My Take on Racial Issues

After Duffy's post on racial issues, I feel like I should chime in. Part of me takes the hippie approach: "All you need is love", but I'm saying that having grown up white in a neighborhood that can best be described as 99% white. I don't know what it's like to be a minority. While I've certainly been party to being judged based on my looks, it's usually been, in my earlier days, by girls choosing to dismiss me before I even worked up the courage to talk to them at a pick-up bar -- and that is NOT discrimination, just good sense on their part.

What I'm trying to say is that, while I can claim that being raised in a loving family is "enough" for a black, white, or polka-dotted child, I have absolutely no experience in such matters. I can only say what I hope is the case, and then try to do my damnedest to make that the case.

In the current political landscape, one of the current criticisms against Barack Obama is that he isn't "black enough". What if my child goes through the exact same identity crisis? I mean, this child is going to be raised in the suburbs by white parents. Yes, we will do everything in our power to ensure that the child accepts who he/she is, and feels proud to be the person that he/she is - but, really, what if that child feels that they deserved to grow up "black"? Heck, I don't even know what that means.

I think Duffy touched beautifully on the facts of adoption - anybody who finds out that their birth parents could not / chose not to parent them is destined to have some level of abandonment issues. On top of that, we have the potential of being asked "if my birth-parents couldn't parent me, why couldn't a same-race family take me in?". Honestly, I can't say, for certain, how I would respond. I do think that race issues in this country are continually progressing to the point where "race issues" will not be a term in some future generation's vocabulary. We are not close to being there.

All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep f**n' everybody 'til they're all the same color.
- Sen. Jay Billington Bulworth, Bulworth (1998)

I guess, my last words on this are: I really, really want to be a father. I hope that's apparent to anybody who reads this and/or knows me. I firmly believe that a child raised in a two-parent household is better off than a child raised in foster care. I know that there are proportionally more black children placed into foster care in this country than any other race. I believe I can be a good father to any child. I believe that I will be a good father. I'm already doing research into what may be different in caring for a "child of color" than typical care of a white child (heck, if Duffy said that she wasn't eagerly anticipating learning how to care for a black child's hair, she'd be lying). I'm looking forward to showing my child role-models that they should follow from their own race (and yes, everybody John Coltrane will be involved in discussions of such role models). I'm looking forward to showing my child role-models that they should follow from his/her parent's ancestry (the gold spoon history of the Batzer name is actually a pretty cool story). I'm looking forward to teaching a child how to throw a curveball, and play the piano - how to read, how to drive. Yes, we're not in a race-blind country, but I like to think that being a good parent is a race-blind activity.

(sorry if this was a bit preachy)

New Poster

So, I figured it was about time that I chimed in here. While I'm in regular communication with many of you regarding the status of our baby-gettin' process, I've never made it around to actually publishing anything here. Mainly because, well, I figure this is too nice an arena for smartaleck posts - and you know me, can't lay off the snark sometimes.

We have scheduled our home inspection -- May 20th. While we're constantly told that the home inspection isn't a "big deal", I'm afraid that it is a little stressful. As I understand the need, this event is basically a check to ensure that our home is a "fit" home for a child. The social worker will want to see the house itself, see where the child's room would be, and ensure that we don't have a meth lab in our basement (we do, but it's hidden, and they'll never-ever find it . . . actually, lately, the basement has been a kind of goldfish hospice, where good goldfish go do die -- yucky fish tank, but need more fish now -- but I'm digressing in an already long parathentical aside). From my end, it means that I need to clean my s**t up. Those of you who know me know that I'm messy, although I tend to confine my messes to relatively small portions of my living area. So, sometime between now and the 20th (probably late night on the 19th), I'll clean up "my half" of the bedroom and try to make the basement presentable. In addition, we'll see about getting rid of the bulk of the junk from the basement - it's just a matter of taking apart the stupid waterbed frame that won't fit up a flight of stairs.

As far as what to expect during the inspection, I don't think it's going to be too much - the agency (Adoption from the Heart) simply needs to make sure that we're prepared to take in a child and will be able to care for it - it really shouldn't be more than that.

---

With other things house-worthy, we finally have a master shower again. The leaky old drain has been replaced, the cracked shower floor couldn't be repaired again, so a whole new shell has been installed, and that damn hole in our kitchen ceiling has been patched. As I type this, the plumber is sanding drywall -- we tried to put sheets around to cover our stuff, but I have a feeling that we'll be cleaning drywall dust for awhile.

This Thursday, hopefully, we'll be picking out the flooring that will go into our newly-painted nursery (yeah, yeah, it's premature to call the "yellow" room the nursery, but that's what it is). We're looking for laminate flooring that will look like very pale wood - but we've got to go to the showroom to pick it all out - we'll see if we can post some pictures after we know what we're doing.

Racial Considerations

I have had some, a few, complaints that I do not update the blog enough. I guess I try and wait for big news. I still feel like I am bugging people somehow. It's me. You know me. Are you really surprised?
So all of the paperwork is turned in. We are waiting on a call from our social worker to set up a home study. She is currently getting over pneumonia, so it will probably be a couple of days. As I have spent this week trying to keep my lungs in place despite my body's attempts to cough them up, I feel her pain.
OK, what else...
I have been reading. I read a very good book, I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla that deals with how children perceive skin color, race, and social ideas about skin color and race through their developmental stages. I found it very straightforward and full of common sense. Children are not born with any prejudice, they are learned, something I think we all know. Dr. Wright, the author, discusses way to preserve that lack of prejudice for as long as possible without shielding children, especially children of color, from the truth of American culture. The other book, Inside Transracial Adoption, is not as good. It is not well written or edited, and while it has some good ideas, the authors take 300 pages to get a 50 page point across.
John and I have been talking about raising a child of another race. We can't pretend that the fact that our child will look different than us will not be a challenge to overcome. We can't pretend to understand the discrimination our child will face in his or her life. His or her life will be more challenging for no other reason than the amount of melanin found in the skin, and other people's ancient, backwards ideas about the importance of that compound. Without having ever experienced what that is like, we have to give our child the tools to overcome obstacles without truly understanding what those obstacles are. It is daunting yet exhilarating too. I feel like accepting this challenge will make me a more aware and stronger person. I hope it will make us an extremely close family with ideals that can help improve the world.
There is a grieving process that all adopted kids go through. Transracially adopted kids have another layer to that grief. They are also grieving a culture or society in which they might have fit better.
Adopted kids can resent being adopted. No matter how supportive the adoptive family is, adopted kids have to come to terms with a certain amount of abandonment, and for each kid, the level of grief is different. Some don't dwell on it at all, Others never completely accept it. Transracially adopted kids can resent being raised by people they don't look like, especially if their parents don't acknowledge that difference.
So while I am really excited about taking on this challenge, and I feel that we are strong enough to succeed as transracial parents, I am also scared of my child someday resenting us. I guess that is really a fear a lot of parents, biological or not, have. We just have to face it sooner and more openly than most do.
However, it can't all be about race. First and foremost is being a loving and supportive family that has lots of fun together.
Last weekend was Greaster, and true to form, Barbara showed up with several fabrics to choose from for the curtains. I love giving my mother-in-law a new project. It is enthusiasm in it's raw form. Anyway we went with a striped fabric that matches the yellow on the walls and the blue and green rugs. It has the word doggie across the stripes. Very cute. We are going to pick out flooring hopefully this week, and I hope to find someone to do the mural before the flooring is laid. That will probably be the end of baby prep until there is an actual fetus/infant to prepare for.
Was this post too long? Too deep? Did I waste your time? Why would anyone want to read this?
See, I knew you knew me.

Baby Steps (See it's funny 'cause....baby. Heh)

Well we finally slogged our way through the paperwork. Just like a regular pregnancy, the first three months were full of inconveniences, say morning sickness, with nothing to necessarily show for it. But it is done. I turned in everything at the agency Friday afternoon. The only thing we are still waiting for is John's FBI clearance to come through. (Thank you to all who sent in the reference letters.) I am sure we will end up with a call in a week telling us 12 things we neglected to complete and must do. If not, once John's FBI clearance goes through, we can set up the home study aka Alex cleans our house in only the way she can, and John must pick up his side of the bedroom and hope like heck that the big hole in the kitchen ceiling is already fixed. The social worker tries to play down the stringency of the home study, but no matter how laid back she tries to be, it is still a critique of our life. So expect the next update when that has been scheduled.
The other baby step we have made involved "the nursery". We are planning on redoing the floors in the room we plan on making into a nursery, the upstairs hall, the bathrooms, and the steps.
Of course this meant that I wanted to get the walls painted while we didn't have to care about drips. So while John was in route from England last Friday, I made a trip to Home Depot. While he sat in Dulles as his flight was delayed two hours, I painted what was know as the pink room a cheery yellow. I have to say there was something therapeutic about getting paint all over that pepto inspired Muppet pelt of a carpet. Poor John has to spend his first morning back painting the ceiling. Though John being John, it only took him half an hour.
I also found some rugs at Target that were fuzzy and fun, so I got them while I could. There are three: blue, purple, and green, in shades that I think going along well with the yellow. The next step is to find someone to paint some puppies and a tree on the wall. My massage therapist is a painter, so she will be the first person I go to. Oh and to get some puppy curtains (Cough, cough, Barbara ;-). The rest like a crib, changing table, etc, will wait until we have a more definite idea of when a live poop maker will be arriving. Other than the dogs that is.

The Beginning of Labor Pains

The modern philosopher Dave Barry once wrote, "If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings"." And like any undertaking in our modern world, the adoption process starts with a meeting. In this case it is probably a more worthwhile meeting than most, but you think for $300 they could at least provide a sandwich tray.
I kid. It was worthwhile. There were four couples total. Two of them seemed to be in our age bracket and had recently decided on adoption over fertility treatments. The last was a slightly more mature lesbian couple, and God bless them as those lesbians knew the questions to ask. And were good note takers for the group exercises.
The day really centered around dealing with birth parents and expectations. We started with psych 101, Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs. This is when I start to realize that dealing with birth parents was going to be a lot like dealing with 8th graders. They come to the agency on all levels of the hierarchy, just like students come to the classroom on all levels. Some of them will not know where they are sleeping that night. Most will at least feel some security and have at least one person that makes them feel loved.
Then we went into this whole thing where we had to list gains and losses we would experience in the adoption and the gains and loss of a young couple who had placed their child for adoptions. (Big lesson learned: Put up for adoption is no longer a PC term. Apparently it had its origins in the pretty heinous practice of putting orphans on trains and at each stop they would be PUT UP on a crate for people to ogle and decide to adopt or not. There are a lot of other terms that are no long appropriate, such as blood relative is now genetic relative. A mother will decide to parent her child as opposed to keep her child. Stay away from real or natural parents or children.)
So the morning was kind of a lot of touchy feely psychology awareness exercises. I can't say I got any major enlightenment from it, but it was nice to have real discussions with people who are facing the same challenges we are. And we got to know S (I am trying not to use names.), the social worker, more, and I really liked what I got to know. She is definitely an advocate for everyone involved but mostly the children
The one thing that struck me about the morning was a discussion about why birth parents pick adoption in a time when there is really no more stigma attached to children out of wedlock. It comes down to stability. Birth parents do not want chaos for their children. They do not want them to be shuffled around from home to home as the parents can and can't afford different things like rent.
The real meat and potatoes came in the afternoon. First we met H. H is the Holy Grail of a birth parent. She was this 23 year old dynamo (who loved my Vera bag, thank you) of whom I was in awe. I do not think I could have been as strong as she was in her circumstances. In her words, she did not give up her daughter, she gave her daughter a life. Ultimately, when she found out she was pregnant, she decided that she wanted the child to have the life she had grown up with. She wanted to know that her child would have people who could look to her future like H knew she couldn't. Once she decided adoption was the right course for her, she fought fiercely for what she wanted for a child she loves selflessly. And she was faced with a lot of scary things including a doctor who ripped up ultra sound pictures when H asked the sex, because why did she care, she was giving the baby up. When she hadn't felt the baby kick for a while she went to the doctor's and was asked why did she care if the baby was alive or dead. Through all of this she stuck fast to what she wanted. She found a family she felt fit all of the criteria she wanted including allowing her to receive letters and pictures and exchange emails. Her daughter is her baby even if she is somebody else's child.
I am not the most religious person. Despite going to church every week, I have major issues about organized religion. However, one things I really like about the Orthodox church is some of the symbolism. One of these symbols is the candle. Each week Orthodox light candles for various things, and the flame and smoke carry the prayers to Heaven. Each week I light three candles: one for me, one for Wyatt, and one for my future child. I am going to start lighting another one for the hope of a birth mother like H.
Now the FUN really began. I want everyone to think back to every experience you have ever had that required a lot of paperwork, applying to college, HR on the first day of a new job, paying taxes, buying a house or car, applying for teaching certification, etc. OK, now double that number. Add five. That is just about the amount of paperwork we will be dealing with before all is said and done. By the way, that will be at the termination of parental rights hearing which can take place anywhere from 72 hours to a month after the baby is born depending on what state he or she is born in. That, folks who care about this kind of thing, is the time to throw a shower or party. We have a list of 22 documents we have to complete before the social worker comes and does the home study. These include an autobiography of each of us covering everything from childhood to our relationship with our parents to views on openness in adoption. The outline we have to follow while writing the autobiography is 17 points long, including subpoints. There are two questionnaires, each five pages long asking such personal questions as, "Has the doctor given you any hope of having a biological child? If, yes, what led to your decision to stop fertility treatments?" We both have to get a medical form filled out by our doctor. (Though we had to sign another piece of paper stating that we know we can not demand a birth mother gets an HIV test. It's not required. She can only do it voluntarily just like all other prenatal care.) There is a financial statement and verification of employment which must be copied onto company letterhead and signed by the head of HR. Employment history, a copy of our insurance card, and who will receive guardianship of the child should something happen to us, round it out. Oh, wait. We also have to give directions to our house.
The real fun is the background checks, PA State Police Clearance, PA Child Abuse History Clearance, and separate fingerprinting for PA and NJ.
This I think is the closest I will get to labor.
I know that the welfare of a child is the reason for all of this. How could anyone turn over a child to someone who hadn't been this thoroughly checked out? But as I look around my classroom at some of the students and what they are asked to live with on a daily basis with their biological parents, I really wonder about the order of the universe. However, that is not where I want to dwell. It is the way it is, and if it wasn't for surprise pregnancies, we wouldn't be able to be parents.
Ultimately though, I think John and I are more excited than anything else. It is the most patient excitement I have ever experienced, but it's awesome in scope. As we plan on completing a transracial adoption, we are currently researching how to raise a healthy, happy child who will not look like his or her parents and must be made aware and proud of his or her racial background. It is very interesting to read about others experiences and learn more about the world we live in even if it is sad to realize how alive racism still is. All we can do is work to combat it through love, and what greater love is there than parents' for a child?

I Look at it as a Positive Pregnancy Test

Well, the deed is done. I dropped off the adoption application this afternoon. The admin will put us in the system, and the social worker will be contacting us shortly to get the fingerprinting process started. As that happens we will try and coordinate when we can take the short two day seminar that is the next step. That can take some time as they want to have as many people enrolled as possible, and there aren't any new couples in Harrisburg. We might end up in Lancaster, which is fine.
This was a tough decision at this point. John, being the financial wiz, really wanted to have more debt paid down along with a reserve from which to pull the money for the seminar, home study, and several other miscellaneous expenses. Completely logical and sensible.
My heart go in the way of his carefully laid plans. Realizing this, he juggled the books, and gave the go ahead. I love him so very much.
I needed to know that we were doing something. I couldn't just talk about it anymore. I was really starting to worry about my emotional state. The whole almost weeping at the tabloids thing started it.
Two days after that we went to a birthday party. It was a joint party for mom, and her and her husband's, one-year-old son. A sixteen-month-old little girl was at the party too. We had a blast playing with babies and visiting with the adults. As I managed to seduce the little girl with pretzels, chips, and lemonade, she and I were having lots of fun, but at the end of it all, she still always made sure her mom was handy for a hug.
I crave to be the only comfort for little arms. I want to now exactly what that certain cry means. I want to see John swing a little person from floor to his shoulders who belongs to him, who complete trusts his strong arms while laughing at the thrill of suddenly going from two feet tall to six three. It's in my genetic code. The wanting is nothing new. The depression that has started to follow visits with friends with children is new. And it is scary. Mostly because there is an edge of bitterness to it. I panic, because there is a part of me that is turning resentful of people I love very much. A friend relates her trying week at doctors' appointments because of ear infections that led to three days off from work and massive amounts of co-pays. She was stressed and frustrated. I was jealous.
Dropping off the application, made that slip a little. That's why I think it is a little like a positive pregnancy test. I don't have the chubby clinging arms yet, but I definitely know they are coming. I might not know the average nine months, but I know its coming. That makes it easier. That makes it exciting. It makes planning ahead to a nursery and playing the name game with John (Currently, he is trying to convince me that Coltrane would be a great first name for a boy. I am a little frightened because it is kinda growing on me. Help!) more optimistic than before.
So I end with the positive excitement I know feel. It has to be patient excitement, but it is excitement none the less.
And I don't have to worry about morning sickness.
DISCLAIMER: Some of you will recognize yourselves. I hope I haven't made you feel bad. I hope it doesn't sound like I am fishing for sympathy. You better not stop sharing stuff about babies with me or trying not to bring the kids around, etc. But I want to be completely honest in this blog for myself and for anyone who might realize this sounds like a lot herself and find some comfort in that.

Live Action Pitfall

Nothing new has really come up in the adoption process, but it has been a while since a post. I have been reading others' blogs and left the need to update. Plus this happened today.....
I may be the only one old enough to remember playing Pitfall on an Atari. Anyway, it was the game in which you had to jump over, well pits, that had things like quicksand and alligators. It was one of the first if not the first.... hold on...yes, it was the first side scrolling video game. Thank you, Wikipedia.
I digress, but do have a point. When dealing with infertility and now the waiting of the adoption game, certain innocuous everyday things that would have just skidding across the surface of my brain, now slam right through the forehead to the gooey nougat emotional center.
In other words, I almost cried today when I read that Britney Spears is pregnant. Again.
These are the pitfalls. A trip to the grocery store can end in an emotional breakdown. Receiving an email from a cousin who is now expecting makes me almost throw my computer across the room.
I find myself actually making fists when someone says something like, "As soon as you stop trying, you will get pregnant." Or, "As soon as you decide to adopt, you'll get pregnant." (Note: If you are someone who has said something like that to me, I apologize. I really know you meant well. It is a hard position to be put in. You don't know what to say. I understand. I love you.)
Britney Spears is pregnant. AGAIN.
We should be in a place sometime this month to turn in the application. There will be an entry.
In the meantime, Christmas is coming on fast. This school year seems to be flying by. I am finishing up my third class towards my Masters of Library Science. Only ten to go! John is working hard at, let's count.... three jobs. He is teaching at YTI for just one semester that will end in January. JANUARY. Thank goodness.
And we still can't find a Wii.