Ugh - Now With Updates!

Diva is here tonight. Superman and I had to get her from her birth mom Janice's house this evening. She has her court appearance (for third degree assault and giving false info to police) tomorrow morning and Janice couldn't bring her here, so she texted me this morning asking if we could provide transportation.

So at 9 tomorrow morning (Tuesday) I'll take her to the courthouse, then sit there watching the parade. If the judge lets her go, I'll take her back to Janice. If the judge sentences her to jail time, I'll leave dancing a jig of mourning.

I will update this post with the results of our adventure in the next day or so, so stay tuned.

As I write this update it is Wednesday afternoon. In completely unrelated news, our auto insurance expires and renews today, but we haven't received the proof of insurance cards yet. Either that or they came and the envelope was misplaced. A likely scenario in my world. 

But I'm stalling. 

Diva isn't here right now. Yes, Slugmama, I danced a jig of mourning as she was hauled off to the county detention center. The jig was more of a thought exercise than me actually bouncing my fat ass in the county municipal building. 

The judge dismissed the assault charge - nolle prosequi, which I've always pronounced nolo process, but I'm no JD. They nabbed her on giving false information. For those of you just tuning in, she was in a fight on the school bus a week after she turned 17. The cops were called, she told them she was 15 to avoid being charged as an adult. Then of course while processing the report it came to light that she was actually 17. She was arrested right here in our living room on New Years Eve. It was the most exciting thing we did on NYE this (last) year, but we're boring. 

The fine, I guess it's the maximum fine but we didn't know that, was $1092 or 30 days in jail. The judge reduced the fine to $175 or 10 days in jail. Well, we aren't going to pay one thin dime for her mess. We've suffered enough expense, both monetary and emotional, on behalf of this child for the last 16 years. Diva tried to call her bio-dad, Robert, but he wasn't available. She texted Janice, who couldn't do anything about it but asked Diva if we were going to pay. HA! When she couldn't contact anyone else, they took her across the street to jail. I was giddy! I giggled all the way home. (Which little piggy does that?) 


Robert called me in the afternoon when he got a free minute and we had a very nice conversation. I like Robert. He indicated that he was going to come down to Greenwood from where he lives near Spartanburg to pay her fine and take her home. Not my home, mind you, but either Janice's or his. I talked to him again last night and he said he'd be here in the morning to get her, but I haven't heard anything from them. She brought a few things here when we got her Monday night and I expect she'll come by to get them. Maybe not. 

I spoke with the clerk of court (I think that's her position) about Diva's sentence. She said Diva will only spend 5 days in jail unless she acts up. Time off for good behavior. So 30 days really means 5. Good grief. Also the fine will be reduced a bit for every day she stays in jail. That makes sense. 

So right now I don't actually know where Diva is. She might be in jail, she might be with Robert. I really don't care (much*) as long as she isn't here!

* She's my daughter. We tried (Lord knows, we tried) to make this family work, to integrate her into the family as befits a daughter. She has resisted our efforts almost from the first, when we got custody of her on February 4, 1999. Almost 16 years ago exactly. I have invested so much in this relationship, in her. We have 16 years of history together. It is impossible for me to divorce myself from her emotionally. I mourn the family that we could have been. For my health and sanity I'm letting it go (shaking it off, as is so popular these days) inasmuch as I am able. It is a complicated relationship, and she will always to some extent be my daughter. So of course I will always care about her, what happens to her, what she does. But I will no longer wrap my life around her. 

Stuff keeps happening

It's been busy around here. Lots of drama. I should have posted earlier, but damn, I've been kinda overwhelmed.

Let's start with Sproing, because his drama just culminated today. I'll start from the end; today he went before the family court judge (where Dept. of Juvenile Justice cases are heard) for a probation violation hearing and was sentenced to further probation until he is 18 years old (January of 2016) and remanded to kiddie jail. He will be at the evaluation center/holding tank until a bed opens in an alternate placement. There are many of them around the state. Some are wilderness camp-type places, some with more of a military philosophy, and I'm not sure what all else. He will be at the eventual placement until he meets that facility's requirements for completion. As I understand it, each program has a certain level of accomplishment, like a number of points or something, that he has to reach to be considered acceptable for release. You know, until he has rehabilitated himself. Or something.

The kid has been incorrigible for months. He is failing all of his classes, refuses to cooperate or do any classwork in his English class and I guess is just lazy in his other classes. He actively despises his English teacher. She expects him to participate in class and do his work, heaven forbid. He has been suspended 14 days in the first nine weeks, so even in the couple of classes he was (barely) passing he has now fallen so far behind that it's overwhelming trying to catch up.

Sproing argues with us almost constantly. "What you fail to understand..." is his opening statement. We don't understand anything, evidently. He has responsibilities and obligations that he isn't meeting, but it's never his fault.

About three weeks ago Superman was out of the country on a business trip. The Tuesday he was gone Sproing and Diva got into an argument that turned violent. He hit her a few times, she threw half of our living room at him, piece at a time. Threw a side table at him, breaking the table and traumatizing the poor dog. She grabbed full drawers out of a plastic case thingie that had some of my craft supplies in it, and hurled the drawers at him, still full of stuff. There was craft detritus strewn all across the living room. I tried as much as possible to stay out of their way, as I had no desire to get hit. I told them to go to their rooms and calm down, which advice was of course ignored. I was in my room and Diva came in, hysterical. She locked the door behind her and Sproing banged on it, demanding to be let in. He's in a rage. You think we want him in here? Hell no! But he kicked the door in. So now not only are their bedroom doors broken and nearly ruined, mine is damaged too. The little fuckers.

There is a little bit more I want to say about Sproing's anger and argumentative spirit, but I'll go into Diva's drama first because his relates to hers.

Diva successfully contacted her birth mother. Through Facebork. A couple of months ago she found her mother's Facebork page and sent a friend request. Her mother, Janice, evidently doesn't check Facebork very often and only saw the friend request a couple of weeks ago, at which point she accepted Diva's request and was thrilled to be back in touch. The feeling was mutual. Janice has seven children, Diva being her second. Janice also has a double fist full of siblings, correspondingly large numbers of cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. Everyone was super excited about finding Diva. The first day they connected, one of Janice's sisters drove down here (an hour+ drive) that evening. The next day Janice came down with all of her younger children to see Diva. Was it that weekend or the next, I don't remember exactly, that Diva went to spend the weekend with her birth family? She's spent every weekend since with them. Last weekend she met her birth father for the first time. I overheard her talking to her father on the phone last night. She called him "Daddy" and she calls Janice "Mom." Interesting, in that she calls me and Superman "Mom" and "Dad" respectively. Sounds confusing.

Anyway, lots of big drama. Janice's family is kinda ... high maintenance from a drama drama drama standpoint. And it turns out that one of the assistant principals at Diva's high school is distantly related to her. She (the principal) was married to Diva's uncle once upon a time. I've had a couple of good discussions with said principal, and she tells me to be careful when engaging with that family. Drama, drama, drama. So far, and it's been maybe three weeks, things seem to be OK.

I am genuinely happy for Diva that she has connected with her birth family. This is something she's wanted for a very long time. I'm happy for Janice, too, because she eventually regretted placing Diva for adoption. It was the only choice she could see at the time, and did it in part (as I understand it) to prevent children's services from taking custody of her two children. So she gave Diva a good home (theoretically) and was able to parent her older son. Then she had five more children (two more girls and three boys) to make up for? replace? the one she'd released for adoption. I don't know. The whole thing is much more complicated than that, but I suspect that's one element.

As I said, things are going well so far. It's the honeymoon period, and Diva does honeymoons very well. I think Janice hasn't told her "no" about anything significant yet, or hasn't made any demands of her that Diva doesn't agree with. When that happens, oh boy, watch out. It'll get dramatic, I suspect. The first weekend Diva was with them, they bought her quite a few clothes and pairs of shoes. So Diva thinks they're heaven sent. Last weekend her birth-daddy gave her a cell phone. (We gave her a phone a couple of years ago and she immediately started sexting with much older guys, ranging in age from late teens to early 30s. Nekkid pictures were traded, meetings were set up. We took her phone away. After a few months we tried again, and the same thing happened. Repeat. So she doesn't have a phone from us anymore.) Right now they are spoiling her. This is the set-up. Soon they will expect things from her, things she isn't willing to do or provide. That's how I see this mess working out.

If you've read this blog for any time at all, you are aware of Diva's explosive disposition. She comes by her demeanor and personality honestly. The nut doesn't fall far from the tree, as the saying goes. So as, um, dramatic as she is, I expect similar behavior from the rest of her family. This has the potential to blow up. I hope it doesn't, but I'm expecting fireworks.

I don't really know how I feel about the whole reunion with the birth family. As I said, I'm happy for the girl and the family, but for myself? I'm not sure. In a way it's threatening, but at the same time something of a relief. We have had Diva for close to 16 years, through ups and downs. More recently things have been very difficult. If she wants to hang with her birth family and show them how bloody difficult she is, more power to her. Then I expect they'll blame us for her waywardness, but whatever. I'm almost past caring. The thing is, I really do care about her. I love her. I don't like her very much most days, but I always love her. I want what's best for her, and often I am not sure just what is best for her. Or for Sproing, either. He's in jail now. I hope he does well, learns important lessons from the experience, grows into the responsible young man I know he can be.

Diva reconnecting with her birth family has raised some issues with Sproing. All of a sudden he was asking about his birth family. Unfortunately we don't have much information for him. His was a closed adoption, so we don't even know his birth mom's name. We have records, court documents, etc. but her name is blanked out. I showed him what we have and he got very angry. He accused us of hiding things from him, for lying to him for 16 years. WTF? He hasn't even been curious about his birth family, hardly. Every so often he'll ask a general question, but he's never had the burning desire for contact that Diva has. I don't lie to the kids. OK, sometimes I may fudge the truth a little, or leave out a few details, but never do I tell big lies.

I understand that Sproing is angry. I think he feels neglected, left out, ignored. Or maybe he thinks we're taking advantage of him or something. I don't know, and he won't talk to me. He won't open up to me and let me know how he feels about anything. I try to start conversations with him, totally open and nonthreatening, but he immediately goes on the defensive. And he gets angry so very quickly. As I said, it's arguments every day for hours, if I keep engaging him. I tell him that we don't agree so there's nothing more to discuss, but he won't drop it then, he wants to keep yelling at me. Wears me out.

Diva will turn 17 one month from today (the 4th) (Happy election day). At that age she no longer is compelled to stay at home. If she runs away before she's 17, law enforcement can haul her back home. Once she turns 17 she's allowed by law to leave home. One month. By a show of hands, how many think she'll move in with her birth family in a month? She has been threatening/promising for months (a year or more, maybe even) to move away, in with friends once she turns 17. Now that the birth family is so eager and willing to have her as part of their lives, it's a real possibility she'll move there. Will that be a good thing? I don't know. Will she choose to do so? I don't know. To her benefit, Janice encourages Diva to finish school. Janice never did. She dropped out very early, getting pregnant at age 13 or 14. Janice wants Diva to get her high school diploma. I'm grateful for the encouragement. Janice also tells Diva to respect us as her adoptive parents. I like this. Will Diva listen? I don't know. Diva has a pretty strong opinion of us, and it isn't positive.

Diva will have to come to terms with her birth family on her own, learn about them, how to deal with them, how to not be overwhelmed by them. I don't know how long that might take, if she ever succeeds. I wish her luck.

Quote for today, and contemplation on our current situation

"Don't be too hard on yourself. There are plenty of people willing to do that for you. Love yourself and be proud of everything that you do. Even mistakes mean you're trying." -- Susan Gale

Those words give me comfort. There's a huge wad of discomfort in my life right now, so a touch of Nice is nice. And of course I tend to be pretty hard on myself. I think a lot of people are their own worst critics.

So today I have been making phone calls to the state Department of Social Services (DSS) trying to find someone who has even heard of the idea of adoptive parents relinquishing parental rights in a failed adoption.  And it's emotionally wrenching. I haven't really spent much time on the phone. I've been redirected a few times, and left a voice mail message at the last number I called. So here we are.

I got a reference to a family law attorney in town. Don't know the guy, but he was recommended by someone I like and trust. I want to see what I can get from DSS before I call him. Maybe. Unless I don't.

Let's talk about this big failure. Work with me here. The adoption has failed. We have tried very hard to make it work. That's my point of view anyway. Maybe we could have done more, been open to more possibilities, had better attitudes and expectations for success. I don't know. As for me, I gave it the best I have. Or had. I feel bad about it, though. I know we need to legally disengage from her. I am ready to proceed. But I'm very sad about it. Even though I know we've done all we can, it still feels like failure.

And the road ahead is rough. I expect the process will not be easy. Not emotionally, for sure, but probably not bureaucratically easy either. And will take a long time. I don't know what "a long time" means exactly.

And that's about all I can say about it today.

She's ba-a-a-a-ack

Of course I'm referring to Diva.
It's only for one night, so she says. She's staying with a friend, and the friend's mom and boyfriend want some "alone time" tonight. I totally understand that. So the friend is at grandma and grandpa's place and the only other place Diva can go is back here. But I am super pissed about it. More than pissed, I am angry. (There is a difference. After a couple of beers I can't tell you exactly what it is, though.)

So Tuesday of last week she declares that she is finished with us and runs off to her friend's house. She's been telling us for years (and I mean literally years) that she does not belong in our family. She started that shit when she was in kindergarten. More recently she says she hates us, hates the whole family, does not want anything to do with us. So, now that she's been with this other family for just over a week, she wants to waltz in here like the Queen of Sheba and assume all of the rights and privileges of being a member of the Java family. Like hell, bitch.

And really, she's been depending on us since she left. The family she's staying with is very poor. Not too bright, either, and I suspect not strongly motivated to do responsible things like get a job. I've met the mother, talked to her a bit, and she seems nice and all. But let's just say she and I don't have a lot in common. So we (and by "we" I mean mostly Superman) have been helping them out with groceries and such. But I'm in support of helping them support Diva. For one thing, it keeps Diva away from here.

Now that she's been gone for a bit over a week I have gotten very comfortable with her absence. And the threat of her presence unsettles me. A lot.

Superman took her to the skating rink this evening, which I thought was a bad idea. Bitch thinks she can resume normal operating procedures. But, Superman had promised to take Sproing to the movies which means dad's not here when she is. Bad idea. She and I... we don't do well together. As angry as I am about the whole mess, it's better for us not to be in the house together without Superman's Super-vision. ;-)

Don't remember if I mentioned it in the last post (I think I did) but it's come to the point that we are seriously considering terminating parental rights with her. "Un-adopting" her, as it were. I don't want to need to do it, but it is what it is. It's come to this. And her being here tonight after rejecting us like she did (and all the other shit she's done to ruin the family relationship - see 5+ years of blog archives) reinforces for me that yes, it's time.

I talked to our family doctor about all this earlier this week. Went to see him because I've irritated the tendons in my left arm again. Tennis elbow or something. Or maybe golfer's elbow. Depends on which set of muscles/tendons is inflamed. Anyway, (I ramble when I'm tired or drunk. Kinda both right now.) I was in the office about that and told him what's going on with Diva. Told him we're considering the termination of parental rights. He jumped on that fast. Essentially said "Well, it's about time!!" No, he was more politic than that. He's good at being nice. He was encouraging. Said we have gone above and beyond to help her, and severing the relationship is a good idea. He knows me pretty well. He's been our family doctor for going on 18 years now. He said "You need to not feel guilty about this." Yep, that's my chief hang-up with this decision. Tonight, though, I am oh so ready to drop her like a hot potato.

Third beer is out of the bottle and into my system. Not thinking or writing very clearly. Gonna go do something else. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Weekend update, questions answered, and other miscellany

Twitch was home this weekend. It's the first time he's been home since he left for school. His term is half over now. The school is on the quarter system, not semesters like my school or Light's school. He is in the middle of his summer quarter now. He likes it and seems to be doing well. He's bored and lonely, though. I think he enjoyed coming home, but I know he also enjoyed going back to his apartment. This weekend reminded him why he was so anxious to get out of here. Yep, the kidlets were in fine form.

I cracked a tooth last week. It happened Thursday, but I didn't really figure out what happened until late Friday. The front (anterior) surface fell away. It's the part between that tooth and the one in front of it. I think it broke along a filling gap or something. I'm not sure. It doesn't hurt, thankfully! My tongue won't leave it alone, though, and the broken edge is sharp. The piece that chipped off was stuck in the gap, but I fished most of it out Friday afternoon. There's still a small sliver of tooth stuck in there. I have an appointment to see my dentist at 10:00. She'll figure it all out. I hope she can do what needs to be done today. I don't want to go back in there for this stupid thing again. I have an appointment for a cleaning next month anyway.

Karen asked recently, in the comments to a post I'm too lazy to look up, just exactly how we came to have Sproing and Diva living with us. I'll try to answer that question briefly, but as I've mentioned many times, brevity is not my strength. Superman and I have been interested in adoption since before Light and Twitch were born. When they were about 5 and 3 years old, we decided to go ahead and look into adoption. We wanted more kids (silly us), but pregnancy and I don't get along well. Knowing there are many children who need homes, we contacted the state department of social services (DSS) to begin the process. We got all our paperwork and home studies finished and were cleared to adopt. But the case workers at DSS were bumfoozlers and didn't want to work with us. I don't know exactly why, but I have my suspicions. We wanted to adopt transracially. Having been foster parents years before, we are aware how difficult it can be to place racial minority children. We wanted to provide a permanent home for a couple of those children.

But DSS wouldn't cooperate, so we went looking elsewhere. We joined an adoption support group, made some friends, networked a bit. There were a lot of people who knew we were looking for a child to adopt. We finally got a call from an attorney in Greenville who got wind of a baby who needed placement, having just been born down in Charleston, SC. Paperwork happened, and two days later we drove to Charleston to pick up our tiny new born baby boy. Sproing was only 4 days old when we got him from the hospital and brought him home. His adoption hearing was 6 months later, when he officially and legally became our son.

Having gotten some good advice from a director of an adoption agency some time ago, we knew we wanted to adopt at least one more minority child. It's (allegedly) emotionally healthier for a minority child in a different-race family to have someone else in the family who is also a minority. It makes sense. If Sproing were the only African American child in this Caucasian family, he'd be the only "different" one. With Diva here, they share the genetic heritage. That's the theory, anyway. So we put the word out that we wanted to adopt another child. A week after Sproing's first birthday, our attorney (the same guy) called with news of a one-year-old baby girl who needed a home. Things prevailed, and on February 4th, 1999, we brought Diva home to live with us. Her adoption was finalized on January (something-teenth), 2000.

And we all lived happily ever after. In theory. In practice, it's been much tougher. Having 4 children isn't the difficult part. Having two of those children suffer from emotional disturbances is the tough part. Of course no one could know when they were babies that they'd have so many problems. Superman and I were naive enough to think that if we provided a good home, loving and nurturing, etc., that they'd be just fine. I've learned a lot since then. Sometimes love isn't enough. Sometimes nature is WAY more powerful than nurture. And that's where we are today.

Does that answer the questions? If you have any more questions, just shoot them my way. I'll try to answer whatever I can as honestly as I can.

It's time for me to go see the dentist. Wish me luck.

UPDATE 1:15 pm:I'm back from the dentist, sporting a fancy new (temporary) crown. I feel so queen-ish.

A brief history of my last 20 years- Book two

How we got here

Why we got here

What we're doing here

Book Two

This is a continuation of the story told in book one. We left off after Twitch's birth, wanting more children and considering adoption:

When Twitch was about 3 years old we began the adoption process. We tried to adopt through South Carolina's foster care/ child protection system. That was a total fiasco that still upsets me. We wanted to adopt children of color since we were well aware of how difficult it can be to find homes for those children. We were willing to adopt somewhat older children, though I wanted a child/children younger than Twitch. Didn't want to upset the birth order, as it was. We were willing to adopt a sibling group, up to 3 children. I figured I could raise 5 kids, but 6 was pushing it a bit too far. But I was open to considering options on a case-by-case basis. And as the process dragged on, Twitch got older, so the age range we were considering got larger.

For whatever reason we got nowhere with the state. I don't know why for sure, but I suspect the various social workers involved with our case didn't want to place African American children in our Caucasian family. Yet there were many children, including a few sibling groups I was aware of who we wanted to adopt. My philosophy on trans-racial adoption is this: children probably do better in families of their same race. However it is better for a child to have a permanent home in a family of a different race than for him to flounder around in foster care all his life, never having a forever family of his own. I feel VERY strongly about this still.

We ended up finding our children through a private attorney. Private adoptions are a lot more expensive than adopting through the state foster system. Five to ten times more in some cases. The legal fees involved in adopting our two children put us in a financial tight spot that was totally unnecessary. Raising kids is expensive. To begin the parenting adventure with that big a monetary expense is really tough. It was worth it to have our children. I cannot put a price on that, or on them (for heaven's sake!!), and I have no regrets. I am, however, bitter about how the whole thing was done.

Now, to get us back on track, I'll tell you about the rest of the entourage. Or maybe I'll start with a bit more personal divulgement. (Evidently that is a word. Spell-check didn't flag it.) I never considered myself to be particularly gifted at hospitality. My house is and always has been in such chaos I'm embarrassed to invite anyone over. I'm always a bit unsure how to treat guests. Would you like a drink? Oh, I'm out of that. Let's see what I have to munch on… Cheerios is as good as it gets. And please don't ask to use the bathroom. It isn't quite clean enough to be on display.

There is another aspect to hospitality. I finally realized it was hospitality after I'd been practicing it for years. I don't have "guests" over. I invite strangers to live here.

A few years ago a family we know was moving back to town after having been gone for a year. He had tried to find work (he's in construction) with his brother in Idaho, and it didn't go as well as the brother had indicated it would. So they came back here with almost nothing except their 4 kids. Or was it 5 by then? Yes, it was 5 children when they came back. I had been there with her when she had her home birth to deliver the 5^th, shortly before they left for Idaho. (That was a fantastic experience, btw, but not a subject for this post.)

So we invited them to stay with us for a while until he started working and saved up enough to get a place of their own. At the time Diva and Sproing were 2 years old, and her kids ranged in age from 1 year old up to 7 or 8 years old, I can't remember exactly. Most of them were approximately 18 months apart.

We lived in a small rental house out in the country. It had a large lot, so there was a lot of room for the kids to run around outside. The kitchen was big, too. Everything else was small. It was an old farmhouse that had originally had 2 bedrooms and no bath. The bathroom was added at the other side of the bedrooms, with access doors from both rooms. In order to get to the bathroom one had to go through a bedroom. There was also a third bedroom off the side, accessible through the second bedroom. We were crowded in the house just with the 6 of us. So we added 7 more, just for fun. With my two youngest and her 3year old and almost 2 year old, we had four children being potty trained at the same time, with only one bathroom that had two doorways but broken sliding doors. There were curtains covering the doorways. Let me tell you, it was quite an adventure. It is mostly enjoyable to look back on. It was a lot more stressful and less enjoyable to live through.

We never had any specific arrangements, no distinct plans for a move out date or any kind of financial remuneration from them. They often bought a significant portion of the groceries and supplies like that. She and the older kids helped us keep the house sort of clean. She did a lot of babysitting for my kids, too. Light and Sproing weren't quite old enough to stay alone, and certainly not old enough to babysit the young siblings. But I was able to leave the house by myself quite often because she was there with all the kids. She handled that overwhelming menagerie better than I did. I'm much better with smaller groups of children. 9 kids under the age of 12 is ______________. (a) overwhelming, (b)ridiculous, (c) a baseball team, (d) all of the above.

We moved to a much larger old house in town while they lived with us. We fit into that house much better, and it had 3 bathrooms!!!! She also got pregnant again while they were here. They finally left the day after she gave birth to her 6^th child. (At home, in the bedroom in our basement.) It was a crazy time. I was a crazy lady. (Was? I hear you say)

Stay tuned for book three, in which we move again and become gay.

A brief history of my last 20 years

How we got here
Why we got here
What we’re doing here

Book One

Big Ass Belle posted a very personal account back in January on the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision that led to legal abortions in the US. I direct you there for her story, but say here that it really made me think.

I guess it begins with the essence of me. I don’t know how to put that into words, but I’ll try. I am a gentle soul. A peacemaker. Sympathetic to a fault. As long as I can remember I’ve been concerned about the welfare of others. Usually if I have something and someone else needs it, I’ll share or give it way. I draw the line at chocolate, though. I’m reluctant to share my chocolate.

The Christian faith appeals to my nature. The Bible teaches love, grace, compassion, and such. It also teaches judgment and condemnation, but as do all Christians I know, to some extent I just skim over those parts I don’t like. I have been a member of a church almost constantly since I was 13 years old.

One tends to pick up the ideas and philosophies of those with whom one associates. In my mid-twenties Superman and I joined a very conservative congregation. We had been somewhat conservative before that, but we became even more so in that church. As we have moved with his new jobs we joined churches of the same denomination and held firm to those ideologies.

I believe in the right to life. I have been against abortion for a long time, but recently have softened my stance there. I still don’t like the idea, but am no longer willing to dictate or judge someone else’s decision about it. But I still consider myself to be pro-life. Semantics is tricky with this subject, as it has been so politicized over the years. Can I claim to be pro-life but not anti-abortion? Tricky.

Beliefs come alive with action. I do what I can under the circumstances, but the point is that I do. This is passion. In the late 1980s when Superman and I first joined the church I was compelled to put action to my pro-life beliefs. He was at the very least supportive if not a driving force in this decision. I can’t recall exactly who decided or how it was done, but the outcome is that we worked with a local adoption agency as foster parents. This agency helped women in “crisis pregnancies” to make plans for their babies. Some women (and sometimes with their partners) chose to parent their children, others awarded custody of the child to a relative, and others chose to release the child for adoption.

We lived in Macon, Georgia. In those days the laws in Georgia allowed a 10 day grace period for parents to change their minds after signing the papers relinquishing parental rights. A child was considered to be in foster care for those ten days even if he was in the custody of the family who was to adopt him. Sometimes these young birth parents changed their minds, taking the baby back to raise themselves. You can imagine how traumatic that is for an adoptive family. The agency we worked with tried to put the babies in one of their foster homes rather than with an adoptive family for that waiting period.

Many of the clients were carrying minority or mixed race babies. Those are the little ones we cared for. These precious babies often have such vivacious personalities even in the first few weeks and months of life. It breaks my heart that it was (and still is) sometimes hard to find adoptive homes for these children.

We wanted to be parents, wanted to be responsible for our own children. Adoption was always a probable part of that plan, but we chose to try to have biological children first. I always said “Let’s have one, see how it goes, then decide what to do next.” I knew I didn’t want to have only one child, but beyond that I was open to many options. In 1989 I gave birth to Light. When she was about 8 or 9 months old we decided to try for another one. Twitch was born 19 months after Light, on Valentine’s Day 1991.

Pregnancy wasn’t nice to me. I didn’t have too much trouble physically; they weren’t high risk pregnancies from that perspective. The problem was with my hormone balance and the emotional turmoil I experienced. Part of the problem was that I was clinically depressed but undiagnosed, therefore untreated. After Twitch was born I suffered nasty post-partum depression that hung on for I don’t know how long. Years. Superman didn’t want me to go through any more pregnancies, and I suspect he didn’t want to suffer through another one of my pregnancies. He figured this out early. He scheduled a vasectomy before Twitch was even born, and had the procedure when Twitch was 3 weeks old.

Neither of us wanted to stop at only 2 children, though. As I mentioned, adoption was always something we’d planned to consider in the future. A major motivation for adoption was our pro-life belief. If we believe that unwanted pregnancies shouldn’t be terminated, we should be willing to want, to love the “unwanted” children. It makes perfect sense to me and always has. Frankly I have always felt that way, even when I was a young child myself. I remember figuring that out when I was about 12 or 13 years old, and wanting to someday adopt.

Stay tuned for Book Two, in which our family increases asexually (after a fashion)

Atrocious sacrifices

Cooper has a lovely new post today about paying tribute to his sons' birth mother. That post and some of its comments inspired me to say this.

I am the mother of two adopted children, and worked as a foster parent for a few years before adopting my two kidlets. In my experience as a foster parent I saw a variety of situations with birth families. Many times the father (sperm donor) didn't give a sh!t about his children and ignored the fact that he had any. This was the case for the two males who fathered my adopted children. Many of the mothers were very young and had no clue and/or no resources for raising kids. Some were selfish, not willing to make the sacrifices required to raise children.

In the case of my son Sproing, I'm not real sure about his mother. She released him for adoption as soon as he was born, and we got him straight from the hospital when he was 4 days old. She was somewhat older, 36 when he was born. A nurse, she already had a 7 year old child she was raising, and was unmarried/un-partnered. Her beloved mother died after a long degenerative illness the day before she had the cesarean section giving birth to Sproing. I think she wasn’t emotionally capable to parent him, and I admire her willingness to see that and take steps to find him a family who wanted him. The sperm donor was a man in his late 50s or 60s who had no interest in her beyond sex and certainly no interest in his child. I never actually met either one of them. I got this information from the attorneys and the court records we saw at the time of the adoption.

My daughter Diva’s birth mother was only 16 when her baby girl was born. She also had an older child, a boy age 2 or 3. She pretended to parent my daughter for a year. We got the baby at 14 months old. Mama and the baby’s father were living together until he beat the crap out of her (the mother, not my baby). Papa ended up in jail for the abuse. Mama and the two babies were in a homeless shelter. I met the birth mother. She was ape-shit crazy, and totally unfit to parent. She was wise (?) enough to place the baby for adoption before protective services took the baby from her. That way mama had at least a little bit of say in what happened to the child. I also met my daughter’s maternal grandmother. Ape-shit crazy runs in the family.

Unfortunately the insanity is at least partially inherited. We’ve been having some trouble with Diva and took her for psychiatric evaluation. I mentioned this in a previous post maybe 2 weeks ago. The test results are interesting in a frightening way. The scariest thing in the report, to me anyway, is the doctor’s suspicion that she may be pre-schizoid. The child has an active fantasy life and has trouble differentiating between truth and fantasy. Her ability to read social cues is hampered. She is willing to do almost anything to gain favor with someone she wants to befriend. Her judgment about what makes a good friend is distorted. Did your mother ever say “If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?” Diva would probably follow a friend over the edge of a cliff. I’m afraid she might do exactly that some day in a metaphorical sense.