Agency Research and More Awful Truths

OK. There are a LOT of adoption agencies. A LOT. What I need is to suddenly discover that I know someone really well who is either in the middle of this process or just starting it who can just tell me what to do. I'm a big piggy-backer. That's invariably how I find my doctors. I choose a friend I know will overthink and just generally beat the hell out of the horse, and then I do what they do. Worked with pregnancy stuff too--I didn't even have to read any books (not that I didn't--I have two books on adoption already--I love books.)

There are so many decisions to make here--and they affect who our child is. I mean, it could be child A if we go with this agency, or child B if this one--it's terrifying. Like having the option to change flights at the last minute. But what if this one crashes? What if that one crashes? AAAH! Forks in the road!! AAAH!

We are talking hundreds of agencies. Hundreds. Thousands even. Probably the more I overthink, the worse it is. We need a good agency. We need one we like. We need one who will bring us Four. The other terrifying thing is: Four may already have been born. She may be out there, right now. Without us.

So this is freaky. How am I going to do this? Find the ones on Yahoo's Adoption Agency Research group that no one can find anything bad about (WACAP, for example). Narrow it down, I guess. Then figure out if we want a baby or a "waiting child: and go from there.

Which brings me to Awful Truths part 2: Defects I consider acceptable for Four. There are checklists for this. Heart condition? Club foot? Unpronounceable Mystery Disease? I mean, this is the kind of thing that forces you to really look yourself in the face.I would love and care for Bart, Gertie or Beau no matter what happened to them or what they look like. Without a doubt or fraction of hesitation. Poptart too. But to ask for it? To say, Problems? Bring 'em on, baby! Well there's a limit to how much we can do that. Financial resources--we've got 'em. Emotional Resources? Time? Can't buy those.

So there are limits. But an "sn" (that's special needs to the uninitiated, like me 24 hours ago) really needs us. Part of me remains unconvinced that any of these other babies does. There are lines, queues, lists of people clamoring to take them on. Scandals about whether they've really been willingly given up, about whether people in their own country might not be more than willing to adopt them but less able to pay, like those raised at (China-Research.org.

But what can we cope with? Correctable heart condition? Open heart surgery, wow, whoa, wow...Ptosis? Well, that turned out to be droopy eyelids. Sure--but can that really be a problem for anyone? Who ARE these people? Same with "port wine stains". Extra toes. I can't believe those really count. Aren't they just what people are trolling the waiting child lists looking for--this one's a little damaged but completely fixable, and I can get it faster! And isn't that really what I'm thinking? I don't want to wait 3 years for Four. Beau will be 5 by then. She'll have missed the chance to be part of the pack. It's valid, it's a good reason to make this happen sometime in the next eighteen months...but cruising the "photolists" looking for one who isn't too bad makes me feel weird. And here's a big one: cleft lip and palate. OH, dear. I mean, assuming that the child could eat ok--that it has been cared for and as well nourished as possible given the circs--this is just cosmetic, right? And largely fixable...but it's weird. And kids who look weird have it rough. Can I cope with that? Or does it get pretty much all the way fixed? I mean, everyone I know who had it, I know because you can still tell. But those are adults. OOH, how shallow am I? Don't comment and curse me for being unsure about this. Educate me. Seriously. Because I know a pediatric plastic surgeon well and I'm really thinking about this, because he could help and we could get Four right when she'd fit in and really be getting Four, not a baby who would have gone to the next couple on the list.

Action (part one). Also, Ugly Truths about Me!

Cooler heads have not prevailed. The current plan is for uncommited forward movement--researching countries, agencies, pros, cons...while both allowing the inner gut check full reign. Time to admits some hope truths. Here's one for me--I don't think I can raise an African child--oh, fine, let's be less politically correct--a black kid. I suspect, that, like most people, I make racial judgments (and let me just say here that I've actually taken one of those tests where pictures flash in front of you and you register positive or negative thought as fast as I can and my results were that I'm not racist, but I do seem to be a Bush-hating democrat...)

I have no overt racist feelings. But I just don't know--it might make a difference to me. It might--at least it would take me longer to erase any feeling of "differentness"--I wouldn't want to risk it. In fact I think risking it would be a terrible thing to do. My brain tells me it wouldn't matter for more than a day or two. If someone left a black baby on the doorstep I'd be be in here snuggling her and loving her in a heartbeat. I know it wouldn't matter--that would be my kid, brought by fate straight here. But when it's me serving as the deus ex machina? My gut says it wouldn't matter but what if it did? What then?

Why doesn't that apply with an Asian child? Two reasons, I'd say. The first is that I've been mentally picturing adopting an Asian child for years. I'm used to it. It's consistent with my vision of the world. Is the second more positive general associations? I don't know. I hope not.

So that's ugly truth number one. Or honest and useful self-assessment. I don't know. But there it is. Onward:
The Action taken: Connecting to Rainbow Kids, choosing South Korea and Taiwan, and requesting information from all agencies that handle adoptions in those countries. Why those two? We meet the requirements. (Our big limitation is the number of kids we already have.) You can choose gender, as they say--in our case, choose a girl. South Korea seems to offer the best foster care and medical information. Taiwan involves birth families in the process. I like those things.


Then I clicked on China--and saw that I would be getting information for about a zillion agencies. Maybe two zillion. And panicked slightly, reasoning that we want an agency that will let us apply to two countries at once, maybe, so there would have to be overlap, so I really don't have to do that...

But you know, we might not do that. We might just go with China. I don't know, do I? If we decide we can handle a slight special needs kid (oh, all the stuff to blog about!) If we just want to, because I love China and Poptart wants the kids to learn Mandarin. If we do.

Guess I should do one more. Or maybe not--Maybe I can get away with ccruising some boards and requesting information from a few specific places. The Great Wall Agency, for example--used by Jeff Gammage's family,whose journey is described in the book
China Ghosts. If we went China only we would want an agency that did too, which probably rules a lot out. So.

Awful truths now--which involves a very exciting checklist entitled "What Special NeedsAre You Willing to Accept" and the googling of ptosis--will have to wait for another post.

First Declaration of Public Intent

So that last post--my first here in a while--was my first public announcement that we're thinking about adopting #4. It's a crazy idea, one that could only be the product of one of the inmates, and cooler heads may prevail--which is, in part, why I'm blogging about it here. I'm not sure we have any cooler heads in our household. Poptart has admitted to both envying friends with four kids and feeling too old to do the pregnancy/baby thing again, and has leapt to my defense when I wondered aloud if my motives were crappy--want another kid, don't want to be pregnant, don't want to give birth, nurse, get up every two hours--so what, am I kid shopping, I asked? Saying no, Let my kid spend the first nine months of her life crying in a crib, no warm breast, no one to do for her everything I did for mine? Just for my convenience?

No, he snapped, that's going to happen anyway. The point is to help--to get one more kid out of that situation. But if the countries Americans adopt from each offer a quota of babies, am I being selfish to take one when lots of other people want a child to raise? Presumabley, eventually, it's one more. I guess.

So he may not meet the cooler head criterion. Here's what there is to know about us, I guess: I like change. I like adventure, new things, new schools, new jobs, new faces. Risk. I went to six schools before sixth grade. He grew up entirely in the same house his mother still lives in.

But he married me. And he never, ever says no to a crazy scheme. He does ask all the questions I don't want to ask because I'm all over enthusiastic and just want to do it--buy the house, get the dog, hire the contractor, paint the walls--now. He's the crazy scheme moderator.

And I know he wants another kid. If I wanted to get pregnant he'd put aside his reservations in a heartbeat. But that's not the adventure I want to have, at this point.

I think we're going to do this. I've always thought we would do this. And now--we'll regret it if we don't do it. I'm not without some fears that we'll regret it if we do...is anyone? But he's on Beauregard wake-up duty and he's been up at five everynight this week, with some exciting three o'clock calls too--so I think we'll fill out the "which country should we choose" questionaires a little later in the week.

Thinking about Number Four.

That's right, I said 4. Wanna make something of it?

Goats.

I believe I said we live in a small New England town...well, I should have said we live on a mountain outside a small New England town, a fact that was brought home to me today when, on the way home from the school bus, Bart and I encounted a lovely man and his young son walking their goats. He came up and stuck out a friendly hand.
"I'm Doug," he said.
"I'm home-schooled!" caroled the son, by way of greeting.

Honestly, I probably could have guessed.

What makes this all the better is that my five-year-old son was not at all impressed by the goats. He's seen goats, after all. Also cows, and he's gathered eggs at another friends,before the foxes got those chickens and the truth is he's more thrilled by the friend he had last year, the one with the dilapidated camper parked in front of his family's trailer.

It's a very small town. It's either a great and charming way to grow up, or just one of the many things he'll have to discuss with his therapist when he moves back to New York.

The Ice Storm, revisited

So, you know how when you were a teenager, all of your friends had these massively fucked up parents, and of course you did too, and you just had to hunker down and protect each other, and sometimes sneak a friend in your window to spend the night because things were just too, well, fraught at her place?

Yeah. And then you're out on your own, and those screwed up upbringings are taking their toll. You've got your friend who strips and flashes everyone at every opportunity, and the other one who passes out on the floor at every social gathering, from granny's birthday to the office secret santa, and the one with the pistol in the glove box he likes to shoot into the air to celebrate New Year's, and anything else he can think of....

And then those people start having thier own children. And there you are. It's like watching a train wreck, really. You can't take your eyes off them, but what are you going to do? Clearly, there's the four-year-old who'll be pouring mom's bottles of Jaeger down the toilet in a few years, and the one who can't sleep at night because Daddy and Mommy are screaming at each other again. Even right here in the Granola household, the future pathologies are becoming clear: Bart will never, ever be the athlete Poptart expects him to be--i.e. the athelete O was, only taller. Much taller. The taller part he seems to have down, but he'd really rather be baking cookies, and I see a world of grief ahead.

So yeah, what does one say? This is somewhere it never occured to me I'd be.

Who the fuck is this Lola Granola anyway?

Oh, I am many many things, complicated, unusual. Freaky, even. A la leche style nurser in the garb of a hipster? A mom of three with the style and wit of a diva on the social scene?

Who am I kidding? I'm a dime a dozen. Throw a stroller wheel in Brooklyn and you'll hit fifty of me, clutching their shopping bags of Annie's Organic Macaroni and Cheese (all the same ingredients as Kraft, but with less guilt!) and lattes. I don't live in Brooklyn, granted, but if I did, I'd be so bored by meeting myself over and over again that I'd probably have to get saved and vote Republican just to keep from committing serial suicide. It sucks being a cliche, it really does.

But I have one big thing up on those other moms, all my fellow bitching and moaning navel gazing travelers down this particular snot-covered road. They're up to their low riders in doubt and angst. Are they doing it right, this mother thing? Properly raising the child(ren), feeding them, enriching them?

Me, I'm doing it right. Got any doubts about what you're doing? Let's clear them up. Your way: wrong. My way: right. Because your way is wrong--unless, of course, it's my way. Because I'm right.

Which means I get to judge everbody else.

I