Paradox
May 25, 2007 Adoption, Writing
I think this is the core of my essay. Not sure yet but when Brett and I were talking about it after dinner last night, this is what I came up against.
–If we hadn’t pre-matched, we wouldn’t have this amazing relationship. Then again, maybe Jessica would have her baby.
–If I’d been less concerned about ethics and less insistent about saying, “You can change your mind — what about these options?” Jessica might not have trusted me so much. She might have kept her baby. (Was I earning her trust or betraying her? She says trust but me, I struggle with it.)
–We are very close because we share this daughter. I also know that the pain of the adoption is a barrier between us.
–I’m older and theoretically wiser (and this is the role I seem to be playing) but her experience losing Madison is beyond my comprehension. I feel inadequate to it. (Both Brett and I were saying that Jessica’s grace and dignity makes us feel rather small sometimes.)
–I am, as you know, extremely pro-choice but I have had a hard time getting my head around Jessica’s decision to place Madison. (Back in my day, all the women I knew in similar circumstances had abortions. That was and is much easier for me to understand.)
–I wish I could have spared Jessica Madison’s loss but at the same time, I can’t imagine my life without Madison.
I’m not sure how much of this has anything to do with the essay — I’m just working it out. (And as an experiment, I’m working it out on blog.) I also keep thinking about how the answer to “why did Jessica place?” is ultimately unknowable. She said, “This is why I’m choosing adoption” but it shifts with time. And maybe this isn’t the essay but it makes me think about how we make life-changing decisions as best we can and then, looking back, they change. Sometimes I think this essay is really about how inadequate I am to this but in a forgiving way. I don’t want this to be a negative essay or sad like the Salon one. Like I said, I want this to be a love letter to Jessica but I don’t want to play into that “heroic birth mom” fantasy. I want it to be more real than that. She’s very human.
So on to Becca’s question: Why am I compelled to write it?
1. Because I think there should be more narratives about adoption that are neither sweetness and light or doom or gloom.
2. Because I want people to see Jessica as the complex person she is.
3. Because I think it’s an interesting relationship to explore (and there’s a bit of voyeur in anyone who’s a fan of personal essays).
4. Because I want to highlight the constant (love) and how sometimes love is inadequate or … something.
Ugh. I’m working on it.
Little bit of trivia for you. When I work I have a main page open with the bulk of whatever I have done of the essay and then I have another .doc open for notes and another .doc open for “darlings” — from William Faulkner’s quote about, “Kill your darlings.” Whenever I know I need to lose something I love, I cut it and paste it into “darlings.” This time around, my notes page is titled “ugh” because that’s how I feel about it. Ugh. And yet compelled. I’m a glutton for punishment.
May 25th, 2007 at 11:59 am
I am very interested in reading this once it’s done. Your relationship with Jessica appears to have become deeper since I started reading here, and I think it’s been about a year? If you can sort out the tangle of emotions it will be quite a feat.
I agree with your points of interest, especially that it’s an interesting and complex relationship to explore.
May 25th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
I don’t think our relationship has become deeper as much as what I write about it here has changed since she’s read my blog and is ok with it. I do feel more secure than I used to but going to visit her family was the turning point for me and that was when Madison was 15 months old.
May 25th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
I don’t think Jessica lost Madison, they are very much in each others’lives.
How can you have lost a child that you can see and hold and celebrate big events with.
You might have lost something big but you have not lost a child.
I have not lost a child, I lost her childhood by not seeing her for close to twenty years. I have a daughter, she is not lost to me, she is very much in my life. I celebrate my genius supermodel.
I think you didn’t make the adoption happen Dawn, just my opinion, think what if Madison had gone to some other woman who put her on Prozac and didn’t let her see Jessica?
Thank God for contact and love and being able to have a relationship. Not that open adoption means no pain that’s not what I am saying.
I am saying that I choose to focus on what I have. I have a lot. From where I am standing, Jessica has a lot.
Just my opinion, not a fact, just my opinion.
*waves to Dawn*
May 25th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
p.s I hope that didn’t sound harsh, it wasn’t meant in a harsh way……
*waves again to Dawn….*
May 25th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
I think one of the most fabulous things about the relationship that you all share is how normal it is. It isn’t held in isolation as this ‘thing’ to be studied and re-examined (while it’s being studied and re-examined) you all just do your togetherness and make peace with it. I love that you’re willing to share your relationship, like you would any other friend–and I think that because your relationship is treated as less precious, it grows more dear, if that makes any sense at all? The casual, ‘we’re visiting while Madison has a marker moustache’ or ‘We’re in the neighborhood (at my house!) come hang out with us if you have time’ seems to create this deeper more meaningful relationship. I can only imagine that just like my grandmothers (I had the clean grandmom–got dressed in nice clean clothes to go visit there, and the dirty grandmom–put on our oldest playclothes to visit there, usually came home wearing a shirt from my grandfather instead!) everyone involved will be more excited by the grittier relationship. So many families put together a clean-grandmom Sunday-best kind of relationship with the first family and you know, it’s never going to feel as close as the relationship you and Jessica have achieved.
Enough from me…
May 25th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
I’ve been trying to write something about the impossibility of making good ethical decisions within an unethical practice.
I know you are talking about your relationship with Jessica, not so much the ethics, but maybe that is part of it.
Adoption, even at its very best, is still connected to the ways women lack power and options. To be pregnant when one doesn’t want to be a mother is simply part of all that. Being in that place happens because women do not have the control over their bodies and their lives that they should have. And there is no position that the adopter can occupy that is not morally ambiguous.
That does not mean that you should not adopt; it just means there is no moral high ground to stand on. In your interactions with Jessica you have the power, and your interactions are exercises of your power. That is not a comfortable place to be and there is no way out of it.
Sorry…I’m not intending to be harsh. It is just something that I think about myself quite a bit. I too find myself trying to make ethical decisions in a morally ambiguous swamp.
May 25th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Yondalla, this is a huge part of my experience but I’m not sure how much of it will be in the essay. I want to focus more on the personal part of it and not in a broader social critique. It’s got me stymied (what to leave out, what to leave in). Also my critique of adoption isn’t Jessica’s critique of adoption — she’s in a different place than I am about adoption and I have no idea if we’ll ever really be in the same place. I think that even my tendency to sit around mired in adoption thought is part of my privilege because when it comes right down to it, Jessica is very busy just getting through her life.
May 25th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
I can’t wait to see this essay. It is your honesty and sharing in your relationship with Jessica that opened our eyes to keeping our adoption open. While it is a struggle for us and probably will always be, I’m glad we chose it.
It was so uncomfortable having to make that choice. I wish there were more stories for people to read when making this decision.
We now balance every action on how open to make our lives. Our circumstances are different than yours and we have a few concerns. It is a journey that not only are we on but his birth family is on too. We all keep at it and we are learning so much about ourselves.
Ok enough rambling.
May 26th, 2007 at 5:42 am
does a first mother nver have any responsible for her decision to have her child adopted
May 26th, 2007 at 10:38 am
orrielynn,
never
responsibility
you were so quick to be mean you didn’t finish your words.
May 27th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
More about the paradox is that you and Jessica are in different places in how you view adoption. As are the queen and I. I am much more interested in ethics and reform, and she doesn’t see much wrong with the system.
We are of course completely backward compared to most adoptive families
May 27th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
“I also keep thinking about how the answer to “why did Jessica place?†is ultimately unknowable. She said, “This is why I’m choosing adoption†but it shifts with time.”
This is where I get hung up, pondering and wondering. Of course I don’t have the close relationship that I can just ask my son’s first moms, so it all goes around in my own head. I am so glad to read what you have to say about it, and all your commenters as well. It makes me feel less alone.
The thing is, it changes for all of us over time. The children too, of course.
May 27th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
one of the paradoxes about adoption for me at least is that my joy/love is intertwined with loss (mine, child’s, first parents). The joy does not exist without the loss. It exists because of it. So too your relationship with Jessica. Not many relationships are like that. that is what makes it special. imnsho