Wednesday, May 30, 2012

May 30th

May is just going on forever. I keep anticipating June and... still not yet. More of May to go.

I don't have anything against May, it's just that we're deep into summer heat already, and now I want the season to move along smartly, so no one has to suffer one minute more.

You know it's hot outside when you sprint from the air conditioned house to the air conditioned car as though it were pouring rain outside and you were trying not to get soaked. Instead, you're just trying not to get baked.

Leaning up against the closet by the front door is a large box containing the pieces of one convertible crib and matching changing table. We bought it on Memorial Day.

It's waiting for the guest room bed to be disassembled and moved into the spare room, and that is waiting upon the spare room being cleaned out and further sorted through, so that it can become the new guest room.

How is it that we can go, so quickly, from having so much extra room, to having not quite enough?

Today I have to clean pretty much everything. Our home study agent is coming for a house inspection on June 8th, and so I am doing a house cleaning dry run, as it were.

I don't think she's necessarily checking on cleanliness, though. I think it's more to be sure that we have fire alarms and running water and any shotguns safely locked away, and not wedged into the bed frame, as it currently is.

Keith was in uniform when we went to the police station to drop off the 911 record sheet. It was like a parade of American types- policemen, tall, glinty-eyed soldier, lovely girl with white shorts and long, tanned legs (that's me, in case I'm not recognizable in that form, I so rarely portray myself that way), and adoption in the offing.

We should have had a little personal parade or something. Everyone quietly saluted everyone else. We made small talk about Mt. Sunapee and skiing and the late, great Old Man on the Mountain, for goodness sake.

Where was the cold fried chicken on the red checkered cloth, I want to know? It was noticeably missing.

"I think it's great that you're adopting," the policeman told me, from behind the glass.

That attitude takes me by surprise, now, even though it's the prevailing one.

He's got the whole thing backward. Our part of the adoption equation is not half as difficult and does not require half as much soul searching, suffering and self sacrificing love as the birth mother's part.

But I doubt anyone is praising her with as much warmth. Most likely, she has been backed into a godawful corner and none of her options are easy.

I watched this special on birth moms on TV the other day. I was appalled and heart broken by turns. It was so eye opening. If and when we go through a disrupted adoption, I'm going to take it far less personally, after watching that.

Not that it will be less painful, I will just know that it has more to do with who the birth mother is, and less to do with who I am.

I mean, how can a woman know, exactly, what plan she is going to make for her child until the end? It's not like we're dealing with simple equations or easy solutions.

When we get matched with a birth mother, I'll know merely that we're along for the ride. We are there, if and when we are needed. We have the emotional and financial resources. The nursery, extended family and baby book will all be on standby.

More than that, I won't know- not until the very end.