Good birthmothers
Oct 20, 2005 Adoption
Kateri has been going through some shit but it’s going to be good at the end. She’s coming out of this stronger and more confident. It just sucks — SUCKS — that her first daughter’s adoptive parents are being idiots about this. It makes me angry because it’s their daughter who will suffer for their choices and I don’t get why they don’t understand that. /rant off
But I wanted to talk about something Kateri wrote here:
Open adoption has created a new standard for Good Birthmothers. It used to be that a Good Birthmother was the one that never comes back. I’m supposed to be the New Good Birthmother, always understanding, always willing to defer to the judgement of the adoptive parents for the good of the child, always grateful for every crumb of respect that I’m thrown. I’m supposed to be endlessly available without ever venturing an opinion.
When I was interviewing the antiadoption activists, several said that the only reason J appeared happy was that she had to lie to me (and to herself) in order to retain access to Madison. Not being J, there was no way for me to argue with them about this. I mean, they could be right no matter how much I wanted to say they were wrong.
I want to believe that J is still happy with us — I do believe she is for the most part — but you know, when she came over and saw Madison’s room, I felt bad. See, Madison’s room isn’t done yet. It’s not painted, it has no rug, and it has boxes in it. I’m afraid that J has this picture of how Madison’s room ought to be and I’m screwing it up.
It’s not the room — the room isn’t that important — it’s that this represents all of the decisions I make and which J might feel she has to go along with.
Back to the room, J comes over and I say, apologetically, “We haven’t had time to do anything yet but I’ve been meaning to ask you about the color…”
I really do value J’s opinion because she’s an artist and she has an eye for things but she and I both know that whatever she says, I still make the final call about what color Maddie’s room is going to be. She could say purple and I could say, “Yeah, well, the thing about purple is…” and we both know then that her opinion is only going to matter if it fits into my idea about how the room is going to turn out anyway.
So J has a choice here — she can state an opinion and back it up firmly or she can acknowledge that her opinion only goes so far and take a safe approach. (She took a safe approach — she was noncommittal then murmured sounds of approval while looking at our paint swatches.)
It’s uncomfortable to live with such obvious privilege. It makes me squirmy. It reminds me of when I was working at one childcare site where all the kids were black and I was pretending they were all the same as me (white) and calling that open-minded. In the same way, I ask J about paint pretending that we both don’t know that I call the decorating shots.
I hope that — and I believe that — openness can be forgiving if we all have patience with each other. I try not to let my own insecurities scare me into being stupid.
For example, while I understand that right now I have all the control, I have internalized the idea that biology — given the chance — will trump all the day-to-day caring I do and that Madison will wake up one morning and stop loving me. I won’t let my decisions about J come from that place of fear because I do believe that there is a moral truth to open adoption, which is to default to welcome and celebration. What if Madison stops loving me? It doesn’t make her relationship to J any less important. And frankly, in my heart of hearts — past the fear — where I live closest to that moral truth, I believe that being welcoming to J will ultimately benefit my relationship to Madison. I believe that where Kateri’s daughter’s adoptive parents are most screwing up is believing that by pretending that Kateri doesn’t matter they will secure their daughter’s love (if this is what drives their beliefs — I have no idea of course what’s really in their heads). Just the opposite, I think.
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Tags: Madison, open adoption
My research problem temporarily solved
Oct 19, 2005 Writing
This won’t work forever but for putting together a proposal, I think this is all I’ll need.
I’m not going to interview subjects right now. I found the name of an academic who has done a lot of research I need to read so I’m going to do that and then maybe interview her. I’m also going to read the four other books and see where that puts me. It may be that my hypothesis is already proven and I won’t need to do more than illustrate the idea. If it’s been proven wrong, I’ll obviously have to rethink. And if no one’s tried to prove it, then I’ll see about making an argument for it.
Right now I’m making a list of questions I want answered from this project and a list of ideas to explore broken out — broadly — into chapter possibilities.
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The date bars I made yesterday? Sucked.
Oct 19, 2005 Writing
I’m going to burn myself out on this kitchen but by then hopefully I’ll have enough food put up that it won’t matter.
I found four books on the topic I want my book to be about but from the Amazon reviews it looks like all four come from a totally different angle. One is out of print and not at my library but I put the other three on reserve. There’s a whole slew of somewhat related books, which leads me to believe that 1) my book idea is marketable; and 2) it won’t be hard to convince an agent or a publisher of that.
Right now I’m getting chapter ideas and trying not to get too focused on any one idea. I can feel myself kind of tipping into the territory of the other books, which is not a place I want to be. Finding them on Amazon helped convince me of that.
I’m going to need to interview some people for it — some experts, some not — and I also am trying to figure out how best to interview the non-experts. That’s preoccupying me a bit.
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Domesticity
Oct 18, 2005 Homeschooling
Happy Sukkot!
Brett has the day off and he’s grading the yard around our house. Madison played in the pile of dirt this morning but now she’s dozing in the backpack carried by Brett.
Noah had his eyes dilated this morning, much to his unhappiness. Now he’s making posters of superheroes as dogs (the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the X-men) while we listen to “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”
I’ve got our daily bread kneading in the bread machine (I’m going to make tiny twisted breadsticks, I think, with one loaf’s worth) and just made tonight’s dinner. I spooned the rest of the pintos (crockpot yesterday) into freezer bags and now I’m trying to decide which to make first: date bars or cheddar cheese mini-muffins. This is part of my quest to find snacks for the kids that aren’t pretzals.
I’m thinking that I need to devote one evening a week to work on my book idea or I will NEVER EVER get it done. Which night? That’s the problem. Maybe one night a week Brett could take the kids to the rec center to swim (our membership is about to run out — I need to remember that) and I could work then. I’ll ask Brett which night works for him. Monday nights he does math with Noah… Hmmmmm.
I found the third grade proficiency test for Ohio online for math and reading. I’m confident Noah wouldn’t have problem with the reading part and we’re eyeing the math part just to see what concepts he’ll need that he doesn’t have. Most of it looks like graphing — reading, interpreting and creating them. I think he’d enjoy making charts so maybe we’ll figure out something fun to graph. I was thinking that once Thanksgiving comes that we can graph how many houses on our street put up holiday lights. Our street is only two blocks so even if the weather is lousy it wouldn’t be hard to make a quick trip on foot ever evening to write it up. Then we can make note of different things. Like we could do a pie chart that shows how many decorated houses have icicles and how many have inflatable santas or something.
Now I need to go find my pumpkin soup recipe.
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J came over today
Oct 17, 2005 Parenting
It’s the first time she saw the new place. Madison was very excited but then shy again when J finally arrived. She says her name now, too.
Work was busy today and I’m a little behind. Brett has some day’s off coming up and hopefully I can clear my desk.
I’ll write more tomorrow, hopefully. My ear is still bothering me and it’s worse at night.
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Tags: Madison