Other People's Kids

Let Me Count the Ways...

Okay, so you've been briefed on the broad outlines of how the Indian Tribe is tangling our hopes for adoption. But as I've mentioned in passing over the months and as Yoda said to Obi Wan Kenobi's ghost as Luke took off to save his friends: "There is another."

I speak of the advanced pregnancy of "Melanie". I have promised a post on the events of last week regarding "Melanie" and I will deliver, but not here. Here I simply want to discuss the events of this morning.

I was vaguely aware that The Wife was talking to somebody on the phone. No idea to whom or about what, and didn't much care. I was drifting in the twilight zone and was feeling pretty comfortable. I had planned to take today and tomorrow off anyway as far as my boss is concerned, so tomorrow is soon enough to get back to work. Suddenly, I hear words that I had to replay in my mind several times and still couldn't make sense of them coming out of The Wife's mouth: "nigger name". Wha? Huh? Um...am I still dreaming?

I woke up fast then and got the scoop. "Melanie" has decided on a name for her impending daughter. The baby's father's mother was apparently trying to talk "Melanie" out of giving her granddaughter a "nigger name". Now, first of all, I know what this name is and it's a beautiful name. Second, I had NO IDEA that the father's family was like that. Oh, I knew they weren't well off, and collected a lot of government benefits for healthy people, and kept their yard looking like a junk yard. But this is the final step toward my actually believing that these people are honestly full-blooded members of that mythical tribe known as "white trash".

Oh, dear. Dear, dear, dear. No child can be allowed to be raised under the careful tutelage of a woman like that while we are able to influence anything at all. No way, nohow. Uh uh. Not happening until we've done our best to prevent it. And she WOULD be the one to raise the child...the father is pretty shiftless, refuses to hold a job and is pretty much an example of why some women shouldn't be allowed to choose the men they sleep with.

And if his mother was the same type and didn't want anything to do with a grandchild like most women in her position, there probably wouldn't be a problem. I have it on good authority (but not outright said to me) that "Melanie" would love to have us adopt her daughter. But she thinks (and she may be right) that if she doesn't parent the child, then the father's family would get next dibs, and she also knows that that woman would seize the opportunity.

So now we've collected two situations, each entirely different from the other, in which we want desperately to adopt a child, the babies' mothers both want us to adopt their children from birth, and outside influences are seemingly dead set against us adopting either child. As an aside, if we were to adopt BOTH children through a miracle of God, they would also have identical initials. And both mothers appear to me to be roughly the same personality type (though our black/indian birthmom seems to have more fight in her where her children are concerned).

I wonder...how many more adoption situations can we get ourselves into where we want it and the birthmom wants it, but other people decide it won't happen? It could become like a hobby or something. Counting the ways where people intervene in a good thing just because they can.

Do I sound bitter? I am, a little. "Nigger name"? Call me innocent, but I sort of thought that was the kind of thing that was last said out loud in the 60s, outside of those white power groups you see on TV trying to parade through Jewish neighborhoods with swastikas. I'm going to have to get out my copy of "American History X" and watch it with new eyes. This stuff really DOES happen.

In what bizarre world would the law put a child in a home like that before it would put the child in our home? And yet after our experiences fostering and trying to adopt, I know that "Melanie" is most likely right. That would be how it would be likely to play out.

Sigh.

Labels: Adoption

posted by Dan @ 10:20 AM