Our computer is on the blink as of today.
It had been randomly crashing from time to time, but this morning it crashed a total of five times.
(I'm now writing this on the lap top.)
This is not good. This is not the time for us to be buying a new computer.
Adoption is expensive. The home study alone has cost us over a thousand dollars.
In the meantime, life never leaves us alone. It keeps needing money, too.
Especially now, because our current renters move out in August and our property manager told us that there could be damage to the roof because of hail storms, and that there is a crack in the wall in the downstairs bedroom and that the deck needs repainting.
So, on top of paying for advertisement to get the place rented, as well as carrying two mortgages until it does, we may have to pay the insurance deductible of a thousand for any repairs to the roof, as well as any repairs to the foundation, as well as the work to the deck.
That is some serious money, right at the same time we are going into adoption.
Until we get the house issues straightened out and rented again, I think we'll have to postpone going active with our placement agency.
In the meantime, the computer decided to cave. Awesome.
I seriously wonder, sometimes, why we are doing all this. I wonder why it's so important that we parent.
If we decided that wasn't important, we'd suddenly have a great deal of disposable income. We could buy all the latest gadgets and go on vacation.
We wouldn't have to open our lives to the scrutiny of strangers, in order to secure their approval of us as parents.
We wouldn't have to wait for weeks and months, not knowing how many times we've been looked at and tossed aside, our faces one of thousands of hopeful couples that pop up on adoption websites.
We wouldn't have to risk emotional devastation at the hospital, if and when an adoption fails.
It was to avoid all this that I wanted to pursue an international adoption. It's more expensive, it takes longer, but the process is impersonal, cut and dry.
Some official in some country picks out a waiting child and attaches that child to your dossier.
You get sent the photo and whatever medical info they might have, which usually is none, and you decide if that child is yours or not.
Then you fly to that country, wait there for weeks to fulfill all the complicated legal requirements and then you are home with your child.
Done deal. Usually.
Domestic adoption is so much more upfront and personal, so complicated, so uncertain.
I keep trying to tell myself that somewhere out there is a woman I do not know. I don't know how old she is, or if she has children already, or if she has family that supports her or none at all. I don't know what race she comes from, what culture, what background.
I keep thinking she must be fighting her own demons, feeling as if she is being moved along in a course she wouldn't have chosen for herself either.
Every single one of her few choices involve grief and loss. Not one of them is free of pain.
I keep trying to believe that our lives are on these two tracks that are bound to intersect at some point. If I don't keep moving forward, then I won't be there to meet her.
She may look at me and wish that she never had to see my face. She may see my life and wish she had been that lucky. Her relief may well be wound all around with resentment, just like my hope will be riding on an undercurrent of fear.
She'll wonder what her child will think of her, if he or she will know how much she loved him or her. She'll worry that I won't love her child enough, as much as she does.
If she decides on adoption, for the rest of her life, she'll be a mother to that child, but not a parent. There won't be a birthday or holiday that will go by without her feeling a mixture of pride and pain, love and loss.
Adoption is not all pretty pink and blue clouds of love and redemption, a perfect, neat little solution to a private problem.
It's imperfect, just like everything in life is imperfect. My child will carry some wounds and will have some questions other children won't be burdened with.
I don't even know who this child will be, but thinking about this makes me feel fiercely protective of him or her. I know exactly what to say to that child. I know all about wounds; I know all about their costs and their gifts.
I guess that's why Keith and I keep slogging on through this. I just wish the computer could have held out for six more months.
Keith is pretty clever with computer stuff; maybe he can get it up and running again, for a little while.
Hopefully, the roof is fine. Hopefully, the crack is nothing but normal house settling, and hopefully we'll get the house rented in a month, and go active with our adoption profile in September, just like we planned.
In the meantime, hey, I have a laptop to blog on. It could be worse.
