So I was pretty messed up after all that (see last blog), as you can probably imagine. Messed up, but had to hold it all together ‘cuz it was also all such a huge secret. I got through, but was in a complete fog (totally stole this imagery, thanks Fuzzy Rat Mother). I didn’t turn to drink or drugs more than the occasional beer at a party, but I did get pregnant again pdq. Did I mean to? Not consciously. I was certainly smart enough to know how to avoid it and to this day can’t understand how I let myself go through it all again.
But I wasn’t myself. I wanted my son to be alive. I was bargaining with life. If he was just alive, I could handle the pain of not being with him because at least he would be alive. I couldn’t make that happen, but somewhere in that messed up fog, I tried anyway. I started university pregnant; luckily I had huge classes in huge lecture halls, so I could just go to class, keep to myself, be anonymous. I had M, a beautiful baby girl, in January 1988. The fact that she was a girl, the very opposite of the boy I lost, jolted me out of the fog a bit, and I realized this was a truly different person.
I hadn’t even contacted the adoption agency before the birth, but had decided to place her too. This time, I kept her with me in the hospital room and took care of her. It was a Saturday, so I did nothing about the placement until I could phone the agency on Monday. It was surreal and wonderful, and the hospital left me alone since there was no hospital social worker working the weekend either. Sharon (adoption counsellor) came right away when I did call, a LOT perplexed, but very supportive. I told her things would be different this time. I gave her a list of “demands”:
1. I will meet the aparents and will be there when they see M for the first time to take her home.
2. They will have a son already, roughly two years old (my mother always called this the “Millionaire Family” so I guess it was my ideal vision of the perfect family).
3. They will give me lots of pictures.
Even a few years later, I realized how much more I could have asked for, but being the non-demanding type and still seeing adoption as the “old school” closed version Juno talked about, it was a breakthrough for me. Sharon said “Okay”. That was it. I trusted her. She knew which parents were perfect right away and I believed her. Didn’t even need to hear about others.
Because I hadn’t given notice before she was born, there was a bit of a delay in the aparents being able to take her home, so unfortunately she was in the agency’s version of foster care for a week or so. Sharon picked me up at the hospital and drove me to her office. She was looking at the aparents file and said — “Now you want her to have a 2 year old brother…let’s see exactly how old their son is.” She was reading and this shocked look came on her face. Their son was born EXACTLY two years earlier; they share a birthday. Now that’s a custom order! Too funny.
When I met the aparents for the first time, M was in the foster home. I showed them pictures and talked about how beautiful she was. They described their life. I felt like I could let out my breath. They were so down-to-earth and likeable, and it was all about their son and their excitement at bringing M into their family. I didn’t feel invisible, like I did with the other aparents. A few days later we met again at the office, this time with M, and they took her home. We took a bunch of pictures together. There weren’t a lot of tears at the time. At one point amum was holding her and both of them were admiring her stupendous beauty, then amum looked at me and just handed her back. It spoke volumes to me. Here she was at the most exciting time, where her wait was finally over, where the week or so between knowing M was out there and being able to see her must have been excruciating, and she thought of me enough to just let me hold her again. It was touching.
They sent pictures over the next year or two, but there was no agreement for ongoing contact. I really think that they would have, had I continued to ask, but it was me who pulled away, didn’t keep up contact with Sharon, went on about my life. Every few years I would drop in to adoption conferences that sprung up, just to get my fix. In 1993, I went to a big one with hundreds of people and just sat and listened to whatever they were talking about at the time. At a break, I found Sharon and she gasped “Oh my God, Canuck, *amum* and *adad* are here!” She took my hand and wove through the people milling around straight to them. And there they were. They immediately started bragging about how smart M was and how she’d stick up for herself with her older brother. They joked that they could predict what she would look like by seeing me again. The amum went on about how M told her kindergarten class that she wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up, and how amazing that was in a sea of five-year-old aspiring astronauts and ballet dancers. I was in shock I guess and didn’t speak much. The amum later told Sharon she thought I might have not wanted to hear so much because I was so quiet, but it was just the suddeness of it all. Anyway, they sent a few more pictures of her 5 year old self and life was good.
I don’t mean to make this all sound so rosy that I wasn’t feeling the pain of being away from her, because I certainly was. I’d spend hours looking at her pictures, aching to hold her, to hear what her voice sounded like. It was just SO much better than the first time, and I was certain we would have a relationship again in the future.
