this woman’s work

You are browsing the archives from 2004 January.

When we had our homestudy, we told our social worker that we would like to be called before they shared our bios with women who had used drugs and/or alcohol during their pregnancies and if their babies had been diagnosed in utero with any severe medical issues. We wanted to be able to hear more details rather than just giving a blanket “yes” or “no.” When we said that, we were picturing kind of worst case scenarios but in reality, we have discovered that we ourselves would be a precall if we were placing a baby for adoption. As would most of the people I hang with.

Would you be a precall? To see, check out the questions in the extended entry below. If you answer “yes” to any of them, then you probably would.
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Someone (I think it was Sandra) said that one of the Jane Siberry songs reminded her of Kate Bush. I can see that (hear that) although I think not all of her songs do. One thing about Jane is that she’s willing to try a whole mess of stuff musically and so her work ranges all over the map while I think Kate Bush focuses on a smaller segment.

I like Kate Bush an awful lot now but I strangely disliked her when I was 16 and miserable and shaving lines into my hair for the sake of fashion. And now look, I’ve named my blog after her! I never would have believed it when I was dissing her to my then boyfriend, Robert. (Only we didn’t say “dis” in those days. I’m not sure what we said. Anyone who came of age in the 80s know?)

The thing is, when I was 16, I wanted authenticity. Kate Bush seemed too affected to me, (which is downright nuts when you consider how much I liked Bauhaus). It was her videos that did me in, all that eye rolling and great swaths of flowing silk or little elfin prancing. I couldn’t watch them.

As I get older, I find that my tolerance for artificiality — provided its honest, not Britney Spears artificial — has increased. It’s why I like musicals so much, really. I like that someone will suddenly pop into an Arabesque in the middle of a New York city street. I like it when someone breaks into song instead of kissing the leading lady. I like it when everything rhymes.

I am a great admirer of the human race despite our many faults. I am encouraged when I see the myraid of ways in which people use art to share their experiences or opinions or hopes. Watching a musical that tries to make sense of the nonsense of racism (South Pacific, West Side Story, Miss Saigon) moves me deeply. I like the metaphor, the way a 4-minute song can stand in for a 4-month courtship. I love to watch the backgrounds slide in and out, these big false fronts that ask us to pretend along with them.

It really does give me hope for humanity.

“The opposite of war isn’t peace; it’s creation!” — RENT

I forgot Music Mondays but that’s ok because we can just switch it to Tuneful Tuesday.

Today’s Jane Siberry song is “Pontchartrain” from her album of lullabyes, Hush. Note how she’s layered her voice and it gains resonance as the story moves forward and then peaks when she sings “I asked her if she’d marry me…” before drifting back down to her solitary voice. I think that part is incredibly romantic. (sigh)

Ahhh, I love this song! Listen to it here.

By the way, I can’t get my burner to work (damn OS X!) so it may be some time before I get those lullaby CDs done. I’m very frustrated by this because I wanted to get it to Alisa before Peanut arrived. Drat!

Click the extended entry to check out some, ummm, disturbing links. Inclusion here does not mean that I agree with the site, like the site, or — frankly — did more than skim the site. Anyway, I went and found a bunch of anti-adoption web sites. I don’t know why I did this … Oh yes I do, I’m avoiding the essay that isn’t coming out like I want it to. Don’t visit ‘em if you don’t want to but below the list of the anti-adoption sites are some regular old adoption blogs.
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My husband, god love him, is a lunatic. He has a paranoid streak you could drive a humvee through and he visits much of that on our mail.

My mom bought him a shredder a couple of Christmases ago but he burned that out sometime last year. Instead of just ripping stuff up and tossing it, he was keeping everything with our name and/or address on it in a large trashcan with the plan to shred it eventually. He finally bought himself an industrial-strength shredder (the discounted floor model, natch) and is now slowly working through his trash can of documents.

All of that waiting paper is an awesome sight. Wanna see? Click here. This is in our basement playroom, by the way. In case you were wondering.

I got another precall this morning. Both precalls we’ve had this week were for women whose babies are due in early April.

The precalls are always about situations where the mother has issues that could potentially impact the health of her baby. At the end of our homestudy, when we started talking about the kinds of specific situations with which we would feel comfortable, Brett and I told the social worker that we would just rather have them call first.

We are actually pretty comfortable with some level of illegal drug use, although I am more than Brett. I think this comes from working in the shelter and meeting moms who used while pregnant and working with their kids. Fetal alcohol syndrome still really scares me — far more than hard drug use — because I can think of some specific clients whose situations were so damn heartbreaking.

We had one client I remember in particular, R. She had a son who was in foster care and then she gave birth to a daughter not long after her second stay with us. She came back to visit us now and then and it seems like I remember that her daughter did not live with her very long either but I could have that wrong. Anyway, R. had fetal alcohol syndrome and it was the cause of her homelessness. She couldn’t keep a job, she couldn’t make good decisions, and she could be really inappropriate in her personal relationships. She also had one hell of a temper and it seems to me if I’m remembering correctly that she got kicked out the first time she used our shelter. Despite some of her more problematic personality traits, she could be very likeable.

I remember talking to her a lot even though I wasn’t her case manager. I think that the first time she was in shelter, I was a resident assistant, which means I had nothing to do with case plans anyway. I hung out in the office and got clients their meds, helped them with the food closet or just sat and talked with them. R. would come sit with me some evenings and we would talk. I didn’t know she was a mother then because she never mentioned her son. The second time she entered shelter, she was pregnant and that’s when I got to know her as a parent.

R. made lots of incredibly stupid choices because she couldn’t think things through. She had no concept of consequences and would go and make the same mistakes she made the week before. It was so frustrating because you knew that she wasn’t going to change because that part of her brain was broken. That was just who R. was. You could say, “Now R, remember that you are not going to tell your potential new boss to go f*ck himself” and she’d agree that was a very good idea and then she’d go to work and tell him to go f*ck himself. It was that kind of thing. You couldn’t exactly hold her responsible but the whole point of shelter was to help our clients take responsibility. So what do you do with people like R.? Help them access programs and hope for the best, I guess.

It scares me to think of parenting a child like that. On the other hand, whose to say what’s going to happen? The risks our child may have aren’t the sum of who that child might be.

There’s a wonderful book called Choosing Naia about the true story of a young couple who learns that their child is going to be born with Down syndrome and their struggle to make a decision about whether or not to continue the pregnancy. Reading it helped give me perspective about saying “yes” to the various precalls we’ve received.

Last year we were able to take advantage of my snowbird in-laws and stay with them for a week in their Florida condo. We wanted to do the same thing this year but it’s been complicated by the adoption. We need to be able to get back within 24 hours, which precludes driving and then flying down there and renting a car is going to be very expensive. We’re trying to figure out how best to handle all of the details taking baby possibilities and budget constraints into account.

I was hoping to get this time to really focus on my book proposal. I’m feeling anxious about getting on to the next thing career-wise since I’m feeling like I probably won’t have a job this summer. Sitting on my in-laws’ balcony with a cheap laptop sounds absolutely heavenly.

I don’t really see getting a baby before then but anything is possible. When we told our social worker we were planning a trip at that time she laughed and said, “Well, Murphy’s law says that’s when you’ll get the call so don’t go too far!”

Take from Angela although what with my child being so enormously huge, these aren’t nearly as cute:

1. What is your favorite food?
Pizza, ummm, chicken. Ummm, french fries. Ummm, dog biscuits. [laughs hysterically] No, leave that! Umm, one more. Popcorn! That’s all.

2. How much does a hat cost?
I don’t know. Probably five dollars. Need to ask me anymore?

3. What is the moon made out of?
Cheese! No, wait, dust. Dust and rocks.

4. What is your favorite tv show?
Arthur.

5. Why is the sky blue?
Hmmm. Let me see. That’s how the sky was made.

6. How old is mommy?
27? [Mommy points out she just had a birthday so he should get this one right.] I don’t know! 26, am I right? [Mommy tells him 34 and he's unimpressed.]

7. What is your last name?
[He knows this one.]

8. Why do zebras have stripes?
Because they went to a cave and got a black and white coat! [Said in a funny voice.] Put an exclamation point on the end so I’m yelling it!

9. What does a plumber do?
Fixes your sink.

10. Where do you live?
On XXXXXXX Avenue. In a house without a garage. Anymore? Write down that I’m almost seven. [He asks for a 7 instead of seven.]

And Baby had me in their contributor’s list last year and they’ve asked me to be in it again this spring. That’s the part upfront in the magazine where they feature some of the authors with a picture and it all looks very impressive and exciting. It’s just the kind of thing to make me feel inadequate when I’m researching a magazine for which I want to write. I go to the front and everyone else looks so much more accomplished than I am. Anyway, in case you ever feel the same way, I want you to know that I took my contributor’s picture, (which will now be my official picture for the occasional times I get asked to send one along with an article) sitting on our bathroom floor with the camera on the counter. It took awhile to get the height right so among the rejected pictures are ones of me kinda half in the frame and a few others of me squinting one eye. This one was the best.

I just thought it was funny. You know, me kneeling on the floor and my legs getting cramped trying to laugh so it looks like a fairly natural smile. Oh and I’m wearing funny fuzzy slippers that Noah got me for Christmas. Now those people featured in Vogue, they’re probably actually in Tuscany or someplace else equally sun-drenched and full of literary possibilities but even if they are, isn’t it more fun to pretend they’re also sitting on their bathroom floors, squinting at their digital camera and wearing fuzzy slippers? I think so.

You can see the pic in the extended entry below. It doesn’t look quite as professional as I would like but I also think it doesn’t screams “taken in a bathroom that needs a good scrub” either so I’m sending it on in. When I get more comfortable with the new camera, I’ll try to get one that looks like I paid someone to take it.

[image removed by author]

I went to go see “Big Fish” while the boys are away at a birthday party shindig. I remembered just before the previews that Brett forgot to grab Noah’s booster seat and I forgot to notice (the shindig involves a long drive on a snowy, icy day) and tried not to freak out. I know that the family has an extra safety seat but that first thought — no seat! snowy roads! — made me get a wee bit nauseous.

“Big Fish” was pretty good but it just made me miss Brett and Noah so now I’m home and feeling melancholy in a good way. You know, in a gaze-out-the-window and heave-a-sigh kind of way, best set off with both a cup of something hot to drink and a good book. Since my solitary excursion also involved stops at two thrift stops, I have ten new-to-me books just right for the occasion. And so I”m off to read them!