All is calm...

Have you ever had one of those days where "all is calm"? I don't so when I do, it is VERY enjoyable. I like to savor it for as long as possible. Last week I had one of those days & surprisingly it has lasted a longer than I had even anticipated.

It all started oddly enough, by me taking a short jaunt down the driveway to the mailbox. In this day & age of electronic EVERYTHING,"mail" is comprised of the usual; never ending on-slot of impending bills & run of the mill junk mail. I'm sure I am no different than others but when I really enjoy the rare arrival of a personal card or letter. Imagine then, my surprise when I got an actual piece of hand written mail. My excitement was momentarily dashed when I saw the return address: My adoption agency.

I took a deep breath to recover as my heart pounded ever so loudly in my ear & virtually out of my chest. For a brief moment I thought "This is it, the letter I have been dreading. The "you are too much for us to handle letter" I thought might be coming from my adoptive family. Without another moment's hesitation I decided right then & there to just get it over with. Rip that band-aid right off in one quick, yet decisive pull. No sense in standing around any longer being a wimp about it. It was indeed with that one rip of the envelope opening that I decided to "man up".

As I began reading what was inside, I slowly began to realize this was not what I was expecting at all. Oddly enough, it was just the opposite. Inside the now decimated envelope, was something I had been wanting for so long. I was holding in my hot little hand my relinquishment papers. Now, I know this may sound odd to some, but those papers are/were the key to my healing & closure. (GAG..I very much dislike those "kinds" of words but for a lack of better ones, they will suffice.) Odd as that may sound I have an explanation. (A lengthy one as usual, but true to form for me.)




Here's the thing: When I was in the hospital, about to be discharged, some secretary came in & hurriedly ran through the specifics that were going to be on my son's "real" (HER words mind you) birth certificate. She went through the whole charade of "is that the correct spelling?" I nodded in agreement & uttered yes to each of her incessant questioning. After all the questions were answered, I asked her what was next. (As I was SURE she knew of my adoption plans as is was in BIG BOLD LETTERS on the front of my chart. Nice huh?) So cheerfully piped up, "Oh you'll get a copy in the mail in a few weeks, & then he's official yours!" Ba-dum-bum CHING! Those words rang out like a rimshot on the Tonight Show. Nothing like kicking a person while they are down.


In my mind that tiny, insignificant little piece of paper is, at minimum, what I felt I deserved for all that I had been through the last 9 months. In my mind, I felt if I was walking away with hemorrhoids,(TMI, I know) stitches & physical pain, the least I could walk out with was a piece of paper that decreed I did in fact go through all of that. I know that sounds utterly ridiculous because all the proof I needed was sleeping, unfazed mind you, in a nursery just down the hall. To me, that birth certificate indicated that for a brief moment in time, however minuscule, he WAS mine. Go ahead, get angry, judge me. I can handle it. It's not as if I haven't heard it before. Believe me, I know how incredibly selfish that sounds. I do, I honestly do. The reality of it though is this: When you carry a child in your womb you almost become one. I have read such things that children even know you are their mother just by your scent. Why do you think the immediately place the child to your bosom? To continue that bond.

As I sit here writing I remember all the somersaults my son did in utero. I can also remember thinking I was crazy trying to fight "nature" & my hormones. My head & my body kept telling me "I'm suppose to bond with this child!" Yet, I fought ALL of that with every ounce of my being because I knew what I needed to do. Oddly enough, at that same time, I can remember thinking how sad I felt knowing that "Kim" would never feel everything that being pregnant entails, good, bad & the ugly. (To this day, I still secretly wish this for her as I feel if she went through a pregnancy she would see firsthand all I had to go & fight through to get to get to "the other side". It is one thing to tell someone about an experience, it is another to go through it for ones' self and LIVE it. (Again, selfish I know.) I wanted her to understand the feelings that I am so meagerly attempting to convey in my writing now. I really tried to find that "common ground" for us to build upon.

Even now I can't help but see the similarities in the obstacles each of has had to go through in this adoption. She had to let go of her desire to have a child of her own. I can not even begin to fathom that. I often imagine that her desire to parent a child of her own came as "natural" to her as my instincts to WANT to live in that brief window of time when my son was only mine. To me our "natural instincts" were one in the same. They came from the same desire: to be a parents, period. Not adoptive parents, not birth parents, none of those precise & definitive type of labels. Just A parent. There I go being a a dreamer again...Was it wrong of me to want to live in that moment where he was just mine? It really depends on who you ask I suppose. I look at it this way: I don't feel it was any less wrong for me to want him to be "just mine", than it is for adoptive parents to feel the same way once a child is placed with them. Often I am told, adoptive parents feel that same way. (Hence some of their over active "protection" mode that they sometimes will go into.) To be honest, I would be worried if they didn't behave like that. I would worry that a child might get a sense of not "fully belonging" in a family. After all, that was my goal in placing my son; I wanted to feel as though I was giving him the family I could not provide for him.

This brings me full circle, however round about, to the "relinquishment papers". For me, they represented that moment in time when "K" was mine; proof that he DID in fact EXIST at one point & time. I have been told by more than one person that he did not/DOES not exist; (How caring & compassionate huh?) I obviously know that to be false. For what I shared with him was special & can never be forgotten even with time, age & fading memories. Only now had that become fact. Granted, it was not the birth certificate I had originally wanted long ago, but it was a damn good substitute. To see his name(my name for him) on those papers was good enough for me. It was all the validation I needed.

As I sit here and proof read through all of this, I can't help, once again, to take a step back & be critical. I know how this sounds to a reader who might be an adoptive parent. I have even gone so far as to ask "How would I feel if Karie were reading this?" To be honest, right now in this little wrinkle in time, I simply can't be the "people pleaser" I often get called. It is time I come first. MY feelings, my emotional & mental well being. I am no good to anyone if I am damaged & unhealed. Especially the son I placed for adoption. I don't feel I have been rude, inconsiderate or blatantly condescending. I am not trying to hurt anyone else or their feelings. There is an author I like, Skye Hardwick, who seems to word this better than I can. Take a brief moment, & read the first 3 lines of the seventh paragraph; right underneath the heading "What life mother is not" I couldn't agree more with what she says there. Actually, I love the 2 paragraphs under that heading completely.

As of right now, I feel as though I have tried to be introspective and honest. I know my intentions are good as well. Better yet, GOD knows my heart & that's all I really need.