Heather @ PNR has given us a pretty open topic for the newest OA Roundtable: open adoption and the holidays. Since we all have something to say, join on in and write something too! The more the merrier – and isn’t this the season to be merry?

 

There are very few moments in open adoption where I really sit back and think, “Wow, this is easy!” Those moments do happen – usually when I’m sitting with my daughter in my lap, or when a date for a visit is mutually agreed upon with relative ease, or when I open my inbox to receive a surprise update. Those moments feel good and right and simple.

The holidays? Are not that way.

Not for me at least.

The holidays are a time where I wonder and overanalyze and second guess and can’t seem to get anything right. It’s a time where I can’t focus on growing our open adoption, and instead have to settle for maintaining it – because frankly, that’s all I have the energy and strength for. As I’ve written before, Cupcake’s birthday tends to kick the holidays into high gear for me. Thanksgiving compounds the issue, and of course as soon as December 1 hits you can’t deny the feelings of merriment that you’re supposed to exude.

Adoption can hamper some of that merriment.

Because you’re not just going to the ice rink enjoying a cold night and a hot chocolate, you’re seeing your daughter in the brown eyes of the little girl that just slipped while her Dad teaches her how to skate. And you’re not just standing on Main Street in Disneyland settling for fake snow after the fireworks with your family, but you’re thinking about the fact that your daughter goes to Disneyland with her Mom and maybe she’s somewhere under that same faux snow. And you’re not just cuddled up by a fire with loved ones, because you’ll always think about the one loved one – the most loved one – that’s not there.

It’s a million little things that add to the complexity of the season.

And that’s before you take into account the open part of open adoption. The wondering what you should do. And the wondering what they might do.

Do I send a card?

Do I send a present?

Do I send something to my child and her Mother?

Do I send a picture?

Do I send an email?

Do I send it well before the holiday?

Do I time it so it arrives on Christmas Eve?

Do I retreat and not intrude on their celebrations?

Is my sending something – anything – an unwelcome reminder that I’m here?

Will I get a picture of Cupcake opening presents?

Did she wear a frilly red dress?

Will I get an email?

Will I hold my breath the entire time waiting?

I know that those questions have the ability to drive me crazy. I know that those questions aren’t asked and answered once but, much like the decision to place at all, will be debated and decided time and time again. I know that sometimes they can paralyze me with fear and uncertaity, until the sand has run out of the holiday clock and I’m left staring at the wrapped present that never got sent. The ornament to match my own that stays in it’s gift bag. The email I draft, but can’t find the strength to hit “send.”

I hope that I’m not hit by the wave of paralysis. I hope that I find the strength to hold up my end of the bargain (albeit a bargain that was never officially made) even if nothing happens in return. I hope that I can live some of that merriment despite the things that hold me back.

But no matter what I hope that when the New Year comes, I will be able to put another complex holiday season behind me and move towards something more simple. Something less stressful. And a time when I can again find the energy and strength to build our open adoption.

Wishing you a simple, and merry holiday season!

Today is my nephew JBear’s birthday. He’s three.

In case you’ve forgotten, Cupcake is three years and fifteen days.

So it’s probably no great revelation that I find myself incredibly drawn to JBear.

He’s absolutely adorable. Tiny for his age, but his vocabulary and sense of humor make him a huge presence. He lights up a room and I can’t help but melt when I walk up to his door every Monday night and hear him squeal my name over and over again while he fumbles to unlock the front door.

And yet, walking in the door and swooping him up in my arms is no replacement for the fact that I don’t do those things with my daughter. When I tucked him into bed last night we said “goodbye” to two and I told him that the next time I saw him he’d be three.

I never got to say that to my daughter. Because I thought I’d see her as a two year old again. It didn’t happen, and I’m coming to terms with that in my own way, in my own time.

I also didn’t do anything on Cupcake’s birthday this year. Well, nothing symbolic. Nothing denoting that it was her birthday. In fact, I was with JBear that evening, as her birthday fell on a Monday…But tonight as he blows out his candles, I’ll be thinking of her. And I know it’s not her actual birthday, but it’s a birthday party for a three year old that I love.

And for a moment, I might just let myself pretend that it’s different.

I had the best of intentions on posting Friday, but somewhere between a meeting in the city and a brief window of opportunity to leave the office early, I forgot. Until I got here this morning and realized that my upbeat adoption free post of my thoughts never actually materialized…..

I had been thinking about writing about…..(shocker)….Long Board. Last week marked five months since we met, and depending on who you ask four (or five) months since we started dating. Which might not sound like a great feat, but for me is pretty remarkable. And despite the fact that we’ve made it here with only one or two little hiccups, I still have the nagging feeling that I’m just waiting for the shoe to drop. That, as if by magic, he’s going to wake up one morning and realize that he’s been suppressing some opinion of me and that he can’t ignore it any longer.

But that keeps not happening….

Which means I’m starting to believe that it won’t! At least in the forseeable future. Now, things are freaking me out in the other direction. Take this weekend for instance….

We went to my parents house Saturday to pick up some tailgating gear. We go inside the house and are talking to my Mom when I see my mail pile. I still get a lot of my mail at my parents house, so I always check to see if I got anything good. On top of the pile were two cards from my Mom – the family Christmas card and an invitation to my parents holiday party. Both were addressed “TG and Long Board.” I’ve never ever never had a letter addressed to me and a boy before. It was a little wierd to me, but Long Board didn’t blink twice – and confirmed to my Mom that we’d be at the holiday party.

Now the holiday party is in two weekends, so I’m okay with that. But in relationships, I’ve always been pretty wary of making plans too far in advance. I mean, let’s face it, we don’t know if we’re going to be together in March, so should we really make plans for then? But LB is all about making plans. We’ve got our trip at the end of the month – which again seems normal, but then we’re talking about going to DC in the spring, Hawaii in the summer, and we’d even talked about football games next season, before this college season had taken it’s last breath! On the one hand, I realize that these plans are all mythical plans that don’t have dates or tickets or confirmations, so it’s not like they can’t fall through – but I’m so used to the guy that’s not real keen on making plans past a week from Wednesday that this kind of planning tends to leave me a little befuddled….

Then Sunday we went to my parents for dinner. I said we didn’t have to, but LB insisted. My grandparents were there and Nana is a little…..much. First off, she asks the blatant questions like, “What are your intentions” and makes open threats like, “I don’t know if you know this, but I love that girl very much and if you hurt her I will shoot you.” Also, she’s a little handsy. Like she’ll sit pretty close, and she asked LB if she could hold his hand while they sat in private conversation. (Private as in she kept telling me not to eavesdrop….I still don’t know what they were talking about….) Instead of running? LB laughed and told her not to worry. He sat around while my family exhibited it’s normal craziness, sat in on the debate my sister and I have about who Mom’s favorite kid is, spent time listening to Pops tell stories, and was a better sport than I ever could have imagined. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, he said he liked my family.

Whether he was lying or not, I can’t tell – but I don’t really care. He’s at least willing to fake it ’til he makes it.

And then we finally had a quasi-hypothetical discussion about our long distance situation and what our other options would be should we decide that living 99 miles away is too far.

My vote was that I’m pretty used to our situation and seeing him on the weekends, but it would be nice after an especially craptastic day at work if I could call him to complain and he could say, “That sounds horrible – how about I grab some In-n-Out and meet you at your place in 20?” But that’s one of the restraints of our relationship.

His vote was that he likes the way it is because he can be easily distracted sometimes and this way he can focus on school Monday through Friday and then be here on the weekends. His thought being that it might be too much to juggle mid-week if he felt like he should also spend time with me, or if I wouldn’t understand why we couldn’t go out, etc. Basically that me being closer could be a stressor during the week…..until he realized that I could also be a support system for him when school/his research stresses him out.

So we were at an impasse. Things are okay the way they are now….but I don’t want it to be like this forever. Or at least for the three years it’ll take him to finish up his PhD. (Which I realize is ridiculous, planning three years from now based on five months, but I guess we’re just talking like that these days). He’s mostly impressed that I haven’t asked him to move to be closer to me. I was incredulous that he would even think that I (or someone) would make that request. He’s in school, in a great program, and there’s no way I would try to get him to throw that away for a shorter commute to me. I told him I’d move to where he is before that happened.

Which is how we left things.

Which is good.

Really good.

If only a little terrifying too….

I don’t know what I was thinking….I knew that the show had some hokey, and yet still triggering, adoption story-line. But the show was so corny, and the coercion was SO blantant and clearly not okay, that it didn’t bother me as much as shows where the coercion is subtle and acceptable. The culprit of the coercion is clearly unstable and “a bad guy” on the show so…..but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Glee.

I suppose i’m a little surprised I haven’t seen more blog posts about this show, but I was out of town for a couple weeks and admit that I gave up trying to catch up on every blog I follow.

Here’s the brief – and pretty ridiculous basic story line, at least as far as adoption is concerned:

Quinn, a high school girl is pregnant.

Finn, a high school boy, thinks he’s the father, since she told him he is.

Noah, another high school boy, IS the father.

Mr. Shuster is their Glee Club teacher.

Teri, is Mr. Shuster’s wife.

Okay, so Teri is pregnant at the beginning of the season. She finds out a few weeks later that it was a “hysterical pregnancy” – as in all the symptoms but not a real pregnancy. She only really wanted to be pregnant so that her husband wouldn’t leave her. SO, she starts faking a pregnancy.

Realizing this can’t go on forever, she needs another plan.

Which is where Quinn comes in. Teri meets Quinn and convinces her that adoption is the best plan for everyone. That she will take Quinn’s baby, never tell Mr. Shuster, and that Quinn can….you guessed it….”go on with her life.”

Coercion, ethical disasters, and horrible cliches abound!

It’s BAD.

And on another day I’ll address all of that – because I’m not excusing it – believe me.

But I’m a sucker for cheesy musical numbers and I GOTTA see how they eventually handle all of this. (Thankfully, some of it finally got resolved in last night’s episode – spoiler alert – like Teri came clean to Mr. Shue about the fake pregnancy – well, more like he found one of her fake bellies and demanded the truth – including her evil adoption plot. He’s appropriately pissed and has left her).

Anyway, between the set-up and last night’s episode was the episode called “Ballad” that I punished myself by watching…..on Thanksgiving.

Highlights of this trigger filled episode?

A scene where Quinn comes clean to her parents about her pregnancy – which includes her yelling at her Mom something along the lines of, “You knew! You knew this whole time! You pretend not to but how could you not know??? I’m your daughter? Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you help? You let me go through this on my own! How could you do that?”

Uh, let me remind you – it’s Thanksgiving – three years after I gave birth, and I’m sitting on my Mom’s couch, in her house, watching this on her Tivo, while she prepares Thanksgiving Dinner in the kitchen behind me.

Add that to the fact that Quinn’s outburst is roughly something that’s started to creep forward in my mind recently, and it was almost more than I could handle.

And I thought it couldn’t get worse.

But then I heard the song that was just too much.

Finn, who we recall thinks he’s Quinn’s baby’s father, knows about her plan to place the baby for adoption (though he doesn’t know that she plans on placing his daughter – oh, did I not mention it’s a baby girl? – with his teacher) and is blindly supportive. He’ll do whatever she decides.

But he doesn’t like it.

Assigned to sing a ballad that means something to him, he stumbles looking for the right song. He finds it, and there is a way too hard-hitting for me (and perhaps all of us whose children’s fathers wanted nothing to do with us or our children) scene in which he sings to a video of a sonogram of his daughter.

I’ll never hear the song the same again.

So yeah, NOT the show to watch on Thanksgiving…..

• That one of my darling nieces is turning FIVE today!
• That Long Board and I met five months ago today! (And basically started dating immediately)
• That my boss threw me under the bus… AGAIN
• That I drank SEVEN cups of coffee today
• That it seems like every book I’ve read recently has some tangential hidden adoption plotline that I couldn’t have predicted from the summary on the back of the book.
• That it’s already December.
• That at the end of the month I have an amazing nine day vacation with Long Board.
• That on that vacation I will hopefully get to meet a bloggy friend!
• That on that vacation I will get to visit two of my brothers whom I miss
• That my Colts are STILL undefeated (yay!)
• That I keep rooting for the stupid Redskins as my NFC team because Long Board likes them (even though I SWORE I would never like a team for some guy)
• That it’s only Wednesday….uh, slowest week ever!
• That I didn’t have a visit last month
• That college football season is basically over for me this weekend
• That Cyber Bestie’s gonna have her baby pretty soon! (I remember when she found out she was pregnant! Seems like only yesterday! Of course, that’s easy for me to say, haha)
• That it’s not 5:00 yet…..so ready to go home!
• That I’m doing some lame list-y post today instead of writing something significant. But there you go! That’s just the kind of day this is!

More tomorrow!

(Well, not more of THIS, haha!)

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

So, obviously, the past week I’ve been a little quiet. A little absent. And everyone knows why, has been wonderfully supportive and caring, and it really has meant a lot to me. People reached out in different ways, in different forms, and really helped to carry me through the week. But now I’ve got to really carry myself again. And, for me, right now, I think a part of that means stepping away a little bit.

Not stepping away from here – though I know that I inadvertently did that these past couple weeks – but just stepping back. Just stepping back….Open adoption has been quite a roller coaster for me. I go from feeling so sorry for myself to being so excited about a visit. From being so frustrated at the lack of communication to being so thrilled about the smallest update. And I realize that it’s a roller coaster that I keep putting myself on over and over and over again.

I can make Dee out to be a saint one day and a sinner the next. I can exhalt her for inviting me into this open adoption and then condemn her for not holding up her end of the bargain. I can praise her for scheduling a visit and I can shame her for not following through on it.

OR, I can just accept that she’s Dee. Not sinner, not saint, not to be praised or shamed, but just Dee.

I mean, isn’t that what we as first parents have been asking for? To just be seen as who we are?

I don’t think this will be easy, and I don’t think this is something new that I haven’t vowed to do in the past, but hopefully it’s something that I’ll stick with. This time.

So that’s one part of the plan in moving forward…..

And really? I think that’s the only part of the plan that I really know….in the future? I’d like to have the visit, but I’m still not emotionally ready to try to coordinate one again. Which likely means we will have had one visit in 2009….which kills me, but I know that I can’t go through another near miss with a visit right now. Maybe in early 2010, like January or something, but I know that with the holidays, my emotions are on the fritz and scheduling is hard enough when both parties are aggressive about getting something on the calendar.

So maybe that’s it for today…..baby steps, but more writing soon, I promise.

And I swear I have things to write about…which I promise I will get to….later today.

 

But I’m here. And doing well, and we’re a week past Cupcake’s birthday and a few days past Thanksgiving and I’m here. A little quiet, but here.

I don’t have terribly much to say this morning…except to send out birthday wishes to my absolutely darling daughter.

 

 

 

And for those that are curious – I’m doing okay. I had a good weekend and a successful first attemt at getting out of bed this morning. Last night was harder….Long Board had come down for the weekend, and as always, he leaves on Sunday nights. He stayed later than usual last night, but he still had to leave. The apartment was empty, I was alone, and it sucked a little bit. I went to bed, woke up this morning and made it a whole 2 minutes or so before closing my eyes again as I realized that the day was here.

But it’s okay. I’m at work, have a lot to do, and am hoping to get out of a meeting that my boss scheduled for tonight (without telling me, checking with me, or even really indicating whether I’m expected to be there or not). Shockingly enough, my plans for the night didn’t include a budget meeting, but were more likely me, a comfy blanket, a glass of wine, and a football game. Go figure.

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps I’ll write more later, but for now, that’s all I’ve got.

 

Happy birthday baby girl.

 

No, this isn’t my contribution to the most recent Open Adoption Roundtable – which I will  write, just not yet. So if you’re looking for that, head on over here.

This year the Birthday Blues have hit harder and sooner than usual. They swooped in to confuse me during a time where everything else is seemingly on track. Work is as good as can be expected, Long Board and I are doing well (despite our first big fight this weekend, but that’s another story), my new apartment is wonderful, and I still have fresh memories of Monaco floating in my head. But there’s this dark storm cloud that’s keeping me from really enjoying all of those other things.

Part of the storm cloud is the fact that the visit tentatively scheduled for this month hasn’t happened. And I don’t think it’s going to. Which sucks, but it is what it is. Yes, I could push for it and hope that something changes, but I don’t have the energy for that. I can’t set myself up for that kind of disappointment right now – and I’m getting to a place where I’m okay with that decision.

But the thing that’s thrown me for the biggest loop is this sence of normalcy….that, well, I just don’t think I’ll ever really have again.

A good adoption friend was talking about Thanksgiving and how much she loves the holiday because it’s not about presents, but it’s about being thankful and it’s about family and it’s wonderfully stress free (aside from the mass amounts of cooking involved!) And while at first I agreed with her, I have since been paralyzed by an overwhelming feeling that that’s not what Thanksgiving is about for me – and that it never will be again.

Sure, I’m thankful on Thanksgiving – for many, many things, and I don’t want to discount that. But being thankful on that one day is sometimes a suffocating feeling. Because we’re supposed to think about that in conjunction with family. And the fact is that on Thanksgiving, a member of my family is missing. Yes, this was my decision, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me to deal with. Cupcake isn’t here, and worse, I often don’t know where she is, how she’s doing, or anything else about her on this day that’s so about family.

And stress-free? Forget it.

Thanksgiving is arguably my hardest day of the year – even more so than her actual birthday. The stress of keeping my smile plastered on my face is exhausting. The effort that it can take to not break into tears is unexplainable.

But I do it. And I’ll continue to do it every year. I just find myself blindingly jealous right now of people that have “normal” holidays. That can relax on the days we’re supposed to relax, give thanks on the days we give thanks, and be with their whole family on the days we’re supposed to be with our whole family.

But this was supposed to be about her birthday. Monday. And for the first time I just don’t want that day to happen. The past two years I’ve been okay. I’ve planned to do something else and it wasn’t a huge deal. This year? It’s one of those hide under the covers years and I just don’t want to deal with any of it. I don’t want to go shopping for a card (but I will) and I don’t want to send the email on the day of (but I will) and right now I can say that I don’t even want my wonderful friends to acknowledge it (though I know I’m just saying that right now).

I just want it to not happen.

I just want November 23rd to be a regular day.

Instead of the day that I gave birth to the most precious baby girl…and walked away.

I don’t want it to be that day.