New York, New York!
I just got back from a two week work trip to Washington DC and New York, for a series of meetings and conferences. Although I was looking forward to some of the conferences and seeing colleagues and friends, this felt like a long trip and part of me was dreading it too. As much as I love travelling, lately I’ve been in nesting mode and find myself just wanting to hang out at home rather than hauling around luggage between hotels and cities. All that said, it wound up being a fun trip. Best of all, I had a bit of free time in between work events and so managed to squeeze in a few visits with old friends from grad school. While in DC, I visited with my friend Noelle and her kids Aidan and Keira again. It was a short trip, but we managed to play a rousing game of Monopoly. (As an aside, can you believe there’s a version of Monopoly now where Park Place, Marvin Gardens and the other properties have been replaced by online “properties” like Yahoo and Disney! And the silver show show and top hat that you move around the board is now an Angry Bird. Boy did I feel old fashioned!). Keira was very proud of her stuffed Bodhi, which I had given her after her visit in April, where she fell in love with my Bodhi (the real one!). After DC, I was in New York City for the weekend. I visited with my friend Jen her daughter, another Kira! Jen, Noelle and I were best buds in grad school. I was so struck by how much their Keira/Kira’s look and act like them — little Jen and Noelle “mini-me’s!” Check out the old photo below of the three of us on vacation in Spain while in grad school (circa 1998?) and the pictures of each of their girls. Guess which kid and Mom go together?
I also got to see my friends Zemer and Coleen and their “mini-me’s” Benjamin and Lena. We spent a nice Sunday exploring the Chelsea and lower east side. We had a nice walk on The High Line, visited the new Whitney Museum of American Art and got to experience the all-plant “I can’t believe it’s not meat” Impossible Burger at Momofuku. Not to mention ice cream and cupcakes to round out the day. It was a really fun Sunday.
There was something so lovely about seeing these friends who I first got to know when we were in our 20s, as parents with kids, families and accomplished careers. I love seeing them with their little “mini-me’s” and getting to know their kids, though truthfully, these moments are also bittersweet. There’s a part of me , when seeing friends and their kids all together, that does get a bit sad and wistful for a child of my own. I have friends who have told me that they worried that it must be hard to spend time with them and their kids, that it might make me sad. And some who have worried about inviting me to events with lots of kids and parents, like birthday parties, wondering whether I might feel uncomfortable. I feel lucky to have friends who are so thoughtful and considerate about my feelings but what I tell them all is that I really don’t want people worrying about me and certainly, don’t want friends to think they should avoid exposing me to their kids. Being with kids of course reminds of what I’m missing and longing for. I’d be lying if I said that sometimes it doesn’t hurt. But that’s not the overwhelming feeling. I don’t want to spend my life or this time waiting in a child-free bubble. More often when I’m having fun with your kids and seeing you being great parents, I’m reminded, in a positive way, of why all of this effort, angst and waiting is going to be worth it. Being with your kids is actually motivating and confirming of what I know in my heart to be true, that I want a child as the center of my world too. It reminds me of how much I love kids and what a great Mom I am going to strive to be. I’ve found that one of the hardest things about this adoption waiting limbo is keeping it feeling real and tangible. After you get past the point of all the research, forms, interviews, putting together websites and letters and the like, it feels like there’s just time and waiting. You spend time updating websites and checking your phone and email accounts hoping for a call, but as the days and weeks and months go by, its become harder and harder to feel that this is all real and that something is happening while I’m here in waiting. For me, spending time with kids, my friends and their families has honestly been a lifeline in this waiting limbo. Being around your kids has kept me sane and feeling connected and has given me hope and inspiration.
I should say that I know from conversations with other waiting adoptive parents that not everyone feels this way about being around kids. Some parents-in-waiting do find it painful to be around kids and do avoid situations with kids or families. While that’s not been true for me, I certainly respect those feelings and can see where they come from. What I would say as advice to folks who have friends who are waiting to adopt (or for that matter, friends who are trying to conceive and grow their family in other ways) is that the best approach is just to ask your friend what they prefer. You can ask them how they are doing. Ask them whether being with your kids makes them uncomfortable. Ask them how you can help and support them. Don’t be afraid to bring up the issue. Trust me, your asking and bringing up the issue won’t be anymore of a reminder or trigger than not asking, and more likely, they will appreciate your thinking of them.
Wow! It’s been awhile since I’ve had a stork sighting and this week suddenly storks are everywhere! There’s a new animated movie called Storks and the ads are everywhere I look. I’m in NYC this week and I even rode in a yellow cab with a big Storks movie banner on its roof. I’m taking this as a good sign…
It’s funny how sometimes the universe speaks to you in mysterious ways. Yesterday, I had two unexpected experiences where I feel like I really learned something about the value of openness and vulnerability.
I love reading and books. My house is full of books and I love having them around me. I love the physical and tactile aspects of books, the look and feel of the cover, flipping pages, underlining and dog-earing sections that I want to return to. I’ve tried but am just not a Kindle gal, despite all the ease and convenience. My bliss is an afternoon in a bookstore and I have more books in my “to read”pile by my bedside than seems safe here in earthquake country. But if someone finds me buried beneath a big pile of books, at 
Happy new year everyone! It seems that planning for New Year’s Eve always loom so large —-what to do, who to do it with. Staying in seems boring but going out on the town is such an effort. I can count on one hand the number of truly exciting New Year’s eves in my life and yet, somehow many of us hold ourselves to this impossible standard of “having plans” for the big night. I took this past week off from work and had lots of fun things on my list but since I’ve been recovering from a Christmas cold (thanks, Otto!), I ended up mostly laying low this week, catching up on sleep, reading and TV (Homeland! Was that a great season or what!). This turns out to be exactly what I needed. So, New Year’s this year was also purposefully (and perfectly) low key. I started New Year’s eve day with a walk in the redwoods at Muir Woods with my friend Sophia. Somehow, I have never been and it’s been on my “Bay Area must see” list. Such a majestic and beautiful place. It’s awe inspiring and humbling to think about these trees having been here for thousands of years. And somehow equally amazing to think that this beautiful ancient forest is just minutes from the hustle and bustle of San Francisco. I feel such luck and gratitude to be able to live in such a special part of the world. New Year’s eve I spent with my friends Victoria and Luis and two of my favorite tots, Eleanor and Sebastian for an early new year’s eve dinner and toast “Falkland Island’s style”— I’ll bet you didn’t know that the Falkland Islands celebrate their NY’s Eve at 7pm our time! New Year’s day I went to a New Year’s meditation retreat Spirit Rock Meditation Center. It was a perfect way to start the year, with clarity of mind and intention. I’ve been thinking a lot about new year’s resolutions. Front and center of my mind is becoming a Mom. Above all. I want so much for 2016 to be the year that I become a Mom, but I also know (and largely accept) that I have very little control over this and it’s not ideal to frame a resolution around something I can only partially control. Might as well resolve for world peace, in that case. So, my best alternative resolution this year is to commit to living life openly and fully. I will ‘say yes’ where before I might have waffled or declined. I will look for ways to open myself up to new experiences, and I will look forward to this adoption journey, wherever it takes me. Happy New Year’s everyone! I hope this is a great year for you.
Being in waiting limbo is just hard. The first parts of the adoption process involve this huge amount of activity and time. There are a crazy numbers of forms, classes, meetings with counselors, organizing of photos, writing of profiles, writing the Adoption Letter, preparing for the home study, books to read, putting together of websites and online profiles. And this is just after you’ve decided on an adoption strategy. Its a big decision and takes a lot of time to settle on the right adoption path–Foster adoption vs agency. Domestic vs international. Lawyer or no lawyer. For me, these practical decisions came to after years of personal soul searching and thinking and research, so it was a surprise to me how much time and effort the application process took. After all this activity, its kind of shocking to the system to suddenly be done with all the preparations, to have your profile be “live” as they say and to be faced by the silence of waiting. It’s like walking out of a bustling party into a silent room. At first there’s a breath of relief, to be alone and quiet, but then soon the thoughts turn to “where is everybody?” “Why am I not getting any emails or phone calls.” Even tougher is that its a weird kind of waiting. It’s not an anticipatory waiting where you can count down the days on the calendar and there aren’t any signs of anything happening, no pregnancy belly to show that something is happening. Its not clear when the call will come, or even whether it will ever come. It could be today, or tomorrow or next week or next year or the year after. It’s a particularly hard limbo to be in. Of course, everyone warns you about this when you embark on the adoption process. Yet, somehow, despite all the warnings and discussions about the waiting process during the adoption classes, I didn’t anticipate that waiting would be so hard for me. I’m actually a pretty patient person, and my life is very full. It’s not that I had an absence of activities to keep me busy. And truth be told, I was glad to be getting beyond all the forms and applications and find some time to get back to other parts of my life, like seeing friends, taking a vacation, getting back to hobbies that had been relegated to the sidelines during the adoption application process. But even still, for a person with a busy life, the waiting is hard, really hard.
Waiting for my stork 