I finally have Internet, and time, and of course now I can't think of anything interesting to blog about.
Oh, I know. So, I received an e-mail from Bethany that had a list of Waiting Children. Most of them were from homes and orphanages in Eastern Europe. Out of those children were two boys, aged two and three, that jumped out at me. They looked like a cute little Keith, square chin and chubby cheeks.
"But Jenny," you may say, "I thought you were going to try domestic infant adoption."
"Well we were," I would reply. "But the adoption process for Waiting Children is expedited, mainly because they may have health issues or are older. Bethany also helps out more financially, making it more within reach. And those children are adorable."
I had Keith look at the pictures and Keith said, fill out the preliminary application and we'll see.
One of the many hard things about this process is that Keith and I are not on the same page. I want to move ahead full steam with adoption, which ever option works out. Keith is more steady and keeps coming back to trying for biological children. I recognize that we balance each other out well, but sometimes I get frustrated, I feel sometimes like he standing in the way of something I'm called to.
But that doesn't make sense, because Keith and I are one person through marriage, and I can't be called to something alone. We have to go forward together, or it isn't "legit." Or something. This is an inherent belief of mine through this process. We move forward together or not at all.
It's one of the things that I believe will help me recognize when it's the right time and the right child; Keith will be on board one hundred percent when that happens. I don't know if this is right or not, but it's part of my faith in this whole process. In the meantime, I simply fall in love with child after child that aren't meant to be ours.
Anyway, I went ahead and started to fill out the preliminary application until I got to the part where it asked about the date of dissolution of previous marriages.
I can't remember.
What's worse is, I lost the divorce decree a long time ago. Not only that, but I can't remember the date of my first marriage, and I have of course lost the certificate. I can't remember my ex husband's middle name. I can't remember the address we lived at. I can't remember the name of the justice of the peace who married us; I can't remember what he looked like.
I. can't. remember.
Here's what I do remember. I remember the exact corner of the the street where the justice's office is located. I remember it was summer, I've narrowed it down to June. I remember because I thought it was ironic that I was getting married in a month that had always been my very last choice for a wedding.
I remember the lawyer's office location, right over an upscale antique store. I remember looking at the judge in the wood paneled courtroom, and the leaves out along the side of the road, so it must have been summer time, three years later.
Give me a car and I could drive straight to both locations. In fact, lately I've been homesick for things like intersections back home, things that when I lived there I took completely for granted. It was back ground, scenery.
Now I want to go back there just for the pleasure of seeing that road side go by. Like that bend in 101 as it approaches the reservoir, on the left that turn off that heads up into the hills and connects back to the road that circles the lake and back onto 101 right before the cemetery. I know all those roads, even the narrow dirt ones with the high banks on either side from the road being worn down over the years, the roots of the trees revealed, twisted and dust covered.
You'd think that after having made one of the biggest mistakes of my life that I'd at least have sense enough to keep track of the paperwork. But no. I don''t even have journals from that time. I actually destroyed them after the marriage failed, since I wanted no written record of that pain to keep me bitter. I wanted to be able to move on with an open heart.
I have no record of it at all. I can't write to the Office of Vital Statistics for a certified copy until I can give them frickin' dates. And I don't remember.
So now that mistake is reaching out from a blurry past to mar the present. Keith and I are planning a trip back there in September. I can look up these places and ask for dates. Once I have the dates, I can go in person to Concord and ask for the certified copies. I'll feel like I'd have wrestled my past into submission then, laid it out in nice, neat piles of paperwork.
Take that, past.
