To the Tree House

The Poppy family had an amazing weekend. To rip off my treasured Boz, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." It included multiple barf-in-the-car episodes, a family milestone, lots of drama and some real highs.

* I'll get the barfing out of the way first. X-Man is a champion barfer--the kid has great aim. Unfortunately, on Thursday, there was nothing to aim at but himself, the carseat and the car. We were driving to meet a friend so we could borrow a pack-n-play for the weekend away. He gave me a second of warning and then whoosh. A word of caution about the X-Man--he's a little trigger happy on the gag reflex. If he's the right combo of tired and phlegmy, he barfs. That's for your future reference.

The first time it happened on Thursday I pulled over and went into full haz-mat mode and thought (ah, pride goeth before a fall) "I am a pretty damn together Mommy. I'm working it out." After the fourth incident in less than 30 minutes, I was not feeling so hot on myself (or my kid or my car). But we finally got it all dealt with.

* Family Milestone: on Friday it all became official--The Mr., the kids, my parents and I stood before the judge and said "yes indeedy, Miss Z is our little gal forever." With her adoption finally finalized we proceeded to Il Fornaio to get foodie. How blessed we are to be the parents of our kids.

* And then--on some mistaken notion that I could manage with two children, away from home, on my own for more than a day, I had agreed to go to our church's parish weekend retreat here . There are various purposes to the weekend: fellowship with other parishioners, time spent in a really beautiful place, reflection, maybe some kind of transformative experience. And truthfully, I got all that plus lost two pounds in the process. And the kids had a blast.

There were some ferociously low moments. Those moments of feeling like the crummiest mom in the world (or at least in this group of people). Lunch on Saturday was particularly unpleasant, with the X-Man doing his best to push me over the edge--and succeeding. I had to send him off with the other families with children for the afternoon while Miss Z napped and I pulled myself back together. The sleep was not great for any of us, and that factored in. I wasn't able to stay in chapel on Sunday because I had Miss Z with me and she was way disruptive. I was embarrassed several times over the weekend by my apparent lack of control of my children--and of my own temper and internal emotional compass.

So that all sounds pretty crap, doesn't it? But you know what? It's wasn't. It was a really great weekend. This is probably going to sound really churchy, but every time I was struggling there was someone there to help me out. Pete and Lee with hot coffee when the kids were up too early. Leslie and Susan rocking Miss Z and singing their own greatest hits to her while I got X to bed. Serina and Lisa taking him off to play with Ella and the other kids. The fabulous Bolt family who let the X-Man try out their new metal detector (totally his thing) and sit at their table for lunch. Kristi telling me that she never would have left the house with her kids when they were this little. And on and on.

And somehow, being out of our usual environment, I was able to get a fresh perspective on my parenting without fully freaking out about it. I came home thinking "you know, what I'm doing is really, really not working. So I've got to try something else." And that's what I'm doing, and I like it a lot better than what I was doing before. I'm not sure it's the ultimate fix, but it's an improvement.

Tag on to all that the joy of watching Miss Z act as ring leader to a small toddler gang and charm the pants off all the grown ups. And seeing X in a pack of kids, hiking to the tree house, running up and down hills, playing fire fighter with an old hose, taking communion with this really special community of ours, TALKING, and having a blast. All that is just priceless. We'll be back for more next year.

Resemblance

We are not obviously an adoptive family. Some families are--they've adopted transracially, transculturally. They get a lot more questions than we do. My best friend CeeCee adopted her two girls from China. People either get right away that they adopted or they think her husband is Asian.

What we get a lot of is this: X-Man and Miss Z look just like each other (one guy asked if they were twins, which cracked us up). X and the Mr. look just like each other. And this weekend, I got this for the first time.

Random Dad: How old is she?
Poppy: 15 months.
Random Dad: She looks just like you.
Poppy: (interior monologue--which direction should I go with this? Point out the fact that it's mere coincidence since she doesn't have a single one of my genes? Or just shine it on, since the feel I get from this particular guy is that he might launch into a litany of questions I don't feel like dealing with in front of our Music Together class, which is about to start?") I opt for the latter and say- oh.
Random Dad: Do you get that a lot?
Poppy: No. Actually people say she looks just like her brother.

Then class starts and--oh joy--we get to sing all those fabulous Music Together songs (I'll save the detailed MT rant for another post). But at that point I was off the hook.

I don't go around saying "these are my adopted kids" for obvious reasons (lameness being primary among them). My general policy is to deal with the information as a fact (which it is) in an appropriate context (when it arises).
Example:
Client wife (at a business dinner w/ the Mr. one month after Miss Z.'s birth): Wow, you have a one month old. You're like Heidi Klum. (and I'm not making that reference up just to impress you.)
Poppy: Thank you, but we adopted so I can't really take credit for getting back in shape.

Example 2:
Mom at playground: So, did you have a difficult birth, since X was a preemie?
Poppy: Nope, we adopted him.

And then I sometimes get really weird responses to the information. A common one is "are they brother and sister?" (okay, let's all just meditate on that for a minute). Also popular are really personal questions about their birth mothers (often laced with Lifetime Movie stereotypes and assumptions). If I sound ranty, I've actually mellowed a lot about this in the past few years. You should have heard me on the topic when I was a stressed out, sleep-deprived, newly-minted parent.

Something I Wrote

A few out-of-area friends asked to read this when it was published (in our local newsletter). So here it is:


Bonds of Love

Sometimes, while tucking my son, X-Man, into bed at night, I describe to him the bond that connects us. I tell him that it’s a cord of love that goes from my heart to his. Nothing can break it. It can stretch around the world if it needs to. It is invisible, elastic and our love for each other flows through it. And it was formed the day I held him for the first time.

That moment—having my son in my arms for the first time—is also the moment that I became a mother. It remains one of the single most powerful, profound experiences in my life, something I still can’t speak of without tears welling in my eyes.

It was a long, hard road to get to motherhood at all. Despite good health and relative youth on our side, my husband and I found ourselves not knee-deep in diapers but up to our ears in infertility treatments. But, when modern medicine didn’t work, we were extraordinarily lucky because both of us were open to adoption as a way to build our family.

I realize that for some people, the idea of bonding with a child who is not "their own" is a tough thing to wrap their brains and hearts around. Intellectually I understand that—but in my heart there was never a question that whether biologically connected to me, or adopted, my child would be mine. The trick was for us to find each other.

Suffice it to say that no one "just adopts." I tell people who are starting the adoption journey to imagine they are entering a giant building called "Adoption." And when you first get to "Adoption," you think you want the shortest line possible, the line that says, "Fastest Route to a Baby" or "First Available Baby." But there is no such line. The line you’re looking for, the one to get in, is the one that says "Your Baby." It might be the longest line in the building. Or you might get in one line first—thinking it’s the right one—only to get up to the front and discover you need to change lines. But eventually, by some amazing sort of kismet, you’ll find the line you need and you’ll find your child.

I know because that’s exactly what happened to us. My husband and I were taking a newborn care class geared toward adoptive parents. Mid-way through the morning my husband’s pager went off and he left the room to make a phone call. I assumed it was something about his work that was keeping him away so long. Then he came back in and started frantically writing notes to me—there was a woman who wanted to meet us. She was due any day and the baby would be premature—probably 32 weeks. Were we interested? When a break in the seminar came, the first thing we did was to call my big sister—a NICU nurse for the past twenty plus years. She told us 32 weeks would be very manageable and we should check it out.

On Mother’s Day we met our son’s birth mother for the first time. For the sake of our children’s privacy, we keep most of the details about their birth families under wraps—the stories are theirs to tell when they are ready. But I will say that there was an audible "click" in the room when we all met. Within minutes of saying hello we were truly laughing together—some of that laughter, I’m sure was brought about by what is, even under ideal circumstances, an unusual and awkward situation. But some of it came from a sort of connection, a sense that this was meant to work out. And that same laughter and slightly twisted sense of humor that was evident between all of us in the hospital is very present in our son. He’s got a devilish glint in his eye and a remarkably sophisticated comic sense. It’s one of the qualities that make us feel we all belong together. And it’s a reminder of his birth mother’s great laugh and big heart.

Three days later our son was born and two days after that I was able to hold him for the first time. He was a little over three pounds, about sixteen inches long. He had a breathing tube down his throat, wires attached to his tiny body and he was in an incubator to keep his temperature constant. He was absolutely the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. When it came time to hold him the nurse carefully detached his breathing tube, lifted him from his incubator, placed him in my arms and reattached his tube. Discreetly, he sat a box of Kleenex next to me and moved across the room. And then the most amazing thing of all—my son opened his eyes wide and looked straight into me. And the bond—that incredible, flexible bond that connects us—was forged in that moment.

He is four now, no longer a helpless preemie relying on me for everything. And there are moments—days sometimes—when I would swear four is a more trying age than two and I can feel the gray hairs sprouting. But the love and connection we have is a constant—through time outs, scraped knees, potty training, all of it. There are ways in which he is remarkably like my husband—in his laser-like focus when he’s truly engaged in an activity, his impatience when he’s asked to slow down and explain something. And there are certainly qualities and quirks he shares with me. Some of them seem strangely hard-wired and feel like fate; others that I’m sure are learned from all our togetherness. And of course—like any child, adopted or otherwise—there are the ways in which he is uniquely himself.

Once our son turned three, we felt we were ready to adopt again. It was an easier process for us the second time around, primarily because we knew first-hand that it works. We had complete faith that our next child would find us.
Each adoption is unique, and the experience of meeting my daughter, Miss Z, for the first time was completely different from that of meeting my son. I traveled all day to reach her. Arriving minutes before her birth, I was able to hold her for the first time seconds after she was born. In all frankness, it felt strange to hold a full-term baby and not a preemie. She was big and blooming, not a helpless underdog. The bond I have with her developed over the course of days and weeks—it wasn’t the instantaneous lightning bolt I experienced with X. It started slowly, with those first feedings in the hospital, her snuffly little sucking noises. I remember rocking her and singing The Mamas and The Papas—"Do You Wanna Dance?" wove itself in and out of our early days and became a guaranteed way to soothe her. All those little moments add up over time and, like strands weaving together, create the tie that binds. Like her brother, she bears a striking physical resemblance to my husband—I’m the sole blonde in a family of brown-eyed brunettes. But she is also very different from X—outgoing where he is reserved, jumping in with both feet while he deliberates his next move. She is lively, independent, and very decided in her opinions (and anyone who knows me would probably say that would describe me as well). I’m not sure who I expected to have show up this time around—my only reference point as a parent was the X-Man. It is a surprise and delight to realize how unique every child is, how little control we have over who they are—and how fierce our love for each of them can be.

None of this would be possible, of course, without our children’s birth mothers. They created these beautiful kids and had the courage and selflessness to choose adoption for them. My children share a connection with them too—not one built out of late night snuggles, kissed owies or shared laughter, but a strong bond as well. And in us, they saw something that led them to believe we could be the parents for these children. They are the mothers who made me a mom.

So here we are, six years, two kids and numerous gray hairs after starting on the road to parenthood—and I wouldn’t change a thing. Sometimes people will ask, "do you have children of your own?" Or they say "did you try to have your own before you adopted?" I know what they mean—they are really asking about biological children. But it’s a strange question to me, because I can’t imagine any children that are more mine than these two.