Archive for the ‘Reflections’ Category

Ben and I are getting to know each other. I can’t say yet that he seems completely happy and adjusted to his new life but he seems less sad. He is still pining for his other family, not showing too much interest in food. I learned that if I gave him a few pieces of food, the same way I give him treats, from my hand he would eat the eagerly enough, so I started by feeding him by hand for the first few days. Now I have him eating from his bowl, as long as I sit next to him while he eats. I’m happy to see him eating and I’ll be thrilled when I can see less of his ribs, but it makes me a little sad to think of what his family did to get him to this state.

Russ came over to meet Ben, and declared him to be a good dog. I thought Russ was being quite generous since Ben seemed relatively unimpressed by Russ, preferring instead to stay seated on his big pillow watching cautiously. (Though Ben did seem to warm when Russ sat next to him and started to pet him.)

“Joy, do you remember that man you were talking to at the bar on our date?” he asked, looking intently at Ben, which made something in my stomach drop.

“Yes,” I said bracing myself.

“So you know that he’s an instructor at the base?”

“Of course, my ex is also an instructor,” I said “Russ, I think you’re getting ready to tell me something you’re scared that I’m not going to like, but you can tell me. I’m little but I’m scrappy.”

“Your ex, Rob, he’s been telling people about the decision you guys made. Everyone at his squadron knows, and so of course it’s drifting over into my squadron too.”

“Oh,” I said, but I knew that. On some level the minute the familiar face approached me at the restaurant I knew that everyone knew. My cheeks felt hot with embarrassment.

“I guess I really need to talk to Rob, don’t I?” I said, smiling weakly.

“It would probably be a good idea. You know, better to grab the bull by the horns?” he said, patting Ben and standing up.

“Sure,” I agreed and I hugged Russ good bye, and tried to determine the best way to approach Rob about all of this.

Rob called the very next day and asked if he could stop by to meet Ben after he got together with his friends for their weekly basketball game in the park. I told him he was more than welcome, and then I fretted and worried about how to gently approach the subject of the broken promise to Rob.

Rob was in my apartment for about fifteen minutes extolling the virtues of my decision to get a dog, all the health benefits, the mental health benefits, etc. etc. before I gestured to the sofa asking him to sit down.

“Rob, when we talked about this baby, we agreed to a few small things to try to eliminate any excessive amount of stress, do you remember that?”

Rob exhaled sharply, “who told you?”

“Who told me isn’t really the issue,” I started but he cut me off.

“Look Emily is my girlfriend and this pregnancy situation is very difficult for her, so next month she’s coming to stay for two weeks and really that seems like the least I can do for her.”

“Oh,” I said weakly, “that wasn’t really what I was talking about.”

Emotions flashed through me, hurt, anger, sadness, confusion and back to hurt. The emotions were coming so fast and that I burst into tears. Rob looked suspicious.

“I wasn’t talking about Emily,”  I said as I got control over my emotions and his look changed from suspicion to confusion, “I was talking about the fact that half of the base seems to know that I’m pregnant and that ‘we’ decided on an adoption plan.”

“Oh that,” he said.

“Yes that.” I said, tears spent, anger was starting to become the dominant emotion.

“Well I just told Tex, and he told someone else, and they told someone else, and you know how these things go.”  He said dismissively.

“Yes, I do know how these things go, which is why we agreed that you weren’t going to talk about it with people from the base,” I said coldly, “do you know how embarrassed I was when I was approached on my date by someone telling me they knew all about such personal details about my life?”

“You had a date?” he asked.

“That’s not really the point,” I said.

“I think it is,” he said starting to sound angry which made me the confused one, “you shouldn’t be dating while you’re pregnant!”

“I won’t date while I’m pregnant if you don’t date while I’m pregnant,” I said with a chuckle.

“I can tell you this, my ex-wife didn’t date while she was pregnant.” He said indignantly and I burst out laughing.

“Well I should hope not, I believe she was married to you while she was pregnant.” I said, still laughing.

“Joy, this isn’t funny, you need to be home taking care of yourself and the baby. You don’t need to be out on the town.”

“I think you need to leave,” I said feeling the laughter fade and the anger flashing back with a vengeance.

“I am not going to leave until we resolve this,” he said stubbornly.

“There is nothing to resolve. I am pregnant and I am doing everything within my power to make sure that the baby has what it needs to happy and healthy, but I have a life, one that I hope to get back to when this is all over, and one that you seem hell bent on ruining. What do you think is worse for my health and the health of the baby – having a nice man take me out to dinner for Valentine’s day or knowing that for the next few years whenever I encounter your instructor friends they will be thinking of me as ‘the girl you knocked up who then gave her baby away’?”

“I don’t think it’s appropriate,” he started again, but I cut him off.

“Well, that’s funny because a couple of months ago you were the one who thought it wasn’t appropriate to have Emily come visit while I was pregnant and might need you for ‘moral support’ but you’ve proven to be pretty flexible on what’s appropriate and what’s not.”

He glared at me and stomped out of my apartment , slamming the door behind him so hard that my whole little world seemed to rattle.

“And this is exactly why we couldn’t keep the baby, and try to co-parent it,” I said outloud to no one in particular, but Ben’s wise eyes seemed to agree with me.

We had a rather difficult week at work, a substantial part of our business model is supported through our Internet business and for a day and a half our Internet went down. We have these mysterious tech guys who hang around, and at times it seems like they are nothing more than over paid children hanging out in the office, drinking coffee, shooting nerf guns across cluttered rooms at each other. However, I really got to see them swing into action when things went wrong. They worked around the clock until everything was back up and running.

It was because of the outage that I found myself in an unusual situation, there was hardly anyone in the office yesterday at the end of the day. Our sales guys was out beating the street, there was one designer left in the design room in the back, so Cathy, Kay, and I were sitting in the front office. The work day was done but we were collectively catching our breath after the craziness of the last few days. Normally one of the tech guys would be walking through to get more coffee or Larry, the sales guy, would be following after Cathy talking about paradigms and other things that tended to make me giggle a little bit. However, today there was just us – the women of our company.

I was sitting on the sofa and I was tired, bone tired. Kay, the receptionist/secretary, and I had been talking about nothing in particular when Cathy had walked in and joined us. A quiet settled over the three of us, it wasn’t an uncomfortable quiet, but clearly there was an elephant in the room. Cathy, always the leader, started things.

“Joy, I hope you aren’t upset at what I told you the other day,” she said “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I really admire what you’re trying to do, I just think you don’t realize how much you’re going to love that baby. Once you have the baby, once you hold it in your arms, you just aren’t going to be able to just let it go.”

In my brain, I flipped through possible responses to this statement. I found none that seemed acceptable. I could tell her that she was wrong, she didn’t know me. I could tell her I already loved the baby and that was why I knew I had to follow through with my plan. I could give her a hundred reasons why I just knew in my heart of hearts that this was what I had to do to make sure that my baby had the life he/she deserved, with two stable parents who loved each other and could give the baby a secure home. I said none of that. Cathy was the mother of two beautiful girls that she loved very much.

“I guess we’ll see,” I said.

“I want you to know that if you change your mind, your family here will support you in any way we can.” she said.

Kay had been sitting quietly at her desk, Kay was always rather quiet and soft spoken, but when she spoke up I saw that color had spread across her cheeks.

“Well, I want you to know that you have my support now, and I am really proud of your decision.”

I had always liked Kay but she and I didn’t have much in the way of common ground. She was ten years older than me and lived at home with her parents that she took care of. When some of us went to the movies or dinner together, she always went home. I was never really clear if she had to go home or she preferred to go home, and it’s not really my nature to pry so I just left it alone. However, for her soft spoken demeanor this outpouring of support was unexpected and welcome. Cathy was surprised.

“I didn’t mean that I don’t support her now, I just wanted her to know that she has options.” Cathy said.

“I got pregnant, when I was in college,” Kay said softly, “and everyone kept reminding me that I had options, while they kept pushing me towards one option. The option that they thought was best.”

Kay turned her green eyes on me, they were shining with tears. “I’ve always wondered if the reason I’ve never found someone to share my life with is because I terminated that pregnancy. Maybe God is punishing me for being selfish.”

Tears welled in my eyes and I crossed to the room and I hugged her. We hugged and cried for several minutes, and Cathy stood by awkwardly her own eyes filled with tears.

“I got pregnant in high school, and I terminated it,” she said “I always wondered if that baby would’ve been the son that Chuck and I always wanted.”

Cathy had married her high school sweetheart, and it always seemed to me that they had the storybook life that you see in the movies. They met and fell in love as teenagers, they went on to college, then got married, have a house, two beautiful little girls, etc. etc.

My heart ached for them, for the babies that they lost, the punishment that they thought they had brought on themselves, and the pain that the loss obviously still held for them. We talked for a long time that evening, and long after the tears were dry the heartache lingered. I don’t believe that they were bring punished or kept from what they wanted because of decisions they made in the past, but what I believe is irrelevant, clearly that is what they believed and that made their choice so difficult to make peace with.

The conversation took me on an emotional roller coast, it left me exhausted, but at the end I was aware of two things – the first was that no matter what decision I made, there would be loss, doubt, and overwhelming emotions.  The second thing was that I was even more committed to my adoption plan, as if I even thought that was possible. (Can you go from 100% to 110%?) I knew that Cathy was right, I loved the baby now and I would love it even more when I could hold it in my arms and count the ten fingers and ten tiny little toes, but sometimes love is letting go. Sometimes you have to love someone enough to do the right thing, not the thing that feels right in that one tiny moment. Cathy was right, adoption was going to be hard, but knowing all the options I still couldn’t see changing my plan.

I’m somewhat of a creature of habit, so almost every morning I stop at Circle K and grab something to drink in place of my occasional coffee.  Usually I grab fruit juice or bottled water but with Christmas a few days away I decided to treat myself to a nice hot chocolate. I was standing there in line, waiting for my turn at the register,  enjoying the smell of hot chocolate and when I stepped up to pay, Ms Casey smiled at me.

“The man in line before you, he paid for your hot chocolate.” she told me.

“What?” I asked, completely confused.

“He told me to wish you a Merry Christmas,” she said smiling sweetly.

There was no one in line behind me for me to “pay forward” this nice gesture too, so I tried to get out of the door in time to thank the mystery man. I saw him from behind his steering wheel, he was obviously in the Navy – he was wearing a flight suit and his brown hair was cropped into a short military hair cut. He smiled when he saw me, and returning his smile I waved and mouthed “thank you.”

I was shocked that a handsome man had just smiled at me, I was pregnant. Bring pregnant was already becoming such a part of how I thought about myself that it wasn’t until I was pulling into the office that I realized that though I saw myself as pregnant, to the untrained eye I didn’t look pregnant. I hadn’t gained much weight yet, what with all the throwing up, and the small bump that was there was easily hidden under the bulk of winter clothes.

I walked into the office ready to tie up any loose holiday ends. Ken was standing there talking to the receptionist and he looked at me and smiled brightly.

“Today, you’re glowing, ” he said.

I blushed, and made my way to my office, but I thought that today was the first day I was hopeful that there might be more to my life than just being pregnant.

I cannot tell a lie, visits to the ob/gyn are my least favorite doctors visits – they are horribly uncomfortable, so I’m going to gloss over the gory details. My first OB visit went much like every GYN visit I’ve every had, after I endured the indignity of being weighed “in public” (okay in public means by the nurses station where no one is really paying attention but the number is always higher than I think it’s going to be.) I was put into the stirrups where I closed my eyes and tried to send my mind some place more exotic.

The new aspect was that instead of leaving at that point, I was taken to the doctor’s office where I sat patiently waiting for him. I looked at the pictures of the doctor and his beautiful wife and children. He had warm kind eyes and I noticed that his children seemed to have inherited his warm kind eyes. (As someone that is adopted I am always fascinated looking at how biological parents and children are similar.) The doctor bustled in with my file, and patted my shoulder as he passed me on his way to his desk.

“You’re into your second trimester,” he said “and I would say your due date is June 11. We need to get you scheduled for an ultra sound. Are you taking any prenatal vitamins?”

“Over the counter ones,” I responded.

“I’m going to give you some samples of prescription prenatal vitamins,” he paused and flipped through some of the pages in my file.

“You are placing your child for adoption?” he asked, looking up at me.

“Yes,” I said simply.

“I want you to know that I applaud you in your decision, and my staff and I will do whatever we can to support you.”

I opened my mouth to answer him, and I thought I squeaked out a thanks, but eyes started to fill with tears at this unexpected statement. I was moved beyond words.

“We’ll work out the financial arrangements with your attorney, please don’t worry about anything on that front. Focus on taking care of yourself and the baby.”

He came around the desk and handed me my paperwork to take to checkout and patted my shoulder as he passed again. Graciously, leaving me with a moment to compose myself before I left his office.

Perhaps it was my imagination but I felt a genuine warmth from his staff as I checked out and made my appointment for the next month.

Back at work, I talked to the receptionist about blocking out my doctor’s appointment for next month. While we were chatting I noticed that Cathy and her business partner Charlie were out of the office for the afternoon. I still felt rattled by Cathy’s reaction to my news but I knew that I was not going to be able to hide my pregnancy for long so it was time to bite the bullet and tell my coworkers.

I supervised our art department, there were three guys in there. Ken who was the team leader and two years older than me and then Tim and Josh who were both much younger. I walked back into their office and as is often the case with creative people there was some nerf ball rolling across the floor. I glanced at the job board, frowning – a common occurrence in that office, but in fact I was buying time, trying to find the words.

“Guys, there’s something I need to tell you.” I said as I turned to face them.

The radio was turned down, heads popped up from the back cubicles kind of like prairie dogs popping out of holes and Ken leaned around his monitor to look at me.

“I’m pregnant and since Rob and I are hardly able to be in the same room together, we obviously can’t parent a child together, so I’m placing the child for adoption.”

At this point I didn’t think I had any expectations because everyone I had shared this news with had reacted so differently, but I was surprised again by the reaction.

“Thank God,” Ken said to me and then he turned to Josh and Tim. “see I told you there was a logical reason.”

“A logical reason?” I asked, puzzled.

“Yea, for all the throwing up,” Tim said with a slight tone of exasperation as though it should’ve been obvious what they were talking about. Ken and Josh nodded in agreement. “we were worried you were developing an eating disorder.”

“But you didn’t seem to be losing weight,” Ken said with a solemn expression and a twinkle of mischief in his eyes.

My cheeks colored slightly, as I didn’t realize that everyone knew I was throwing up but of course, the walls were thin and the bathroom was rather centrally located so I imagine I had been heard in there more than once.

If you had told me that those three men that I so often thought of as “man children” with all of the toys in the office, late night movies, and long talks about video games would have taken the news so in stride I would’ve been flabbergasted. However, there was a slight shift, as they took me under their wings and tried to protect me. In the days that followed they learned that french fries didn’t make me sick, and so they often brought me some back when they ran to get lunch whether I asked for them or not. I was also presented with ginger ale and ginger candy as someone had read some article that told them ginger was good for upset stomachs. There was, of course, teasing now – after a bout of morning sickness I was told that it was the watery eyes that made pregnant woman seem to glow, but I was touched by their kindness more than I was harassed by their humor.

There was still a coolness that I couldn’t explain between Cathy and myself, but I refused to settle on it for any length of time. After all I was under the advice of my doctor to focus on myself and my baby and the blessings of friendship were far outweighing the small bumps in the road I had encountered and I knew I would still encounter.

It’s my intention to start this blog at the same time I started my journal. My son was conceived on September 11th so I still have a while before the journal started. In the meantime I thought I would share some things that are adoption related with you here. I’d love to make this website a spring board for you to find further information and to encourage discussion.

If you find something you want to share with me, leave me a comment!