I must admit that prior to the call I was a little pessimistic—call it self preservation.
This particular birth mother liked three families.
How could you like all three?
Were we similar?
How could we be?
Wasn’t there anything about us that stood out from the rest?
I convinced myself that there was just no way we could compete in this pool of prospective adoptive parents. The fact that we lived in NYC was proving much harder to match with Texas birthmothers than I ever anticipated. My gut told me that the City just didn’t translate well to people who didn’t live here—-but what did I know.
I took a deep breath and made the call.
On the third ring she answered.
…….45 minutes later I said goodbye to my new found friend.
I went into The Boy’s room where he and Kipp were playing trains.
“I think we’re done.” I said, as I looked Kipp in the eye.
He shook his head and told me not to do this to myself again.
“Don’t set yourself up for disappointment again Snyds.” (pronounces Snides—short for my maiden name of Snyder).
“Kipp, I hear you but I haven’t had a call like this since The Boy.”
Now I had his attention.
“So what was the difference? Did she say she liked us best?”
“She said I was different. She said I talked to her as a friend, with a different tone in my voice than the others. She said I talked about “her” as a piece of our family. No one else did. She said the others seemed hesitant and a little scared. But I get it—we’ve done this before. I shared with her how we were scared of the “birthparent scenario” the first time ‘round and she laughed. ‘I’m just a regular person’ she said. I laughed back and told her that we were just regular people too. I told her I knew some of what she was going through–I’d been through it with the Boy’s birthmother. I can sympathize with how hard it is for her. I know the difficulty of this decision. I also told her I know how brave and generous she is and that the little girl that she is carrying is going to know that too. I told her about Jake’s Box in my closet and how I’ll start one for The Girl if she picks us. And get this…..she loves Jake, she loves the Ladies and she loves that we live in NY! Hard to believe right? But she grew up on the East Coast—it’s a sign.”
He started to believe me and asked “and what made her different?”
“She didn’t ask me judgmental questions that have nothing to do with motherhood—like who did I vote for in the last election, would I love this child if she was a “Wicken” (yes, I’ve been asked that) and why do I think working fulltime is a good idea with children (uhhhh because the bills don’t pay themselves)? She asked me what I love best about being a mom. She wanted to know about our life with The Boy—what we all do together. She asked me why I wanted another child. She wasn’t looking for a reason to hate me.”
“And what did you tell her?”
At this point I was crying.
“I told her I love everything. But I especially love the simple things. Like the first time he hugged me. The first time he held my hand. The first time he gave me a kiss without me asking for one. I told her I never imagined that I would ever love my child this much and I wanted another to grow our family to do it all again and especially to give them each other. “
“And what did she say?”
“She said she will talk to her social worker on Monday and get back to us.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said great. Talk to you soon. I couldn’t help myself…it was as if I was getting off the phone with L.”
And if I was wrong?
Well then I’d just deal with that then.
But for now I was going to be cautiously optimistic.
Monday was two days away.
Love much,
xob