Now don't get me wrong, I can be spontaneous. As long as I am not doing something that could have life altering consequences, I can be spontaneous and happy at the same time! Knowing this about me, you can imagine that becoming a lesbian adoptive parent in a VERY conservative state was a bit un-nerving. Becoming an adoptive parent to an almost grown person who has spent almost her entire life so far in abusive or challenging environments and who has lived through experiences that she is not even able to voice...well, let's just say that there were times when I questioned my own sanity.
I had to commit myself to the idea of "doing it scared". I couldn't have done it without Nicole by my side; nor could she have done it without me. We spent months in anxiety over whether or not this child would accept us. We were so different from her. The very first question we asked the adoptions recruiter was whether or not she would accept lesbian parents. The answer came back pretty quickly that she had no issue with that. Not long after, Nicole asked me one day, "Do you think she will be OK with us being white?" I just laughed and said, "If she doesn't care that we are lesbian, I can hardly imagine that being white will throw her!" In the moment it was funny, but in my heart of hearts, I harbored serious worries over being rejected and hurt. So did Nicole. We tried our best not to leak worry into our daily lives, but it is difficult when you have such strong feelings about a child and you have no idea how things are really going to go when you meet.
Before we could meet her, we had to have an approved match. Typically the way this happens is that your local agency does a home study on you and forwards it to the child's agency, who gives it a once over and as long as they don't see any obvious conflicts or disqualifiers, they send you a packet of information about the child that gives you a cursory run down of their history, personality, medical/behavioral/educational issues, etc. You read through it and if there are no disqualifiers on your end, then a conference is scheduled between your agency representative and the child's agency and they all get together and talk about you behind your back. The point of it is to get down to real brass tacks and make sure that everyone believes that this is a good match and that it is in the best interests of the child to proceed with an adoption with this family. Typically, at the end of that conference, a determination has been made, yea or nay, and so we were VERY surprised when we got a phone call saying that they were just not sure and needed more information. A phone conference was scheduled between our daughter's agency and ourselves, so that we could answer the agency's questions directly.
Remember that thing I said about liking things to be predictable and orderly...ESPECIALLY if the results could be life altering?
I remember like it was ten minutes ago sitting in our car in the parking lot of Nicole's work talking on the cell phone connected to the car speakers to a room full of people we didn't know but who held our hopes and dreams in their hands. The car was awash in papers. I had brought every single document that had been generated during the previous nine months, just in case.... There was nothing left to do but to swallow hard, breathe through the fear, be absolutely honest and pray that things would go well. They asked some really hard questions. Remember, their job was to protect a child who had been through hell and who was emotionally shut down and could not take another hit. We sat in the car, holding each other's hands so tightly that it hurt, eyes locked together and answering questions that dug at our souls....."She is completely shut down. How will you reach her?" "What methods will you use to motivate a child that is completely unmotivated?" We talked and listened and then all of the sudden, there it was! "Well ladies, we have only one things left to say. Congratulations...It's a GIRL!"
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