We attended a workshop at WACAP over the weekend on open adoptions that was intended to start the conversation with perspective parents about the good and the bad of keeping in touch with birth parents. A very minimal level of openness is required in our program which states you must commit to sending a letter and photos once a year. That said, some families choose to maintain a very open relationship with yearly (or more) visits – even traveling across the country to make them happen.Obviously Kerri and I have thought about this a lot and we both have mixed feelings. There are those CNN Headline News stories that dissuade you from the any possibility of contact with birth parents – “Mother hitchhikes across country to reclaim adopted infant in bloody massacre of adoptive parents and their pets…â€? – but these are a rarity in reality. We are becoming more and more open to the idea of some sort of contact with the birth parents for the sake of the child. When we first began to consider it, I was more of the opinion that if we were going to take responsibility for parenting this child and, conversely, the birth parents were going to give up the responsibility of parenting this child, then all bets were off. The error of this view is that it’s entirely parent-centric and devoid of the child’s perspective.I’m coming around to the idea of maintaining contact because I’m beginning to realize the importance of biological heritage, particularly in our situation where a black child we be raised in our overwhelmingly white personal world. There may be a lot that a connection to a birth parent has to offer our kiddo – “why do those white people do those goofy things all the time?â€?The financial side of this is tough. We’re taking on a lot by raising the child and to shoulder the additional burdens an open adoption can bring (like flights to the East coast for visits) is a lot to ask. Like anything else in this whole process the answer really is just “it dependsâ€? which I’m learning to become more comfortable with, slowly.

Since we completed our final paperwork for the adoption last week, we have officially entered the “waiting zone” in which the goal is to _not_ jump every time the phone rings. We may be playing this game for a LONG time to come. It’s a weird mix of trying to prepare and “nest” while not getting too ready. It’s all part of the uncertainty of adoption I suppose.

The Good:Several weeks ago, my sunglasses, a great pair of Smiths fell out of my shirt pocket and the frame broke. I tried several times to glue things back together with no luck. My wife suggested that I take them back to REI where I’d bought them. Now, I’m a reasonable guy and I feel fairly realistic–so the thought of taking a five-year-old pair of sunglasses back to the store where I’d bought them, without a receipt, and requesting a refund for the full-price I’d originally paid after I had effectively broken them do to my own carelessness, seemed, well, absurd. But she persisted, just give it a try…Well, I obliged and took a trip to REI this Sunday. Now, when I die, and come back to life, my second-coming-career will undoubtedly be the returns clerk at REI. This is a person who’s job it is to essentially make everyone he or she encounters very, very happy. The line was huge, full of people with shirts that didn’t fit, flash-lights that were broken out of the box, and then me, with my five-year-old broken sunglasses. Did I mention that I’d broken them due to my own carelessness?! Well, the answer was an unequivocal yes. Fortunately I’d used my REI membership number when buying them so there was record of the purchase, and they did charge an 8% charge since I’d used a credit card to purchase the glasses, but there were no insinuating “So, tell me again, how they were broken?� or the even more predictable hysterical laughing followed by, “What have you been smoking? You want us to give you your money back? After five years? And your clumsiness???!!!�In any case, I walked out of REI that day with a brand new pair of sunglasses and newly found dedicate to spend as much disposable income a lazy, computer nerd should commit to spending at an outdoor recreation store.The Bad:So, shiny new glasses in tow, we took Chloe out for a bike-ride on the Burke-Gilman trail. She was very excited to ride in the bike trailer and was sound asleep back there after about 200 yards. Kerri and I rode on and after about 30 minutes stopped to take a break. There are a number of great places to rest on the Burke-Gilman and I’m not sure why we chose to stop where we did, but it seemed appropriate at the time.Our bike trailer is a two-seater and petty wide and I had pulled my bike over to the side of the trail to sort of get out of the way. We were at an intersection with a street and there were not a lot of people riding then. About half-way through my Odwalla bar (AKA “the best bar know to man-kind�) we hear this yelling. There were riders coming in either direction and it took me a second to figure out it was coming from an older woman on a road-bike headed towards us from the South. At first I thought she was yelling at the guy coming towards us from the other direction but eventually it became clear that we were the targets.She kept yelling “Clear the lane! Clear the lane!� Now. I work in Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle and our office is only one block from two different homeless shelters and a methadone clinic so I get my fair share of the crazies everyday and I don’t even think twice about it, so my first reaction was to think, “strange to see a crazy homeless lady riding a bike all the way out here in Ravenna!� As the yelling continued she began to sound more and more lucid (relatively speaking). Finally, she was bout fifteen yards from use and just getting more and more pissed. I looked at the bike trailer that contained our dear little three-year-old sleeping silently and thought that its parking place was quite reasonable. In reality, it was probably covering about half of the bike path, but, to be fair, my bike was leaned against a freaking Yield sign, the idea of which, was to let cyclist know that cars were progressing through the following intersection without much concern for bikes and that it would be wise to not pedal through without first hitting that coaster-break to make sure you weren’t about to munched by a beamer or something. Jesus.The closer she got, the louder she got, and the more insulting her language got. As she passed us she actually said (and I swear I’m not even paraphrasing) “Fucking move. I bet your drive like that too, you fucking asshole.� Then as she passed the actual trailer (you know, the one holding our dear, sweet, sleeping three-year-old daughter who is the light of our life?) she continued, “Move this piece of shit.�Kerri had the fist, only, and probably best, response, which was, “are you serious?� followed by “have a nice ride.� and that was the extent of our involvement. I hear the French have term for the sense that you have when you think of a response to a situation after the situation has passed–that idea of “I should have said that!� Well, whatever that term is, I spent most of the remaining bike ride thinking not only of things I’d should have said, but ways in which I could inflicted physical damage to her without any repercussions. If Tony Soprano can get way with it, I should be able to as well, correct?Maybe she was having a bad day, her cat died, or she found out her Benz was going to need another $3500 in repairs which weren’t covered under her extended warranty. Maybe she was just a lonely old lady who’s only love was to ride her bicycle fast and wear her spandex with pride. I’m sure there are any number of reasons she could have used to rationalize referring to our bicycle trailer, the one that contained our dear, sweet, sleeping three-year-old daughter who is the light of our life as a “piece of shit.� But I can say to that crazy lady on the road bike passing us on the Burke-Gilman trail on Sunday afternoon that if I see you again, I will not be leaving thinking of all the things I should have said.  This is not the Tour De France and you need to fucking chill out. Got it?

6 Cups raw rolled oats3 Cups chopped nuts - preferably cashews and almonds1 Cup bran1 Cup wheat germ1 cup cocoanut1 Cup powdered non-fat milk1/2 Cup sunflower seeds1/2 Cup sesame seedsmix separately and add to dry mixture:1 cup safflower oil1 cup honey1 cup water3 tbsp vanillaSpread into shallow pans and bake in slow oven - 300° for 2 hours, stirring every 1/2 hr.

We just turned in our paperwork in preparation for our home study, which will be taking place on Friday morning. I can’t say enough about how well WACAP runs their program. The autobiographical information they request as part of the home study program is just another example.

This questionnaire, which is a LOT of work by-the-way, really gets at some significant information in an efficient way. The standard requests for “name, rank, and serial number” are addressed in other places, but on this form, some very pointed questions are posed and they force you to consider how you have become, well, you.

It’s been a fascinating process for me and really given me a sort of “snapshot” of my life at the age of 32. I’ve included a few of the many questions here, and a couple of my responses:

Regarding your parents:

How did your parents communicate with you when you were happy and excited? Distressed, discouraged or unhappy?

What did you learn from your parents/guardians about marriage and commitment? Would you say that you have generally parented (or want to parent) in ways similar to how you were raised or do you plan to do anything differently?

What were your parents’/guardians’ attitudes on education?

What values did your parents pass on to you?
Regarding your personal views:

What are your strengths? Weaknesses? Do you have patterns of behavior that you would like to change but have difficulty doing so?

How do you usually handle problems, stresses, or difficulties in the workplace and at home?

What impact do you think your childhood has had on you as an adult? Do you find yourself trying to behave or not to behave in certain ways because of what happened to you as a child?

Describe your personal goals. How do you see yourself and is there any thing you would like to change about how you see your self image? Is there anything that you would like to change in how you relate to others?

Regarding Courtship and Marriage/Partnership:

How would you describe your role within your current relationship? Give an example of your problem solving process with your partner.

Describe your partner’s strengths and weaknesses.

How has your relationship changed over the years?

How much is your marriage like your parents’ marriage? How much is your spouse like your own mother or father?

And a few of my responses…

MOTIVATION TO ADOPT:
Please describe how you came to the decision to adopt (include information regarding infertility or any other medical condition, if applicable).

Kerri and I have always talked about the idea of adoption, but with our first child, we felt a real draw to biological child-birth. Kerri was terribly sick for the entire pregnancy and spent the last trimester or so on bed rest. When we started to talk about another child a few months ago we decided we’d start trying to have a second child together, and at the same time beginning to research on adoptions. The idea was we’d let fate take its course. After week or two though, Kerri was feeling like she just didn’t want to put her body through that again and so here we are. We’re both fully vested in the process and philosophy of adoption.

PREPARATIONS FOR ADOPTING:
What issues do you feel are important to discuss with your child in regard to his/her adoption?

Clearly the issue of identity will be an important want for the rest of our child’s life. Kerri and I both want African American culture to be a part of our child’s life so we will be continually talking about how we can make that happen. Also, issues of attachment will like come into play, even though we would parenting the child from a very very early age. We will do as much as we can do to foster a sense of attachment with our family and a sense of understanding about adoption and the child’s birth family.

If you already have children in your family, how will the adoption of another child impact the other members of the family?

Chloe is an amazingly gregarious child, a real social butterfly, but we can count on some jealousy. We have begun to talk to her about adoption – it helps that her best friend is adopted from China so she has a point of reference. We will continue to talk with her and look for ways to better prepare her for the big day. Part of that will include an action plan for us that will attempt to help us keep some focus on Chloe during the time the new baby is being brought home and adjusting.

We officially got started with our adoption last week when our info packet (AKA “the MASSIVE binder that arrived by commercial freight in a large wooden crate marked ‘THIS SIDE UP’.”) – but today was our first official workshop as the process gets rolling.We met with our newly assigned social worker who proceeded to, somehow, shake me from my tree of confidence and, within the matter of an hour or so, turn me into a babbling, trembling idiot – and I’m positive this was completely unintentional on her part.Next we met with our program coordinator. Now, we are applying to the African American Infant program through WACAP and this program, by most standards, provides people with incredibly good odds for adopting a happy, healthy baby in a short amount of time without the legal risks associated with most domestic adoptions. That said, these are still, typically, birth mothers who *may* be relinquishing their children for nefarious reasons. Part of our responsibility in the process is to become informed about the issues that may come up during the referral process.I don’t feel that I’m a super square guy or anything. I mean, I was never really a party animal or anything, but I did me some mis-be-hav-in in my day so it shouldn’t be a big deal to think about what situations might contribute to a mother making the most painful decision of her life. But, as we sat there, listening to our instructions regarding becoming informed about the potential effects on a child of prenatal heroin use and how there are a entirely new classes of drugs out there (something called “poly drugs” which I take to mean, “We just kind of mixed a bunch of shit together and gave it a try and now Time magazine is warning their readership about it.”) and we, as responsible parents, need to get hip to all that street lingo so we can understand just how potentially harmed our future child might be – man! What a trip. Okay, sorry for the painfully long run-on sentence, but my point is that for something that figured would be more of a just an informal information session, I can’t believe how exhausted and overwhelmed I am.We continue the saga tomorrow and hopefully, with the aid of my much-smarter-than-I wife, I’ll be able to keep my trap shut and my energy up. We shall see.

I found myself in a weird situation yesterday, trying to explain to Chloe what “power” meant. It was in the context of the TV antenna and I was explaing how the the antenna sort of boosted the reception, you know, made it more powerful.

Chloe: “What’s power?”

Me: “um, …”

Jesus, what is it? Sort of a strange word in that it’s a concept that can apply to a lot of things and it doesn’t mean the same thing to them all. Chloe’s at a point, being 38 months old, that we’re trying to work on some value stuff now. Simple things, like “No pushing. Pushing hurts people.” These things often relate to personal safety, but can just as easily be about socialization and fitting in.

Power, as a concept, is entirely applicable to the conversation, but without talking about how power can be a bad thing (Hitler, multi-national conglomerates, our current “Commander in Chief”) it’s hard to talk about how it can be used for good. I think this is something my dear old college professor, Dr. Jim Wehmeyer, called “paradigmatic structuralism” – the idea that you must know one side in order to know the other.

So, I find myself – being unwilling to go into the intricacies of free-market capitalism, or the trials and tribulations of a representative democracy where the primary method of election carries some fatal flaws (that and the fact that 51% of the country’s citizens are TOTAL AND COMPLETE ASS-HATS) –  still, without an answer to the question my three-year-old has posed: “What is power?”

We made the decision this weekend to file our application to adopt. While Kerri and I have talked about this option for a long time now, it’s become very real with that check for $250 sitting in our mailbox waiting to picked-up and delivered to WACAP. There are obviously a lot of things to consider and plan for now. But, on a larger scale, the decision as shifted my view of parenting and what it means to be a parent a bit.

As Chloe gets “older and wiser” I am seeing more and more that my presence in her life is not just about hugs and kisses and cuddles, but also about acting as a guide. Kerri and I are just present for a bit to help her figure a few things out, and then we’ll be gone and she’ll continue along on her crazy, adorable trajectory. The adoption process reinforces this even more so because of the missing biological connection. We’re sort of like guides-for-hire – management consultants for the very very young – with an amazingly long and complicated engagement.

Kerri and I have begun to talk more about another child. We’ve always sort of agreed that having two would be nice, but after Kerri’s horrific pregnancy we sort of took natural child birth off the table.

Adoption has come up many times when we talk about a second child. We adopted all of our dogs (two of which are greyhounds who have a surprisingly involved adoption process involving home visits) and I don’t mean to draw a comparison between dogs and kids, but idea of “taking over” for a birth parent isn’t entirely foreign. So, last week attended an adoption introduction at Amara. They specialize in placement of “special needs” children and are one of many options for adoption in the Seattle area. I found the whole thing much less uncomfortable than I had anticipated. While the process of adopting appears to be a painfully long and involved exercise in bureaucratic process, everyone is essentially advocating for the same thing—the love and care of a person.

We have several other agencies to visit, including WACAP, which we’ll be visiting this week,  and many more “big” decisions to make before anything remotely interesting begins to happen, but I’m actually really interested in the process and I think/hope I grasp the importance of it.