The wide-eyed feeling of jumping into that big unknown

For anyone who might be curious to know how it feels to be on the path to adoption, I can compare it to the way I felt during the moments leading up to when I proposed to Tiffany at the top of Yosemite Falls several years ago. Neither of us had been to that point before, even though Tiffany spent an entire childhood of family vacations camping and rafting the valley, and neither of us, for our own separate reasons knew exactly what to expect that day. As we climbed up, and up, …and up (puff puff) the trail together, getting higher and closer to the top, the excitement of what was to come in the moments ahead became more and more palpable. Trying to contain that excitement became a kind of mental game, and I remember using little tricks to keep myself from blowing the whole surprise: I would legitimate the glowing, giddy smile on my face by taking a deep breath, looking out over the valley and expressing my awe at the scenery (boy, was I getting all emotional about the outdoors that day); or during a photo op, I would just subtly move my hand to point at the pocket where the ring was waiting—a little joke to myself. Little distractions like that were essential to keep my cool. In much same way, I feel like making our birthmother book, writing our life stories, sharing our thoughts on this blog, going through the training, painting the baby’s room… all these little things are simply fun little games to offer us an emotional outlet to deal with the extraordinary sense of excitement in the midst of a profound unknown. 

It’s been quite a journey so far, a leap of faith and an emotional ride that is likely to get even more intense. In a childish sort of way, Space Mountain actually comes to mind; it’s a ride where you can’t exactly see the gut-mixing series of dives and twists about to happen, but you know they’re right ahead of you. This is one of those times when it’s best to just close your eyes and take it all in, enjoy the thrill of it. It’s a mind-blowing thing to absorb, the fact that we’re inviting someone into our home for the rest of our lives. And with completely open hearts we’re welcoming the change it brings for us. We will emerge from this as a family of more than two, which is the only thing we’ve known so far.

We feel more and more encouraged as we embark on this course together and as our little secret makes its way around to family and friends and our circle of support grows. Our gratitude to all of you reading this is beyond words. As we climb higher on the trail, looking back at the view from here and seeing how far we’ve come, emotionally and otherwise, we’re driven to keep trekking up the path, taking whatever comes in stride and letting the excitement and anticipation grow. 

We don't know, but we've been told...very little.

Six couples. Three full weekends. Roller coaster of emotion. No, it's not the trailer for the latest reality show. It's the extent of what we know about our upcoming trainings. Many of you have asked "just what will they train you on?" We just don't know.

There have been a few hints that we will cover the topic of infertility or our path to decide to adopt. We've also heard tell that birth mothers who have worked through our agency in the past will come to speak with us. There are 6 full days of training attended by our entire group of adoptive families. We're so excited to meet the others and develop some commeraderie with the people who can best relate to our many emotions right now.

Interestingly, we haven't heard anything of those training topics that hospitals host for expectant birth parents, i.e. swaddling, managing expectations, infant first aid. I guess only adoptive parents need to have a safe environment to bring a baby into and birth parents are the only ones who swaddle their babies. We're going to be overachievers and attempt to conquer both.

Our official training dates are the weekends of March 31st, April 7th and April 21st. We realize that life will soon begin to bombard us with unofficial lessons faster than we can blink.

Thoughts on the Banyan Tree family

With Marlene’s latest genealogical endeavours, there has been a lot of talk of family trees.  It’s made me think about how often we’ve wondered what our family will look like as it grows and just exactly what shape it will take. On a recent trip to the Big Island of Hawaii, we were reminded that not all trees express that conventional shape of the archetypical “tree”.  In the center of Kona Town, there is an enormous old Banyan tree that extends across the main street and spreads it branches in all directions, extending its air roots down to the ground. Banyan trees grow in warm, moist places, and we’ve also seen them in India and San Francisco. I’ve always loved these trees. The air roots are particularly cool, extending like open hands to plant themselves into the earth. The best part: these thin strands eventually become trunks of their own, supporting new branches and new life.

Cultures around the world also revere this tree. Hindus evidently believe the Banyan tree is where the God Krishna rested after devouring the earth, turned himself into a child small enough to fit into the tiny Banyan leaf, and from there everything in the world was recreated. In the Philippines, the banyan tree is thought to be the home of spirits. On Guam the native people believe in ancient spirit guardians of the banyan trees.

The Banyan tree is also a place of shelter. It provides a shaded place for people to gather for village meetings, trading and being together. I can’t think of a better symbol for our family. So it turns out a family tree can take on many shapes. Marlene certainly has her work cut out for her.

Now… how to actually paint one of these things in the baby’s room…

Sunday Night Musings

I must say we are both getting pretty excited about the TaJdoption, as it has now been dubbed, at least by me. Family has been a favorite topic of ours for as many years as I can remember being together. When we were first married, it was something we’d often openly mull over. On more than a few occasions this would happen on our late Sunday night drives back home after dropping off the “three blonditos” in the East Bay. We’d return Tiffany’s nieces back to their rightful home, adequately worn-out after a whirlwind weekend of adventures together. Almost as soon as we first saw the lit-up city buildings appear, they would engulf us as we crossed back over the bridge from the East Bay. It was then that we’d inevitably curtail another planning-our-future-together conversation for the sake of navigating our way back home and getting ready for the “real world” again. I think we both dreaded the Monday morning return to work even more so because of all the fun we’d just had together, pretending to be a family of five.*

Our fair city by the bay was a playground for all ages. The experience of spending time with children there—family-style camping on the islands, much-anticipated visits to the ocean, hiking in the lush green hills, and absorbing all the cultural aspects we could— was the initial impetus that led us to decide that parenthood was a life we wanted for sure. In recent years it’s been fun to envision raising a family here in Colorado, TaJ style, in our new urban playground—one with a lower admission fee and a little closer to the mountains. It even has our own little Midwestern version of a shoreline, Confluence Park, just a short bike ride away.

Of course, those family bike rides along Cherry Creek and splashing in the waves are still not in our immediate future. And Sunday nights at home as new parents will no doubt look a bit different for a while. But we’re getting more and more excited about how we'll eventually be doting on the new addition(s) to our family. For now, I'm envisioning cribside acoustic concerts, taking those quintessentially cute photos of tiny feet, and just sitting and watching peacefully sleeping babes. Okay, I know… don’t worry, we’re also eager to partake in the sleepless nights and midnight feedings, stomach the ear-piercing, deepsleep-shattering shrieks and wailing, and managing the incomprehensibly frequent diaper changes. But hey at least there will finally be a chance to put that old rocking chair to good use, even if it does have to be at 3am.

Anyway, on this particular Sunday night, those are the thoughts that come to mind. Our excitement and anticipation are definitely growing, and as we continue with this adoption “process”, we get more of those expectant parent kinds of thoughts. It’s been a really compelling personal and emotional discovery so far, and I must say this journey is feeling pretty good to be on. Next stop: training.   

  * By the way, my favorite weekend? That trip to the goat dairy in Pescadero. It’s something I still smile thinking about, especially when I’m reminded that my life skills now include an uncommonly intimate familiarity with alpine goat milking.

We could write a book about it!

Well maybe not, but we do need to compile a visual journey for an expectant mother to take as she learns about who we are. We had a great time last night mapping out the sections. You'll likely all have a cameo appearance within the pages of our lives since there are to be a TON of pictures.

I wish I had two weeks off. I might get fired because of this if I wasn't going to be out of the country and away from the computer. Thanks to Lisa for suggesting that we do this online (despite our more touchy, feely side that wanted something more tactile). Now, we are addicted to the book creation website and all the fun things we can do!

We got the giggles last night at the audacity of anyone to suggest that we summarize our autobiographies into one paragraph. Really? We think there's a little more to us than that. We've been drawing on songs that give you a sense of someone's character in a few short verses, but we like the longer versions better. This can be done, but it will be hard.

In England a couple of weeks ago, I learned the value of being concise (no snickering!) through the ole' French philosopher Pascal. In a letter to his friend, he wrote: "The present letter is very long, simply because I lacked the time to write a shorter one."

Our challenge will be to take the combination of 72 years and fit it into neat, little, two-page spreads on things like "our story", "family", "friends", "travel", "our favorite things", etc. It will definitely take more time to do this and do it well than to just write a slogging journal about our lives. Though the end product will be a treasure for our kids forever.

Homestudy and interviews, check.

Funny thing an interview. It is someone's job to identify really personal and important information about you in about an hour. Just asking me my favorite food could take that long. How could I possibly expect her to get it all down in about an hour?

Well, we tried. Our individual interviews went well this morning, or so we think. What do we know? We just put it all out there and hope they'll pick up the pieces and fit a nice puzzle together. We were reminded often that this puzzle becomes the permanent public record on the two of us and our background. This was the last of the process required by the state (other than weekends of training). Drug use, alcohol and other forms of abusive circumstances in our past were questioned and put to rest.

The bulk of the discussion was about our families and our relationship with everyone in them. Josh's fit neatly into the paper that comes with the agency's paperwork from the state. Tiffany's took extra sheets. All of Tiffany's families got credit for finally finding a match and sticking with them for 30+ years. She ended with Marty and when Tiffany said he was the youngest of 9, that was enough. No questions about which of his siblings has how many kids there. We think that wore her out.

Interestingly, her purpose with this exercise was to learn who has taught us how to be a wife, husband, mother, father, family member. What relationships were we exposed to that gave us a thread of hope to journey into this unknown? My brief answer would be all of the ones we talked about and the rest of them that we didn't have time to cover. It leads to a lot of thinking about just how we grew to be these particular people.

Relationships are funny. Who each of my family members was for me at age 9 was drastically changed by age 29. To ask me in an hour what are some characteristics of each person in my family and how they relate to me opens a HUGE box of memories and I don't know that I captured any of them well enough. I did get the sense that she had confidence that we were all open and adaptable to change. In the end, that's what she said she was looking for.

A Change is Gonna Come.... (sam cooke)

Time to catch up...

We spent many years and tears getting to this place. This wasn't the first time we looked at ways of growing our family that were natural and reflected our ways of thinking. We had looked at our options before and considered them  upside down, backwards, sideways and inside out. We thought about the various options so much that we decided to stop thinking about them. This time it was different. This time, the foggy "what ifs?" didn't resonate as strongly. This time, we were sure we were ready. To all of you who have bounced down this rocky road with us, thanks for your patience. Now, hang on for the ride!

In January, 2012 we met Jude Simmons with Adoptions: Advocacy & Alternatives. It just felt right. We said it driving home that day and have said so many times since. The various concerns we had about the process, the costs, the perceptions and the reality of adoption just formed into a big ball of certainty. We immediately sent in our application.

our application waiting for the mailman after we first met Jude

A week later, we made the trip to the agency again to begin the paperwork required to get the ball rolling. We went through each page with Jude so we knew exactly what to do next. After a long meeting on all of the next steps, we ended with holding hands and focusing on our chosen path. We each spent some time concentrating on the "seeds" we wanted to plant in this garden. In her wisdom, she knew to hope that our birth mother was treating herself well in her pregnancy. We just wanted the patience to handle whatever was to come.

The paperwork involved background checks, financial statements, fingerprints, identification of a pediatrician, a legal guardian, references and a plan for daycare. We were to develop a bulleted timeline of our lives individually, a two page summary of our lives and a longer version with all the details. We had separate multiple choice questionnaires required by the state asking about our upbringing, our thoughts on discipline and our roles in our relationship. Additionally, we developed a thorough description of our lives together and our plans for the future with a growing family.

We had a lot of homework to do!

One unique thing about our agency is that six to seven couples are formed into a group of adoptive parents. We are part of a team of support for each other. We are grateful for this despite not having met any of them yet. The next step was to coordinate the schedules of seven busy couples to find three full weekends we could get together for the required training in order to be licensed. We were anxious to begin this process, so we responded immediately. Then, we had to leave for Hawaii.

us forgetting what we were doing for a week and simply watching the water lap the shoreline

When we came back, we had our training dates and plenty of energy to get going on our life stories. We had a blast reliving our fondest memories, reflecting on our relationship and sharing our favorite stories with each other. We're not supposed to like the paperwork, but we really enjoyed the time together. We valued the moment we were in within this huge, new adventure.

Once our entire lives were summarized into a packet about half an inch thick, we began our home study process. Jean Noblitt is conducting our home study on behalf of the state of Colorado. She visited our humble abode at the end of February and passed our home upon inspection. She was another reassuring force in this whirlwind of emotions. We meet with her again tomorrow when she'll hold individual interviews with each of us.

Our intention is to use this page to update all of you. We hope it's a fun way to answer your questions about where we are in the process. When we're finally licensed and waiting for a match (hopefully by May) the rambling, waiting thoughts might get really interesting. Thanks for following along and for your support.