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

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.

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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.