Why didn't her real mom want her?

Anna is a woman I met years ago at a Mexican Wedding. We had a late night tequila fueled chat on a hill above the warm ocean. Years go by and our names get tossed about with fondness but little or pretty much zero facetime. Finally we just remet days ago at a baby shower.  The Mexican wedding has now resulted in a baby shower for the knocked up bride.  Anna saw me and Clementine and marched over in a jumpsuit- she's the only human I know who makes a jumpsuit look smarter than it is.  She's a supergoddess. And on Sunday she upbraided me for not updating the blog more frequently. Since she is a paying customer and 6 feet tall, I instantly agreed.

And I do have an update but I've been ruminating on how to dominate this story with a Spalding Gray-esque New England buddhist brilliance. But it isn't coming. Perhaps it's just a scary snapshot of the future.  And it was a timely reminder to get my story straight.

So, I'm standing by this trough, which is around 20 feet long and narrow and silvery- like a gutter that one might put above a garage door.  But this trough, resting about 2 feet above the grass, was filled with scoops of sprinkled and whipped creamed ice cream. It was also surrounded by intense toddlers, resembling a team of little people working an assembly line where the job is to taste-test ice cream with pink plastic spoons.  If you squinted it looked like the kids were clearing leaves and debris from a gutter.  Clementine was eating and laughing  and not dropping any ice cream on her dress. A feeding trough instead of a high chair was making all sorts of sense to me.

Suddenly, The Lovely Girl was standing beside me.  Slender, lovely, pale, with glossy wisps of golden wheat-colored hair surrounding her face. She was probably seven but exuded the world weariness of a fourteen year old. Either her dad is old or her mom's a supermodel or both. She was the kind of seven year old who's too old-souled to even be a child actor.  Like Charlotte Gainsbourg but in Crew Cuts clothing.

She was watching Clemmie hoover 7 simultaneous scoops of ice cream with suspicious glee, as if waiting for to someone to yell- "Hey, you, stop eating ice cream outta my gutter!" 

The too-wise child studied me with huge expensive blue eyes and an expression not unlike what an agent looks like when she needs to drop you from her roster.

'Why did you have to adopt her?"  

Even though I kind of wobbled from the question, I love how abrupt kids are. They suffer no tedious propriety.  No wind-up. No, "Hi, I'm Lulu and I'm curious about this child you are acting like a parent to."

Of course explaining my entire life for the past five years, or an invitation to read my blog didn't seem appropriate chatter over the ice cream trough, so, I smiled too hard like a grown up does at kids that don't belong to her.

 "I couldn't have a baby of my own, and I wanted to be a mother, so I adopted her."  

Lovely Girl didn't nod or smile back. She just went on, like a journalist digging beneath the talking points.

"Why did her mother give her away?"  

I blanched, looking instinctively at my kid, who was entering Sugarland Express, and unaware she was being discussed.  And my mind coughed. What's my smart, pat polite party line about what compels a woman to give a baby up for adoption? I had the answer for grown ups, but not for kids, and not in front of my kid. I inhaled, thinking hard.

"Why didn't her real mom want her?"

I didn't realize how California I had become, but when I opened my mouth, I was sooooo the Center for Non-Violent Parenting.

"Well, her mother-- I'm her mother, but her birth mother loved her very much and, and, and wasn't able to take care of her so she made the awfully difficult decision to give her up for adoption. That's how much she loved her. And we met and liked each other and she gave her, the baby to me and I'm raising her like my very own child. She is my child."

I didn't know I could sound like a brochure, but I can.  While I was relieved in the moment, I was starting to feel slightly anally probed. I casually reached for a spoon and started sipping at the melted ice cream. It was fairly clear that everyone either felt gross or was going to at any minute.

Suddenly I had an idea. I turned on Lovely Girl. 

"How old are you?"

"Seven."

"Do you know any adopted kids?"

And from there we had an actual conversation. About her school friends who were adopted and what that was like and how not a big deal it really was. There was no mussing of hair or even awkward fake hugs, where you gingerly hug from the collarbone up.  I didn't even get Lovely Girl's name or meet her parents and she wafted away and it doesn't qualify at all as a teachable moment for anyone except me.

I have to get my story straight and I have to do it soon. We are going on three playdates this weekend and as my kid grows and her language grows, so will her ability to understand the questions from other kids.

Right now she beams at me with the purity that sees no difference between us.  But that will change. And it's coming soon.  Goddamn it. 

Here you go, Anna. Thanks for the nudge.
 

Bad and Good Dreams.

I'm so used to not getting what I want that almost every morning I automatically wake up about 30 minutes before anyone else, including my dogs.  I lie there, as still as I can, cherishing the alone time, wondering if my new life is really just a dream. 

I look at my unconscious husband, equal parts impossibly hairy and handsome, and our two dogs hogging much bed.  And I wait and assess what hurts and what's slid even further down the maypole of encroaching middle age.  I run down a mental checklist of what must happen on this day, and convince myself it can all get done.  Then I wait and worry.  And wait to see if my dream is real. 

Soon enough, a tiny little voice pipes up over the baby monitor, calling for me.  And I exhale happily.  Yes, someone did give me a child. This actually happened. Then the voice on the monitor changes.  I can interpret the baby speak. 'Mama, get down here and change the soggiest diaper you've ever seen, next to Siberian orphans at the end of a long holiday weekend.'

Even as I type this sentence about my life it feels like I'm making it all up.  Even my fantasy life as a compulsive liar wouldn't dare dream of me ending up as a mother of a sweet and fierce toddler.  

Due to the complications of advanced age coupled with serious Momnesia, I'm astonished by what I forget and even more astonished by what I'm able to remember.  The Bad Dream will last the rest of my life, no matter what becomes of my over 50 year old brain.

And yes. I do have internal conflicts about being an old mom. I feel guilty almost constantly when I realize what my daughter will be grappling with when she's 20. Parents who are 70 years old. To combat that reality and mitigate my guilt at the prospect of her pushing my wheelchair to her own college graduation, I do yoga daily, brain exercises (when I remember to) and drink more Kombucha and chia seeds than anyone really should ever have to.  I want to earn my daughter's devotion by truly and fully being there for her, as opposed to her being weighed down by obligation to me. I don't want her life to be a sacrifice to my accomplishment of becoming a mother despite the odds and my age.

And yet, the guilt persists. Do other adopted moms feel the guilt of rearing the child of someone who couldn't provide for the baby they gave birth to?  At times I feel myself numbing out or lingering at the grocery store, staring down the aisles of a CVS, deepening my time away from her- not because I need a break but because I can't stand the guilt of actually having this stunning little person who I desperately love and who loves me so much.  Why did my happiness have to come at the expense of someone else? A question for which there is no answer is a question I just keep asking. Over and over. And I remember that dream. It was a really bad dream.

To call my bad dream a nightmare is to insult what a nightmare my bad dream actually was.  About three weeks after we brought Baby Girl home, our in-laws came to visit. They took her out for lunch and a long walk so I could get my first real alone-time nap.  

To call that nap sleep is like calling heroin a recreational drug.  I have never been so deeply asleep in my entire life- probably due to being a bedwetter... yes. I wet the bed until I was 8 or 9- and still never truly sleep deeply, most likely due to the fear of  a deep, hard sleep leading to a soaked husband.  

And during this one nap, in the almost death-like depths of sleep I will probably never enjoy again, I had a dream. 

The baby was with my mother-in-law, being sat and cared for and doted on. And someone took her.  The grief, the loss and the sadness all tumbled around us, for a long, long time. We never got our baby back- the crime became a wound, which became a scar and we somehow moved on while continuing to grieve- and my grief was Anna Magnani-like in it's fierce wildness. I grieved HARD, in the way that dreams drop you into the deepest well of an emotion and leave you there- weeping and keening and wailing and crying, heart torn asunder amid vivid unimaginable pain- yet all of this happening in a tiny but rough neighborhood in my brain, while the rest of me just lay there, unable to defend myself.  It amazes me that I didn't thrash myself awake from the horrors of losing my newborn in my dream, but I stayed asleep. 

And in that cinematic way that dreams do, decades passed.  And I was someplace fancy, like a beautiful old department store, or restaurant or University with marbled floors. It was an event and everyone was dressed up and on their best behavior. And my long lost daughter was there.  

She was 25, had a different name than the one we gave her, was eye wateringly beautiful, lovely and spoke French fluently. I don't know why I knew who she was, but I did. She didn't know me. She had been taken from me at 3 weeks old, and had clearly been raised with love and care and respect.  

I never told her who I was and when we spoke I was deeply saddened by how polite if distant she was, treating me the way any well raised young woman would treat a stranger. As I watched her walk away and go back to her very full life, I was devastated but proud. The well of my grief was the deepest I'd ever felt- and I dream-cried endlessly.  When I tried to put words to my sadness, all I could say was, "All I wanted was to be a participant in her life and to watch her grow up."  

Then I woke up.  The in-laws returned with my baby girl and I was so happy to still be her mother.  And I was stunningly well rested.  But the dream kept wafting back into my memory for days and weeks after. Even now I think about it, like a scar from an old accident.  It's taken me over a year to write it down and in doing so, I hope to exorcise it.

It finally occurred to me that I dreamed what my birth mother must have experienced in giving up her baby.  In one nap I felt the full force of her grief and loss and helplessness.  And it was awe-ful and awful.  Of course I have zero idea of what it truly felt like to grow a baby inside me and give her up for adoption, but now that I've been lucky enough to be this child's mother for 18 months, I have a tiny idea of just how much it must ache to have given that opportunity up.  

So my guilt is the price I willingly pay for the happiness I feel as a mother.  And my ongoing if tender relationship with my birth mother is something I will nurture and support as long as my birth mother wishes it to. It's the least I can do.

Whitney, Trayvon & Me. Or, Why Beyonce Makes Me Cry.

I can't watch Beyonce without crying, especially if my daughter is sitting on my lap at the same time.  Baby Girl caught me crying at the video for "If I Was A Boy" just this morning.  I tried to hide my tears from her, and I tell myself she's too young to be traumatized by seeing her mother cry. But she did look baffled. Hell, I'm baffled. 

I'm not ashamed to be impressed by Beyonce's talent- she opens her stunning mouth and her golden soul pours out, but I'm baffled that she makes me cry every single ding dong time I hear her sing.  I even sobbed at her Superbowl half-time performance, which was stupendous and kinda goofy at the same time.  I don't own any of her albums. 

Well, that's a lie. 

I own one. 

And a half. 

Maybe 2. 

And admitting that is painful for a self proclaimed music snob.

I can and do listen to Ann Peebles, Sharon Jones, Aretha, Ella, Billie, Nina Simone, Azalea, Santigold and Gladys Knight without busting into tears.  It's singly a Beyonce-induced crying jag. Each time I leak this salt water of self-embarrassed out of my eyes I'm holding my tiny black baby daughter, so that must have something to do with it.

Our baby was born on February 8, 2012. The precise text my baby mama texted to me after she was born was "She so white".  And Baby Girl really was quite white for a fully black baby.  I even sent photos to family members back home and a niece and a nephew both replied, "I thought she was supposed to be black." They sounded disappointed, not that this needs pointing out, but... I am aware that even writing about race is a tricky thorny deal.

 As Baby Girl began 'browning up', as her birth grandma said she would, I held a secret fear deep inside me that I was terrified to utter, and still haven't said aloud.  I was afraid of my child becoming too dark, and wondered if it was because I was secretly racist. But the more I thought about it, I feared (and still do) that the darker she is the more people will prejudge her. And by prejudge, I mean be prejudiced.  Hell, even some black people are prejudiced against their darkest brethren.  While we were waiting in the hospital for Baby Girl, our birth grandmother told us all about how her own family held her apart since she was darker than anyone else. 

Read "Outliers" if you think I'm a clueless white racist about this. Malcolm Gladwell writes about his own mother's personal success being partially due to the lightness of her black skin.

The oddest thing is, I forget my daughter is black until I see another white person holding her.  Which is a lot...

I wish I had a 401K for every woman who, upon seeing my baby, lowers her voice, grabs my forearm conspiratorially, and almost whispers, "I always wanted a black baby."

My inner smart-ass wants to say, "Well, I had no choice, because none of the white baby mommas would have me." But the truth is, we went to the transracial parenting workshop, we got scared by what could happen, we endlessly discussed it, and we came to the conclusion that we just didn't care what color our child was going to be. 

And to be even more scarily honest, when Baby Mama and I first spoke she asked me if my husband would be okay with a black baby. She didn't worry about me, but she was worried what he'd think.  If he would love the baby enough.  And I don't even really know how to comment about that. It made me sad that she asked. Sad for us all. I wanted in that moment to be able to push some magic button so all people would never even have to think, much less say something like that to other people.

In fact, to fully fall on my knee jerk liberal knees, it took me a lot of practice to even say "black" as opposed to "African-American".  But my beloved baby-gramma corrected my even more knee jerk liberal mother in the hospital waiting room. My mother was taking elaborate pains to say "African-American",  when baby-gramma said, "You don't have to call me that.  I'm not from Africa, I'm from Louisiana. I'm black."

That led to a thick little pause as my sister, my husband, my mother and I all adjusted our progressive radars and silently thanked baby-gramma for sanctioning the use of the great shortcut word "black."  After all, we call ourselves 'white", not "Caucasian", or "Irish--Catholic-German-Jews"- unless we are drinking and/or joking or in therapy.

By the time we were able to leave the hospital with our three day old baby, Whitney Houston drowned in a bathtub in Beverly Hills and the world mourned (and judged).  Whitney and I were the same age when she died and I became a mother. 

We spent another week in Akron, waiting for the adoption papers to fly from Ohio to California, get signed, approved and fly back, before they'd let us leave the state, and all we could really do with a tiny baby in February was stay inside and watch TV, which was bursting to share with us the senseless details of Whitney's tragic succumbing to her prescription and top shelf demons. 

For those of you who only know Whitney from her manic and messy Bobby Brown years, fact is- Whitney was the Beyonce of the 80s- she was as physically perfect as she was talented. Whitney's voice held her soul and maybe that's why she died young, sad and empty- she sang her soul right out of her body.  Once your soul is gone, you become an addict or nobody or Donald Trump.

I can't say that I took Whitney's death terribly personally but whenever I heard a snippet of "And I Will Always Love You" I would tear up despite myself, because it might be a seriously overcooked and chewy love song  (and I seriously prefer Dolly Parton's version) but I was falling in love with my baby and that's the kind of song you find yourself singing at 4am to a bald 6 pound being peering up at you with deep dark eyes full of pre-verbal soul.

A few weeks later we had Baby Girl home with us in Los Angeles when Trayvon Martin was shot and killed.  I was beyond devastated by his murder. I took it so personally that even I knew it didn't make sense to me. Then I blurted out to my sister what I didn't even know what I was thinking/feeling-  "If we took home a baby boy instead of a girl I'd be terrified every day he went outside just to do anything."  I felt racist for even thinking this but it's true. I'm simultaneously thankful and heartbroken I have a girl because she has a better chance of making it to college. Alive. 

Oh, and I'm very white- translucently so, and as I age my hands are quickly resembling Vietnamese spring rolls- you can easily see my veins and bones through my rice paper skin.  And I love right now in my life and my baby's life because she has no idea we are different colors. She screams with joy when I come home and we cuddle in front of the mirror in her room. She loves looking at us in the mirror, and I can see that she sees no difference between us.  And I treasure this ignorance because I know it will change, forever. Some day soon.

I know the day will come when someone else informs her that she is different than me in ways that mean absolutely nothing and absolutely everything.  And we will have conversations about it, probably more than a few, and my job will be to make sure she understands that even though our skins are different, it's what lurks beneath that really matters.  But as she grows and learns and is categorized, she will have to learn this for herself over and over and over. And she will have to be tougher and braver and wiser and forgiving because of it.

And I will have to let it happen since it's her life, and not mine. And I will never ever know how it truly feels to be her.  But I am lucky enough to know her soul and I will protect and nurture that soul so that she can share it with the world, like Beyonce, without the fear of it ever running on empty.

What Kind Of Mother Are You?

Seeing my one year old child love me because she doesn't know much about me but she does know she needs me to live makes me finally understand how things like Scientology can happen.
Two things seemingly happened at once in my kid's brain development.  The milestone where all babies cling desperately to their mother hit her hard, after months of crawling to and enjoying the lap of oh, just about, anyone.

Yet, at the same time, I saw her recognize that I don't actually appear to be her mother, but since I've acted as if (as if having a person's fresh warm drool fill my belly button and not instantly dry-heaving could ever be considered 'acting') I were her mother.   Baby Girl eyeballed me, compared the facts as she was to know them at that point in time, and then-- and I swear on this- I saw my kid decide that I must be her mother because I am the person who is always up in her cornflakes.

I read her mind as if I could see right into her hairless skull, "Something here isn't completely adding up, but you'll have to do. For now." As for her father- she accepted him immediately.  It must be his hair. She pets his furry chest like he is her pet cat. And her father is content to purr in return.

Being a parent is not unlike leading a cult or pulling a Patty Hearst.  These babies are so effing helpless, and since you primarily are the ones to feed them, change them, turn them, dress them, bathe them, control what they wear, hear, eat, who they see and when, when they sleep, and when they better perform on cue. They are not your baby, they are your hostage.

And while early parenting resembles a hostage situation, it's an intimate one, so you get a little close, perhaps too close with the prisoner.  Stockholm Syndrome happens to you both.  Every time you flip on the light switch, and enter their cell and free them from their crib, they squeal with delight or hand you their teddy bear.  It's cute and it proves one thing.  Babies aren't as dumb as they look. They play us like Words With Friends.

Babies have no choice but to be cute and all adorable to their captors- since we provide them with three hots and a cot.  But babies know that there are two people (if they are lucky) who basically keep them alive.  And they better play dumb, smell good and act super cute and adoring or their high-maintenance factor will wear off toot-sweet. For true.

But right around that singular moment when you see your months old child accept you as their parent (after all, you are who they came in with) - it is also at that time in the mother-child continuum, that you (a new mother) decide what kind of a mother you are and will be-- and it's not because of how  you feel about your child.

A woman chooses what kind of a mother she is based on other mothers.  Sure, a woman's DNA and mothering instinct guide a lot of common sense mothering, but meeting other moms and vowing to never be like them has completely shaped my mothering.

And if I'm not mistaken, and I'm sure I am, mothering the species really is a process of elimination- Darwin on diapers.  I definitely needed that non BPA, silicone baby bottle molded to resemble and feel like a breast full of warm, grassy milk from AmazonMom.com but I didn't need to take hormones to force my ancient breasts into lactation so I can experience the 'breast feed' and basically feed my adopted daughter milk laced with fun, bouncy hormones.  I'm not above formula when the donated breast milk runs out.

I am the kind of mother who buys and wears the BPA-free silicone teething jewelry from fab.com but I am not about to pre-chew her food and spit it into her pre-toothy mouth.  I'm not the mom who refuses to let my child have sugar and gluten but feeds her Kombucha which then makes the baby as drunk as Lindsay Lohan on a low speed police chase.

I am not the mom putting Fanta in her baby bottle, but I am the mom who lets my kid pick up her sucked over toothbrush off the bathroom floor and stick it back in her mouth.

Babies demand you to be present every moment they are awake.  Being that awake and alert must be as draining as performing neurosurgery or taking care of a criminally insane person, because baby-reality makes you make challenging, split second parenting decisions all day long.  In baby-reality, you pull the iPhone out of your baby's mouth even if it means they will dump a pot of hot coffee on your head.  In baby-reality the three second rule of dropping food on the floor and still eating it becomes regular old meal time. Baby-reality allows you to allow your precious being chew on baby wipes if it lets you get her diaper on her in a few fleeting seconds of peace.

A friend found a nanny after interviewing five highly recommended women.  When I interviewed my nanny, I asked her what I should be asking her. I had never hired a nanny or anyone ever in my life before.  I felt it rude to ask if she had ever, I don't know, lost a baby somewhere.  So I hired her. She's a great nanny.  I was and remain desperate for her to love me as much as I love her. I'm not jealous that my kid loves her nanny, I'm jealous that my kid gets to hang out with my nanny.

When I was around eight, and struggling with bed-wetting issues,  an older female relative suggested I be forced to parade around the neighborhood with my wet underwear on top of my head. That would learn me.  While my mother drew the line at that, my secret shame wasn't as fiercely protected by my family members as it was by me.  I distinctly recall Amy Brent asking my mom if she could diaper me before bed, as if I was a larger than life baby doll.  I believe she was watching my mom pin my cloth diaper on me at the time. That might have been my mother's version of letting me chew on baby wipes.

But bed-wetting taught me about bigotry.  I learned early that if you have one weakness or difference from other kids; be it skin color, weird religious affiliation, buck teeth, or bed-wetting it will be the first thing you are made fun of for when the chips are down in a sibling fight or a whole-block-kids-only street fight.  I learned early to have no secrets. They are the easiest weapons that can be used against you.

My current parenting style?

The kid has a fancy air filter in her room but we don't know how to change the filter.

She'll live.

And I trust she'll do a lot more than just live.