I went to my monthly adoption support group tonight. I try to go most months when I am in town. I am generally glad I do, though it’s a mix of emotions each time. It’s helpful to meet other families in the same boat, but at the same time, it marks the passage of time, another month without a match, feeling that I am stuck and that this is not moving forward, wondering whether this will work out. The mantra is always “patience”,”hang in there”, “waiting is the hardest part.” All that may be true but still, it doesn’t make the waiting limbo feel any easier and in all honesty, hearing the mantra time and time again, just starts to wear thin. There’s always a topic for the meeting, usually some informational component on one of the many, many logistical, legal or sometimes emotional ins-and-outs of adoption. Today’s topic was all about birth fathers and the rights they have in the adoption match. Let’s just say there was a LOT to process, and a lot to start to worry about. In all the training and counseling that goes on for potential adoptive parents, there’s generally a lot of discussion around birthmothers (as there should be) but comparatively less so about birth fathers. But, they are, of course, a part of this too and the legal issues around consent are complicated and the potential complicating scenarios are many. In earlier stages of this, I used to approach these types of discussions by taking tons of notes, sucking in every last nitty gritty detail, learning as much as I can to prepare myself for the possible scenarios. I’m nothing if not a good student and researcher and that’s generally been my strategy for life—arm myself with as much information and preparation in advance, so I can’t be taken by surprise. “Be Prepared,” as the Boy Scout motto goes; an adaptive strategy that probably most Type-A achievers like me learned early in life. But, as time has passed and also hearing more and more adoption stories from adoptive and wanna-be-adoptive parents, it just became clear to me that every situation and story is so different that you can’t really prepare for all the inevitable surprises. And in fact, you can drive yourself (and probably others around you) crazy with trying to foreshadow the possibilities and prepare for every scenario. The best you can do is let go and be open (there’s that word again!) to whatever happens. Of course that doesn’t mean avoid all preparation or to just let yourself be pushed along blindly or worse yet, bulldozed. It’s interesting because when I was younger, it would have been very, very difficult for me to even consider a “let it go” strategy. I think it’s only in the last five or so years, having wrestled with some difficult life challenges, that I can see the value of letting go. I think this will also make me a better parent when my time comes. I try to now listen to the stories with openness and empathy, knowing that this story won’t be my story or my baby’s story. By sharing in this common experience with others in the group, I feel less alone and more confident that whatever the road before me, I can handle it, I am prepared and it will be so worth it!
**Incidentally, the photo is part of the mural on the Women’s Building, in the Mission, where the San Francisco support group meets. The image of mother and child seems perfectly connected to all of this. The monthly meeting has been a good excuse to come into the city and have dinner in the Mission. I’ve been making my way through the various nearby taqueria’s and burrito places. My next blog may be a food blog!
My friend Noelle, her husband Paul and kids Aidan and Keira came to visit and I took the week off to vacation with them. We had a great week and packed in a walloping amount of Bay Area sights and fun along the way. Noelle and I met when we were both in graduate school at UCSF so it was a homecoming for her and the kids were excited to see “where Mommy used to live.” We spent some of the time taking day trips from my house in Berkeley and then mid-week, went up to Stinson Beach in Marin for a few days.
I haven’t posted a stork sighting in quite a while. Storks are few and far between here in the U.S. but I did see a mural with a bird (maybe a heron?) that looks suspiciously like a cousin of the European stork! I’ll take it as a stork sighting!
The last few weeks have been a bit of a blur and so I am finally catching up on finishing some old posts. I am big sentimentalist about holidays. I just love celebrating holiday traditions. Even better when there are kids involved. It lets me be a big kid too! Easter is one of my favorite holidays. There’s the excitement of spring and the world coming back to life and color after a gray winter. Coloring eggs is a lot of fun and of course, who can’t love a holiday centered on candy and chocolate. I have great memories of Easter as a kid. I remember hunting for eggs that my Dad (aka the Easter Bunny) had hidden and how in some years “the easter bunny” did such a good job hiding the eggs that we’d be finding (or smelling!) errant eggs weeks later. I remember hoarding my chocolate bunny, not willing to eat it because that might hurt the bunny and being horrified to find my bunny, which I had carefully tucked away, eaten up by my little brother. This year I did a two-take Easter. Since I knew I’d be travelling to the east coast for Easter weekend, the weekend before Easter I had friends over to my house in Berkeley for brunch and an egg hunt. And then the following weekend, on the “real” Easter Sunday I was in Connecticut celebrating Otto’s first Easter. Otto seemed to like the Radio Flyer baby trike I got him as an Easter gift. Easter Sunday was lovely weather and we had a nice walk to their local park nearby. I’m not sure who had more fun playing with the plastic (cheerio loaded) eggs, Otto or Gary, the dog. Gary figured out the trick pretty quickly and was all over the eggs! It was a fun two weekends. I’m in the midst of updating my adoption brochure (more on that later in another post!) so the timing was good for getting some fun photos. I knew the visit to Connecticut was going to be a bittersweet weekend, with it being Otto’s first Easter but also coming up on the fifth anniversary of my Mom’s death. My Mom died just before Easter in 2011 and I think of her so often this time of year, around Easter and spring. We visited the cemetery to put flowers on my Mom and Dad’s graves, the first visit there with Otto in tow and I couldn’t help but think about how much Mom and Dad would have loved him. This year, maybe for the first year since Mom died, looking at Otto, I could really feel both how life moves forward and on in the next generation and how the memories and traditions we grew up with bridge the past and present and keep those we’ve loved and lost alive in spirit. There’s some sort of peace in realizing this.
When I was kid, many of our birthday parties were bowling parties at Skytop Lanes, the local bowling alley in town. I still love bowling. I’m terrible at it…really terrible…but there is something about bowling that takes me back to being a kid. I even like wearing the bowling shoes.The sights and sounds—the thunder of the balls as they roll down the alley, the crash of the pins, even the sound of a sad gutter ball —make me smile. My brother, who lives in Connecticut a few hours away from our hometown, heard that Skytop Lanes is closing down, after fifty years in business. Since I was in town for Easter we decided to make a pilgrimage home for a last game. We had a blast! The place had not changed really one bit since we were kids. Kids were there having their birthday parties. Families were bowling up a storm. My brother and Evan outplayed me for sure. Quite a few of my turns were gutter balls but I managed to get my groove back a two games in and even bowled a strike!Otto isn’t quite big enough—he barely outweighs some of the balls but still, he made a great cheering section. It was a really fun afternoon!
Two of my new year’s resolutions this year were to be more spontaneous and to explore more of my adopted home state of California. Death Valley is one of the hottest and driest places in the US. This year, with the combination of rainstorms in the fall and warm winter weather, this normally barren place is alive with color. Seeds that have been dormant are sprouting and painting the landscape in shades of yellow, white and purple. A “superbloom” like this is rare–once in a decade. I’ve never been to Death Valley but had been thinking about wanting to get out to see the wildflowers, since this year, with the rains, they are bound to be spectacular. So, when I read about the “Death Valley Superbloom” a few weeks ago, I immediately thought, “Let’s go!” I feel very lucky to have friends willing to take up the call and head off for the weekend. Thanks Willy, Judy, and Sophia! Our “roadtrip” turned out to be a bit circuitous because, as it turns out, when thousands of tourists decide to make the pilgrimage to Death Valley, hotel vacancies become very scarce in rural Nevada. Not to be daunted, we decide to stay in Vegas and drive from there. Vegas itself was an adventure, having never been. All in all, it was a fantastic weekend and just what I needed. The last few weeks have been tough. I’ve been both very busy at work and also feeling really anxious and sad about being in adoption “waiting limbo” and as a result, it’s just been hard to get out of my head. This roadtrip did a lot to restore some balance. Just seeing this amazing scenery, having fun with my friends and living in the moment has been a great respite and chance to escape even if just for a weekend.
I was in Boston for work this past week and while there, met up with my brother to take my nephew Otto to the German consulate in Boston to register him as a German citizen! My siblings and I were all born in Germany. In fact, we moved to the US not long after my brother was born. My Dad was naturalized when I was little, but my Mom and my siblings and I kept our German citizenship all these years. Over the years, of course, I’ve debated about whether to give it up. I’ve lived in the US since I was five and in so many ways (most ways in fact) consider myself an American through and through, but still over the years, keeping my German passport and identity has meant a lot to me. It’s an important part of who I am. Now even more so since my parents have passed away, I feel it connects me to them, to family and to our heritage, in a way that is special and unique. Also, somehow, having this connection to another country and culture has also brought me a different perspective on the world and on living in the US. As a baby born to a German citizen, Otto also inherits German citizenship. I am happy that my brother and Evan wanted to give Otto that connection too. I think my Mom and Dad would have been very proud too. With a name like Otto, how could he not be German! I was a bit nervous about the consulate visit. My my role was as interpreter (since my brother’s German consists of “Ein Bier bitte!) and while my German is OK, German bureaucratic and legal forms are a challenge for my conversational German. But we did OK and the folks at the consulate were incredibly nice. In fact, we did the whole procedure in English. The Germans are picky about names and you can’t name your kid just anything. The US tendency for unusual/bizarre names is not the norm in Germany and it used to be that you had to get approval for a birth name. I think that is no longer strictly true but still, I think the consulate administrator was stunned to meet a baby Otto. And I love the photo of Philp and Evan with Otto in front of the consulate sign—my brother looks so much like my Dad in that photo. The whole process was a good test run for my baby, who as an adopted child would also inherit the same right to German citizenship (and US citizenship too, of course). As parents—whether adoptive or birth parents—there is so much of ourselves that we pass on to our children. While as an adoptive parent I won’t be able to pass on my genetic DNA, I am so glad to be able to share this cultural DNA. And who knows where life will take him or her. Maybe he or she will want to live in Germany someday.
with views of the Pacific, the bay, San Francisco and the entire Bay Area. You can see Mt Tam even from Berkeley and most days on our evening walk, Bodhi and I catch the sun setting over Mt Tam in the distance. I’ve been all over but somehow never made it onto Mt Tam. I love hiking and one of my favorite things about living in the Bay Area is the easy access to outdoors and nature. It’s still amazing to me that minutes from the city, you can be in the middle of nowhere. I love the fact that I am able to be outside every day, with relatively little effort. I love also that the people who live here feel so connected to nature and that so much effort is made to preserve special places like Mt Tam. Pt Reyes in Marin and Tilden Park, here in Berkeley. Saturday was as a beautiful day—there was a bit of fog but what would San Francisco be without fog! Even with the fog, the views over the city were amazing. Sophia, who grew up here always laughs at me when I shout about how beautiful some view is and how lucky I am to live here. I do feel that way. I grew up on the east coast, in Connecticut, and went to college in New England too. California was not on my mindset. My first time in California was coming to San Francisco for graduate school interviews. I was quickly hooked. I remember driving through the Berkeley hills and over the Bay Bridge and that was it. I needed to be here. I still feel really lucky and blessed to be able to make my life here. I am looking forward to sharing this all with my child and introducing him/her to all that is so special about this amazing place. There are now quite a few more hassles about living in the Bay Area than when I lived here first as a graduate student—the cost of living, the traffic, the crowds—but even today, whenever I catch a view of the Golden Gate Bridge coming, or the sunset over the Pacific, or the glistening hills of San Francisco, I still catch my breath and say to myself, “how lucky am I!”
The Bay Area has been in the midst of Super Bowl madness the last few weeks. Downtown San Francisco streets are shut down for the “Super Bowl City” and the horrendous Bay Area traffic is even worse than it’s normally very bad. Not being a football fan or caring about the game, I had a lovely weekend staying put and avoiding crossing into Super Bowl-cisco! Yesterday Bodhi and I did some work in the garden. My garden is my happy space and I’ve been excited to get back out there, after a rainy January. With all the rain, the ground is nice and soft so perfect for gardening. I’m on weekend two of my latest garden project to put in a new garden bed and plant some fruit trees. My little digger dog loves to be in the thick of things. If only I could train his digging on the right spots! Saturday night I met a friend for a movie, to catch up on the pre-Oscar nominees. On Sunday, I went to the San Francisco Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm with my friend Phil for a Dharma talk and a Japanese tea ceremony presentation. I love Green Gulch. It’s a really beautiful and contemplative place. The gardens are gorgeous and peaceful and there’s just a feeling of intense calm when you arrive. As it turned out, this weekend there was a children’s program, so the place was overrun by kids, which was a bit of a surprise and definitely added some noise to the normal quiet zen atmosphere but it turned out to be quite nice. It reminded me of my childhood church where we had a special children’s sermon. It was amazing to see the little ones in the Zendo listening intently to the Zen priest and taking in his very kid friendly talk on why monsters and fears and worries we all have are nothing to be afraid of. Lessons that even we grown ups can benefit from. I’m glad that I can add Green Gulch as one more kid-friendly and fun place to bring my kids! Over lunch, we took a nice walk and since Green Gulch is just next to Muir Beach, we made our way over to The Pelican Inn, a super cute British style pub, for lunch. While I love Green Gulch, I don’t love the spartan zen food—especially when The Pelican Inn is right there! It was an all around great super bowl weekend!
Waiting for my stork 