9 months down, ? to go

Month 9 flew by with the nicer weather (a relative term on the West Coast), finally updating my home study after my move, working hard, hardly working, and..... the purchase of my new sailboat! Yay me!

Now I just have to learn to sail it.

The photo is my hoodoo family I met on The Great Road Trip of '09. They live in Red Canyon, Utah, and took good care of me on one of my long, hot, and solo hiking trips. 

Wordle!

I love wordle. Add your text--in this case, I copy/pasted all my blog posts--and the Wordle Gods create a lovely little beaux-arts piece. Or at least a totally rad little picture of all my words.

Rants

 

I'm having a bad day. Get ready for an unedited, stream-of-consciousness tirade.This whole motherhood quest--through its many incarnations over the years--comes in fits and starts of emotion. I'm still happy that my first two trimesters (look at me--still pregnant-centric) went by so quickly (I'm not negating my last post), but I'm overwhelmed with emotions today about the institutionalized prejudice against adoption. I struggle with this--not the decision to adopt, but what (and how) I'll tell my child when s/he asks about the process. I'm comfortable with being honest, and there's no regret in my decision, even if the Uterine Gods did conspire against me and removed my choice. I don't ever want my child to think s/he was a Plan B, second class, or unwanted,  and I hope that by the time  s/he decides about parenthood, the choice of how to build a family won't be swayed by public prejudice.

The impetus of my mood was learning more about the discrimination that exists at my job. I was shocked at the beginning of the adoption process when I learned that the federal government gives us 15 fewer weeks  leave than birth mothers. It never occurred to me that there would be a difference between birth mothers and adoptive mothers. I've always considered myself fairly savvy, but that was a shock. I've come to terms with people's initial reactions. "Birth mothers need time to recover physically" "I guess not many people adopt newborns anymore" "well, how old will your kid be when you adopt her?" I probably thought the same thing. With the first example, at least. But adoptive parents have done a good job educating the politicians about the truth--that adoptive children are the ones who need time to heal. Even newborns have attachment disorders. Internationally adopted children come with significant barriers from culture shock, climate changes, language differences, food, being ripped from family and familiar caregivers. All that traumatic loss that takes months, if not years, to heal. Locally adopted children come with attachment disorders, multiple foster-home placements and displacements, abuse, drug and alcohol involvement. All that traumatic loss that takes months, if not years, to heal properly.

 

Back to my original peeve. I knew that my school district didn't offer adoptive mothers any maternity leave benefits. We also have to beg for unpaid time off in order to travel to pick up our children, as teachers don't accrue vacation time. Birth mothers can take time off before birth to prepare for becoming a family. We can't. But today, I learned more about my collective agreement. After their year of maternity leave, birth mothers are guaranteed the same position they left. Same school, same classroom, same teaching load. Me? I have vague guarantees of a "similar" position somewhere in the district. I have no rights to my job. All the work I've done building up my programs, my classroom, my office space, all I've done to build my career so that I can support my child, all could be gone, and I could be shuffled off to another school teaching 6 different subjects.

Again, I literally feel like someone kicked me in the gut. 

Through this whole process, I've been really pissed off at The Man, blaming my school board for their insulting letters and lip service and "we understand, but..." Now I'm also pissed off at my union, who made the unfair agreement with The Man. 

Through it all, I remain really grateful to my friends and colleagues, who are suitably shocked when I tell them of the inequalities between the two kinds of mothers. I especially smile when I have to repeatedly tell my colleagues "no, really" when they keep insisting that I must be mistaken, I really must be, and the look of shock when they realize that I really am telling the truth.

For my own sake, I hope The Man caves before the promised Human Rights Commissions complaints and public shaming, and before the next round of bargaining. As I've said before, I want to spend my time mothering, not crusading. 

Wow. I got through that whole rant with nary a "fuck" "fucking" or "stupid fuckers." How rare for me.

Lest you think I'm holier-than-thou, I have ingrained hypocrisy. I will forever feel guilty about the "hilarious" game of "Mom loves me best" my sister and I used to play, when the ultimate insult was "yeah, well, you were adopted!"

My second "trimester"

I'm already in my sixth month of waiting. I hate to jinx it all, but the time flew. I'm quite sure my tone will be different when I'm hitting my eighth trimester, however. 

I've been able to occupy my time with the new apartment, new kitten, my nephews (aren't they gorgeous?), and that ever pesky job. My latest stress is figuring just how the hell I'm going to survive on parental leave (I've stopped calling it maternity leave, since I'm not a real mother according the federal government or my employer).

Those are my thoughts for the day. That and 15 MORE SLEEPS 'TIL WE LEAVE FOR HAWAII!

On Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

~ Khalil Gibran

One blog post every 9 months? Sounds about right.

I think about my child-to-be (and birth mom) every day, but push it far down to maintain my sanity. Two couples from my adoption education program were expecting over the holidays. One couple is pregnant and due in a few weeks. I wasn't even jealous when they told me! So happy for them, and my fingers and toes are crossed for a healthy delivery.

The other couple has had a terrible string of bad luck. They got caught in the Imagine bankruptcy last summer. They decided to look to the US, and got chosen fairly quickly by a birth mother. Sadly for them, the birth mother decided to keep her daughter. I found out less than an hour ago, and I've been quite numb since then. Tears dropped, though only an iota of what they've shed, I'm sure. Yet another reminder of how fragile the motherhood process is at the best of times, and how many extra uncontrollable variables there are in adoption. I felt like a useless fool in my email response to them. What can I possibly say? "You're young. At least you're not my age." Hardly. Platitudes suck.

All I can do is wish them well, which I do. Then I will have to push it far down to maintain my sanity.

Must now spend time with new kitten to lift my spirits.

Bassey Ikpi

I have a growing file of poems/books/songs/letters for my child. This is one of the recent additions, sent to me by lovely Sabina.

None of the poems or letters I've started to Child comes anywhere close to the brilliance of Ikpi.