this woman’s work

Madison was gluing sequins on leaf cut-outs to make our house more autumn-like and more gorgeous. She said, “Were you friends with Pennie after I was born?”

I put down my book to try to figure out what she was asking and then I told her how we met Pennie and how we became friends and how we are still friends. For the first time I told her that Pennie met us specifically to see if we would be a good mommy and daddy for Madison. I knew we were trudging into territory that I am totally unprepared for (and for which I believe I can’t ever be prepared): Why did Pennie place Madison for adoption? Sure enough:

“Why did Pennie choose you to be mommy and daddy?”

I told her because we had Noah and Pennie wanted Madison to have a brother because she has a much-loved brother (Madison’s namesake).

“Oh yeah,” says Madison. “I know him!”

“But why…” she hesitated, sprinkling her sequins. “Why did she want me to have a brother?”

I dove in.

“Madison, I think you’re asking me why Pennie chose not to be your mommy and chose me to be your mommy instead, is that right?”

She nodded, not looking at me.

This is a story that’s going to change as she grows up. This is a story that’s going to change in the telling and in the hearing (from me and from Pennie) and it’s going to change as she brings more of her own story to it. I don’t think I can ever answer why. But I have to answer why.

(I believe that my why is always inadequate to Pennie’s story. I believe that I have no right to guess why although I can’t help doing so. But I know, too, that my version of events is one I need to share with Madison although with such care and acknowledgment that it is very much my version. And that I am an unreliable narrator. Only she is just four right now and she’s asking me and somehow I have to answer)

And I fumble around. I say something like (and this isn’t all of it), “Pennie loves you so much and I think she was worried that she wasn’t ready to be your mommy and I think she worried that she would not do the right job of it.”

I want her to know that Pennie loves her without creating the “she loved you enough to give you up” heroic fable. And I want her to know that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Pennie (because unlike some adoption stories, there are no glaring addictions or scary behaviors that made her adoption such a clear decision). One day when Madison’s older and ready to contemplate the complexities of domestic infant adoption and of her adoption, I don’t want her starting out with the idea that Pennie was in some way broken and that adoption is always “right” in the presence of these outside circumstances. This is a big challenge for me. How do I put the locus of the adoption within Pennie’s person without somehow fixing Madison with the idea that her mother didn’t want her? Madison was not/is not unwanted.

How do I separate parenthood from the child who would be parented? How do I explain the daunting weight of cultural expectations, the stultifying absence of societal supports?

And how do I make it clear — is the insertion of “I think” enough — that I am an unreliable narrator?

It’s hard enough for great big grown-ups to understand let alone 4-year olds. There is nothing definitive to say, “Here is why.” It’s the glaring question she dares not ask directly: “Why am I not with her?”

Madison did ask, “Do you think she would do the right job of it?”

And I said, honestly, “Yes.” But then we talked more of things I won’t share here that are specific to this story but still, could not answer the “why” as well as I wish.

(Sooner or later Madison will ask me why I didn’t help Pennie and I hope she is old enough that I can tell her why in a way that she can understand — the complications of our particular adoption, the complications of choice within the context of a culture that does not truly honor choice. I hope by then I understand, too, because I think I will always wish I could have done things somehow better. I am always asking myself “why” too.)

Madison said, “I think she would do the right job of it, too.”

Then she asked me, and I can’t remember the wording, but she asked me if I was happy that Pennie chose us. I told her that I was very very very happy and grateful to be her mommy but I was sad that it meant that she and Pennie had to miss each other so much.

I said, “I know you miss her being your mommy and I know she misses being your mommy, too.”

Madison: But I can call her.

Me: Right.

Madison: And I can have playdates with her.

Me: And tea parties.

Madison: And I can say Macintosh. I can say Macintosh and Rome. Macintosh is a pretty big word! I don’t even know how I know it!

She is the queen of segues, this perfect little curly-haired child!

I write this stuff down for me as a baby book and also because I know you all wonder how other families do it. I wonder, too. I gobble your blog entries up, too. Frankly, this conversation — it’s not one I think I got right but I also don’t know if there’s a right way to get it. It’s the truth of our adoption, really, that there are no good answers. I think there is only an ongoing conversation that we need to be having and that I have to be willing to get it wrong because I have to say something and keep that conversation open.

I am also sorry if this entry — or any like it — hurt the first parents who read me. I know this isn’t an easy read and I apologize.

The hospital in which Madison was born plays a big part in the story of her birth and adoption. She likes to hear about me rushing down the halls to get to the maternity ward — to get to her. This is her favorite part of the story and the piece she asks for most often. I’ve told her that someday we will go back and visit there so she can see where she was born.

Yesterday we were driving to an event and I told her we were going to pass the hospital. She craned her neck to see it but it was outside Noah’s window (so called even when Noah isn’t occupying the seat next to it, which he wasn’t) and we were on the freeway going fast. I told her we’d see it again going home.

This time she caught sight of it because she could see the big lit-up letters spelling out its name.

“Oh!” she breathed. “There it is!”

She really wants to go back and see it.

“To see the babies,” she says. “But I won’t turn INTO a baby again, right, Mommy? Because I’m a big girl now.”

I think going back there is something we need to do soon. That way I can show her the door I came in and the halls I rushed down. We can get french fries at the Wendy’s where I took Noah the day he met her. Hopefully we can peek at the babies and maybe — just maybe — I can get a kind-hearted nurse who will let her see one of the rooms so she can picture where she lived her first three days.

She has taken to heart our previous conversation about staying with Pennie. Maybe passing the hospital put it at the forefront of her mind because she brought it up after while we were tooling around looking for a bank machine to pay for parking.

“Mommy, Pennie should babysit me and Noah while you go to a meeting,” she told me.

“Or maybe Daddy and I could go have coffee while Pennie babysits for you guys,” I suggested.

“If you bring me a danish. No, two danish. No, three danish!”

Then she was quiet for a bit.

“At our house, not Pennie’s,” she added. “And with Noah.”

So those are the terms. That seems doable. I told her she can call Pennie and let her know she’d like to have her come over and babysit. Noah will be happy to set himself up with a video game and ignore them both so Pennie will still get alone time with Madison and Madison will get alone time with her.