Part of the adoption application process involves writing lots of essays about yourself:  your dreams for your child, your views on parenting, your own life experiences.  It was hard, but in a good way.  So much of the wish for a child is something you can’t put into words, but adopting parents just have to find those words somehow, anyway.

Here are some bits and pieces I wrote for my application, and I’m happy to share them.

One summer day…I think it was actually in August, 2007…   I was at home, just doing things around the house, not thinking about anything particular, when I had a very strange but profound feeling that a child had called to me.  I actually looked out the window to see if it was Emily, but I knew at the same time that it wasn’t that kind of sound.  I spent the rest of the day thinking about how impossible it would be for me to have a child on my own, and how much motherhood would change my life, and how hard it would be, and by the next morning I just knew.  I was ready.  So I started trying to puzzle out a way of making it happen.   My friends, especially Ken and Karen, were amazingly supportive as I worked my way through each wretched step at the fertility clinics.  But everyone was relieved when I started looking at adoption instead.  At the clinic, nothing felt right – once I decided adoption made sense for me, everything kind of clicked.

Office work had seemed ideal when I was first trying to start a family, since my schedule is flexible and I work near home.  But since this has turned out to be a longer “project” than I had first hoped, I am ready to start moving back into work that engages me more.  I’ve started looking at PhD programs in Education, and will return to that field over the next few years.  In the meantime, however, my job is pleasant, pays the bills, and allows me time for picking kids up after school, doing summer tutoring… and taking maternity leave!  Several of my coworkers are also single mothers, and they’ve been inspiring examples in “making it all work.”

I have a vision of a beautifully “patchwork” family, with room for my dear friends, my relatives, my child, my child’s birthmother, and a beloved partner all to be a part of the pattern.

 

What aspects of childrearing are important to you?

I didn’t want to just write “all of them,” but I wasn’t sure how else to answer this question.  It’s like I’ve had a little “imaginary friend” for the last three years – when I’m driving alone, there’s an invisible kid in the back seat.  Sometimes it’s a boy and sometime’s it’s a girl; sometimes a toddler, sometimes a teenager.  He hides behind trees on days I walk to work; she’s just ducked into the cereal isle in the grocery store.  I get jealous every morning when I see people walking their kids to school, and I catch myself staring.  My heart holds on tight to every minute I spend with the kids who are in my life, whether it’s happy hugs or stormy moments.  Monday when I picked Emily up from school, she and her friend were bickering over something in the car and I just started laughing.  Sometimes I think I love that girl most when she’s being obnoxious.

What do you expect from your children?

Headaches, hassles, and hilarious questions that come out of the blue.  Messy collections of bird nests and shells, stacks of fingerpaintings.  Fussiness over the color of shoes or the shape of sandwiches or something else.  Sticky fingers, hugs and kisses, teenage drama.  Hand-drawn Valentines.  Disagreements about Facebook.

I expect to fully believe that Second Sunflower in the school play is the most important role in the history of theater.

I expect to cry the first time, and probably every time, they go away to camp… but not until after they leave.

I expect to hear a list of all the things I did wrong, when my child gets to be 20.

I expect I’ll be forgiven by the time they’re 30.

“As a mother, I look forward to…” 

The hugs and kisses.  The bedtime stories.  Playing the alphabet game in the car and building sand castles at the beach.  Saying Yes more than No.

But I’m not living in a fantasy world, here.

As a mother, I look forward to waking up exhausted in the middle of the night when the baby won’t sleep, and to cleaning mashed carrot out of my hair.  To being known as somebody’s Mommy by people who can’t remember my actual name.  To endless “why?” questions, and obsessions with trains (or dinosaurs, or horses).   To constantly having to wipe things:  butts, noses, countertops.

And even more, I look forward to those magical moments when she slams the bedroom door and yells, “You’re no fair;” to the meeting with the teacher when he gets caught in a lie or accidentally breaks something; to sometimes having to say no.  Babies are cute, and hugs and kisses and stories are wonderful, but I can share those beautiful, happy, easy moments with my niece and nephew or with my friends’ children.

I want the whole deal!

Dear Birthmother,

I knew I was ready to start a family one ordinary summer day when I was just doing stuff around the house.  I heard a sound – not in my imagination, but with my real ears – and it sounded like yellow flowers blooming.  And I just knew:  something or someone had called to me.  I’ve been looking for my child ever since.

I do awesome crafts. I am very funny.  I’m a terrible gardener and an adventurous cook.  I hate Disney movies except for some of them.  I am against high-fructose corn sweeteners and in favor of bare feet and sticky fingers.  I do not fear the terrible twos or the terrible twelves or even the terrible twenties.

Adoption is a choice that takes a tremendous amount of trust and love.  The trust you place in me will be the star that guides my steps every day.  And this is my promise to you:  I’m going to be a fantastic mother.