eventually saw your arm off in order to be free and alive was basically an easier emotional option than our 72 hours. For that dude, his choice was clear. Chop off your arm and live. Our choice was murkier. Wait for this baby to become yours. Or... what? Did we have a choice? Could we have folded, caved and walked away? It wasn't an option. The only option was to wait.

72 hours (which is 3 days for those of you with math skills like mine) is a long time to wait for a birth mother to decide to give her newborn baby to you. Especially when you have holed up in your 10 foot by 10 foot bonding room in the Akron General Maternity Ward and have not left that child's side for much of those 72 hours.

Surrender has always been an awful word in the context of war & death, but in the legalese context of surrendering your infant to someone you met the Monday before at a Red Lobster,  it's reasonably unimaginable.

While we were waiting for the baby to be born, Bio-mom's mother Sheila told us Bio-mom had already signed the surrender paperwork. Andrew and I instantly sobbed. My sister and mother both welled up and Sheila looked at us with slightly stunned amazement. As if to say, " You really didn't think we were gonna go through with this?"

I was moved at Bio-mom's resolve. But in my heart, with 16 nieces and nephews, who I fell in love with at first sight even though I'm not blood related to half of them, I also knew that Bio-mom wasn't legally allowed to sign those papers until well after she had given birth. Even me, someone who has never brought another human to term on this planet, I knew that once Bio-mom saw this baby, all bets were going to be that much harder to place.


Bio-mom left the hospital Thursday morning, determined to make her son's 5th birthday special, despite it being the day after having given birth and the day she left her newborn behind. We gave her gifts for her son, thanked her for her baby, hugged her gently and tried not to think about what she was feeling. 

I imagine it like the grief of losing a limb, or the ability to walk, or see, or hear.  She left a living part of herself behind with a middle aged white couple she had primarily communicated with via text. Sheila called us sobbing from the hospital lobby, begging us to do right by this baby. We assured her we would not be able to do anything else. 

Bio-mom named our hopeful child after her Creole grandmother, who had the misfortune of having four children with a man who fell into and died from drug abuse. Bio-Mom's grandmother was forced her to put her four children in foster care, reared by folks who were just after the monthly check.

Soon after we were reunited with our hopeful baby again, Jan the hospital social worker visited. Not to rain on social worker's parades, but their job is to rain on everyone else's parades with as much professional diplomacy and efficient empathy as possible.

We eagerly asked Jan when the 72 hours of legal limbo would precisely end, just so we could have something to shoot for.  Jan smiled like a nun and gently reminded us not to be in too heartless of a hurry; that the 72 hours doesn't officially begin until after birth is completed. So, sometime on Saturday afternoon/evening, at around 5pm. Or later. She'd get back to us.

It was Thursday, 10 am. Nurses let us know we were were free to leave the hospital and come back to visit baby. They would keep her in the nursery so we could rest, shop, relax... sort of like a more sterile form of day care.  We opted to stay until they kicked us out.  We were either leaving together or when baby left without us. Thus the real agony of waiting officially began. My mom turned to me and said, "This is your labor." Good times.


We passed the time by taking pictures, cuddling, snuggling and treating this baby as a member of our family- why should this newborn live in a heat-lamp limbo even if she was? She was hugged, fussed over, dressed, changed and basically babied. It was what every baby deserves and the least we could do.   We reveled in her eating skills and her repertoire of face-making while sleeping. She has a quite pretty male pattern baldness, sort of an Ed Harris hairline, and these occasional crazy furrowed brows. We call this face the Roscoe Lee Brown. We might not get to keep her, but acted as if we were. Nicknames were invented, poopy diaper songs sung, and a delicate cautiously optimistic love blossomed.

My sister & mom held and smelled her divine odor and fruitlessly tried not to fall in love. I could see them memorizing her face, neck, toes and fingers just in case. Andrew and I stole away to the hospital cafeteria with the always on, low level volume TV, tucked on a high shelf- I wanted to throw my shoe at it, but couldn't tear my eyes away from it. Watching whales be milked at the Atlanta Aquarium helped somehow. Life does go on. It just has to.

Andrew asked me if I saw baby's face when I closed my eyes. I did. I realized why I married this man. To share this painful miracle with and to complement each other's weaknesses with our quite different strengths.  Bio-mom texted a bit, asked for pictures, was very brave and strong and asked us if we were sure about this. Now it was my turn to be surprised. She hadn't begun to understand our resolve, which matched her own.

I told Bio-mom she was my hero. Despite or because of all that, I was a sneaky bitch and sent her photos of baby sleeping on daddy, skin on skin, and a photo of baby gripping my thumb. She asked for one of baby alone. Close up, just the face. Bio-mom was onto me. It was gonna be a mom on mom showdown.  I complied. I sent her just single face baby photos. I tried to find the most unflattering ones, but there just aren't any... this limbo baby is stunning, almost more so than the children with regular parents who are going to take them home. This limbo baby is going to make everyone love her and mourn losing her. She's a survivor baby.  Even the nurses told me she was the general favorite in the nursery. Which was great to hear, but painful in the long run of the 72 hours.


Thursday night was pure, unadulterated heaven.  Every poop was an Olympic gold medal, every bottle drunk a Rhodes Scholarship, and every burp a Maya Angelou poem. We kept staring at each other, stunned at how simple and natural it felt.  We took turns on the crunchy hospital bed and the roll out mattress chair, which could easily replace waterboarding as a torture device. At least it took our minds off the waiting.

I kept telling myself I didn't really like baby, not nearly as much as my dog, and tried to find things wrong with her. It helped pass the time and the nagging feeling that I never get what I truly want.  I am good at accepting loss, being optimistic and moving on.  But this would prove my undoing. Wanting to mother this tiny sleeping peanut who had no idea of how much buried joy and heartfelt pain her very being had awakened was sorely testing my ability to roll with the punches and shake it off.

Nurses wanted to take her to do things to her. I pretended I didn't care as they wheeled her away. I yearned to feel relief when she was out of sight. No such luck. They'd bring her back and my heart would expand out of all proportion like the Grinch when he finally learned that Christmas wasn't about things at all.


Thursday night, Bio-mom texted that she wanted to come by the hospital to see baby on Friday. I feared telling her we had to leave baby behind at 2pm on Friday to see the social worker.  We debated whether Jasmine visiting the baby would hinder or help her decision making.  But ultimately it didn't matter. Until 5pm Saturday, Bio-mom was baby's only mother, so if she wanted  a visit, that was her full and unequivocal right.

Baby was sporting a tiny lo-jack bracelet on her ankle so if someone took her, alarms would ring, lights would flash and doors would lock. But can you steal your own true baby? I decided not to ask that question. Admitting full helplessness, I let Bio-mom know when we'd be away and when baby'd be in the nursery. And the nurses assured me Bio-mom would have a private room to visit baby in. Great.

Friday morning, 36 hours left. The large nurse clock on the wall drove me nuts. I wanted to smash it against the wall and grind it into dust under my slippers. Sheila texted me to check in. 'How was our first night.' 'Oh, it was long and hard.' I elaborated about how hard newborns are to care for. Went into detail even.

I was hoping for them to feel relief at not having another newborn to care on top of the two babies already sharing their one bedroom apartment but it backfired. Sheila shot back, 'Oh. Are you not up to it?' They were testing us to make sure we really wanted her. Of course they were. Who would simply and selflessly love someone else's hopelessly dependent and completely needy baby? How does that happen? Where in human nature does nurture supplant nature?

I realized I'm truly bad at being sneaky. I confessed that we loved it. And that we were a good team. Andrew would make me sleep farther away from baby so I wouldn't wake with a shot every time she gurgled or sighed.  It wasn't what I intended to convey, but the image of the devoted father sealed the deal. Andrew was my ace in the hole. A good man that in love with someone else's baby was the clincher. Bio-mom, her mom and the grandmother the baby was named for had suffered enormously from the lack of fatherly love and attention.  That was what they were searching for. It was never about me and my word-smithy text-ability. It was about this child getting what none of them had ever had- a loving and devoted, dutiful father.  I was truly the backseat driver.


The snow was falling hard as we readied to drive to Cleveland. Since Bio-mom and I were the only ones with wristbands, baby had to go back to the nursery. As we steeled ourselves to leave, Bio-mom texted.  She had changed her mind. She wasn't coming to see baby. She was too busy job-hunting. This woman who had just given birth to a baby two days prior, left that baby to give her son cake and presents was looking for a job two days later. Bio-mom is a hero. A woman I can only hope to be as strong as. She's a tough ass tiger mother. I took notes.

Andrew drove very slowly because we were trying to be those people now. If we died en route to the social worker, what would happen to baby?  Cleveland was bitter. The snow whipped the wind from the big ass lake around us hard. We still had 27 hours to go.

Amy, our Cleveland Social Worker tape recorded us signing paperwork promising to not hit, abuse, neglect or have anyone else care for the not quite ours baby. It was a harsh exercise, making us sign paperwork and give this child a name, despite the fact that Bio-mom had more that a day left to surrender.  It felt unfair to make us fake parenting and make fake parenting vows, but that was the rule. We complied because we had zero choice. Sure, no one else would care for her for 6 weeks. We might not get to, either. I can easily vow and sign something if it doesn't matter anyway. Hell, I went to Catholic all girls school for 12 years. I can swear to anything.

I'd cheerfully sign and vow all the while thinking that baby wasn't that cute, that she'd smell much better and where was that huge avalanche of maternal love I was supposed to feel completely buried under and I wasn't all that sure about her strong, fierce nose.  I'd sign a page and nod, listening intently,  and tell myself I truly wasn't a mother type. I would be happy to raise five interesting yet damaged dogs and just be that kind of woman.

We signed and initialed and promised and had to give the child that wasn't ours a name. Andrew did it with his heart. I vowed and signed, with my hand and my mouth- my heart was nowhere to be found.

Social Worker Amy informed us that the birth father, who's home address Bio-mom didn't know, could contest our adoption and that legally, even after Bio-mom had surrendered, he could fight for custody and win. And we'd have to pay for the trial to fight him. We signed. We initialed, we named her and nodded. Why not? She was our baby in triplicate double-spaced paperwork only. Someone else's name was on her birth certificate, and was probably with her at the hospital nursery right now.


As we were leaving Andrew asked Amy if she could tell if a birth mother was able to go through with the surrender. She nodded. 'Just today a mother gave birth that I know won't go through with it. The adoptive parents flew in from California, too!' We must have have paled because she quickly added that since our Bio-mom had two other small children she was raising alone, while jobless, was a likely candidate for surrender. She smiled and said, 'Don't panic unless you haven't heard from me by 6:30pm tomorrow night.' Awesome.  Cold comfort.


We drove back to our hopeful baby. Then a text came in. Bio-mom. She was in agony. She had no idea how much this would hurt. She didn't know if she had done the right thing. She couldn't stop thinking about baby. Our bellies were in ropes. How could we wish so badly for her to continue down such a wounding path?

I texted that while I could never truly understand her pain I admired her bravery and heroism,  and that her pain was our pain, which in many ways it truly was. How could we celebrate our great good fortune at becoming a family if it came at the expense of someone else's pain?

She didn't text me back. The long drive back to the hospital grew that much longer. We got baby back and spent another night caring for and falling for the baby who belonged to someone else. Jasmine had 18 more hours to walk in and claim her child.


Saturday was when the snow fell sideways and accumulated in drifts.  We met the droopy pediatrician,  who wanted to see baby on Monday or Tuesday. We said if that if the baby was ours we'd be calling. He shook our hands and smiled sadly and left.

Mom and sister showed up. We were in the last five hours of waiting. Didn't hear from Bio-mom or Sheila. Time was ours to kill or be killed by.  It all boiled down to sitting and waiting and eating or walking. My sister walked the halls of the hospital with me. We visited the chapel, the library, the cafeteria, the coffee shop, the gift shop where buying a single roll of Tums took a good 30 minutes.  We searched out other ways to spend or kill time.

Nurses came around to check on us, give us sad smiles and tried to distract us with funny stories of twin boys named Tank and Brick. Trisha regaled us with stories of the parents who were toilet training their two day old.  It didn't work.  Then, finally it was five. I had to walk, to leave loving Baby to Andrew and my mother. Deirdre came with me. I forgot my phone and ran back to get it. We wandered the halls of Fetal Monitoring and checked out the happy photos of babies who went home with parents who belonged to them.

My phone rang.  It was Amy. It was 5pm. It was over. Bio-mom had signed. My sister and I hugged quietly in the empty hallway, alone in front of happy familied baby photos. We would now have that same opportunity. We ran back to the bonding room to free Andrew and my mother and our baby, who we could now call ours. It was official. Labor was over.


We smiled and cried. Our joy was mitigated by Bio-mom's pain.  Pictures were taken. Nurses came in to congratulate us. We took the hospital clothes off our baby, dressed her in the clothes her brand new grandma had bought and washed for her, and we put her in her first car seat, also a gift from her grandmother, who shopped for this baby as if she had all rights to.

Social worker Amy came to sign her release. The hospital social worker and the nurse  signed papers. We were already packed to leave the bonding room forever. Trisha, our fantastic nurse cut the no-steal-baby-lo-jack off our baby's ankle. I had to be wheeled out in a wheelchair. Hospital regulations.

I wanted to run out, but I submitted to being wheeled, our baby in her car seat, on my lap. Amy walked beside me. As a representative of the state of Ohio, Amy is technically the baby's custodian until the adoption finalizes in 6 months.  The baby was hers, as Ohio, to hand to us, once outside the hospital doors.

Andrew ran ahead to pull the car around. He had shorn the car of three days of snow as thoroughly as an Australian cowpoke shaves a sheep to make UGGS.  The cold was sharp but felt great.

We were given Clementine Grace, directed to snap her into her car seat, shook hands with Amy, hugged Trisha the nurse.  I sat in the back seat and watched my baby breath and sleep as we made our way back to the hotel, where we dance with our baby and cry at Whitney Houston songs that used to make us roll our eyes.

Yes, we are those people. Finally.

xokd

24 hours

24 hours ago we became something else.

Jack Bauer would be crying like John Denver at the 24 hours we just had.

We are not officially parents. The baby we hold, cuddle, sniff like pups, change, feed and adore like fawning minions is not ours. not until Saturday at 5pm... when consent and surrender papers are signed. we don't like the word surrender, it just feels so Cowboys vs Indians, but that's the word the social workers use.

We think her name is Clementine Grace Delilah Alice Jane Gorham Ginger Hussey, but we're just waiting for her to tell us which one she wants to open with.

Babymama is profoundly shy- so all dreams of filming the baby being born, cutting umbilical the cord, instant-love- inducing psychosomatic lactation (for me and Andrew), skin on skin attachment opportunities went out the window.   It just became about a healthy birth, a happy baby and a generous brave babymama --

We only broke down 4 or 5 times, when they put the maternity ward band on my wrist, when we were told Babymama had already signed consent papers --which unfortunately she cannot actually do- but knowing her resolve was firm in giving baby to us was such a massively huge gift that Andrew and I both lost it in a hallway.

We waited. Twizzlers were consumed. Names were debated, tabled, resuscitated, test driven and rejected.  Texts flew. Babymama, me, Babymama's mama, all texting like teens between contractions and centimeters and petucin and epidaurals... this truly is a baby born by text.

Babymama was determined to deliver yesterday in order to be home today for her son's 5th birthday. The son she had in the 11th grade.

We waited, we hung out with Babymama's mama and we ate in the Akron General Coffee Shop-- Cheeseburger Chowder, anyone? Five different kinds of fries. Salads are  olives and croutons. good times.

Andrew and I bought Martino a birthday gift so Babymama wouldn't have to go to Toys R Us immediately after giving birth and leaving a newborn in the hospital. As we waited an eternity to pay for a gift bag- everyone's real nice and real sllloowwww here- I received a text.

I had her.

It was 4:30.

I am not a corny person. But the sun actually came out just at that moment.

Babymama texted me again.

She's so white.

And truly, she was the whitest black baby I've ever seen, perhaps since Barack Obama.

When Babymama asked me to come to her room to see her, it was like meeting the pope- the really holy Polish one, not the current Vincent Price-like one. I sat with babymama and her mama. It was awkward and painful and desperately sweet. They gave me a bag of baby clothes that they had picked out for her. 

We talked, mooned over the tiny booties and Minnie Mouse t-shirts and then I just flat out asked them to please let me see the baby. It was 6pm and we hadn't seen her yet. Babymama's TV was on. Reality.

Babymama smiled and nodded. I ran out. Babymama arranged via the social worker for us to have a 'bonding room'. We checked in and waited an agonizingly long time to get to hold her...

We held her for about 15 minutes before we were questioned about whether to ask babymama to breastfeed. Another agonizing decision. Do we do what's best for the baby's health and wellbeing but give babymama a chance to dangerously bond and fall in love? We don't want to be bad people, just bad parents.  We said no.

No social workers, no adoption agency people were there to guide, advise or yell and holler,  it was just us falling all over ourselves trying to figure out what the hell to do.

Then babymama wanted to see her. We walked the baby over, having just had 15 minutes with baby ourselves, and seeing babymama study this wee baby and cuddle her fingers and toes with a bio-love I've long marvelled at brought out my latent tiger momma. I hungrily and anxiously watched her pore over her baby. She knew how to hold her and feed her. I felt so old and white and useless...

Finally we asked that we let our family say good-bye to baby before visiting hours ended. They let us take her but Babymama, so beautiful, shy and young, huge dark brown eyes glancing around the room, asked me if she could hang out with the baby after my family left. She looked at me balefully. 'I'm leaving tomorrow, without her, so can I share her with you tonight?' We beamed. 'Of course! Of course!'

Shirley, babymama's mama (and younger than me) told us to go back to the hotel, and get our last good night's sleep- she told us it was an order. We smiled, bungled and said, maybe... we knew we weren't going back to the hotel. We weren't leaving our (her) baby. We did skin on skin and cuddled and swaddled and cooed and took pictures. We became those people instantly.

We took her to our 'bonding room' for another hour, then felt so fabulous and magnanimous about ourselves that we had the nurse take baby to babymama.

And we didn't see baby or hear anything from babymama all night long. It was brutal. We paced, kept asking the nurses who came into our empty nest what was happening and they said, 'She's with her mother. Nothing to be done'. We tossed and turned and fretted. Our phones were dying, our charger back at the hotel.  It didn't matter because there were no more texts. Was babymama reconsidering? How could she not irreversibly bond with this gorgeous little bewitching creature?

A long night of woe passed in the empty bonding room. I made mental notes- fuck adoption, let's go buy an egg and rent a uterus in India. We lost our dog, cat and house in three months- and here we are in Ohio, losing something that was never ours.

Powerless doesn't begin to describe the feeling. Especially while trying to sleep in a hospital bed that crunches with every turn. Andrew finally fell asleep, eyes full of worry and grief. I watched him sleep, heard nurses laughing in the break room and fell asleep until 6am. Three nurses changed shifts and still we had no baby. Tammy (12-6am) told us that Babymama asked baby to come back to her after being bathed. Tammy told Babymama we were waiting for baby. Babymama told her we were at the hotel. Tammy assured we most certainly were not. Babymama said she'd text us. She didn't.

6am. We got dressed and had a droopy oatmeal in the cafeteria surrounded by glowing eyed, zombie-skinned exhausted residents. I texted social worker to tell her we figured it was all over...then I texted Babymama because I just couldn't help myself. 'How are you? How is the baby?'.

No response.  We sank into our weak coffee and tater tots. murmuring morning TV made it all so much more bleak.

A text came. Social Worker reminding me this is not my baby, and to let babymama make her peace.

A text came. Babymama was getting ready to leave. Waiting for her mom and discharge papers. Thanking us for letting her have one whole night with our baby. She called her our baby. And then a request for cash. As I was running for the ATM to drain my checking account, everyone grabbed me. Stop. Wait.

We argued about how much to give her when we got a text- she accidentally sent that to me. The text was meant for her father. We gave her what we had, and she looked at us fully, for the first time. She was smiling. She was sad beyond measure but she was grateful for her time with Delia. Her TV was on. Reality.

She named her Delia. After her grandmother Odelia.  Babymamas get to name their babies on the birth certificate, and then it changes hands when all is finalized around 6 months later. And then she gave us the baby. And she left. I don't even want to peek at what that feels like.

Delia has not left our side since. Andrew is snoring on her right now. They both seem quite content with the arrangement.

We may not get to keep her, but we are parents. All the nurses in Maternity are rooting for us- even the ones who thought we were baby's grandparents. 

xokd