My oldest daughter is pregnant - sort of. She and her husband just completed the home study required by the adoption agency in preparation for their second child. Three hours, dozens of pages of paperwork, and a personal interview later they are ready to advance to the second round of adoptive aerobics.
We talked about it last night at the park as their two-year-old, Olivia, was trying to coax a calf to come and nibble on the stick she poked through the fence.
How do you handle conflict as a couple? How do you handle discipline? What is your spouse's greatest strength? What is his/her greatest weakness? If the home you grew up in had a motto, what would that motto be? What lessons from your parents' home did you take with you in creating your own home? These are just a few of the questions the agency interviewer posed.
As they have been gathering financial statements, letters of recommendation, and getting medical exams, I've been thinking a lot about the woman I may never meet - their baby's birth mother.
If my new grandchild arrives this fall, his or her birth mother is entering the final trimester of her pregnancy. How is she doing? Is she healthy? Is she worried about the impending delivery? Has she already made the decision to place her baby for adoption? In her quiet moments does she wonder about us - the family she will pick for her child?
It's probably a good thing most of us don't get to "choose" our family. Really, would you have willingly chosen your Aunt Sophie or Uncle George or even your brother Jimmy? All it takes is one good family reunion to see how biology has betrayed you, how nature and nurture were somehow on a collision course.
What an awesome responsibility to choose a family. To choose a child. To set aside everything you don't know and everything you do and take or place a child.
Birth mothers and adoptive mothers have more in common than I ever realized. Both pledge with heart and soul to give an innocent the opportunity for the kind of family life and love we all long for.
Baby dear, where ever you are, you are loved.
