My Gay Adoption Day 45 :: Patience, Please

Happy Holidays! Or did I miss them? Oops.

Well here it is, January, and in Boston we're buried under a foot and a half of snow. What is THAT about? During Wednesday's blizzard Kevin and I looked out from our second floor windows and watched as the snow piled up. Then, as we shoveled a path to our door, I asked him, "Can we build a snowman?"

"No," he replied. "Wait until we have a kid."

I sighed. Which brings up the theme of this blog: patience.

Back in December (which is where we left off, puppies), when we were sitting in the quaint white offices of Friends in Adoption, it seemed to be the word of the day. No, wait. The word of the day was "butt-cramp," but I'm not going to explain why - the girls were so nice to us there, I don't want to ruin a good thing. But patience was the overarching concern. No, wait. The overarching concern was cash - as in how much it costs to adopt a baby. But that's a subject for next week (perhaps.)

Have you lost your patience with me yet?

The fact is that the adoption process is like a bone bruise. Years ago I slipped on black ice and sledded down the front steps to our South End brownstone - scoring near-perfect 10s, except for the German judge, who gave me a 2.5 on the dismount. If you missed that chapter of my life, I suggest you read "The Oxy Con." A bone bruise sets on with some quick, intense pain - you have, after all, injured yourself to the bone. But it's the aftereffects that really hurt: months and months of a dull ache that grows with each passing month until you can't focus on anything else.

To hear the featured adoptive mother at our Get Acquainted Workshop in December, the adoption process involves the same level of frustration and pain. First, you shell out tons of cash and work really hard to get everything prepared, and then you endure months - potentially years - of waiting, during which you begin gnashing your teeth, shrieking at your allies in the process, and suffer a complete mental breakdown. You end up in a psychiatric ward with pale sponges strapped to your head while a team of specialists in white lab coats attempt to convince you, via electric shock treatments, that the llama you just met at the zoo did not, in fact, eat the child you have yet to adopt.

Well, maybe that's an exaggeration, but I would still like to point out that, as in most processes in life, you are the author of your own ending. If you bring bitterness to the table (as it seemed this wannabe-mother did), then I'll wager the process will be bitter.

Edmund Burke wrote, "Our patience will achieve more than our force." No axiom could be truer with regard to the adoption process. Initially, you'll be forced to cough up blood. Er, I mean, a lot of money (but it tastes the same). Then, you'll have to do a ton of work - in the last six weeks, Kevin and I have written autobiographies, had physicals, met with social workers, subscribed to magazines, watched "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" in Swedish (highly recommended, although it's fairly graphic at points, which seemed to upset my mother quite a bit but made me briefly consider a nose-ring), written a narrative, and chose, then sought out, over 80 high-resolution photos for our adoption book. This may not seem like much, but "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" is almost three hours in length. How was I supposed to have time to blog?

We're nearly at the point where we can go "live" in the Friends in Adoption system - which means, theoretically, that in a few short weeks we'll be eligible to be matched with a birth mother. And the waiting will begin.

We've been warned that this process can take up to three years. Many couples don't wait that long, of course; the time variance can be ascribed to how your book appeals, whether your photos imply that you're an axe-murderer, the color of your dog, the fact that in one photo you're wearing a Stetson hat that reminds her of her days on the rodeo circuit, roping steers in the wan moonlight as the musky breeze whipped through the saguaro cacti on the plains of Arizona. Or something. Or maybe a freak wind whipped through her house and carried all of the other books out the open window, leaving just ours on the bedside table for her to curl up with while she sips cocoa and watches "Casablanca," wrapped in a pink fuzzy blanket. It could happen.

Frankly, there's no way of knowing; birth moms are unique, every one. And they'll choose the right couple for them. If it's you, you'll get the call. If not, you wait. End of story.

Which requires patience.

In the interim, the most common advice is to avoid knitting booties, buying changing tables, and investing in yellow wall paint for the nursery (I know, since you're not in control of what sex your child will be, the common prescription for baby rooms is a non-committal yellow, but really, darling - yellow is just so, I don't know, que l'on n'aime pas , although if you have a boy and you change his diaper face up, you'll be covered when your walls are, er, covered). Try not to glower at parents of toddlers at the grocery store. And don't head hungrily over at the next table at the Rose Garden and utter to the young couple while pointing at their baby, "You gonna raise that?"

Instead, just live your life normally. And keep your humor up. That's how Kevin and I approach the waiting process: with a sense of fun. And if, along the way, we're feeling desperate, I'll build myself a snowman, or grab a permanent marker and write on the dining room wall myself - and as Kevin scolds me, I'll remind him that a little fantasy goes a long way.