the wide tent

hi prospective adoptive parents!

2009-02-04T19:29:00.002-05:00

So, it seems that most of the rest of the visits to the wide tent these days are folks searching about how to write a "Dear Birthmother Letter." Welcome, and congratulations on your decision to adopt! Let me recommend two must-read sites for prospective adoptive parents:

Open Adoption Support, a great place for all members of the adoption triad to meet and share in a safe environment. This site was designed and is managed by Dawn, who blogs at This Woman's Work (see my review of Dawn's blog here). Dawn is one of the most thoughtful commentators on open adoption and domestic adoption ethics. You'll learn a lot from her, more than just how to write a "Dear Birthmother Letter." Run, don't walk!

hello lesbian la leche league leaders (or LA's, or pissed-off ex-LA's ....)!!

2009-02-03T12:39:00.003-05:00

Traffic on this blog is pretty minimal, but I've been noticing that most of the visits lately come from some variation of the search "lesbian la leche league leader." I am a retired LLL leader, and a lesbian, and if you'd like to be in touch about my experience of becoming a leader (in a word: awful), leave me a comment on this post and I'll be in touch with you. Courage my dears!

A New Year, A New Blog

2008-12-31T16:32:00.002-05:00

I have a new blog, called my goodly heritage, at mygoodlyheritage.blogspot.com. It is mostly dedicated to book reviews, links and an occasional essay. Come on over and check it out!

"dear birthmother letter"

2007-01-23T13:01:00.001-05:00

two of our closest friends are in the process of adopting a child, and i'm looking for some advice about how to help them.

k & p are wonderful people and have a two year old biological daughter. they do not have any fertility issues, but want to grow their family through transracial adoption (they will be adopting an african american child; they and their daughter are white), and are as well equipped as anyone i know to do that thoughtfully and ethically. they are very interested in having the adoption as open as possible, and while i don't think they have thought through all the ethical issues in adoption, i know they are very much open to and trying to have a very ethical adoption. (i know that may be a contradiction in terms; i just mean as much as adoption can be ethical, they would like theirs to be, even if they don't know all of what that means yet.)

they are working with a regional open adoption agency which requires that they create a profile with a "dear birthmother letter" on one side and photos of them and their family on the other.
i've read the first draft of their letter, and it feels pretty typical. they have included all of the things that the agency has told them are important: their thoughts about open and transracial adoption, descriptions of their family, their community, their jobs, interests, etc. the first paragraph is fairly typical: "we admire your courage in making this difficult decision ... we desire openness but want to honor your needs ... if you place with us your child will always know you loved him/her and made this difficult decision out of love..." (this is my paraphrase; i don't have the letter in front of me.)

i have a couple of things i'm wondering and would love guidance from you, especially those of you involved in adoption reform and/or ethical open adoptions:

i find that it's very hard to share your own insights into anything you've learned through experience with someone who hasn't yet experienced it. sometimes the only way you can really learn something is through experiencing it. one of the things i've learned as a la leche league leader is to give information, rather than advice, to hold judgement, and to try to empower women to make their own good choices. more and more i'm learning that's a good way to approach life (the older i get, the more i find that being a righteous know-it-all has a way of coming back to bite you in the butt!) so i guess i'm wondering what you all think is the "bottom line" of ethical adoption, the stuff you would always be blunt and up-front about with prospective adoptive friends (as opposed to the nuances that folks might need to learn for themselves). i guess another way of saying this is, what do you wish a trusted friend had said to you as you embarked on your first adoption, and what would you not have been able to hear, because you needed to learn it yourself?
k & p's agency calls k & p's profile a "dear birthmother letter" and probably every other profile in the book will begin "dear birthmother." if you were k & p, what would you do in this situation? how would you advise them if you were their friend?
what about that ubiquitous "courageous, noble birthmother" paragraph at the beginning of the letter? how would/have you handled that?

thanks internets! i hope you're share your thoughts.

so, micah has weaned...

2007-01-19T14:24:00.000-05:00

...and it feels just right. we were both ready, he only needed a tiny nudge from me, and while it feels a teensy bit bitter-sweet, it's a whole lot less so than i expected it to be!

i've been ready for this for most of the fall, but i just wasn't sure whether micah was or not. i had this thought that he really needed to wean -- that our nursing relationship was no longer the beautiful, healthy, nurturning thing it had been for so long, but rather was holding him back in some way. i can't quite put my finger on it, but he seems clearly ready to be moving to a new place (there's been a lot of that totally age-appropriate separating-from-mom stuff that he's doing which is driving me kinda crazy because it's a lot of one step forward two steps back, and the two steps back involve a lot of clinginess on the one hand and lashing out/limit-testing on the other. that, and a lot of night waking. sigh.) my intuition was telling me that our nursing relationship was holding him back in some way. but i wasnt' sure. what if our nursing relationship was actually the thing that was helping him through? what if he really needed his nursies to get through this feeling nurtured and secure?

i had decided i would push a tiny bit over our vacation, and see how it went, but in the end i didn't need to. with all the excitement of christmas -- multiple church services, parties, presents, visiting relatives -- he totally forgot to even ask on christmas eve and christmas day. then we flew to arizona, drove to the desert, and set up camp -- and again, he never asked. on the fifth day, when we went to the library to escape the rain -- he asked once, but i easily put him off. he asked a couple of times when we were backpacking in the desert and he was a little miserable, but again, he was pretty easily put off.

when we returned home, he started asking with a bit more frequency, but it was never very hard to say no, and so i decided we were definitely going to be done. i always offer a cuddle instead, and now he only asks maybe once a week if that.

i decided that if he forgot to ask when things were stressful/exciting/new, and only started asking again when we landed back into our routine ... well then, it seemed to me that this was much more of a habit and less of a coping mechanism. and so there you have it -- we're done!

micah was 15 days when he started nursing, and 3.75 years when he stopped. all together, i was lactating/nursing for 4.25 years. and if i do say so myself, i'm kinda proud of that fact!

"oh. my. god. my refridgerator was gross!" and other news since last we spoke

2007-01-18T20:09:00.000-05:00

my house is almost always messy. it's pretty small -- maybe 1200 square feet and almost no closets -- and we are a family of four (including one adult with packrat tendencies and one really kinetic three year old boy). another of us (not the aforementioned adult, i'll have you know) cares about keeping some semblance of tidiness, but the other three of us care not one whit. what that means is that the house is almost always messy (and one of us is almost always frustrated).

but messy and dirty are two different things. it is my goal that under the mess, things are relatively ... well, if not clean, exactly, at least hygenic. i'm the first to admit that i fall short of this aspiration more often than i like to admit, but on the whole, i feel fairly confident that if you use my bathroom, eat food prepared in my kitchen, or put your baby on the floor to play, you and your baby will not get ill.

or so i thought until i cleaned out the fridge the other day. oh lord. i knew it was bad, and i was prepared for that, but i had no idea. apparently we had been pushing the leftovers back and cramming more in front for a month or more, because i found stuff i barely even remembered. eww.

i'm choosing to view it as symbolic. cathartic. it was a difficult fall. the fridge is now pristine, the tupperware drawer is full again, the condiments are consolidated, and everything in the fridge is edible. things are looking up!

in other news...

last weekend i took the most decadent trip to visit one of my best and oldest friends, jennie, in chicago. jennie actually lives in iowa, with her husband and toddler, but her very generous sister betsy lives in chicago, and we decided to meet for a kid-free weekend. i flew out friday evening, despite ominous weather in the forecast, and returned on monday (mlk day, so julie and the kids were off), without any weather-related incident. in-between, jen and i stayed with betsy in a lovely, 17th floor apartment over-looking the city and the lake. i slept three uninterrupted nights; walked a lot, shopped (with betsy as my personal dresser) and ate without a kid on my lap; and came home each evening to a bottle of good wine and cheesy t.v. jennie (who is blogless, or i would link to her, hint hint) resolved to finish her dissertation before she begins her full-time job this summer (right jen??), and i came up with multiple schemes for what i'm going to do with this next phase of my life. it was bliss. on a plate. we were definitely cracking betsy up with our simple needs ("are you kidding? this couch is the best bed i've ever slept in!") we plan to do it again soon.

finally, can i just say how much it rocks to be working with two la leche league leader applicants who are smart, thoughtful, organized, dedicated, enthusiastic, reliable, way cool and just plain fun to be around? and how lucky am i that one of them is the inimitable jo? i believe that the lovely and astonishingly well put together mia is currently blogless, i would send you her way as well!

trip pix

2007-01-03T21:01:00.000-05:00

new year's resolutions

2007-01-03T20:54:00.000-05:00

eat until satisfied, not uncomfortably full

eat more fruits and veggies

run at least three times a week for three miles at a time

train for the broad street run and actually run it

practice yoga at least once a week

spend less time listening to my own voice inside my head trying to figure it all out, and more time listening to what god has in mind for me

go on more dates and overnights with julie

greetings from the border

2006-12-28T16:38:00.001-05:00

greetings from ajo, arizona!

we had a whirlwind of a christmas, with julie's whole family visiting for the weekend; three church services in 24 hours (remind me to write about serving communion to a nun at the christmas day, homeless service); our annual "island of the misfit toys" party between the two services on christmas eve; and a chinese food extravaganza on christmas afternoon. we then skedaddled to the airport and flew to pheonix, collected our backpacks and rental car in the wee wee hours of the 26th, stayed the night at an econo-lodge, and then made our way to organ pipe cactus national monument, where we have set up camp in the desert, with the mountains of mexico just to the south.

our plan was to car camp a couple of nights, and then hike back country with our packs for a couple of nights. a cold, dreary rain today has us instead in ajo, eating good mexican food and hanging out at the public library (where, wouldn't you know, they are showing the movie cars! the kids are thrilled.) we've had two days of beeyooouuteeeful day hikes so far, and the kids have been amazing troopers, so i can't complain too much! tomorrow is supposed to be nice again, so we're going to try for a one-night back country packing adventure, probably just three miles or so out, and then back again the next day. we fly home early sunday morning.

look forward to desert reflections and some photos when we return!

"what do you do?"

2006-12-18T18:25:00.000-05:00

i get asked this all the time, and i have yet to come up with a satisfactory response. in the first years home with micah, i said simply, "i'm a mom and a homemaker," or "i'm home raising my children." that's what i wanted to be doing, that's what i was passionate about, and that work completely fulfilled me. i loved the work, and i loved resonding that that's what i did.

in the past year, and especially in the past months, however, my work outside the home has exploded. it's very very exciting, and i'm feeling very invigorated by it, thinking about possible new directions for a career when micah is in school full-time, and learning about and honing skills i didn't know i had. it feels very very right to be shifting focus as i am, as my kids enter new phases of their lives, and i do too.

so, these days, the things i do in addition to raising kids and keeping a home include:

i'm a la leche leader, and i lead a monthly meeting on my own (i don't have a co-leader as yet). i also spend about three months a year (in two week chunks) staffing the helpline, which means i take from 0 to 4 calls a day from moms needing breastfeeding help in all of philadelphia county. i've also just begun leading several leader applicants through the accreditation process, which will involve at least bi-monthly meetings.
i have several leadership positions at my church. for the past three years or so i have served as church school superintendent (before that i taught sunday school). in that capacity, i recruit and train sunday school teachers; organize regular teacher's meetings; negotiate space so that we have sunday school rooms, and also make sure the rooms are in good shape; evaluate and order curriculum; buy supplies; arrange for substitutes or sub myself; and conduct a 15 minute children's worship service each sunday before the sunday school hour.
for the past two years, i have also served as a deacon on the official board of the church.
for the past year, i have met bi-monthly with a small group dubbed the "reorganization task force," charged with proposing a whole new vision of how we "do" church. the culmination of that process finds me on a new administrative council, coordinating partnership-building and fundraising for our outreach programs (homeless shelter, food and clothing cupboard, summer day camp for at-risk youth, and city work camp program for rural and suburban youth groups).
finally, and by far the most exciting and time-consuming, is that i serve as the chair of the board of my daughter' s charter schoool. in that capacity, i have in the past three months doubled the size (and racial diversity!) of our board; begun implementing an entirely new model of board governance called policy governance; and begun to work with the ceo on launching a capital campaign. i've also found myself pulling out all my connections from my law school and law firm days in order to bring some political muscle to bear on an effort to remedy what started out as an administrative snafu regarding enrollent (i.e. how many students we're getting paid for, as opposed to how many we're actually educating -- the numbers don't match up, and not in our favor), but which has turned into a huge, hairy political nightmare in the midst of a mayoral campaign and a school district budget crisis.

so, that's what i *do,* outside of raising my kids, cleaning my house, doing laundry, shopping for groceries, planning and cooking meals -- all the homemaking, stay-at-home-mom stuff that i l*o*v*e. i estimate i spend between 20 and 25 hours a week on my "outside the home" work. and when it started getting to those levels, i started responding to the "what do you do?" question a little differently. instead of just saying "i'm a mom and a homemaker," i'd say that plus "and i do a lot of volunteer work outside the home." but funny thing, no one ever really asked me about my "volunteer work," and i always got the idea that people thought i was, you know, going on a field trip now and again with my daughter's class.

so i decided recently to respond to the question "what do you do" by telling people what i do, just like every other working mom would. by describing my work, especially with the school, work which has really become my passion. the thing i'm learning, though, is that work outside the home -- no matter how important it is, and no matter how many hours you spend on it -- doesn't really count if you're not paid for it.

for example, on sunday i had a rich, full day -- after church (which for me starts at 9:00 getting ready for church school, and ends around 12:15 when the service is over), i helped julie prepare a lunch for the children's choir, which she directs, before they began a dress rehearsal of their cantata on christmas eve. i then went to a two and a half hour meeting of the reorganization task force, where we hashed out a plan for the church's structure in the coming year, to be presented at the congregational meeting in january. i then rushed to a house party a friend of mine was hosting for a mayoral candidate i support (personally, although doing so too publicly has become a liability for the school, because unfortunately he doesn't currently wield much power, and is probably going to lose...). at this house party, glass of wine in hand, i was introduced to a woman who serves as the treasurer of the local chapter of the national organization of women.

and she asked the ubiquitous question, "and what do you do?"

i replied, "i'm the chair of the board of a k-8, environmentally themed charter school in XYZ neighborhood." she looked at me quizically, and inquired a bit about what i do. i began to talk about some of my work, and she just looked more and more confused.

"but, is this a paying position?" she interrupted, clearly confused about how i could be paid for chairing the board of a charter school (i can't), and equally clearly unable to understand how that could be my "work," what i "do," if i'm not paid.

"no," i sighed, "i'm not paid for that work. i'm home with my children right now, but that's the work i do in the world." inevitably, as everyone does, she launched into the completely patronizing speech, which she no more believes than anyone else who uses it in response to "i stay home with my kids," about how that's just such important work, the *most* important work, really.

that, i have learned, is the signal that you have been dismissed. that is the point at the cocktail party when you are about to be abandonded for greener pastures. and it appears to be true even if, in fact, you are running one of the few highly successful charter schools in the entire city of philadelphia. because if you are not getting paid for it, it just doesn't count.

go figure.

so, has any one else found themselves in this position? how do you handle it?

response from the art museum

2006-12-09T18:20:00.000-05:00

i was well pleased with this.

Dear Ms. [last name deleted],

I am the Director of Visitor Services at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and I am writing in response to your recent email about your friend's experience. We work hard to ensure all of our visitors have a pleasant experience and are upset when we fall short of that goal. I can only imagine your friend's frustration and concern when she was told that she could not breastfeed her baby within the gallery. I assure you that is not our policy. The Museum is fully aware of the ordinance that permits women to feed their children wherever they wish. This ordinance is reviewed with all of our staff and security personnel during their training. It seems that in this case, this particular officer was not clear on the policy. I cannot apologize enough on behalf of the Museum that your friend was put in that situation. We have reviewed this ordinance in subsequent line up meetings with all of our security officers as well as ensured that the class currently in training is clear on the policy.

Ms. [last name deleted], I am a mother of three and I know and understand how difficult it can be for mothers who choose to breastfeed their children and then have to deal with criticism from those around them. We take pride in welcoming families to the Museum in hopes that our young visitors will continue to explore the Museum, as they grow older. We would not want anything to hinder that relationship.

Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention. We look forward to welcoming you and your friend back in the future.

Sincerely,
[name deleted]
Director of Visitor Services
Philadelphia Museum of Art

what i've heard so far:

2006-12-04T16:32:00.000-05:00

Thank you for applying for a position at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
using electronic mail. It is not necessary to send a hard copy of your
resume. We are currently reviewing resumes and will contact you for an
interview if your background and qualifications closely match the needs of
the department. All resumes will be considered for one year.

We appreciate your interest in the Museum.

Human Resources Department
Philadelphia Museum of Art

(i sent my letter to info@, visitor services, human resources, development, and the women's committee [whatever that is ... rich white ladies from chestnut hill, no doubt]. this is what i received from hr. do they even read their emails??)

breastfeeding at the philadelphia museum of art

2006-12-03T16:49:00.000-05:00

To Whom It May Concern:

I am a long-standing member of the Art Museum, and I am planning to make an additional contribution toward the effort to keep "The Gross Clinic" in Philadelphia. The Art Museum is one of my favorite places in the City, and my children and I are frequent visitors.

I am also a breastfeeding mother, a La Leche League leader, a member of the Philadelphia Breastfeeding Coalition, and an attorney. I was very disturbed recently to learn that a mother visiting the Museum was asked to move out of a gallery into a cold and drafty stairwell to breastfeed her infant.

Surely the Art Museum is aware that Philadelphia City Ordinance 1996 Amends Section 9-1105 of the Fair Practices Code, making it an unlawful public accommodations practice to prohibit a breastfeeding mother from, or segregate a breastfeeding mother within, any public accommodation where she would otherwise be authorized to be, whether or not the nipple of the mother's breast is covered during or incidental to breastfeeding.

I feel certain that the Art Museum does not have a policy on breastfeeding in public that knowingly puts it in violation of the Fair Practices Code. Therefore, I am assuming that this unfortunate incident occurred because the Museum has not adequately trained its employees about the Museum's legal obligation to allow mothers to breastfeed anywhere they please in the Museum.

If you have already implemented such a training program, please let me know so that I can rest assured that the Museum is in compliance with the law and supports breastfeeding mothers and their children. If you have not already implemented such a program, please let me know how I can be helpful in that regard. I would be very happy to put you in touch with attorneys and lactation educators who could not only inform your employees of the rights of breastfeeding mothers, but also the overwhelming public health benefits that accrue from the public support of breastfeeding.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Marta [last name deleted]

"Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce... have sons and daughters .... seek the welfare of the city ... for in its welfare you will find your welfare."

Jeremiah 29:6-7

some context for my thinking about race and class: the early years

2006-11-16T19:57:00.000-05:00

it occurs to me that if i am going to think out loud here about race and class, i should offer up some context.

i am white and middle class. my parents are white, and both first generation middle class. my late mother (beatrix, aka trixie) was born into nazi-occupied amsterdam and, at age 14, immigrated to flint, michigan via indonesia (where my grandfather spent the war in a japanese concentration camp) and sweden (where my grandmother, marta, was from). my grandparents moved to the united states with three children and nothing else; they were classic pull-yourself-up-from-your-bootstrap immigrants and good eisenhower republicans. my grandfather (henry, micah's middle name) had a 6th grade education and a profound work ethic, and he eventually became the manager of the flint city club, where flint's elites wined and dined. he spent hours each night with my mom pouring over her homework, and she graduated near the top of her class, even though she spoke almost no english when she started high school.

my dad was the forth of five boys. his father worked in a bank, but not as an executive. his mother was stretched thin and deeply unhappy, i believe. they were democrats in the way that everyone in the working class was a democrat in those days, and episcopalians in the way that everyone was some sort of church-goer in those days. they moved out of detroit, michigan, when my dad was in elementary school in one of the first waves of white flight. neither of my granparents finished high school, and my dad was the first in the family to go to college.

both of my parents had an intellectual and political awakening in college, where they met, and especially in graduate school in ann arbor, where they became sort of quasi-hippy intellectuals. i went to kindergarten at martin luther king elementary school in ann arbor (just two years after king was killed), but i have very few memories of that year, and i have no recollection of whether any of my classmates were black. we moved the next year to lafayette, indiana, where my dad became a professor of linguistics and my mom a graduate student in comparative literature. everyone in our circle of friends and in my elementary school was white and middle class, as far as i can recall.

when i was in sixth grade, my dad did not get tenure, and decided to leave academia and move to the country. he took up carpentry, a trade he had learned with great skill from his brother. my mother kept at her doctoral program for awhile, but eventually got a job as a high school english and german teacher; she would finally finish her degree when i was a sophomore in college. i went to middle school and high school in a conservative, rural, all-white community in the heart of bible-belt indiana. my parents struggled financially during those years, putting us in good company with many folks in that community. intellectually and politically, though, i did not fit in at all.

despite being fairly solidly middle class, politically left-of-center, and highly educated, my parents never managed to acquire a class sensibility that i associate with middle class, educated liberals. my childhood was full of books and robust political debates, and my earliest memories include marching against vietnam, singing "we shall overcome," and one summer given entirely over to my parents' obsession with the watergate hearings. but there was no npr playing at our house, my dad drank old wisconsin club (by the case, until he stopped drinking altogether) and my mom made cheese sauce with velveeta and drank generic instant coffee. we rarely ate out, and never at a restaurant where you had to worry about which fork to use. when my mother got an interview for a fulbright scholarship, she had nothing to wear, and bought a hideous blue and red plaid polyester pantsuit of which she was inordinately proud. my dad loved classical music, but it was only for special occasions, not background noise, and we never, ever went to the symphony. i'm even more solidly middle class than my parents were, every bit as liberal and pretty much as educated, yet my parents' lack of a liberal-educated class sophistication is something i carry with me.

stay tuned for part two: "not bad for a hoosier": the college years

some thoughts on race: first in an occassional series

2006-11-09T08:30:00.000-05:00

i really want to join the chorus of voices thinking about race these days (and i'm sure there are many more), but i'm just not sure where to start. there was a time in my life when race felt very easy to talk about, even though it was far from an easy topic. what i mean is that it was a very complicated topic which i felt very much at ease discussing. make sense? my experience of race and racism was largely academic and theoretical, and no doubt that was a very important entree into a much more concrete and lived experience of race and racism that has further informed my thinking in the last decade an a half. i have certainly found that both experiences -- theoretical and lived -- shape one another in significant ways.

unfortunately, i'm finding that the more i live out the messy, complicated issues of race and racism in this culture (the ones that i used to just think and study about), the less easy it is to talk about. i think that is unfortunate because i believe we need to talk more about race in this country, not less. about that i am sure.

so i hope that in the months to come, i hope to be venturing into these waters. i am acutely aware that this is a difficult topic, all the more so because people don't know me, so it is not possible for you, my readers, to assume shared values. that makes the sort of shorthand one can often have with friends when discussing difficult topics, well, difficult.

along the way i will try to share more of my own background and experiences, so that folks can have a better idea where i am coming from. i hope that if i deviate from what seems to me to be a liberal/academic white script about race, you will not jump to all sorts of ugly conclusions.

to be continued...

so much to blog about ....

2006-11-08T10:50:00.000-05:00

so little time!

a lot of good stuff happening irl:

i had so much fun cavorting with my pals sara and cate, who were in town for a conference this weekend. i wish they lived closer, sigh. the are both an inspiration to me. (cate's fans should check out this homage.)

i finished julie's sweater, zipper and all -- pix to follow soon. this is my first grown-up sweater and has been in the making for many years, so i'm pretty pleased with myself!

but of course, the biggest and best news is that christianist-fascist rick santorum no longer purports to represent me in the united states senate (woo-hoo!!), and that the republicans no longer control the house (as i write, control of the senate is still up in the air, and may be for some time). this is indeed good, good news.

two things i want to blog about soon:

faith, fate and adoption
race, poverty and white anti-racism work

remember when i said i wasn't going to write about big ideas anymore? yeah.

weighing in on madonna and child

2006-10-25T19:32:00.000-05:00

i've been taking a wait-and-see attitude about madonna's adoption of an african child. i think it's easy to jump on the celebrity-bashing bandwagon, and i saw an awful lot of folks who don't know jack about international adoption ethics spouting some pretty strong opinions on an issue they've never given a second thought to before they read about it in some tabloid or celebrity gossip site . that bugs me.

i'll admit i don't actually know all that much about international adoption, although i'm learning. there was a time when i felt pretty superior to international adopters, to whom i self-righteously assigned all sorts of bad motives for choosing international over domestic adoption. as in most areas where i have formed strong, black and white opinions -- especially when they are not fully informed and when they are fueled by self-righteousness -- i have come to feel quite humbled by some pretty awsome folks who struggle with a whole host of issues i don't even know about, and who do it with incredible integrity.

so i'm not quick to jump on the celebrity-adopter-bashing bandwagon. my feeling is that celebrities get to build families too, and get to have all sorts of reasons for wanting to do so, and while the issues they face and how they can deal with them with integrity will certainly be shaped by their celebrity status, i'm generally going to be slow to judge without a lot of facts that i can be pretty sure are not distorted by our collective glee in tearing down celebrities just for the sake of it.

(and then there's the fact that madonna's music takes me right back, and can still make an afternoon of cleaning, or a long run, pure joy.)

but still. at some point even i feel like i have enough information to form a judgement, and here it is: i think this adoption pretty much highlights everything that is wrong with international adoption. i find it deeply deeply troubling. here's why:

there are lots of good reasons to want to adopt a child. unlike some adoption theorists/critics, i believe that wanting to help a child have a better life can be among them. helping a child have a better life is quite different in my mind than wanting to "save" a child. i don't believe that wanting to "save" a child is ever a good motivation for adopting a child. and i don't even think that wanting to help a child have a better life should be your first or primary motivation for adopting. first must be the desire to build a family. of course, i can't know madonna's heart, but it doesn't seem to me that she woke up one day and said, "i really don't think my family is done. i really want to mother another child. i'm going to spend some time learning about the ways i could bring another child into my family. if i do decide to bring another child into my family, and i do it through adoption, it will be important to find a child who will struggle with a very difficult life if he is not adopted." to me, that would be okay. somehow, i don't think that's the process that led madonna to adopt this particular boy.
when adopting, i believe that celebrities have an added burden, because of their celebrity status, to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, and not to take advantage of their celebrity. that means you don't get to work around the law. (of course nobody should, celebrity or not; i just think celebrities have an added burden to be ethical on this front precisely because it is so much more likely that the rules will be bent for them.)
if you spend about three minutes doing research on the ethics of international adoption, you know that one of the biggest ethical problems is that many of parents who are releasing their children for adoption have a very different understanding of what adoption means than westerners do. i believe that at the very least, western adopters have an obligation to make sure that the parents of the children they are adopting really understand the finality of what they are doing when they release their children to be adopted. clearly madonna did not do that with the father of the child she is planning to adopt. that means either that she did not do enough research about international adoption to know this is an issue (i.e. she didn't bother at all), or she knows this is an issue and just didn't care. either way, this is probably the thing that disturbs me the most.

guilty pleasures

2006-10-24T20:15:00.000-05:00

sunday evening julie and i went to see the queen, which i l*o*v*e*d. i will admit to a certain fascination with the british royal family -- when i was 7 or 8, i made my mom get me up at 4:00 a.m. so i could watch princess anne's wedding. and of course you can bet that as a teen-ager i was all over princess diana. i remember where i was when she got engaged (visiting friends in maine), and i remember vividly where i was when i heard she had died. it was sunday morning of the church retreat, and we were in the dining room waiting for breakfast. one of old first's many lively characters, ed, had joined us that year. as i sat down at one of the long picnic table benches with baby trixie, ed told us that princess diana had died, and he declared, "the pavarotti got her! the pavarotti got her!" i was a little skeptical about the whole thing -- ed didn't strike me as the most reliable source, and the fact that he was claiming some sort of involvement in diana's death on the part of luciano pavarotti seemed to me a little bit far-fetched. it took me several minutes to realize that he meant the "paparazzi got her!" not "the pavarotti!"

other guilty pleasures: a long-standing fascination with brooke shields (i did read her book on post-partum depression, although i didn't buy it; it only took about an hour to read the whole thing while sitting on the floor of barnes and nobles, sipping coffee. the fact that it wasn't very good in no way diminished my fascination); a growing fascination with angelina jolie; kraft macaroni and cheese; cheetos; pizza king pizza (one mushroom and "pepperoni" and one "vegetable" every time i visit my dad -- only my indiana readers will appreciate this guilty pleasure!); cop shows (although i'm a bit of a cop show snob -- i could mostly skip law and order, but the wire and the sheild i'm totally addicted to); abba.

how 'bout you? what are your guilty pleasures?

knitting advice needed!

2006-10-24T20:13:00.000-05:00

can anyone give me, or direct me to, a simple, easy-to-follow explanation of how best to sew a zipper into a sweater? julie's sweater -- the one i've been working on for years, and my first adult-sized sweater -- is done except for the zipper. just in time for the cold snap!

bad la leche league leader!

2006-10-22T16:32:00.000-05:00

i went to the regional la leche league conference on friday night and saturday, and was completely and unapologetically self-indulgent! i booked a hotel room by myself on friday night, even though i could easily have left my house saturday morning at 6:30 a.m. and arrived in plenty of time for the first session. then, i shamelessly skipped all the leader meetings/celebrations (lll is 50 years old this year) and instead stayed in my room, eating junk food from the vending machine, drinking wine, watching csi and law and order reruns, and knitting. i slept for eight uninterrupted hours, had breakfast delivered to my room, went to four really interesting sessions, talked to almost no one but the one phila co-leader who was at the conference (and whom i really like), and then left. bliss.

i have to admit that the leaders at the eastern pennsylvania la leache league conference sort of scare me. have you ever heard the joke about how pennsylvania has philadelphia on one end, pittsburgh on the other, and alabama in the middle? yeah. like that. when i went to the conference two years ago, just before the 2004 election, the hotel parking lot was a sea of george bush bumper stickers. i kid you not.

i am very ambivalent about la leche league. and not just because the (catholic homeschooling mom of six, not to stereotype or anything) mid-penna leader in charge of leader applicants at the time i applied gave me a hugely hard time. apparently being a lesbian and an adoptive mom makes one categorically suspect when it comes to leadership. but that's not the main source of my ambivalence (just a lot of bitterness, lol!) -- maybe i'll blog about that more some other time. still and all, becoming a leader seemed to me at the time -- and still does, to be honest -- the best way to prepare for the sort of breastfeeding advocacy that i think may become my career someday. and going to the sorts of sessions i went to saturday confirms that for me; they were awsome, and the ibclc's (international board certified lactation consultants) who led those sessions -- lll leaders all of them, some for 35 or 40 years -- were truly inspiring.

still, no apologies for holing away in my hotel room and knitting! it was just what i needed, and i think i shall do it more often.

hot on the heels of the blasphemy post ....

2006-10-19T20:35:00.000-05:00

a post about spiritual gift assessment, in which marta discerns her spiritual gifts and discovers that she is in fact, the devil incarnate. and perhaps finds a new vocation.

my church is in a time of transition from an outdated organizational structure to a new vision that we hope will be more fluid, more welcoming, more spiritually enriching, and more mission-centered. the old structure, which worked well for years, invovled a fairly complicated committee structure (a history committee, membership and growth, worship and music, christian education, stewardship and finance, outreach, etc. etc.). there were six members on each committee (regardless of how much the committee did) and each member served two years, with two rotating off each year (regardless of people's passion or gifts). there was a nominating committee, which in its best incarnation tried to discern the gifts of the congregation and lead folks to the appropriate committee; in its worst incarnation it made cajoling phone calls which everyone involved dreaded, pleading with folks to serve on this or that committee.

this structure hasn't been working so much lately. people are saying yes to being on a committee, but then just not showing up for meetings. some committees just don't meet at all. meanwhile, unofficial ad hoc groups and some officially sanctioned "task forces" have risen up to do the work of the church about which people feel passionate. but still, most of the work is being done by a few core members, while new folks can't figure out how to get connected and end up fading away.

so last winter, the church commissioned a group of folks to study, pray, and discern a new direction/structure. we were commissioned as "the reorganization task force" but have come to call ourselves the "circle of friends." we're now in the process of introducing the vision for the church that we discerned over a period of about eight months, a direction we hope the church can get behind and begin to feel excited about.

i won't go into a lot of detail right now, but one of the major precepts of this vision is that the ministries of the church should spring up from the gifts and calling that members feel they have been given by god. so, if there is a group of people who feel called to serve the homeless, and who have the gifts to do that, then they should be empowered to do so. they should be given the authority and the responsibility to make that ministry work. those who feel this calling should not have to cycle out of this ministry because their two years on the outreach committee is up, to be replaced by someone else who actually feels a calling to teach sunday school, but who has been made to feel obliged to serve the homeless for the next two years because we need to fill that committee slot.

obviously part of this vision involves helping folks discern their spiritual gifts. a few members of our group have chosen a spiritual gift assessment tool to help us in this work. this tool is obviously directed at christians. i think with not too much interpretation, it could be used by any person of faith; with just a little bit more interpretation, it could be used even by someone completely secular. go check it out; i would be interested to see what you think.

my own assessment has confirmed and crystalized for me something that i have been coming to understand about myself for a year or so now: i am an administrator. now you have to understand that i come from a family of often-embattled teachers (mom, dad, partner, brother, sister-in-law), and was, in fact, one myself once (the first in a series of failed careers ... more on that in a minute). if you know any good teachers in most school districts or universities in, well, the universe, you know that administrators are the devil. the source of all evil. the bane of ones existence. the main obstacle in the way of actually accomplishing anything. the best you can hope for is that they will leave you alone, let you shut your door and teach. so, yeah, i greet the news that i am an administrator with some chagrin.

but there you have it, that's what i am: seeing the big picture, holding a vision, making a plan to get there; organizing ideas and people; keeping track of information and paying attention to the details; motivating, supporting, moving things forward, getting the work done -- that's what i love. this realization has been creeping up on me for a couple of years, actually; scoring 100% in the area of administration on the assessment tool only confirmed it.

i'm also realizing what i've been doing wrong all these years, trying to find a vocation/career. i've always focused on the issues about which i feel passionate, rather than thinking about what skills i actually bring to those issues.

for example, i'm passionate about public education, and i love literature and writing, so i thought i should be a teacher. and i loved everything about being a teacher -- planning lessons, thinking about the big picture, keeping up with the research, putting together really interesting units -- everything except actually getting up in front of real live students and, well, teaching. that i didn't love so much.

i'm passionate about justice so i thought i should be a lawyer. not surprisingly, i loved law school -- that's all about reading, research, writing, thinking about and discussing "big ideas." law school for me turned out to be an important crucible for thinking about race, among other issues. i always assumed i would be some sort of public interest lawyer, maybe a civil rights litigator. except the idea of the courtroom holds absolutely no interest for me. at all. i spent two years clerking for a judge, and was perfectly happy doing research and writing opinions, but the time i spent in the courtroom -- which for most clerks was the whole point? i. hated. it. later i moved on to an employee benefits practice, which was interesting to me because it's really complicated, arcane, tax-driven. but actually serving clients? real, live clients with questions that affected real live lives? not so much.

i'm passionate about breastfeeding, so i thought i should be a lactation consultant. as a step along the way i became a la leche league leader. but you know what? i don't really love helping real live moms with their real live breastfeeding issues. i don't look forward to staffing the helpline. i don't feel particularly skilled at leading meetings. direct service is just not my forte, not the thing that makes my heart sing.

now, instead of starting out with a topic i feel passionate about, i'm thinking about the skills i can bring to those issues. this may seem ridiculously obvious -- certainly i am asking myself why it took me so long to figure this out -- but for me it such a different way to think about what sort of career i might pursue one day.

these days i'm looking down the road and thinking about putting together a coalition of providers and researchers to study ways to overcome the barriers to successful breastfeeding experienced by poor, urban women of color. it's just a seed of a notion right now, but i'm clear that i'm not interested in providing direct service. instead, i realize that my greatest contribution would be as a writer and administrator of a grant.

so, what are your spiritual gifts? how do they or don't they correspond with your carrer/vocation?

taking the lord's name in vain

2006-10-19T12:58:00.000-05:00

apparently i do it on a regular basis.

yesterday around 5:00, micah wanted to go outside and ride his bike. his friend a., who was over to play, was eating a bowl of peanuts and raisins (a staple snack in our house). she didn't want to play because she wanted to keep eating. micah was pretty tired, being "napless is seattle" as we say, so i was expecting a huge meldown. instead he went into the kitchen and started rummaging around in the drawer where we keep boxes of plastic bags, aluminum foil, wax paper, etc., along with lots of used plastic bags just stuffed in willy-nilly. it took me a minute, but i figured out he was getting a. a bag to put her snack in, so she could take it outside. great solution, i thought, and let him rummage a bit more. but alas, the drawer is so over-stuffed that sometimes the boxes of bags get stuck. micah's rummaging got progressively more frantic, and finally he started wailing "jesus! JESUS! jesus!jesus!jesus!"

i'm pretty sure he was not saying a little prayer.

a week in the life: a series in seven parts

2006-10-18T15:15:00.000-05:00

wednesday

micah slept through the night from 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. (he only woke once, before i went to bed, and only needed a 10 second pat to fall asleep, so i don't count that as not sleeping through the night.) even though i could have slept until 7:00 a.m., i woke up at 6:30, as i do without fail these days. i'd rather have the sleep, but if i can't have that, it's nice to read the paper and drink a cup of coffee before the kids get up.
i made julie lunch, got micah dressed, got the kids breakfast, made trixie lunch, pushed trixie out the door and into the carpool, took a shower, and dropped micah off at school. home by 9:15, i set about accomplishing the following list:

call jo re: la leche league meeting tomorrow and to confirm playdate this afternoon
write a letter to the redevelopment authority about our urban garden
call peco about the double electric bill we received this month
go through stacks of stuff
send email re: a presentation i'm making during services on sunday
send email to ceo re: capital campaign goals at trixie's school
send quick bread recipe to someone at church for use in meeting i'm co-leading
schedule interviews for several candidates to the board of trustees at trixie's school
bake quick bread
do laundry
call mari
review document prepared by a colleague related to church presentation
clean kitchen
clean kitchen
clean bathroom
take the rug to the cleaner (micah spilled a beer)
call a mom at the nursery who asked me to switch co-oping days
call or email my bro and sil about winter holidays
pay parking ticket

items completed are in blue.... i guess that's about half, sigh. three hours flies by so fast.
at noon i picked up micah, we got some pizza and met jo and sophia at the playground. we haven't seen them for far too long, so that was fabulous.
at 2:30 we picked up a., the little girl i took care of the last two years. she's in preschool now, but we pick her up early on wednesdays to avoid a really long day, and so micah and i can have some time with her. then on to the school to pick up trixie and chauffer the car pool kids where they are headed.
3:30 to 4:15 the kids watched some pbs kids and jumped on my bed while i checked email and began composing this post.
4:15 a. accidentally poked micah in the eye and things deteriorated quickly. we went downstairs to read stories.
4:30 julie arrived home, half an hour earlier than usual, and took the kids out to ride bikes. i lay on the couch and read about barak obama in a magazine, then joined julie 15 minutes later with beers.
at 5:00 i could no longer stand the way the older boys on the block were playing at execution-style gun violence with a fairly realistic-looking play dart gun; the way a group of young black men who routinely smoke pot, drink and listen to loud music were hanging out on the stoop, watching the kids without comment; or the way that micah was watching the whole thing with rapt attention. we all went inside and read stories.
k. came to pick up a., and micah and a. had nursies while k. and i commiserated about a couple of really troubling households on the block that are making things feel really unsafe. she, her husband, and a. are white, and are in the process of adopting an african-american child. we ruminated about the fact that we always believed that our neighborhood was an ideal place for us to raise black children, but sometimes lately we're not so sure...
the time got away from me, and sudenly it was 5:45 -- just enough time to heat up some left-overs before julie had to leave for a volunteer phone-calling gig with moveon.org.
micah was asleep by 7:30, trixie happily engrossed in a website associated with the warrior cat series she and the twin boys down the block are obsessed by (they trade books back and forth daily). i got in the bath and finished reading about barak obama (i continue to be pretty impressed by him).
i traded places with trixie and while she lounged in the bath, i read her a bit of the hobbit, which is taking us an inordinately long amount of time to get through. we're enjoying it a lot, but it's not a harry potter-esque page turner.
8:45 trixie is tucked in bed.
waiting for julie's return, i accomplished a few more things on my list (in red). also followed up on some emails.
10:00 CSI New York.
11:00 bed.

some of my favorite people: a series in potentially infinite parts

2006-10-15T13:58:00.000-05:00

cate

i've only met cate in real life four times (soon to be five!!). at least i think that's right ... it doesn't seem possible! we don't talk on the phone much at all. but i can't imagine my life without her.

i first "met" cate around eight or nine years ago on the gay and lesbian parenting board at parentsplace -- or was it parentsoup? -- before they were both gobbled up by ivillage. trixie was a baby, and cate and her partner were in the process of thinking about trying to conceive (cate is nothing if not a meticulous researcher!). roughly around the time they actually got started, we were thinking about number two. unfortunately, both our journeys involved infertility, and therefore a lot of anxiety and grief. fortunately, our journeys overlapped. fortunately for me, anyway, because when i look back over those years, i simply don't know how i could have done it without cate. we emailed every day, often multiple times a day. she knew so much about options and treatment possibilities, and had such a gentle, respectful way of sharing those with me without being pushy or making me feel bad when we ultimately made quite different choices than she had. julie called her my infertility doula.

i think for me one of the many difficult aspects of infertility was how isolating it was. it wasn't just that all of my friends were *freakishly* fertile; it's just that infertility is so fundamentally impossible to share. it's not that people are insensitive, or thoughtless -- i suppose some are, but that wasn't my friends, who genuinely grieved with me and were deeply sad about my difficulties -- it's just so deeply private and existential. it was even difficult for julie to know how to be supportive, difficult for her to understand how deeply and in what complicated ways infertility undercut so much of who i thought i was. and of course, each woman experiences infertility in her own way; there were many infertile women whose experience didn't connect with mine at all. but cate, cate was not only there, every step of the way, but she really *got it.* it meant the whole world to me, and she will forever have a huge place in my heart.

cate eventually got -- and stayed! -- pregnant, with her fabulous twins, henry and eleanor (by coincidence, my kids' middle names!). she had a harrowing pregnancy and a pretty damn hard birth, and the first few months (years? decades?) with twins are, well, as cate puts it, "extreme parenting." but even through all that she was so there for me. she continued to celebrate, in such a heart-felt way, our family-building when we turned to adoption. at one point we were feeling very discouraged and limited in our options; cate gently sent me a ton of research she had done about agencies in her area that might offer more options. when i said that our financial resources made those options unlikely, she offered, on the spot, to loan us pretty much anything we would need. to be paid back whenever we could. ("we'll just need it when the kids go to college.") at this point, i think i had met cate, live and in person, all of one or two times. can you imagine? in the end, we didn't need to take her up on her offer, but for a time it made everything feel so much better, knowing that we had that option.

perhaps my favorite way that cate has supported my family is through donating breastmilk when my stash had run out. i never developed a full supply for micah, but i had been pumping for a long time before he joined our family, so between my own supply (two-thirds to three-quarters of what he needed) and my extensive freezer stash (around 1200 ounces), i was able to exclusively breastfeed him until he was six months (i used a devise called a supplemental nursing system, or sns, to supplement him at the breast). around that time, cate went to a conference and fedexed me all the milk she had pumped! and let me tell you, this twin mama made a lot of milk! her donation and another local friend who was pumping for me got us through another month or so before we started supplementing with formula. then a couple of months later, cate offered to meet us at a hotel in new jersey where her partner was staying for a work meeting so that she could give me a cooler full of her freezer stash ("i really don't have any room for it, and the twins aren't drinking breastmilk in their sippies at school anymore.") and then she figured out a way to use some of her partner's frequent hotel user points to get us a free room.

if it weren't enough that cate is thoughtful, kind, generous, a meticulous researcher (she knows more about infertility than lots of medical professionals), and an awesome mom -- there's more! she's also an exquisitely talented fiber artist (addict? ;-). her work is truly inspiring. go check out her blog, mamacate, where you can usually find photos of her latest projects. and her really cute kids. and these days, the fabu addition being built on her house.

in a couple of weeks, cate -- and another friend from our gl parenting board days at parentsplace, sara of saraskates -- are coming to phila for a conference! can i tell you how excited i am??

2006-10-14T16:34:00.000-05:00

dean mcdermott's "adopted daughter" lola

2006-10-14T13:07:00.000-05:00

Dear Editor of the [Philadelphia Inquirer] Newsmakers column:

I read Newsmakers daily, and I have noticed that it is your policy always to note that a celebrity's child is adopted, even when the story has nothing to do with adoption. It also appears to be your policy to do that by putting the adjective "adopted" in front of the word "son" or "daughter," such as in today's column, which notes that Dean McDermott has a son, Jack, and an adopted daughter, Lola.

I am wondering if you can clarify for me why you have this policy? I have two children whom I adopted, and I certainly think that adoption is a wonderful thing, and something that we in our family are very open about and celebrate. However, if you asked me to describe my relationship to my children and what it means for us to be a family, the fact that my children are adopted would only be one salient fact among many. Other salient facts would include that my daughter was conceived through donor insemination, and that my son is Black while the rest of us are white, for example. Yet if I were ever to make it into the Newsmakers column, I doubt you would describe me as "Marta, who has a donor insemination daughter and a Black son." So, if you wouldn't do that, why do you use the modifier "adopted" as a matter of course?

I'm not actually asking this rhetorically. It seems that this is a very common practice in the newspaper industry -- Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's kids, for example, are always identified as adopted, as are Chief Justice Roberts' kids, and on and on. I know this is a practice that drives many parents crazy, so I'm sure I'm not the first person to point it out to you. And I doubt that you will stop simply because I have brought it to your attention as being, at best, kind of stupid, and at worse, deeply offensive. So, I guess I'm really just wondering -- why?

Thanks for your time,

Marta

********************

i never received a reply to this letter, but since i sent it, there has only been one mention of a kid whom i happen to know is adopted, and he was simply identified as angelina jolie and brad pitt's son, maddox. i don't think i've ever seen that kid (or any other adopted kid) identified that way, so maybe they've changed their policy? i'm a newsmakers junkie, so i'm keeping tabs.

who's imitating whom?

2006-10-13T19:39:00.000-05:00

we hear so much about how the fashion industry's obsession with thinness is so detrimental to the healthy body image of young girls, and i think that's absolutely true. even my relatively media-free braniac 9-year old who disdains popular girl culture is worried that she's fat.

but it occurs to me that the horror of the size zero obsession is not just that our little girls are too often and at an ever-earlier age trying to imitate super-models; it's that our super-skinny super-models are trying to imitate little girls. heroin chic? how about pedophilia chic? this morning i was watching some of the little girls at micah's pre-school, one four year old in particular, and i thought "wow, she's got a super-model body!" and then i thought, "no, she's got a little girl body, and that's what the size zero super-models are after." i know this is not a new thought, but the whole catering-to-latent-(and no doubt not-so-latent)-pedophile-fantasies just creeped me out in that moment, as i watched these really lovely, totally unselfconscious little girls deciding whether they wanted to be the bell ringer today or the handy helper.

payback's a bitch

2006-10-11T20:52:00.000-05:00

the cost of dinner and drinks with really fun work colleagues at cuba libre: what? $30, $40?

a ticket to see "a prayer for owen meany" with your ap students and said fun colleagues at the arden theater: around $30 or so.

a partner who is at home, with the kids, figuring your interim grade reports which are due tomorrow?

so, what is priceless going for these days? any suggestions?

riddles on hawk mountain

2006-10-09T19:31:00.000-05:00

we spent a glorious day hiking on hawk mountain today. julie, micah, trixie, trixie's friend m. and i headed out on a four-plus mile loop, but it turned out to be much more difficult hiking than we thought -- basically, most of the hike was through boulder fields created during the last ice age. very cool, but as it turned out, too much for micah. so a mile or so in, julie and micah broke off on what we thought would be an easier and quicker way back to the visitor's center (in the end, they got back after we did, having climbed practically straight up a rock face -- which, wouldn't you know, was the only part where micah *didn't* melt down. in fact he *loved* it; the simple walking along the wide, smooth path along the ridge, not so much...).

the girls and i continued on our original route, but cut maybe half a mile off by taking a short-cut near the end.

trix and m. are two peas in a pod: brainy girls on the nerdy side, pretty much oblivious of the girl culture swirling about them (and to the extent they are aware, pretty much disdainful of it). they both read, a lot, and mostly in the fantasy/magic/anthropomorphized animal genre.

they are also both great hikers.

here's what we did to pass the time:

what is black and white and read all over? (i realize that one only works orally.)

what walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?

railroad crossing, look out for cars, how do you spell it without any r's?

the person who made it doesn't want it, the person who bought it doesn't need it, and the person who is using it doesn't know they're using it.

so you're driving a bus, and the bus driver is wearing a green shirt. at the first stop, 5 people get on the bus; at the second stop 3 get off; at the third stop 2 get on; and at the fourth stop everyone gets off. what color are the bus driver's eyes? (also better orally.)

but this one was the best, a riddle from my childhood that totally stumped me, but i was *sure* these two girls would find the answer obvious. alas they didn't.

a father, who is a doctor, is driving with his son to the hospital where the father works. while crossing a railroad track, their car is hit by a train and the father is killed instantly. the son is rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. the surgeon walks in and says, "i can't operate on this child, he's my son!"

trixie immediately suggested that the boy had two fathers, but the other possibility totally eluded both of them.

sigh.

some of my favorite people: a series in potentially infinite parts

2006-10-07T21:33:00.000-05:00

pat

i've known pat for over 10 years, and i remember precisely when i met her. julie was teaching junior high at a private school in philadelphia, which had just expanded into a new space, and julie was painting her new room. one of the parents, eileen, was helping; eileen is the sort of person who has exquisite taste and boundless energy, and is constantly repainting her own house. she was acting as interior design consultant to julie, and they had picked out a gorgeous yellow for the walls and a smooth periwinkle blue for the trim. we were all there painting -- was it summer? or on a saturday? anyway, eileen roped her cousin pat to come help; pat's daughter was about to start kindergarten at the school. so my first image of pat is on her knees painting trim.

it started out that eileen was really our friend, and pat just sort of hung out with us sometimes, but at some point the balance of the friendships shifted. we still adore eileen, but really, pat is the one who set up camp in our hearts. she's warm, funny, sexy, smart -- all with just the perfect edge to keep all that wonderfulness from being cloying.

pat is a psychiatric nurse, and she has x-ray vision into the deepest darkest depths of your psyche. in like ten minutes flat, no kidding. i've seen her do it over and over again -- she'll meet a friend of ours, or a member of the family, at a gathering, and spend maybe ten minutes talking to them. the next time we see her, she launches into a full psychiatric evaluation that is spot on. it's occurred to me that having a friend like that could be really intimidating -- i mean, what does she think of me, anyway? but i know she loves me, and she's got one of the biggest, most open, most generous hearts of anyone i know. so even when her insights are a bit brutal, it never feels like she's judging.

pat is part of a big, irish-catholic family, and while i know for a fact that her clan has as much craziness and disfunction as the next family, from my vantage point not-quite-on-the-inside-but-almost (that's the sort of folks they are, especially pat and her cousins, eileen and rose -- no matter how infrequently they see you, they always welcome you into the circle of their family as though you are long-lost kin), i yearn to be part of something just like that. the women are all warm and maternal, but with dry humors and sharp tongues to take any sentimental edge off. their husbands are each in their ways the salt of the earth -- the kind of men who give you faith that maybe the world is going to turn out okay. the kids are all drop-dead gorgeous and the kind of kids you hope yours will grow up to be.

at any gathering of pat and her family you can be sure to be well-fed at a table prepared and arranged with exquisite attention to detail. there will be fresh flowers and linens and good wine, but you will never, ever worry about which fork to use when. there will be toasts that are so funny and thoughtful and perfectly delivered that you will wish you could be the guest of honor some day, to hear folks say such nice things about you. you may worry that you have over-stayed your welcome, but not too much, and you'll stay anyway, because who would ever want to leave?

pat is deeply catholic, down to the marrow in her bones, and is one of just a few catholic friends who have made the struggle to keep being catholic make perfect sense to me. and it is a struggle. i always attend easter vigil with pat at the very progressive catholic church in my neighborhood (it's a gorgeous liturgy). last spring she and a bunch of other women staged a protest about women's ordination; more recently pat attended the ordination of several women priests, one of whom is a friend of hers. our shared faith is one of my favorite things to talk about with pat; i always come away feeling spiritually fed.

pat struggles with demons, as we all do, and while i'm not sure of the all the details, i suspect pat's demons are of the uglier-than-average sort. i sometimes worry, when we fall out of touch for months at a time that she's having a rough patch, and that i'm not being as good a friend as i should. pat is a caretaker extrordinare, someone for whom i'm sure it's hard to ask for help. it's so easy -- blissfully easy -- to let her take care of me; it's harder to know how to return the favor. it's something i mean to be more mindful of.

pat is one of my favorite people indeed. if she weren't happily married to a really wonderful man, and if i weren't happily married to a really wonderful woman, pat would definitely be on my short list of folks to fall in love with.

the three best things

2006-10-05T17:43:00.000-05:00

the three best things i've ever done for myself, excluding personal relationships that are just too obvious (i.e. relationships with spouse, children, other family, friends, god):

1. run the philadelphia half-marathon (i also ran the philadelphia marathon a couple of months later, but it was not nearly as exhilerating);

2. walk away from a job/career that i was good at and which paid an obscene amount of money, because it did not feed my soul;

3. breastfeed micah.

and you?

three hardest things

2006-10-04T10:53:00.000-05:00

the three hardest things i've ever experienced in my life, in order:

1. the grief of my mother's completely unexpected death when i was 24 and she was 50;
2. infertility;
3. struggling on a daily basis, in real and concrete ways, with staggeringly complicated issues of race and class.

how 'bout you?

2006-10-02T18:20:00.000-05:00

the hikers have returned!

2006-10-02T18:19:00.000-05:00

micah and i baked all day: whole wheat bread; apple pie; bacon and cheddar quiche; leek, asparagus and goat cheese quiche. yum!

update on sister in law

2006-10-02T13:17:00.000-05:00

it's bad news, but it's good bad news. my sister in law has dcis (ductal carcinoma in situ) -- it means the cells lining the ducts are involved, rather than the breast tissue/glands themselves. as i understand it, this is a "better" tumor to have, if one has to have any at all. the prognosis with radiation is very good.

thanks for all your good thoughts and prayers.

hiking the appalachian trail

2006-10-01T20:30:00.000-05:00

julie and trixie are sleeping on the appalachian trail tonight, having started their first big backpacking adventure yesterday around noon. julie's done a lot of backpacking, especially with kids, but this is trixie's first time hiking with a pack and camping on the trail. we hike a lot around the park near our house, and yesterday when they called me (they're up on a mountain ridge almost the whole way, near harrisburg, and having no trouble getting a signal) trixie swore "i'll never complain about hiking in the wissahickon again!" she sounded content and pleased with herself though. they had hiked about 6.5 miles, the first mile or so straight up the mountain, and they made it to a trail shelter before the rain started last night.

i had to quell a lot of far-fetched fears about rattle snakes and copper heads and various other sorts of calamaties that only i could imagine in order to let this happen, and i'm awfully glad i did. trixie is not a sporting sort of girl, but my hope is that she doesn't wait until she's 35 to find the athlete in herself. i told her this on our drive to the trail (we went up in two cars, leaving one at the end of their hike and then taking them on to the beginning before micah and i headed home). i told her how very much i understand her antipathy for team sports -- one of the many personality traits trixie and i share.

"i'm not going to try to convince you," i said, "that you might some day come to appreciate team sports. maybe you will, but i certainly never have."

"i HATE team sports!" she said with a sort of dramatic conviction that isn't entirely artless. "i hate the way you always feel like you're letting everyone down. and when you mess up, there's all these 'oh mans!' and people grumbling under their breath."

i nodded in total agreement. but i was about to launch into what felt like an obligatory treatise on how what really matters is that you do your best, when she cut me off before i could even get started:

"and what i REALLY hate is when they tell you 'it's okay, at least you tried! that was a great effort!' yeah, RIGHT," and she rolled her eyes.

"yeah," i had to agree, "that's the worst."

but i assured her that there are plenty of ways to be an athlete that don't involve team sports. i pointed out that the vast majority of runners have never run a marathon, and i have. me! the one who hates team sports with an abiding passion because i'm so entirely lacking in any sort of skill or confidence.

trixie seems to have inherited a double dose of my personality -- i *so* get her, whereas julie is often just left scratching her head. but physically trixie is practically a little clone of julie. julie's orthopedist has suggested that we *try* to get her to 50 before replacing her knees. she's 41 now, and we have our doubts she'll make it that long. so i doubt running will be trixie's sport -- i'm waiting for micah to get a little older, although i'm sure he'll be outpacing me (which isn't hard -- i didn't say i ran that marathon fast!) by the time he's six. but i think maybe hiking could be. it's certainly something we all love to do, and in just a couple of years, micah will be ready too. we have dreams of taking a sabbatical sometime when the kids are older and hiking the appalachian trail, taking the kids out of school and setting off on a six month adventure.

in the meantime, i'm thinking about finding someplace warm where we could do some hiking over christmas. i was thinking of hiking a little ways in somewhere, setting up a camp, and doing a couple of day hikes before hiking out -- i think micah could handle a six or seven mile hike if he didn't have a pack and we paced ourselves over a whole day.

any backpackers out there with ideas of where we should go? we will probably get enough christmas money from relatives to cover plane tickets just about anywhere, so the only requirements are warm, beautiful, and relatively easy hiking.

here's something i've been pondering

2006-09-26T17:35:00.001-05:00

several times recently i've read prospective adoptive parents say that they are only willing to consider an open adoption because they believe open adoption is best for their children.

i don't completely understand this.

i do, of course, believe open adoption is best for children, and ultimately everyone else in the adoption triad as well. in an ideal world -- at least an ideal world in which adoption still happens (putting aside the possibility that this is a contradiction in terms) -- all adoptions would be healthy, open ones.

but i don't understand how it's better for a child to be rejected by a potential adoptive family that is committed to openness, just because the first family doesn't want an open adoption. it seems to me that *all* children are better off in an adoptive family that is committed to openness. it seems to me that perhaps children whose first families want the adoption closed will *particularly* benefit from an adoptive family that is going to be sensitve to all the complex issues that arise when that child wants to find his or her first family.

i can certainly see how an open adoption could be best for adoptive parents who want to have that experience, and i think that's a valid reason for only being open to an open adoption. but i don't see how it's best for the children.

i'm not trying to create an argument here so much as i'm asking for clarification. i really just don't understand this reasoning (and it's possible i have the reasoning all wrong), but i would like to.

any thoughts?

a week in the life: a series in seven parts

2006-09-25T21:17:00.000-05:00

monday

in almost no respect has this been a normal monday. normally, i would pack micah off to school, spend the morning cleaning, catching up on laundry, making a grocery list; i would spend the afternoon after picking up micah shopping at the co-op, perhaps baking bread, fixing a special meal to be shared with kate and pete and ada down the street (i feed them on mondays, they feed us on thursdays).

instead, i'm recovering from a nasty stomach bug that had me throwing up all night friday, and had me worn out the rest of the weekend just walking across the room. this morning, trixie, micah and i managed to sleep in a bit because trixie had an appointment to have a couple of teeth pulled. except not so much: we arrived, she was perky, she headed back bravely with a stuffed animal in each hand ... and promptly refused to open her mouth. sigh. we'll try again, there's no real urgency, just a crowded mouth.

the rest of the day was pretty mundane: some time on the computer while micah watched a video; a hike in the woods with the kids after school; openning a couple of jars of canned (homemade at my dad's this summer) chile, defrosting some corn (from new jersey), boiling some macaronni. by the time dinner was done, half of it delivered down the street, i was feeling icky and took to my bed.

this afternoon we got news that julie's sister, who had a lumpectomy today, probably has breast cancer. the results won't be back for a day or two, but the surgeon is very concerned.

it hasn't been a great day.

Hunger, by Adrienne Rich

2006-09-25T13:57:00.000-05:00

--for Audre Lorde

1.

A fogged hill-scene on an enormous continent,
intimacy rigged with terrors,
a sequence of blurs the Chinese painter's ink-stick planned,
a scene of desolation comforted
by two human figures recklessly exposed,
leaning together in a sticklike boat
in the foreground. Maybe we look like this,
I don't know. I'm wondering
whether we even have what we think we have--
lighted windows signifying shelter,
a film of domesticity
over fragile roofs. I know I'm partly somewhere else--
huts strung across a drought-stretched land
not mine, dried breasts, mine and not mine, a mother
watching my children shrink with hunger.
I live in my Western skin,
my Western vision, torn
and flung to what I can't control or even fathom.
Quantify suffering, you could rule the world.

2.

They *can* rule the world while they can persuade us
our pain belongs in some order.
Is death by famine worse than death by suicide,
than a life of famine and suicide, if a black lesbian dies,
if a white prostitute dies, if a woman genius
starves herself to feed others,
self-hatred battening on her body?
Something that kills us or leaves us half-alive
is raging under the name of an "act of god"
in Chad, in Niger, in teh Upper Volta--
yes, that male god that acts on us and on our children,
that male State that acts on us and on our children
till our brains are blunted by malnutritiou,
yet sharpened by the passion for survival,
our powers expended daily on the struggle
to hand a kind of life on to our children,
to change reality for our lovers
even in a single trembling drop of water.

3.

We can look at each other through both our lifetimes
like those two figures in the sticklike boat
flung together in the Chinese ink-scene;
even our intimacies are rigged with terror.
Quantify suffering? My guilt at least is open,
I stand convicted by all my convictions--
you, too. We shrink from touching
our power, we shrink away, we starve ourselves
and each otehr, we're scared shitless
of what it could be to take and use our love,
hose it on a city, on a world,
to wield and guide its spray, destroying
poisons, parasites, rats, viruses--
like the terrible mothers we long and dread to be.

4.

The decision to feed the world
is the real decision. No revolution
has chosen it. For that choice requires
that women shall be free.
I choke on the taste of bread in North America
but the taste of hunger in North America
is poisoning me. Yes, I'm alive to write these words,
to leaf through Kollwitz's women
huddling the stricken children into their stricken arms
the "mothers" drained of milk, the "survivors" driven
to self-abortion, self-starvation, to a vision
bitter, concrete, and wordless.
I'm alive to want more than life,
want it for others starving and unborn,
to name the deprivations boring
into my will, my affections, into the brains
of daughters, sisters, lovers caught in the crossfire
of terrorists of the mind.
In the black mirror of the subway window
hangs my own face, hollow with anger and desire.
Swathed in exhaustion, on the trampled newsprint,
a woman shields a dead child from the camera.
The passion to be inscribes her body.
Until we find each other, we are alone.

********************

there's a lot of talk around the blogosphere right now about anger and pain in adoption. i'm not sure what this poem means in that context, but it came to me, and i thought i would share it. adrienne rich and audrey lorde were both very important to me in my heady days as an undergraduate, evolving as a feminist, newly a lesbian.

i'd love to know what you think.

a week in the life: a series in seven parts

2006-09-19T17:55:00.000-05:00

tuesday

micah woke up twice in the night, both times having to go to the bathroom with diarrhea. or maybe more accurately softer-than-usual and much more frequent stools. not sure what that's about, but it's wearing me out. we're in the process of getting him to sleep through the night in his own bed (previously he slept with me and julie slept elsewhere, which worked well in the getting plenty of sleep department, and not so much in the marta-and-julie-are-*married*-and-not-just-ships-passing-in-the-night department). it's going ... okay. the rule is he can't get in our bed until the sun comes up, and most nights he only wakes once or twice, and usually just needs the covers put over him and a pat. which i can pretty much do in my sleep. but for the past several nights it's been more like three or four times a night, and involves trips to the bathroom, and i often have a hard time falling back asleep. so, it's feeling a bit like having a newborn again, except that i was so much better able to cope when it was a newborn waking me every few hours. i was the poster mama for "this isn't so bad" and "this too shall pass." now i'm just a grump.

the other thing micah is doing is waking up early. really really early. this morning he was up at 5:00. i tried to get him back to sleep, bringing him to my bed even though the sun was decidedly not up (julie, however, was, on her way to an ungodly early spinning class at the y). but no go. just before six, trixie woke up (an hour earlier than usual, but who could blame her, what with all the racket micah was making, and my grumpy yelling and stomping around). i put them in front of a dvd and slept on the couch for another 45 minutes or so, which made me relatively human and able to cope for the day.

relatively. it was a bad morning. i managed to get trixie up and out the door by 7:50, when our neighbor leif took her and his two kids to school. leif is also on the board of the charter school where all our kids go, and he had a capital campaign meeting at 8:00, so needed her early. i was supposed to be at that meeting too, but have decided there is no way in hell i have time to run a capital campaign on top of everything else i'm doing, and i emailed the school's ceo to that effect. "sorry, won't be there today, maybe ever. love, marta." but then micah and i took to fighting, which was mostly me being pig-headed and cranky, plus a little of micah being ... micah. he threw his breakfast on the floor for no apparent reason. hit me and threw a toy when i put him in time out on the green chair. so it was up to his room for a more serious time-out, for both of us. then we fought about eating the breakfast he had thrown on the floor (he did finally eat most of it) and about cleaning up the markers he had dumped the day before. he tried to convince me that he is "too small. i'm just a little boy! i can't clean up the markers!" i tried to convince him that i would call kate and tell her that micah couldn't come down this morning and play with ada as planned if he didn't clean up. i'm not sure what i was going to do if that didn't work, because i was *desperate* to take him to kate's, but it did work, and i dropped him off for a couple of hours.

i came home, poured my first cup of coffee of the day, cleaned up the disaster that was the house, did the breakfast dishes, vacuumed, took the rotting, smelly compost around to the garden, and finally headed to the park for a run. i almost convinced myself that i had too much to do and should skip the run, but i knew that would be a mistake, and the truth of the matter was that kate was watching micah so i could run. so i ran -- over a narrow rocky path through the woods, along the ridge that follows the creek, and then back again on "forbidden drive," a wide gravel path frequented by bikers and runners. it's a beautiful park just blocks from my house, and one of my favorite running spots. my run was short, maybe two miles, but it routed out my crankiness.

kate and i decided to go to smith memorial playhouse and playground with the kids, where everyone had a good time. until they didn't. ada is two years old and is one of the kids i took care of last year, about 20 hours a week. she and micah are very much like siblings. so there was a bit of pushing, hitting, and throwing, a time-out, a threat to leave immediately if micah didn't help clean up, a relatively uneventful lunch, then more hitting and throwing on the way to the car. fun fun. i managed to keep micah awake on the drive home (he's giving up naps, and often is up until 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. if he sleeps in the day, so we're way in favor of no nap, even if it means a little crankiness in the afternoon), but he fell promptly asleep in the time out awaiting him at home, so i just let it go. i set the timer for 45 minutes, put some beans in the pressure cooker for supper, made tuna salad for lunch, and sat down with raising the roof, a book about church growth, which i have been assigned by my pastor to read.

at 2:15, despite my deep deep desire to let him sleep, i woke micah, and he was pretty cheerful about it. he had a nursie on the couch, while i read about diarrhea in the american academy of pediatrics baby-to-five-year-old book (my reading was fruitless; i guess i'll have to call the pedi tomorrow ... i'm wondering about lactose intolerance?) at 3:00 we drove to the school to pick up trixie and leif's kids, dropped them off at their mom's work, and headed home. i cut a piece of bread (whole wheat which i baked yesterday) for a snack for trix and sent her off to her piano lesson a few blocks away. julie called to say she would pick trix up so they could do some shopping (my birthday is thursday; they are going on a backpacking trip in a week and a half); as they would be home on the late side, i suggested they just get something to eat and micah and i would scrounge, leave the beans for another night.

i did some church work (i'm on a task force charged with proposing a whole new organizational structure for the church, a vision of which we just proposed to the congregation; i think follow-through is really key at this point, so i'm trying to make lists of everything we need to do in the coming months ...) while micah played (by himself, a once-in-a-blue-moon event!), and then we headed to the playground at the end of the block, where we were joined by kate and ada, after kate's jog. at 5:00 we headed home, made dinner (a salad and red wine for me, avocado for micah, annie's organic whole wheat mac and cheese for both of us), then a bath and a slathering of goop for micah. once again, he actually played! by himself! okay, what he really did is take every single thing out of the play room shelves and spread them all over the floor, but i got half an hour or so of computer time (spent mostly on the first half of this post). (normally i would have put him in front of a video for half an hour, but i had taken t.v. away for the rest of the day during one of the hitting/shoving/throwing episodes).

at about 7:15 trixie and julie arrived home with hiking boots and other fun stuff in tow; trixie my nerdy 4th grader immediately fell on her homework, and julie and micah went off to create some order out of the mess micah had made earlier. they are now reading stories as i type.

the rest of the evening may involve a few moments of catching up for me and julie, although more likely she will fall asleep on the couch while i'm putting trixie to bed. i doubt trix and i will get to the hobbit tonight, though, what with the late start on homework, so maybe julie will manage to stay awake. before that, alas, a messy kitchen awaits, and it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to put in a load of laundry. it will definitely be an early night -- i'm pretty wiped.

edited to add: i forgot the call i got today (i'm on the lll helpline for two weeks) from a grandmom, whose daughter gave birth last week to a baby with a billirubin level of 13. her docs want her to stop breastfeeding. 13! it's nothing short of malpractice, imho.

9:32 and i'm off to bed.

back to school/back to work

2006-09-17T14:28:00.000-05:00

it's been all-back-to-school all-the-time around here. trixie had her first day the tuesday after labor day, and julie should have started that thursday, but instead we all made a whirlwind trip to indiana for julie's uncle's funeral. so julie really started with her kids the following monday, when micah also started school for the very first time. that's going pretty exceptionally well, despite a fair amount of anxiety on my part that the separation was not going to be pretty. as it turns out we are both soooo ready. micah's teachers keep asking me "and how are *you* doing?" and i try my best to keep the glee out of my voice as i give some vague, non-committal response and then skip merrily to the car for three whole free hours! four times a week! bliss on a plate.

of course everyone keeps asking me, "so, now that micah's in pre-school, are you going back to work?" rather than laughing in their faces, though, or getting all sarcastic ("no, i'm just planning to catch up on my soaps, and enjoy some well-deserved bon bons, actually), i've decided to just say to people "i work part time from home." the funny thing is that if i got paid for what i do, no one would question whether i am "working," but because for the past few years i have done my work for no pay and with a small child in tow, it is apparently not really "work." (julie says i have a chip on my shoulder about this, by the way, but you know what they say: it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you! ;-)

so anyway, today was the "first day of school" at church, and as i'm the church school superintendent, that's a big day to get ready for. it all went well, but i'm pretty wiped out. yesterday was a big founders' day and middle school dedication at trixie's school, and as i'm the president of the board of trustees, that was a pretty big day too (i introduced paul vallas, the ceo of the phila schools, and michael nutter, hopefully the next mayor of philadelphia, and the architect of our recently passed smoking ban in public places; i was way impressed with him, and am planning to volunteer on his campaign).

none of this is new work -- i've been doing both for a couple of years -- but it's like a revelation to have time to do it during the week without micah (as well as the many other kids i used to take care of -- i'm not doing that any more either (woo hoo!!)). i knew it was time to send micah to school when i had conversations with him that went like this:

"micah, why don't you put on a video while i do some work on the computer?"

"i don't want to watch a video."

"how about you turn on pbs kids?

"i don't want to watch pbs kids."

"sure you do," i would say, as i turned it on.

"I DON'T WANT TO WATCH P. B. S. KIDS!" he would scream as he turned it off.

"MICAH! YOU. WILL. WATCH. PBS KIDS! i HAVE to get this work done."

"NOOOOO," he would scream, and melt into a puddle of tears, and climb in my lap for a nursie.

so yeah, i'm just a little bit happy that those days are over.

*happy dance*

hello friends

2006-09-14T19:43:00.000-05:00

well, yes, i've been away. it was a busy, crazy, lovely, inspiring summer, which ended on quite a sad note, and through it all i've been wondering if i would return to the wide tent, and if so, how?

i think yes, at least maybe, but those few of you who still come round to visit (and why would you really, what with no posting for four months??) may find quite a makeover. one thing i'm always struggling with is how to find a balance in my life between by life-in-my-head, which is consumed by Big Imortant Ideas that are really important to me, and which inform my life in significant ways, and, well, my life. you know, life as i live it, day in and day out. i have found that my initial foray into the blogosphere was too consuming, and tipped the balance way too far into my head and out of my life.

there's another thing too, which is hard to explain, and not really worth going into too much. i guess i just don't like the way i feel about the me that i try to be or at least convince you that i am here in the wide tent. it's something about writing for an audience that i haven't really figured out, but 'nuf said, it's my stuff.

still, having read over my meager postings, there *were* some i really liked -- the ones that reminded me of a day spent with the kids that i might otherwise have forgotten, or a meal prepared and enjoyed, my work (which i haven't blogged about much, but which i'm really loving these days, and would like to have a record of). so i'm thinking i will try to keep blogging about that stuff, and see what happens. perhaps i'm going to peter out again. or perhaps the wide tent will blossom with the minutia of my life, minus the Big Important Ideas, which i love, and continue to think about, but need to find a less consuming place for.

so welcome back, those few of you who may still be lingering about. there will almost always be a pot of coffee on here at the wide tent, and a whole lot more baking happening these days!

first fruits, blue birthdays, tired tigers

2006-05-16T19:34:00.000-05:00

last night's supper, including our first spinach salad from the garden, and last year's pesto (we freeze it).

garden update: we're very close to having a deed to one of the four lots (at an outrageous price which the city mysteriously determined was the fair market value....); and we've asked the city to certify two more for sheriff's sale. we'll see.... i'll keep you posted.

note julie's homemade beer. yum!

we spend a lot of time at the new jersey aquarium these days, where they have an amazing shark exhibit, and two hippos that micah is completely fascinated by. and of course a lot of fish. thus the fish cake!

happy birthday sweet boy!

the other night, he insisted on sleeping in this costume. okay, admit it -- isn't he just the most beautiful boy?

on the needles -- a sweater for micah!

2006-05-15T19:24:00.000-05:00

i've never knit anything for poor micah. well, that's not true -- i started something in size 2t when he was about 18 months (and still on the small side), but never finished it (not a lot of knitting was going on in those days....). it's still on the needles. i may try to finish it for my little cousin in amsterdam who will turn one this summer (we'll see....) other than that unfinished project, i've really never had a chance to knit anything for micah -- before he came home, i had no idea what sweater size would be right for what season, and after he arrived, well, i haven't mastered the skill of knitting while constantly holding and nursing a baby (cate did it, with twins to boot! but she's a fiber artist extraordinaire, a goddess really, and totally totally out of my league. you really should check out some of the beautiful things she knits on her site.)

so finally, i'm working on a sweater for micah, and i'm really happy with it. it's a double breasted, shawl-collared sweater in seed stitch. i'm doing it in a bulky wool/mohair blend which is really lovely. this color will look totally divine on him. i've always wanted to do something in seed stitch, but was really intimidated by it. i actually have a below-the-knees coat i want to do for myself in seed stitch, and i'm thinking it won't be as completely overwhelming as i feared. i'm realizing that if i knit in the "continental" fashion, seed stitch would be a lot easier, without all that effort of throwing the yarn back and forth every stitch ... but i tried it at my church knitting group -- one of my friends there knits that way, and it looks so simple. but when i tried to do it i was just all thumbs, and decided my inefficient american style is probably more efficient for me in the long run! hey, i'm enjoying it, and actually finding ways to work in a few rows here and there in a way i was not with those old, tired projects (see below...) that had come to feel like chores.

by the way, i don't know why i can't make blogger insert pix into my posts -- i know how to do it, but it's not working. so i'm using picassa, which only lets me put one pix into each post (as far as i can tell. i'm pretty backward when it comes to this stuff.) anyway, forgive the multiple posts.

next up, micah's birthday cake!

julie's sweater -- a closer view

2006-05-15T19:17:00.000-05:00

this gives you a little bit better sense of the fabric of julie's sweater. i can't remember what the wool is called, but it's hand-dyed, hand-spun from somewhere in latin america, and it's really yummy. unfortunately, these photos don't really do it justice.

julie's sweater

2006-05-15T19:13:00.000-05:00

i've been working on this sweater for julie for four or five years -- it's finally off the needles, and almost done (just in time for summer....) obviously, i still need to sew in the ends, put in a zipper, and block. and the collar is supposed to get folded in half toward the inside and sewn down -- i don't really get it, but i have until the fall to figure it out! julie's been waiting very patiently, and is quite happy with it.

trixie's poncho

2006-05-15T19:08:00.000-05:00

i started this poncho for trixie over a year ago -- it's hogwarts colors, if you hadn't noticed. fortunately, there was no chance she would outgrow it while it was taking me forever to finish it, because it's big enough for her to wear as an adult. she likes it nonetheless.

my prayers are with jessica

2006-05-12T20:14:00.000-05:00

tomorrow julie is going on an all-day bike ride. she usually bikes for a week or more in the summer, but this year we're going on a big vacation with her family, so instead she's just doing a day-long ride in new jersey. now, normally, this wouldn't even phase me; we generally try to support one another in our extra-curricular activities, and biking is one of julie's passions. she rode across iowa when micah was about two months old, leaving me with a six year old, a teeny little preemie, and no car for almost two weeks, and i barely complained, apart for some good-natured ribbing (which continues to this day). so a day-long ride should be no big deal. but micah has been, well, quite challenging these days, especially the past few, and this being the end-of-the-year countdown when everything generally seems to be spiraling out of control, and having been really sick for more than a month with non-stop allergies, well, i've been feeling a bit sorry for myself that she isn't going to give me the saturday break that i have become accustomed to.

tonight i even made her take us out to eat, because i couldn't bear to cook, and then clean the kitchen that seems to be perpetually dirty despite the fact that i seem to be always cleaning it... we went to our favorite cuban/columbian restaurant, and i drank more than my share of the pitcher of sangria (julie was driving, so i felt it was my duty to keep several drinks ahead of her).

and basically the whole evening, i have been giving her a hard time -- mostly all in fun, but you know, with a little edge to it -- for leaving tomorrow in the wee hours with a couple of cool chick friends to go biking in new jersey, while i will be home, alone, yet another day like every other day, with the kids.

when we got home from tierra columbiana, i quickly checked my email and favorite blogs. and found this. and then i went back and read this. and this. and, well, all of it is just, well, i guess there just aren't words. i read with tears streaming down my face. talk about putting things in perspective...

when i came back downstairs, julie was playing music from godspell, and micah was dressed in his tiger costume, sitting beside her on the bench, playing along. trixie and her friend, who is spending the night, were upstairs playing dress-up and narrating tales like the beautiful, bookish girls they are. the neighborhood children, who will be up until midnight tonight, were outside jumping double dutch and playing pitch and catch and making a racket that usually drives me crazy. and you know how sometimes, all-too-rarely, you seem to be viewing the world through a filter like they use in the movies, to make the light just so, and all the colors pop out? and you watch your world unfold like a movie, with the soundtrack of your life playing over the top, while people laugh and talk and get on about their business, but you can't really hear them, because the music is playing over the top of it all? do you know what i mean? it was like that for a few moments.

i wish i could hold on, moment by moment, to how exquisitely beautiful and precious life is. it's so easy to lose perspective.

and i'm accutely aware that jessica's life and death wasn't about making me appreciate my life more... it feels so small to be focusing on that. but what her life meant, to the extent that those of us who didn't really know her can know it at all, was written in her own words -- eloquently, hopefully, heartbreakingly -- in her own blog, cancer, baby. if you haven't already, go read it now.

my heart just breaks that she never got to have the experience of motherhood. i hope that the bliss and contentment and good fortune i feel in loving my kids is only a shadow of the peace and joy her soul knows now.

girls night in

2006-05-11T20:43:00.000-05:00

julie's out tonight -- thursday is choir rehearsal night (she's the music director at church), and tonight she's also chaperoning the prom (!) (she's a high school english teacher). micah was toast by about 7:00, as he's been giving up his naps, so it was an early night for him. so trixie and i cleaned the kitchen and then made popcorn (organic, still on the cob, from my dad's farm in indiana) and watched the first half of little women. i read the book to her last fall/winter (i think we were interrupted when we finally got our hands on the 6th harry potter -- we're snobs, and order the british version from the u.k.), and we both really loved it. at first i didn't -- the first few chapters are fairly trite, with a pat moral lesson clearly spelled out (by marmee, of course) at the end. but the story gets much more thoughtful, and the moral dilemmas and lessons much more complicated. i love that the girls are always struggling against their evil twins, and not always winning -- i think that's what trixie identifies with. i also love the clear message, on the one hand, that girls should not be restricted to the domestic realm, and the equally clear message, on the other hand, that the domestic realm is of high value and worth choosing. rings true for me, on both counts!

anyway, my tender-hearted trixie had to turn off the movie tonight when beth was about to get sick -- she was almost in tears, and made me promise we could skip past the sad parts when we finish. she also reminded me that thursday is her night to sleep with me, and since i'm still sleeping on the nasty old futon in the play room (with plastic under the sheets in case micah has an accident at night -- which has not happened in 4 or 5 nights, knock wood!), she's now sacked out on a pile of throw pillows next to the nasty old futon, in a sleeping bag.

sweet sweet sweet. have i mentioned? it's a good life.

the end of an era

2006-05-10T15:47:00.000-05:00

so yeah, we're done with diapers here at the wide tent. i've always been especially aware of and moved by -- perhaps somewhat melodramatically so -- milestones and anniversaries, which no doubt explains why i'm really dwelling on this of late. i'm finding hard to wrap my head around how we got from there to here. for so long, my entire being has been consumed with babies. beginning eleven years ago this summer, when julie and i drove across the country to camp and hike in glacier national park, and packed a thermometer so we could begin charting her cycles.... no, really, it would have been more than that. eleven years ago in february or march we joined a lesbians-who-wanna-be-parents group started by our friends d and m. they were pregnant and expecting j, one of trixie's best friends, who is about to turn 11. (they also have another child, m, are divorced, and both remarried ... a lot can happen in 11 years...). we ran screaming from the group, which totally creeped us out by the weird roles everyone seemed to be into (there was a lot of talk about having separate groups for the "moms" -- i.e. the ones who were going to get pregnant -- and the not-quite-dads-but-not-really-moms. these roles naturally fell along fairly traditional gendered butch/femme roles in the relationships. we were already mixing that all up, since to the extent that we have roles in our relationship -- and we don't really much, but if really pressed, julie would be on the butch end of the spectrum and i would be on the femme -- we weren't paying them much mind, as we had decided for lots of mostly practical reasons that julie would get pregnant first. first! ha! but i digress....) anyway, we took away from that one meeting an enduring friendship with d and m and now their new partners and their amazing kids. and a plan to get pregnant in the next year or so.

and as it happened, things went fairly according to schedule, all things considered. we took that thermometer -- an old fashioned mercury thermometer, which we promptly broke, scattering beads of mercury all over our tent, and a subsequent one as well, purchased somewhere in the dakotas, until we finally got wise and bought a digital one -- on our trip, and that really felt like the beginning. i remember how much on my mind our future child was as we drove across the dakotas, reading to each other from kathleen norris's dakota: a spiritual geography (we even drove through her little town, and in stalker-like fashion looked up her address in a local phone book and drove past her house; i actually regret now that we chickened out in the end and did not ring the bell.) three or four months later we began at-home inseminations with frozen anonymous donor sperm, and six tries (spread over eight months) later, trixie was conceived. then we were in pregnancy mode, then in baby mode, and by the time trixie was two we were starting to think about another.

that's a whole other story, for another post, but the highlights include six at-home tries; a pregnancy conceived on my first clomid cycle with an re, during which cycle i also passed a clomid challenge test; fetal demise, after very encouraging betas and an excellent early ultrasound; a d&c and subsequent testing which revealed no abnormalities; another pregnancy conceived on the subsequent fifth clomid cycle (by which time the clomid was making me c*r*a*z*y and my brain mush, not altogether compatible with my profession as a high-powered attorney in a very complicated, highly regulated, tax-driven field with an extremely steep learning curve....); another fetal demise, and, despite my fervent desire to miscarry on my own, an extremely painful d&c necessitated by the fact that i was about to take a business trip during which i could not really afford to have a miscarriage, in the event that my body should actually decide to oblige me; four weeks of heavy bleeding of the huge clots variety, during a trip to the midwest to visit family; another d&c to retrieve the tissues that had not been retrieved in the last [extremely painful] d&c, and which was causing all the bleeding; extensive testing, none of which revealed any reason for the two miscarriages; and finally, a second clomid challenge test a year after the first, which i failed in a fairly profound way, and which finally gave us some answers. my re said that the fact i had conceived at all was pretty astonishing, but that my chances of actually carrying a pregnancy to term were pretty much zero to none. of course we could have gotten a second opinion. we could have found a clinic willing to work with a woman with a sky-high fsh. we could have done ivf with julie's eggs. but at that point i was so worn out, so longing for a baby -- and perhaps most importantly, so longing to quit my job and be home with the baby i already had, not to mention the next baby that with luck we would somehow bring into our family, that i just couldn't justify the cost. i was making good money, but considering that every cycle would cost the same as a domestic adoption, and that if we weren't successful pretty much right away, i would be stuck in this job that was making me miserable, we decided to go with what had always been our plan for baby #3: domestic adoption.

that's also another story, and really this time i will keep it to a nutshell: one agency told us we would never be chosen because we were a lesbian couple. another agency -- the one we ended up working with -- told us we could expect a baby very very quickly. (another agency told us the same but had some seriously questionable ethical practices). as it turned out, th agency we went with was wrong (although, thankfully, quite ethical), and we waited a year from the completion of our homestudy to bring micah home.

and then we were out of trying-to-get-a-baby mode, and back in having-a-baby mode. but basically, we've been in some sort of planning-for-baby, or being pregnant-with-a-baby, or having-a-baby, or trying-to-have-another-baby, or grieving-about-losing-the-bab(ies), or researching-adopting-a-baby, or waiting-for-a-placement-of-a-baby, or having-another-baby mode for a really long time. and while micah hasn't really been a baby for well over a year now, something about the fact that he's out of diapers really symbolizes that WE'RE DONE WITH BABIES. wow, huh?

and if you think i'm being a drama queen about *this* rite of passage, just wait for the maudlin post you can expect when micah weans!

micah (the short version)

2006-05-09T15:43:00.000-05:00

i need to write about my kids because they are just blowing me away with their amazing selves these days. but i only have a minute here, so i'll just hit micah's highlights:

he turned three yesterday (!?).
he's playing t-ball in a 3 to 5 year old league (how cute is that?), and can dribble both a basketball (with his hands) and a soccor ball (with his feet).
he's the most buff three year old you've ever met. i mean, this kid is solid muscle, with the most yummy tush and 6-pack abs.
he's sharp as a tack.
and, drumroll please! he's potty trained! beginning last wednesday, we had about three days of on-and-off accidents, and for the past four days, nary a one. totally dry and clean, day and night. how 'bout that? (and that's also the topic of another blog entry, hopefully: the end of an era at the wide tent. our baby days are really and truly over. no more diapers! wow.)

oppose the federal marriage amendment

2006-05-01T15:10:00.000-05:00

just received this email from a friend at church:

Dear Friend,

Sign this postcard that will be hand-delivered to your Senatorsand Representatives this summer! Congress is considering the discriminatory Federal Marriage Amendment and the Senate will vote in June. HRC will hand-deliver these postcards to Senators on June 5. Take action today!

http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/campaign/fma_postcards?rk=rp1TgtS17XrQW

a lovely day

2006-04-28T19:25:00.000-05:00

so, yes, the wide tent has been largely neglected lately. sigh. life is so rich and full, and finding a balance that includes writing here on any sort of regular basis is proving elusive. ah well, it's not such a bad dilemma to have.

today was a lovely day in philadelphia. i love this city, all the time, but especially in springtime. the temperatures have been mild, the sunlight on the river just sparkles, and the trees and bushes are a riot of pink and white blossoms. and being the mom of a highly spirited, temperamentally challenging pre-schooler is soooo much easier when regular physical activity is as easy as stepping outdoors any time of the ever-lengthening day. these days i'm realizing that much of the challenge that is micah is mostly about me, about my ability to cope. winter is just so hard for me. spring is feeling like a honeymoon. a honeymoon with the honeyman, as he has recently dubbed himself: "i'm the honeyman!"

so this morning micah and i met some friends at smith memorial playhouse, an indoor playhouse located in one of the mansions of fairmount park, along with a brand-spankin' new playground. all totally free and a ten minute drive from my house, along the blossoming and sparkling kelly drive, which follows the schuylkill river through northwest philadelphia. this stretch of the river is one of my favorite places in philadelphia, especially in the springtime, and i've run many many miles along the jogging path there.

we had a lovely time at the playhouse, and then headed to trixie's school which got out at one o'clock for the teachers' professional development. i'll have to tell more about this remarkable school another time; it's also one of my favorite places in philadelphia. i had a posse of girls -- trixie, the two neighbor girls i take care of before and after school, and another friend's daughter, and we (along with a very tired and napless micah) headed to the philadelphia museum of art to gaze upon princess grace's wedding gown. she was a philadelphia girl, and lived less than a mile from me (in a very tony neighborhood which starts, in classic philadelphia fashion, just a block from my quite-gritty-quite-urban-feeling-not-quite-but-almost-a-ghetto neighborhood). indeed, kelly drive is named after her brother, who was a city council member. it was fun to drive home from the museum along kelly drive, and just blocks from our house point out to the girls the church where grace worshiped (and where philadelphians hoped against hope that the wedding would take place), and to the block where her house was. i haven't figured out exactly which house was hers, but i jog past there all the time too.

when julie got home i left the kids with her and headed to a meeting at the school about next year's administrative structure and how to deal creatively with a serious budget crunch (i sit on the board there and will be board president next year). i came home to an empty house (bliss!) as julie had the kids at the ymca (micah's playing tee-ball!) and pulled together a lovely meal of lentil stew, steamed broccoli and caesar salad, completely out of thin air, as i haven't shopped in over a week. we ate on the patio out back (well, "out back" is precisely the size of a very small patio; we live in a rowhouse and have a patio of a back yard and a postage stamp of a fr0nt yard) and then spent some time as a family cleaning up. (my new motto is "i don't care if you made the mess -- i'm always cleaning other people's messes. we're a family, and if the house needs to be cleaned, we just all have to pitch in and clean it!") and while i've been typing this, micah fell asleep all on his own (that *never* happens, i always have to sit with him). so the house is cleanish (okay, it's not clean at all, but it's not the total pig sty it had become by the end of a week of total neglect on my part), my kids are asleep, and it's only nine o'clock.

life is good at the wide tent. hope it's as good wherever you find yourself.

adoption dot com boycott

2006-04-18T07:49:00.000-05:00

i've personally never been there, and it sounds like a good thing.

for any of you who are adoptive parents, or considering adoption, please check out this site about a boycott of adoption dot com because of discrimination against gay, lesbian and single parents.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

2006-04-14T13:36:00.000-05:00

OFFICIAL BOARD OF OLD FIRST REFORMED CHURCH
OPPOSES SO-CALLED “MARRIAGE PROTECTION AMENDMENT”
TO PENNSYLVANIA CONSTITUTION

April 7, 2006, Philadelphia

On Tuesday, April 4, 2006, the Official Board of Old First Reformed Church, United Church of Christ, unanimously passed a resolution (see full text, attached) in opposition to HB2381, the so-called “Marriage Protection Amendment” currently under consideration by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. The Official Board’s resolution opposes the amendment’s discriminatory definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, its potential to repeal significant rights and protections which support safe and stable families for gay men, lesbians, and their children, its violation of the principles of religious freedom established just blocks from Old First, and its incompatibility with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the principles of God’s love and justice.

On Sunday, April 2, 2006, Marta [lastnamedeleted], a member of Old First, shared a moment of concern about how HB2381, and similar legislation across the county, affects her and her family. Marta's partner, Julie [lastnamedeleted], is the director of music at Old First, and they have two children. “The most specific way the amendment would affect us is that we could lose our domestic partnership benefits, which we receive from the publicly-funded Philadelphia school district, where Julie is a teacher,” says Marta, who is a stay-at-home mom and serves as an Elder and as Church School superintendent at Old First. “But even more scary to us is the way this sort of legislation feels like an assault. Day after day we hear that our committed, covenantal relationship is a threat to the institution of marriage, that our loving little family is a threat to the very fabric of society! It seems like every day, there’s another bill or ballot measure, each one more severe and punitive than the last, until we have to ask ourselves, when is it going to stop? How much longer will we and our children be safe in this Commonwealth, in this country?” Following worship on April 2, many members of Old First participated in a letter-writing campaign in opposition to HB2381.

Founded in 1727, Old First Reformed Church is located at the corners of Fourth and Race Streets in historic Old City, Philadelphia. Old First strives to be a wellspring of faith for a diverse people in the heart of the city. Old First is proud to participate in the United Church of Christ’s “God is still speaking” campaign. We promise to all that “no matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”

[CONTACT INFORMATION DELETED]

RESOLUTION OF THE OFFICIAL BOARD
OLD FIRST REFORMED UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST
APRIL 4, 2006

WHEREAS Old First Reformed Church is an Open and Affirming congregation of the United Church of Christ, where we welcome into full membership persons of every race, language, age, gender, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability, and economic level;

AND WHEREAS Old First Reformed Church holds that discrimination is incompatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we commit ourselves to work diligently to end all oppression and discrimination which afflict God's people in our society;

AND WHEREAS Old First Reformed Church affirms all relationships founded on the principles of God's love and justice;

AND WHEREAS the Official Board of Old First Reformed Church finds that HB2381, the so-called “Marriage Protection Amendment,” which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman, would establish in the Pennsylvania constitution a discriminatory definition of marriage;
AND WHEREAS the Official Board of Old First Reformed Church finds that HB2381 would repeal significant rights and protections which support safe and stable families for gay men, lesbians, and their children;

AND WHEREAS the Official Board of Old First Reformed Church finds that in these ways, the so-called “Marriage Protection Amendment” is incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the principles of God’s love and justice;

AND WHEREAS the Official Board of Old First Reformed Church finds that the so-called “Marriage Protection Amendment” violates the principles of religious freedom which were established just blocks from our church;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED: The Official Board of Old First Reformed Church, United Church of Christ, opposes the “Marriage Protection Amendment,” currently under consideration in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives as HB2381, and we endorse any effort by our members to defeat this amendment.

for anon

2006-04-05T18:55:00.000-05:00

anon, i'm sorry you feel like you need to hide your identity here. please know that as long as you remain civil, as you have, i will not remove your comments, and at any rate, no one is going to be allowed to attack you for your views here!

your interpretation of scripture is certainly one many christians agree with. personally, i think it is a sad and stunted reading of god's word, one that makes god very small, indeed, and makes idolators of its adherents.

(and i'm not interested in proof-texting, but just for the record, jesus had not one word to say about homosexuality.)

i'll keep you in my prayers, anon.

god is still speaking....

2006-03-31T21:50:00.000-05:00

but not on network t.v.

here is a message from the united church of christ's accessible airwaves campaign about the latest ucc ads, which have been rejected as "too controvercial" by all of the major networks (they are controvercial in that they suggest that "no matter who you are, or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here"):

Last year ABC, CBS, and NBC refused to air a commercial created by the United Church of Christ. Recently, ALL THE NETWORKS rejected the UCC's newest commercial that names the rejection so many people say they experience from organized religion.

Rejection of paid advertising by the networks is just the beginning. For example - James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Richard Land and Gary Bauer have together racked up 36 appearances on the Sunday news talk shows, including Meet the Press and Face the Nation, during the past eight years.

Principle leaders of the United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), American Baptist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, African Methodist Episcopal Church, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, among others, haven't appeared once!

It is apparent that the Religious Right political leaders have joined forces to keep mainline religious leaders off the airwaves.

Please add your voice to the growing number of Americans who are calling on the networks to give equal access to progressive religious voices on television.

By going to this site and sending a message to the networks, you can help open our broadcast airwaves to mainline religious voices and find out more about this issue.

couple of things on my mind...

2006-03-30T20:38:00.000-05:00

well, there are lots and lots of things on my mind these days, not that you'd have any idea, based on the activity here at the wide tent.... actually, silence here often means a particularly engaged period of my life off-line, and so it has been.

a couple of things to share:

go right now to this site about the genocide that is happening as we speak in darfur, sudan, and send a post-card to george bush. a member of my congregation spoke about his campaign recently, and it really is astonishing that we're letting this happen. it's very very easy to send a postcard. if you have a blog, please post about this campaign there so that more people will send post cards.

the pennsylvania legislature is considering a marriage amendment to the pennsylvania constitution, much like those that have passed in numerous states already. this one would define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and would prevent the commonwealth and any of its subdivisions from confering on same-sex couples any legal status that is substantially similar to marriage. my church is doing a letter-writing campaign next sunday in opposition, and i am sharing half of the sermon time with our pastor (who rocks, by the way) to share some thoughts. this is what i'm planning to say (feedback would be appreciated before sunday, but it's already exactly 10 minutes, which is as long as i have, so it can't get any longer):

I was in the car recently listening to Radio Times and heard Kenji Yoshino, a gay professor at Yale Law School, discussing his new book about gay civil rights. Yoshino was telling the story of an encounter with his father who lovingly embraced his son with the words “You are my son,” during a difficult time in Yoshino’s life when he was beginning to question his sexuality. Knowing that his father loved him in that sort of unconditional way allowed him to come to terms with the fact that he was a gay man. Commenting on that encounter, Yoshino said that “love is a sort of narrative permission that allows certain stories to be told within its bounds which could not otherwise be told.” I was so struck by this thought that I kept repeating it over and over until I got home and wrote it down. “Love is a sort of narrative permission that allows certain stories to be told within its bounds which could not otherwise be told.” I think that the community we have created here at Old First is one in which the love at the heart of our Christian faith allows us to tell all sorts of stories we might not otherwise be able to tell.

I think that, like love, the law also is also a sort of narrative permission that allows certain stories to be told. Often those stories are very affirming, but unfortunately, they aren’t always. One of the stories for which the law creates a narrative framework is the story of marriage and family: the law tells us that certain sorts of marriages and families are “real” and “legitimate” and worthy of celebration, and others are ominously dangerous imposters. Of course, we at Old First know better, because God’s love is what guides our story-telling, but none of us at Old First is immune from the effects of this other story that is constantly being told by and through the law. I would like to share with you how that other story has affected me and my family.

As you all know by now, the Pennsylvania legislature is considering an amendment to the Pennsylvania that would only recognize marriage between a man and a woman, and that would prohibit the Commonwealth from conferring any legal status on unmarried couples. This proposed amendment has to be understood in a much wider context of similar legislation and amendments, beginning with DOMA, the federal so-called Defense of Marriage Act, followed by mini-DOMA’s in many states, and then a proposed “Federal Marriage Amendment” to the federal constitution, and most recently a rash of state constitutional amendments like the one currently under consideration in Pennsylvania. To date, voters in 19 states have enacted such constitutional amendments, while 13 other states in addition to Pennsylvania are currently somewhere in the process of enacting one. Many of these amendments also contain vague language denying marriage-like benefits to unmarried couples, which may be interpreted as including domestic partnership health benefits. The state of Virginia recently enacted legislation which prohibits any contract, public or private, which would confer any of the benefits of marriage on a same-sex couple.

And as if these assaults on same-sex couples aren’t enough, now our opponents are going after our families. Currently one state, Florida, does not allow openly gay and lesbian people to adopt children, neither individually nor as a couple. Now 16 other states are considering legislation which would prohibit adoption by lesbians and gay men.

Obviously, there are concrete ways that all of this legal activity affects me and my family. If the Pennsylvania constitution is amended as proposed, Julie and I essentially lose all hope of ever legally marrying in Pennsylvania and enjoying the legal benefits of marriage. We also quite possibly could lose the domestic partnership benefits we receive through the publicly funded Philadelphia School District – the benefits that allow me to be home with our children and to do the unpaid work I have come to love.

That alone is certainly reason enough to go downstairs after worship and write a letter opposing the HB2381. But I want to try to share with you on an even deeper level what all of this means to us. I want you to imagine that every day when you open the paper, or log onto MSNBC, or turn on the radio, a drama is being played out in which you are the enemy, the villain. You, your most intimate relationships, the family you cherish, you all are dangerous. Unfit to raise children. The flashpoint rallying people of faith across the country in a way no other cause has managed to for decades. You, and your family, are a threat to the institution of marriage and to the very fabric of society. You hear this day after day after day, as the drama gets played out in an ever escalating series of legal enactments, each one more severe and punative than the last, until you have to ask yourself, when is it going to stop?

As for me, I go through a pretty constantly cycling series of emotions. Much of the time I get caught up in the minutia of my life, which is pretty wonderful, and I feel safe in the little bubble of progressive folks I have chosen to surround myself with. But there are other times when I lie awake at night and wonder when they will start trying to take our kids away from us, and whether Canada or Sweden or Holland will take us in. Now, I am the first to admit that in the light of day, these fears seem pretty extreme, and probably unfounded, and usually I just shake them off and tell myself I’m letting my overactive imagination get the best of me. But there are other moments when I remember that many of the Jews of Europe continued to tell themselves that it wasn’t really that bad, even as they were being sent away to their deaths in the camps. So, how do you know when that line gets crossed? How do you know when the fears you have for yourself and your family are no longer just overblown stories you are spinning for yourself in the dead of night, but something to be taken seriously? I don’t know, and not knowing makes me anxious.

I especially hate that I can’t protect my children from that anxiety. Recently, Trixie overheard a conversation I had after church about the many states considering banning gay men and lesbians from adopting, and in the car on the way home she asked me about it. We talked, as we have many times before, about how some people think it’s wrong for two women or two men to love each other and to be married and to raise a family. I explained that, for reasons I really don’t understand, some of these people feel so strongly that they want to prevent gay and lesbian people from adopting children. Trixie and I agreed that this view is absurd, and that especially silly is the notion that God agrees with this view, since after all, God is love, and that’s what our family is all about too. This is a conversation we have had many times before about marriage, but never about adoption. I waited while Trixie mulled it all over, and then came the obvious, inevitable question from a bright and thoughtful girl: “Mom, if they do that in Pennsylvania, do you think they will also undo adoptions that have already happened?”

“You mean like my adoption of you, or our adoptoin of Micah?” I asked.

“Yeah. They can’t say we’re not your kids, can they?”

And there you have it. That’s the story the law is currently telling my children: their family may not be secure because they have two moms who love each other. Of course, I assured Trixie that we will always keep our family safe, and that she needn’t worry. But the competing drama being played out in the law right now tells her and us a very different story.

Despite all the gloom and doom I’ve been sharing with you for the past several minutes, I’d like to end on a note of hope. Because I actually do feel startlingly hopeful these days. There is, of course, a much larger story than any of those I’ve been talking about, and that is the story of God’s love for us. Just recently, when I was feeling quite some despair about all of this, it came to me: I believe in God, and I believe that our God is a God of love. Those of you whose faith is deep and firm will find this a simple enough truth, one that I’m sure has sustained you through many difficult times. But those of you who know me well know that my own faith has mostly been plagued by doubt, so you may understand what a startling and powerful revelation that was when it gripped me recently. Yes, I believe in God, and our God is a God of love. God’s love is with me, God’s love is in my marriage, God’s love is in my family. And as Jeff reminded us last week, God’s love is with our opponents too. And God’s love will prevail. It will. And that is profoundly hopeful.

I’m not a pollyanna, though. I know that while my faith and God’s love are powerful and full of hope, they are unfortunately no talisman against bad things happening. This is a mystery I am still struggling to understand, but which I nevertheless know to be true. So, I hope you will take a stand against this gathering madness and lend your voice to the story love is telling. You can begin during the coffee hour today by writing a letter to your representative, asking him or her to oppose HB2381. If enough of us take a stand, and let our voices be heard, perhaps the law might begin to tell a different sort of story as well, the love story we here at Old First already know.

I thank you all for doing your part to make that happen.

how you know when micah is sick

2006-03-09T12:35:00.000-05:00

first, his nose was too stuffy to nurse this morning. then he asked for a sippy of milk, which he clutched in his hand, while he lay on his belly on the kitchen floor, cheek to the cool linoleum, and drifted in and out of sleep while i made coffee, breakfast, packed trixie's lunch. then he sat almost completely still and watched babar for two hours while i cleaned the play room/study, including sorting through and filing every scrap of paper on my desk. then he fell asleep nursing, and slept for an hour and a half, and when he woke, despite my offer to take him to the pizza shop for pizza and root beer, he's now snoozing in my arms again while i type.

this all may not seem like shocking behavior to most of you, but as any of you who know micah can attest, this boy is sick! poor thing.

am i just a terrible mother for actually enjoying how docile he is when he's not feeling well? if so, well, there you have it! because let me tell you, i've gotten so much done this morning, i feel like skipping.

fat tuesday, ash wednesday

2006-03-01T13:43:00.000-05:00

one of the things i love most about my life as a christian is the way that the rhythms of the liturgical year shape time for me. until i began my conversion to christianity (which i would actually say is an on-going project, i'm realizing of late) at about the age of 32, all but about five years of my life had been tied to the academic calendar. there was the year between college and graduate school, the two years between my high school teaching career and law school, and the two years i clerked for a judge after law school. but even four of those five were really still tied to the academic calendar, because julie was a teacher even when i wasn't.

now, julie is still a teacher, and my daughter goes to school too, so my life is still very much shaped by the academic calendar. but that version of the year -- summer vacation, back-to-school, first semester, winter break, second semester, the long midwinter doledrums, spring break, the endless weeks to summer, end-of-school-year insanity, and finally summer vacation again -- that year is only one of the ways that my family and i mark time. the liturgical year -- the pregnant waiting of advent, the candle-lit festival of the incarnation that is christmas, the quiet insights of epiphany, the introspection and discipline of lent, the joyous festival of the resurection that is easter, the celebration of the birth of the church in all its diversity at pentecost, and the weeks and weeks and weeks of "ordinary time" (i love that phrase) -- it is this year, more and more, that gives time shape and meaning, especially my interior time, that on-going becoming that is my spiritual work.

i've always loved cusps; friends who are into astrology would probably say that's because i'm a virgo on the cusp of libra. while other folks dread the begining of the school year, or the disruption to their daily schedule of a school vacation, i've always loved these times. it's partly the "clean slate" aspect of it -- the school clothes all clean and new, the empty note books, the newly sharpened pencils, all laid out in hopeful expectation. but there's something else about those times too, which is hard to describe, but which somehow draws me deeper into the sacred, illuminates for me god-in-the-world. my absolute favorite time of parenting, hands down, is the first few weeks with a newborn, a time frought for most with anxiety and sleep deprivation, but which for me, twice, were the most luminous times of my life, full of mystery and wonder.

so here we are on the cusp of one of my favorite family traditions and one of my favorite liturgical seasons. yesterday was "donut day" in the tradition of julie's family (a tradition i have whole-heartedly embraced!). lots of home-made, deep-fat-fried, sugar glazed goodness shared with good friends going on at the wide tent last night.... mmmmm. and then this morning, the left-over dunuts bagged up and stashed in the freezer, we begin our 40 days in the wilderness. i just love this day, my senses all heightend, my whole life feeling like a prayer. it will inevitably wear off, and by the time holy week rolls around, the discipline of lent will no doubt be wearing thin.

and then there's easter. it's a good life.

a few thoughts on adoptive breastfeeding

2006-02-24T23:58:00.000-05:00

afrindiemum inadvertantly set off a little firestorm when she posted about her plans to breastfeed the next child placed with her for adoption. i have to say, the responses were pretty eye-opening to me.

i think that maybe the issue of adoptive breastfeeding is a flashpoint that can serve to illuminate a lot of the bigger issues in adoption. ethical issues, such as the degree to which current infant adoption practices are coercive, for example, become even starker when adoptive breastfeeding is added to the mix, because yes, the fact that a potential adoptive mom is preparing to breastfeed could absolutely add to the coersion a pregnant woman considering adoption might feel when matched with a couple hoping to adopt before giving birth. adoptive breastfeeding can also be seen as a litmus test for a potential adoptive family's ethics around open adoption, and their respect for the mother of the child they hope to adopt: do they plan to tell the mother about their plans to breastfeed, even knowing that they risk losing the placement over this issue? is the potential adoptive mom planning to breastfeed because she wants to "pass" as the baby's biological mother? because she wants to deny the existence of, or importance of, the baby's first mom? does the potential adoptive family believe that breastfeeding will make a child they adopt more "theirs?"

in my mind, if the answer to any of these questions is "yes," that's a problem. but here's the thing: i don't think the problem is adoptive breastfeeding. the problem is the underlying ethical issues which simply get illuminated, or writ large, by adoptive breastfeeding. so, for example, say a woman would lie to a pregnant mom about her plans to breastfeed, or she really did want to breastfeed in order to diminish the role of her child's first mom. and then for some reason she decided not to breastfeed. it was too difficult. or it just didn't work. or an ugly comment from someone scared her off. so she doesn't breastfeed. does that fix any of the underlying issues? of course not. on the otherhand, say a potential adoptive mom is completely forthright about her plans, owns them as her own, goes to great lengths to make her adoption as ethical and uncoercive as possible, and breastfeeds her baby with the full knowledge and blessing of the baby's other mother. is breastfeeding still somehow wrong, or unethical? i don't think so.

i also suspect that adoptive breastfeeding illuminates the problems of adoption from the perspective of mothers considering adoption for their children. i can't help but think that if a pregnant or newly post-partum woman can't even imagine her child being nursed by another woman; that if her visceral reaction, her mama-instinct, is that this is wrong wrong wrong; then that's a huge red flag that she shouldn't be placing her baby for adoption in the first place. because if she can't imagine another woman mothering her child at the breast, then what it seems to me what she really can't imagine is another woman mothering her child. period. an ethical agency ought to listen to that, and help this mother find the resources to parent. an ethical potential adoptive mom will listen to that and say, "you owe me nothing. you need to make this decision based on what is best for you and your baby." of course, that doesn't often happen. but again, i don't think that adoptive breastfeeding is the problem; rather the problem is that all too few agencies, and all too few adoptive families, really have adoption ethics first and foremost in their minds.

over at afrindiemum's there were a wide range of reactions to adoptive breastfeeding, including some very ugly ones from people who have no relationship to adoption whatsoever. and what those reactions illuminate for me, as an adoptive mother, is that these people and people like them don't really believe i'm a mother. the arguments that adoptive breastfeeding is "unnatural," that it is "predatory," that it is "selfish"; the implication that breastfeeding, and especially the non-nutritive aspects of breastfeeding, have not been "earned" through the hard work of pregnancy and childbirth -- these arguments rest on the underlying assumption that an adoptive mother is not really a mother, not in some deep-down, essential way.

and i can't argue with that. i have no genetic connection to either of my children; they are both legally mine only through adoption (trixie through a second-parent adoption; micah through domestic infant adoption). i can't and won't make the argument that motherhood for me is "just like" motherhood for someone who gave birth to her children. i can't know that, for one, and i suspect that it isn't true, for another. i would argue, in theory anyway, that my experience of motherhood, while different, is equally as profound. that it is a deep spiritual practice. that through my children, through splitting my heart and my sould wide open to these two human beings who are not my "flesh and blood," who are not of my body, for whom no hormone or instinct or primal, genetic connection creates an attachment -- that through mothering them i have truly experienced god in my life, found a vocation, done my absolute best work. that it is inconceivable to me (literally and figuratively, as it happens) that i could love another human being in such a deep and awe-inspiring way. but even that argument is theoretical, because i have nothing to compare my experience to. not even in my imagination: i am barren, i will never give birth to a child. so maybe women who have given birth to their children really are more "real" than i am. maybe their souls have been lifted and transported to places i'll never know. on the other hand, unless those women have also adopted a child, they can never know what i have experienced, so no more can they argue that my experience is somehow less than theirs.

what i suspect, though, is that each of us is truly a mother. a biological mother who is raising her children. a first mother whose children are being raised by another mother. an adoptive mother raising children born of another mother. we can argue until the cows come home about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or we can all stand in awe of each other, and be moved by the depths of each others experiences. and realize that it's not a competition -- or at least it shouldn't be. bowing to the mother in you does nothing to diminsh the mother in me.

i bow to all of you mothers.

the good the bad the ugly

2006-02-22T18:48:00.000-05:00

so julie and i had an overnight by ourselves (!) last weekend, and it was divine. we drove to ohio friday afternoon/evening (about 7 hours), stayed the night with julie's sister and sister-in-law, ditched the kids around noon, and headed off for about 30 hours of bliss. we stayed at a beautiful place in holmes county called the inn at honey run, which is just the most exquisite place, if you ever find yourself in ohio amish country. ate well, managed to work in two movies on either end of the inn stay (capote, because we're trying to see most of the major academy nominated films before the awards; and firewall, because nothing better was playing at the time we had, and as bad as it was, it was still a movie!). we both feel rejuvinated, and no longer like ships passing in the night.

which is a good thing, because we were already in pretty dire need of some serious relaxation even before micah was hospitalized last week with intussusception, a condition where the intestine telescopes in on itself, causing intense, cyclical pain. micah endured this pain every 15 minutes for 14 hours after our arrival at the emergency room of the children's hospital while a trio of bungling residents wrung their hands over his confusing symptoms ("he has pain, yes, but no vomiting or diarrhea, oh dear, what could that mean???"); ordered tests and then canceled them (but not until after micah had been strapped into the cat scan machine for a good five minutes); and seemed genuinely startled when they finally witnessed one of his episodes of pain, hours and hours after we'd been telling them how serious it seemed to us ("oh, wow, he really is in pain, isn't he?"). and still it took a fellow the next morning, after micah had slept at most in 15 minute spurts, to say "of course it's intussusception! this is not confusing at all! let's fix it!" and then a couple more hours, while they roused an attending to performe a simple enema with air under the x-ray machine, which both confirmed what it was and fixed it (the air pressure pops the telescoped part of the intestine out). and then, as a final indignity, they kept us for another 24 hours of observation, and wouldn't let the poor kid eat or drink anything.

i'm not sure whether it's good or bad that i didn't understand how serious his condition was at the time. certainly, i would have been way more assertive had i known.... as it turns out, this condition is very serious, and if left untreated, will always lead to death within two to five days. micah finally got treated 23 hours after his pain began. i also read (simple google search which produced the article linked above as one of the top three or four hits) that the trio of pain, vomiting and diarrhea appear in only 21% of cases, so why those first three residents were so freaking confused is just beyond me.

i don't know what it is about hospitals that just lulls you into some sort of altered reality. maybe it's all the waiting, and the expectation that you will wait. that waiting is just part of it, and if it were truly an emergency, things would move faster. and that if you try to make too big a deal of your kid's pain, they will just roll their eyes at you behind your back and make you wait even more. i dunno. i really wish i had been more assertive. i certainly will be in the future. lesson learned.

unfortunately, micah was really the one who had to endure our lesson learned, the hard way. he's such an amazing kid. i don't think i could have coped as well as he did, nor could i have bounced back as quickly. finally i made them let us go, once they took the iv out of his hand and i could no longer keep him from dashing out of the room and laughing maniacally as he flew up and down the halls.

what a kid. i'm still in awe that he's mine.

when the injustice in the blogosphere starts getting you down....

2006-02-13T16:33:00.000-05:00

and you find yourself consumed with anger and the need to vent -- especially if that anger and need to vent takes the form of mean spirited snarkiness -- may i suggest you have too much time on your hands?

how about logging off your computer for a few and getting out of your head? here's a handy list of things you might try, if you're having trouble coming up with your own:

1. take your dog for a walk.
2. play outside with your kid(s).
3. call an old friend or family member you're feeling guilty about being out of touch with.
4. write a letter to the same (the old fashioned kind, that requires a stamp. they're now 39 cents).
5. if you have one, get involved in your place of worship.
6. if you're a person of faith but don't have a place of worship, visit one this weekend.
7. go for a run.
8. or a walk if you don't run.
9. bake bread.
10. okay, bake some chocolate chip cookies.
11. read the collected works of martin luther king.
12. or dorothy day.
13. or read people magazine.
14. or entertainment weekly. in fact, read it weekly.
15. become a big brother or big sister.
16. have sex with your partner, whether you feel like it or not.
17. wear lipstick, even if you never do.
18. put on prince really loud and dance with your kids.
19. read a memoir or novel completely out of your realm of experience and/or comfort zone.
20. begin a spiritual discipline such as prayer, meditation, or yoga.
21. have sex with your partner again, whether you feel like it or not.
22. sign up to do a hunger walk.
23. observe lent, if you're christian, and make sure to deep-fry really greasy, sugary donuts on mardi-gras.
24. tithe.
25. watch reruns of cagney and lacey.
26. join a coalition around an issue you care about. commit some serious time to it.
27. start planning your garden; order seeds.
28. join a community garden if you don't have one already.
29. invite someone over for dinner.
30. learn how to knit.
31. or how to brew beer.
32. invite a friend out for a beer at a neighborhood pub.
33. volunteer at your local public school.
34. or your local homeless shelter.
35. read harry potter to your kids, or to yourself if they're not old enough.
36. read a classic.
37. read a trashy mystery.
38. join a book group.
39. have coffee with a friend.
40. if you don't have a friend, make one. see above, #s 5, 6, 15, 22, 26, 28, 33, 34, 38.

i have not fallen off the face of the earth...

2006-02-05T17:41:00.000-05:00

my server is just down. yes, for like two weeks. verizon sucks. i hope to be back soon.

thanks for delurking!

2006-01-24T04:44:00.000-05:00

americanfamily, are you dawn's friend? always glad to see the fellow midwesterners!
ditto, susan!
barb, cape may is one of our favorite spots. i hope you are well. i miss your blog....
tertia, can i just say that i feel like i have arrived, now that such a celebrity has visited my site!?
beth a, my dad is an organic farmer near lafayette, and has a farm stand at the farmers market downtown. his stand is called earthcraft farm, you should check it out! i love that you are from lafayette! i used to live on highland avenue, and went to highland elementary school (it's condos now i believe.... sigh).
zitoun, julie and i did graduate work at iu as well. yes, i know it well!
k, dag! hey, my mom was dutch, and i still have family there. in fact, we will be visiting this summer. amsterdam is one of my favorite places on earth. my cousins live in the jordan. where are you?
erika, aruba girl and fisherwife, thanks for stopping in. jo rocks doesn't she? hers was the first blog i read, my introduction to this whole wacky world! welcome.

and thanks and welcome to all the rest of you who have been visiting. my goodness but jo is a popular girl! a link from the leery polyp and my stats are through the roof.

i guess i should actually write something of substance soon, huh? i owe shannon a piece on mary and martha, homemaking and hospitality, which i am working out in my head. soon, i hope!

riding high right now

2006-01-21T16:27:00.000-05:00

this morning i attended the birth of my friend rachel's baby girl, and wow! a beautiful, gentle homebirth. it was such an honor to be there. i will definitely have to write more about that, and perhaps the other two births i've attended, but not right now. soon.

my server has been down for almost five days, and i've been going nuts. i'm glad to be back, trying to catch up, and will post more soon.

okay my lovelies!

2006-01-16T18:54:00.000-05:00

i sort of missed delurking week, but there's such an interesting lot of you showing up on my statcounter, i'd just love to know who you are. time to come out of the closet! especially you philadelphians. and especially especially the hoosiers among you, being a hoosier myself. and especially especially especially the one of you from lafayette, indiana, where i went to elementary school. and then there seems to be a nice sampling of international visitors. i'm practically blushing pink i'm so flattered. but who are you??

okay, time's up. ollie ollie in come free!

"tell all the truth but tell it slant..."

2006-01-15T15:10:00.000-05:00

i'm pretty new to this blogging business, but one thing for sure i've figured out: part of why we do this is that we get to be way more thoughtful, articulate, funny, hip -- you name it -- than we are in real life. okay, so i should only speak for myself. maybe the rest of you are really as thoughtful and thought-provoking at all times in real life as you are on your blogs. maybe you're really always that sure of yourself about the big issues in life (and especially adoption). maybe the insights trip so easily from your fingertips, on to your keyboards and through the ether to my computer screen because you really do have that sort of clarity and integrity. (come to think of it, ms. jo over at the leery polyp really is pretty much the hippest, most way-cool, thoughtful mama you'd ever to care to meet, and not even a teensy bit of a disappointment in real life.... so maybe it really is just me....)

but i'm feeling like a tiny bit of a fraud quite acutely right now, completely captivated as i am in the raw, exquisitely written but completely artless heartbreak unfolding at speaking for myself. if you haven't read her blog, you must. and then just start clicking on the birthmothers blogring, because everyone of their stories is a story that needs desperately to be told. reading their stories is certainly blowing my mind.

so, i posted something at speaking for myself which felt, when i wrote it, to be very sincere, and thoughtful, and only a tiny bit self-congratulatory. but in what julie would call a "come to jesus" moment, i'm feeling the need to tell the whole story, to straighten out the slant of that truth. it's the story of how we came to be parents in the first place, the story of trixie's conception.

we started thinking seriously about having a baby in 1994, when researching something like "lesbians trying to conceive" or "donor insemination" or "known vs. anonymous donor" wasn't as simple as doing a google search and getting hundreds of hits. in the end, friends of ours were expecting a child through anonymous donor insemination, and had worked with a local feminist health clinic (i would link to their website, but sadly they closed a few years ago), which in addition to providing gynecological and abortion services, was willing to facilitate home donor insemination for lesbian couples. this clinic had a relationship with a sperm bank in florida, and all of the donors at that bank were strictly and forever anonymous. i'm sure there were banks back then with known and knowable donors, but i'd never heard of such a thing. as far as i knew, the only way to have a known or knowable donor was to find one yourself.

we had not given much thought to this option. but in september of 1994, we were visiting our friend jennie in boston to celebrate her 30th birthday -- she was the first of our college crew to turn 30, having taken a year off after high school to live in portugal, and it was a big milestone. (hi jen! see, if you had a blog, i could link to it here!). another college friend, john (not his real name) was at the party. julie and i were not close friends with john, but he was very close to several of our friends, including jen. john had been a bmoc, with good reason: he was beautiful, smart, talented, thoughtful, and outrageously gay. he was the sort of guy you hope will pick you for his friend, and although he had never really chosen me or julie to be a special person in his life, he was kind and warm at jennie's party, and i was very taken with him all over again.

on the drive home from boston, i broached with julie the possibility of approaching john to help us make a baby. she was also excited about the possibility, and we sent him a very tentative note, asking if such a thing was even in the realm of possibility. he responded with guarded yet heartfelt enthusiasm, and we arranged a "summit" of sorts in boston some time later with a bunch of mutual friends in order to talk about what it would mean. both the big picture and the nitty-gritty logistics.

and here's the truth: the reason it didn't work was that john really wanted to be a father, and we were really clear that we didn't want another parent in our family. i wish i could fall back on the legal issues facing gay and lesbian parents, and chalk it up to the importance for me to be able to adopt our child and have a legal relationship, which would have required that john relinquish his parental rights. but as i recall, he not only was willing to do that, but would have insisted on it, precisely so that i could be a legal parent. no, all he wanted was to be a dad, to be involved, to be part of making decisions, to impart his values, to be a real and lasting part of his child's life, not as a "friend," or an "uncle," but simply as a dad. and he trusted us! even enough to relinquish his parental rights, he trusted us, if only we would say "yes, let's make that kind of family!"

but at the time, it was just too much for us. i wish i could remember what it felt like to be me then, what part of me couldn't imagine the possibility that there would be three parents in my child's life, couldn't trust that a man as good and kind and thoughtful as john could be trusted to work with us to make mutual decisions in the best interests of our children's lives. we even had a role model for this, another college friend who was just such a dad with a lesbian couple. in retrospect it was a clear crisis of imagination. it was, in many ways, the same sort of need to have the "pride of place" in our children's lives that drives so many adoptive parents to be threatened by their children's other parents. the sort of need that i would like to think i'm above.

of course, there are differences. what john wanted to be in our children's lives was beyond what even the most ideal open adoption offers to parents who place their children with another family to raise: a true co-parenting arrangement. indeed, what we wanted from john was sort of the best a first parent can hope for in an open adoption relationship: to be truly included as an important part of the family, but in the end, not a parent, and ultimately with no power except that which we, the "real" parents, might confer. and of course, take away, as our whims dictated. the fact that john declined this invitation suggests really good instincts on his part; the fact that he did so without bitterness or rancor -- indeed with tenderness and great regret --makes me only all the more sad that we didn't have more open hearts and minds at the time.

now of course, it goes without saying, i have no regrets about having conceived trixie the way we ultimately did, with an anonymous and unknowable donor. for if we had gone any other route, we wouldn't have trixie, which is simply unthinkable. the irony, though, of her situation, is not lost on me: no matter how she comes to feel about it later in her life, and no matter how much she wishes we might have made a different choice, it would have been impossible for us to choose a known or knowable donor for trixie. if we had done that, trixie would not exist. an enigma, for sure. the best we can do, if it becomes important to trixie some day (and so far she has very little curiosity about her father), is to help her search, and to be advocates for openness. but the truth is, unless he actively wants to be found, the chances of her finding her father are very very small. which is, certainly, a great loss for both of them.

and that's the truth. straight up.

when an adoptive mom becomes a stalker: some thoughts from inside a closed adoption

2006-01-13T21:29:00.000-05:00

micah was born at 33 weeks and was placed with us when he was twelve days old, still in the nicu. he came home to us three days later. his mother, amber, and father, malcolm (not their real names), held him briefly after he was born, but they never visited with him again, nor did they call to find out how he was doing. i'm not sure when his mother left the hospital, probably the next day or the day after that. she and malcolm made an appointment to meet with the agency several days later in order to sign the initial consent (final relinquishment wouldn't happen for three more months) but they didn't show up, and the agency was not able to get in contact with them for several more days. when the agency did reach them, amber and malcolm assured them that they still wanted to place their baby for adoption, and they both signed the initial consent form when micah (then still "baby boy c" [also not his real initial]) was eight days old. the agency called us for the first time that afternoon to see if we would be interested in the placement. obviously we were, but for various reasons, the placement didn't take happen for four more days.

amber had been in touch with the agency several weeks earlier. actually, she had been working with another agency, but they did not think they could find a placement for an african-american baby, and referred her to our agency, which works almost entirely with african-american mothers. at that time, of course, she did not think she was having a baby for several more months. she said she had only discovered she was pregnant at five months, and had known as soon as she discovered the pregnancy that she wanted to place her baby for adoption. she filled out an extensive social and medical history, and answered a few questions about what mattered to her in an adoptive family. she was open to a same-sex couple and to people of a different race -- she just wanted people who were well-educated and open-minded. she did not want to meet us or to know anything about us; the only thing she wanted to know was that her son had in fact been placed with an adoptive family. she did not want us to know her last name; she did not want letters and pictures; and she did not want her son to be able to contact her when he turned 18.

we received the social and medical history, with only last names, addresses and phone numbers redacted, so we know a whole lot about micah's first family. we know his parents were in their early twenties and were parenting his two older sisters, who were six and four when he was born. we know his sisters' first names. we know his parent's birthdays, where they went to high school, what neighborhood they live in. and, because the hospital messed up, and because the agency missed a last name when they were redacting, we know both his parents' last names.

you see where this is going, don't you? we have so much information about them, it would probably take me about a day to find them. and if i couldn't, it would probably take a private investigator about half an hour. it's a constant temptation which i am firmly committed to resisting until micah decides he's ready to find them and is capable of handling the possibility of their rejection. i don't want to betray their trust or disrespect their wishes. i don't want to open wounds, and it's not my place to second-guess the way they've chosen to deal with their grief. i know micah's sisters didn't even know their mom was pregnant with him, or at least hadn't been told. i believe amber and malcolm were told they could open the adoption at any time, that at the least there would be letters and pictures at the agency if they ever wanted them (and we do send them, even though they've never requested them).

and yet... and yet. i'm haunted by the thought of them. i scan crowds when i'm out, wondering if i would recognize them if we crossed paths at the zoo, or a library or playground. i wonder about micah's older sisters, and how much they really understood. i wonder how much micah looks like them. are they also sharp as tacks? do they share his wicked sense of humor, his passion, his persistence? i wonder about amber, how she's doing, if she started community college the next fall like she planned. i wonder about their pain, both amber's and malcolm's, and how they are coping with what they've lost, this beautiful baby boy of theirs. i wish they could know him, know how well he's doing, what an amazing kid they have.

and also i mourn for micah, for what he has lost, and especially the part of it that needn't have been lost had the adoption been open. even if we do find them someday, when he is older, and even if they welcome the reunion ... i just wish for micah that there would never be a time when he didn't know them, his mama amber and his daddy malcolm.

and then there's this: what if right now they are out there, wishing they could know micah, wishing they could have a relationship with him, yearning to know that he's happy and well, and they are just too afraid, or in too much pain, to reach out? what if they can't imagine we would be open to that? or they just can't imagine it, period? that haunts me more than anything. i find myself thinking, well, you could find them and just send a really simple note, and leave it at that. put the ball in their court, but at least make sure they know we're game if they are.

and then i start to feel like a stalker, and think that i need to stop thinking so much.

right?

midwinter blues update

2006-01-13T18:32:00.000-05:00

1. do get the house under control. and keep it relatively under control. the mess just makes me want to crawl out of my skin. check -- it's not clean by anyone's standards, but it's livable.
2. do get out of the house. every single day. preferably somewhere micah can run and play. close -- monday we went to the zoo with the two of my favorite lovelies, jo and sophia; tuesday we went for a jog; wednesday we didn't get out (it was raining and i was waiting for the washing machine repair guy), but we did have a play date with my friend liz and her four year old daughter recently adopted from sierra leone; thursday we went to the zoo in the morning with rachel and her son, who is Micah's age, and after school we went ice skating with pat and her kids; and today we went to the library.
3. don't let getting the house under control become an excuse for not doing #2. check.
4. do get together with friends several times a week. pick up the phone and call! check (see #2 above).
5. do start running again. at least three times a week, even if you have to do it with micah in the jogging stroller (ugh! he's just so freakin' big these days!). so far, i've run twice, once with micah, once without. and i still have a couple of days to get another run in! (and oh lordy, am i out of shape! but it felt gooooooddddd.)
6. do put together a training schedule for running the broad street run in may. even though i haven't run in a couple of months, there's plenty of time to work up to 10 miles. haven't done this yet, but this is the sort of thing i love doing (charts and schedules and such), and there's still plenty of time.
7. do finish julie's sweater i've been working on for 4? 5? years. by the end of january seems a reasonable goal. cate, i just don't know how you find time not only to knit, but to write about knitting.... but aren't you happy that i'm at least blogging? and of course, it's not yet the end of january... hope springs eternal!
8. ditto trixie's poncho. oops. (see #7.)
9. do eat more fruits and veggies. better, not enough, but better.
10. don't throw the baby out with the bathwater if i fall down on anything on this list. check (see # 6, 7, and 8).

the fact that it's been a balmy 55 to 60 degrees this week has surely helped a lot in the lifting of my funk, along with the fact that it was still light the other day at 5:00 p.m. (!), but i'm going to take a little credit too. so far so good.

run, don't walk

2006-01-13T18:25:00.000-05:00

to the store for coconut milk and curry paste, squash, cabbage and potatoes, (if these aren't staples in your house), so you can try out this yummy recipe courtesy of (the currently hibernating, hopefully soon to reemerge) boomerific. we had it for dinner tonight, and it was oh so delish. i used red curry paste, and was a little heavy handed, which meant that julie was in heaven, it was just on the verge of (but not quite) too hot for me, and i made a box of annie's macs and cheese (organic, whole wheat, of course) for micah. trixie was at a birthday party for dinner, but it probably would have been a little spicy for her too. so be careful with the curry. and enjoy!

edited to say: i added some chickpeas for protein, and it was great. i'm a bit of a protein hound.

short on time, long on ideas

2006-01-13T06:11:00.000-05:00

i have so many posts running through my head, so little time these days (seems i either have meetings in the evenings, or i fall asleep with micah.) here are some thougths rambling around in my head. what should i tackle next?

our adoption story
when adoptive moms become stalkers: thoughts on micah's birthfamily
yoga and running as a spiritual practice (and some thoughts on infertility)
christian chaos, or, dynamiting the current organizational structure at our church
a wildly diverse united church of christ congregation considers equal marriage rights
vindicating martha (as in mary and, not stewart): some thoughts on homemaking
sensory processing disorder, anyone? with a possible dash of adhd thrown in?
getting married again for the first time: how self-indulgent is it?
epiphany: why our family is probably complete, at least for the next 15 years or so

those are at the top of the list right now. what sounds interesting to you?

bleak midwinter blues

2006-01-08T19:21:00.000-05:00

so i don't know who you are out there (or if there really *is* anyone out there!), but whoever you might be, i need your help to keep me accountable. it's the bleak midwinter again, and i'm a little bit down in the dumps. sigh. happens every winter. and the thing is, i know exactly what i need to do to feel better, but that's sort of the nature of being down in the dumps: you don't have the energy or momentum or get-up-and-go or *whatever* it is you need to do the things that would give you the energy, momentum, get-up-and-go.... so it's just a vicious circle. anyway, i figure if i tell someone else what i know i need to do, and maybe if you ask me how it's going now and again, then perhaps i'll be more inclined to get off my butt.

so, here's my do and don't list for getting out of the bleak midwinter doledrums:

1. do get the house under control. and keep it relatively under control. the mess just makes me want to crawl out of my skin.
2. do get out of the house. every single day. preferably somewhere micah can run and play.
3. don't let getting the house under control become an excuse for not doing #2.
4. do get together with friends several times a week. pick up the phone and call!
5. do start running again. at least three times a week, even if you have to do it with micah in the jogging stroller (ugh! he's just so freakin' big these days!).
6. do put together a training schedule for running the broad street run in may. even though i haven't run in a couple of months, there's plenty of time to work up to 10 miles.
7. do finish julie's sweater i've been working on for 4? 5? years. by the end of january seems a reasonable goal.
8. ditto trixie's poncho.
9. do eat more fruits and veggies.
10. don't throw the baby out with the bathwater if i fall down on anything on this list.

grampy

2006-01-06T22:40:00.000-05:00

i first met grampy almost 18 years ago, when he was still quite hearty and hale, but just as it's hard to remember your kids at a different age and stage, i can't really remember him then. well, a little bit, maybe. but really, the first clear images i have of him, he was already wearing cowboy boots at all times to keep his foot from dropping, and soon we were talking about how he really shouldn't be driving any more, although he did for many more years. even after his foot slipped and he drove his big, baby blue buick through the garage door, through the brick back wall of the garage, and into a tree, he kept driving. that very car, in fact, even though it was officially totaled, because he was offended by the amount the scrap yard guy offered him. the tires alone are worth more than that, he grumbled, and for the next year we would find him in his wheel chair, pulled up to the open hood, tinkering. he was a fine mechanic (having dropped out of school after the 6th grade, he went on to make a fortune with his own trucking business), and the car is still sitting in the garage today, in perfect working order.

just like his car, grampy should have been dead long ago; anyone else would have been. he stayed alive through sheer stubborn force of will. when he died, early in the morning on the day after christmas, it was because he decided to. he was in the hospital, and having refused a feeding tube, told his youngest daughter, julie's mom, that he was ready to go home. you mean back to the house? she asked, but he shook his head and said, no, home. he said the 23rd psalm, reminisced about the boys he had taught in his sunday school class years ago, and talked about whom he might see when he got home. ellie said, julie and marta and the kids are coming in a couple of days, maybe you'd like to wait until they get here. why should i wait? he asked, and indeed, why? he could have been no more sure of julie's devotion to him, no more secure in the bond he shared with his great grandchildren, no more comforted than he had already been through the regular visits to his home, and more recently to his hospital bedside, to which micah knew the way by heart, exploding out of the elevator, down the hall, through the swinging doors, to his grampy in the first room on the left.

grampy died the way he lived, with dignity, fully aware, and completely in control to the very end. at 92, his body just gave up, though his mind was still sharp as a tack. it was a death we can all hope for. his funeral was as joyful an event as a pennsylvania dutch funeral can be. "the best funeral ever" was bandied about by folks old enough to have attended their share. his granddaughters eulogized him beautifully, and i trust the irony of their tribute to grampy's open and accepting nature was not lost on the homophobic minister at shepherd of the hills. (i am ashamed to admit that i took some satisfaction when said minister's praise-song hand waving was upstaged by the beautiful rendition of "i'll fly away" sung simply and beautifully by julie, her sister, her sister's partner and trixie. and i'd even allow as how it was a bit unchristian of me to be enjoying the moment quite so much, except that grampy, too, would have been rolling his eyes at the hand-waving; and while he was a pretty straight-forward guy from an era when irony had much less cache, he too would have appreciated the irony.) yes, grampy's was a death to be celebrated, not mourned.

and yet i do mourn. not for grampy's passing, because that was, as they say, a blessing. but i do mourn for so much that having grampy in our lives meant. the beautiful quiet landscape of his gentleman's farm an hour outside the city where we would rake leaves in the fall, sled in the winter, sip sodas and rock on the front porch in the spring and summer. the long afternoons when micah and julie mowed the lawn on the riding mower, and trixie rode her bike up and down the lane. the way grampy called trixie "miss philly" and the way his eyes would light up as he watched "henry" -- the middle name he and micah shared -- play with antique clay marbles on the living room carpet. i will miss the way his house smells comfortingly of days gone by; i will miss eating fried clams and succotash at hickory park; i will miss sneaking ruffled potato chips and real coke when everyone else has gone to bed. i will miss the window into julie's childhood, the house almost exactly the same as when she was a babe. most of all, i will always regret that micah won't remember grampy or his place.

grampy was buried on a lovely hillside next to his wife florence, who died a few months after trixie was born. one of ten children, he is survived by just one sister, as well as two daughters and their husbands, two granddaughters and their partners, and a great granddaughter and great grandson.

my first meme

2006-01-06T20:14:00.000-05:00

what were you doing 10 years ago?

i was starting the second semester of my second year of law school (in the midst of writing that law review article, in fact). thinking lots and lots about race, "property as power" and the constitution. love, love, loving it ... almost as much as i hate, hate, hated practicing law. sigh. it was an expensive little hobby, law school, but i did love it. i was considering converting to judaism, drinking a lot of high-test coffee with law school buddies i'm no longer in touch with, smoking a lot of cigarettes bummed from said buddies.

we were living in the same house, only its third owners in a century, in the midst of (still ongoing) renovations. attending monthly block club meetings with mrs. bracket, mrs. sheppard, mr. ravenell, mrs. farmer, reverand wills and so many other old-timers who have since died. we were also on our third try of home inseminations trying to get julie pregnant; trixie would be conceived the next summer. i was *very sure* that women who stayed home with their kids were sad sell-outs and that daycare was part of the feminist revolution; that no kid of mine would *ever* sleep in my bed; and that moms who breastfed for more than a year were doing it to fulfill their own needs, not their babies'. um, yeah, please pass the crow!

what were you doing 1 year ago?

almost exactly the same thing i'm doing right now! staying home with micah. taking care of baby ada from down the block, now 18 months and walking and talking up a storm. taking care of the girls next door before and after school. sitting on the board of trixie's school. very close to completing my la leche league accreditation. serving as church school superintendent. resolving to run more and eat better. trying to pull myself out of the bleak midwinter dolldrums.

five snacks I enjoy:

1. salted peanuts and raisins
2. whole wheat toast right out of the oven with butter
3. julie's homemade beer, especially the belgian tripple (is beer a snack? sure!)
4. garlic stuffed olives from dibruno's
5. marinated mozzarella balls from talluto's

five songs to which I know all the lyrics:

1. every song on abby road
2. lift every voice and sing
3. bob dylan's jack of hearts
4. abba's dancin' queen
5. every song on prince's 1999

five things I would do if I were a millionaire:

1. quit taking care of other people's kids
2. tithe (or more)
3. practice yoga several times a week
4. get regular massages
5. travel far and wide

five bad habits:

1. putting off returning phone calls
2. not dealing with paperwork right away
3. yelling at my kids
4. bragging about my kids
5. taking my grumpiness out on julie

five things I like doing:

1. running
2. spending long days at the beach with my kids
3. preparing and eating meals with friends
4. watching cop shows with julie
5. reading to trixie while taking a hot bath

five things I would never wear, buy or get new again:

1. women's jeans that aren't low riders
2. oversize t-shirts or turtlenecks
3. cheaply made shoes
4. large frame glasses
5. brief-style undies

five favorite toys:

1. internet
2. knitting needles and yarn
3. kitchenaid mixer
4. new digital camera
5. tankini from title 9

so here’s the deal: remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. then add your blog to the bottom

moma la carter
afrindiemum
An Elephant’s Gestation
Boomerific
the wide tent

then select five people to tag:

1. mamacate
2. sara skates
3. peter's cross station
4. wet feet
5. leery polyp

wow! i'm a "prominent race crit"

2006-01-02T14:32:00.000-05:00

i was just googling my name to see if my blog would come up (not sure how public i want to be with folks in real life), and i found quite a long citation to the law review article i wrote in law school entitled "Race Obliviousness and the Invisibility of Whiteness: The Court's Construction of Race-Miller v. Johnson." the citation is at this site in this article. at one point he calls me a "prominent race crit" along with a bunch of authers who have been incredibly influential to me: derrick bell, kimberlé crenshaw, lani guinier and patricia williams, among others. too funny!

too much....

2006-01-02T08:12:00.000-05:00

julie's grandfather died the day after christmas, and while it was expected and a blessing -- he was 92, fully in control, and very ready to die after a long physical decline -- it definitely threw off our plans for a restful week at home as a family. instead we spent the week with julie's folks and sister and sil at grampy's farm, about an hour from here, in the midst of a lot of stress and family angst and funeral planning. sigh. a tribute to grampy will have to wait so that i can put my house back together again (we flew out christmas night after feeding our christmas party of "misfit toys" and the house is a wreck). tomorrow it's back to the grind.

yes, i'm feeling a little sorry for myself.

the darkest day of the year

2005-12-21T10:11:00.000-05:00

i had a total stressed out freak out this morning, completely forgetting that it is the solstice, the darkest day of the year.... i was reminded by dear cate, in her lovely post today. thanks cate for reminding me what's important right now. i'm going to light a candle, remind myself of what is basic, let go of the stress, and remember that from this day forward, the light is slowly seeping back into our lives.

"build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce...

2005-12-19T22:08:00.000-05:00

... seek the welfare of the city ... for in its welfare you will find your welfare." jeremiah 29:5,7

on the next street over, there are four vacant lots where four very narrow rowhouses were torn down in the mid-80's. two of them are owned by the city, two are long-tax delinquent and we have been unable to locate the owners. on one side of these vacant lots, next to the two that are city-owned, was a very very dilapidated house occupied by a squatter who sold drugs. and a dog and a lot of cats. the drug-dealing squatter's name was ricky, he played drums, drove a van, and was really quite a nice guy ... aside from the drug-dealing.

so these vacant lots had been basically a weed-infested trash heap for about twenty years until we -- a group of friends on our block, but really mostly me and julie -- applied to the city for an urban gardening agreement and began gardening there. we built beds, hauled in dirt, cut down dead trees, built a sandbox for the kids, planted vegetables and flowers, and generally tried as best we could to take care of it. in order to get the urban garden agreement, we needed a petition signed by residents of the block, and especially the adjacent land-owner. everyone signed willingly, including ricky the drug-dealing squatter, and for five years we all lived in harmony.

then pearle (not her real name, but she is quite a gem) decided she'd had enough of ricky the drug-dealing squatter (and i can't blame her -- even nice drug-dealers are not pleasant neighbors, and i'm speaking here from experience....) and she bought the house on sheriff's auction. now pearle lives across the street from the garden, in the house her husband grew up in. they've lived there about eight years. and for the first five years of the garden's existence, we never heard one complaint from her. we wouldn't have even really known she existed, except that her husband is the brother of one of our favorite neighbors. but once she bought the row-house next door, and set a crew of (very likely undocumented, being-paid-under-the-table) contractors to work, suddenly the garden was a problem. a BIG problem. "the farm" she called it. "tobacco row" (no, of course we don't grow tobacco!) and she started working the block, getting the old folks worked up about the "newcomers" (never mind that we've lived in the neighborhood for 13 years, a fair sight longer than she has) coming in and "taking over the block." suddenly raccoons and other vermin were a huge problem and it was all our fault (despite the fact that several of the old folks she was getting all worked up also have vegetable gardens in their yards). and most unfortunate, she tried, somewhat successfully, to make this a racial issue (she and most of the neighbors on the block are african american; we're an interracial group of gardeners, but she likes to ignore that fact and claim we're all white). in the beginning, all she really wanted was the lot next to her new property, so that she could build a garage. but despite our best efforts at reconciliation (and we really really tried, let me tell you) things just got worse and worse with pearle, until it became sort of a personal vendetta on her part.

unfortunately for us, as the new adjacent land-owner, she was able to take ownership of one of our two lots. the city offered us another urban garden agreement (it has to be renewed every year) on the second lot, but i told them that i wanted to buy it. last week i went before the vacant property review committee, in a big ornate city council caucus room in city hall, and told them that yes, i wanted to buy the property personally, and that yes, i was willing to pay fair market value for it. (gulp ... i have no idea what that's going to be, but i can't imagine it will be too much.) so they passed a resolution to sell it to me, and i'm just waiting to hear about the assessment and then hopefully, before too many more months, we'll have the deed in our hot little hands.

i don't know if pearle knows about this. it's probably going to make her crazy when she finds out. and i suspect that if i draw attention to the fact that i'm buying the lot and planning to continue gardening in it, she'll stir up more trouble. and then there's the fact that we're planning to continue squatting ourselves on one of the two lots that is privately owned, in hopes of getting the city to help us force it to sheriff's auction so we can buy that too. (the owner of the house on the other side of the garden is interested in the second privately-held lot, and we've decided in the interests of neighborhood harmony to just split the difference with him and not try to acquire that one.) and pearle could cause trouble on that front too, bidding herself just to push the price up. so i'm trying to be as under the radar as i can about all this.

in the meantime, though, pearle is flagrantly flaunting the city's zoning regulations while rehabbing her house. the city requires that a big orange notice of proposed zoning variances be posted prior to a meeting before the zoning commission any time any renovations change the exterior dimensions of the building. that includes minor alterations such as a deck, or a set of stairs. even a fence around your yard has to go before the zoning commission. and pearle has built a peaked roof where there used to be a flat one, added a two-story addition to the back, and added a front porch -- all without any zoning permits. i talked to an architect friend of mine, and he said the whole project would be shut down instantly if someone called it in.

but it just seems so snarky, you know? even though pearle would do it to us in a hot second. even though she is really the most mean-spirited person i've ever met. she is, after all, building houses for people to live in, just as we are planting gardens and eating what they produce. in my more generous moments, i try to see that we are both "seeking the welfare of the city," in our own ways. and then of course i don't want to disrupt the relative sense of detente we seem to have entered with her and the rest of the neighbors since she acquired the lot for her garage and stopped stirring things up. so i guess i won't be calling l&i any time soon, even though it galls my more vindictive self to see her getting away with this.

advent reflections

2005-12-18T15:03:00.000-05:00

i always hope that advent will be a quiet, contemplative time of anticipation and preparation -- preparation of a spiritual sort, not what seems like the endless madness of getting ready for christmas. we here at the wide tent keep christmas pretty simple -- our kids just get a couple of gifts from us, the family gets photos of the kids, grown-up friends get homemade beer and salsa. i guess it's all the nieces and nephews and other kids in my life that i get a little carried away with -- i like to make them something with a bit of a personal touch. often it's mass-produced tie-dyed t-shirts; this year i'm going a little crazy and making more personalized gifts. regardless, it never fails that by now, a week before christmas, i'm just feeling too busy, with too much to do, just a bundle of stress ... hardly wide-open and ready to receive the christ child. on top of that, the house is a mess, and i have no time for any of the quiet homemaking details that seem like they ought to be part of christianity's one big indoor, home-based festival.

it doesn't help that i never factor in the inevitability that a) we will all be sick in turn for much of advent and b) everybody and his sister will invite us to their holiday parties. which of course are lovely, full of good cheer and fellowship and yummy food, yadda yadda yadda. but what ever happened to celebrating christmas over christmas? you know, christmas has its own liturgical season -- that would be the couple of weeks after christmas. it's nice and short and defined, it ends with epiphany, and yet nobody really observes it, because we are all observing christmas when we're supposed to be observing advent. this year, we're really trying to observe advent as its own season of the liturgical year: our tree is not up, and we will not decorate it until a few days before christmas; we're not listening to christmas music yet; and we're saving all those sweet christmas treats until, well, christmas. we are lighting advent candles every night before dinner, and singing advent songs for our grace. it has been lovely, and has really added to our sense of anticipation -- i can't wait to listen to the messiah, for example, both the traditional choral version, as well as the hip-hop/rap/jazz "soulful celebration" that we love.

and well, maybe, even in the midst of the madness, this advent has been more of a time of contemplation and spiritual preparation than i give it credit for. maybe i've just got it all wrong in my expectations... maybe advent is supposed to be a busy, not a quiet time of contemplation -- certainly my best thinking often gets done in the midst of domestic chaos. and maybe the spiritual preparation of advent actually springs from the daily and domestic chores of preparing a home for a simple mid-winter festival of lights and hope. yes, i suppose it's true that much of my own spiritual formation has happened not in spite of, but because of the banal dailyness of life, of keeping a home and raising a family. again, the "quotidian mysteries" kathleen norris speaks of. i do know that i've been thinking a lot about making our lives more intentional -- more intentionally ethical, more intentionally simple, more intentionally joyful and aesthetically pleasing (more on that in another post). and this has definitely come in part out of our advent observance this year. hmmm....

still, i'll admit, i'd give just about anything right now for a clean house and two or three days with absolutely nothing to do!

testing testing...

2005-12-14T17:28:00.000-05:00

thanks to cate i now know how to do this cool linking thing. (okay yes, i'm a bit of a luddite deep down inside... there was once a time in my life when i could really claim to be a luddite, but that was before i owned a computer, a cell phone, a minivan, and, just in the last week, a second car. good lord, is this really my life?)

anyway, just needed to give it a try. oh, and here's the link to the books by kathleen norris that i mentioned in my first post. woo-hoo, isn't this fun!

my pink coat

2005-12-13T23:17:00.000-05:00

i used to hate pink. when trixie was born, we had good friends who had a two year old son, and we got all of his hand-me-downs for a couple of years (until trix caught up with him), and that's pretty much what she wore. i felt very strongly, in an earnest, feminist, new-parent sort of way, about *not* dressing her in pink and girly girl clothes. when she was about a year and had been mistaken for a boy *every single time we went out* (it's amazing how gendered baby girls have to be before they will be assumed female), i had a bit of a freak-out and ran to the store to buy her some grrl clothes. nothing pink, mind you, because i hated pink, but i remember some cool brown stretch pants with blue and yellow flowers, and some mod-in-a-slightly-girly-sort-of-way pull-overs. it had suddenly occurred to me that the whole point of not imposing frilly pink girl clothes on her was so that she could choose what made her happy and comfortable; but that in only dressing her in hand-me-down boy clothes, i was likewise imposing on her. i wanted her to feel comfortable in girl clothes if she wanted to wear them. (did i mention that i tend to over-think things? get to know me....)

anyhoo, i needn't have worried. our trix is every feminist mother's dream, defying all the gender stereotypes. she thinks barbie is stupid; is completely bored with the boyfriend/girlfriend talk that has already started in third grade; and was appalled at how femmy and made-up all the publicity shots of hermione granger were when the last harry potter movie came out. "mom, look at her, she's wearing jewelry and her nails are polished!" she cried in horror when i showed her a photo display in entertainment weekly. atta girl! at the same time, she wept when i made her cut several inches off her hair (oh the fights we had every morning! oh the joy now that she can brush it herself!); she's the very last girl her age to still choose to wear dresses to church; and the "best day of her life" remains the day she was a flower girl in her cousin's wedding, in a long white dress that looked an awfully lot like a wedding dress, if you ask me.

but it was trix who taught me to love pink. she always has a favorite color, but it changes every few months or so. for awhile now it's been scarlet and gold (gryffindor, you know). when she was a preschooler, she went through a short phase when pink was her favorite color. she liked pink because her best friend jonah (whose hand-me-downs she wore her first couple of years) loved pink. she had no idea that girls were supposed to like pink, she just thought it was a pretty color. i had always hated pink, mostly because i associated it with over-the-top, frilly, compulsory femininity. i had never really considered pink a color aside from its gendered associations. but for those few months, when trixie was in a pink phase, i started noticing pink. in the spring, my neighborhood is a riot of pink blossoms; in the fall, in the woods where i run, there's a bush whose leaves turn the deepest rose. having seen it anew through trixie's eyes, it's grown and grown on me until now it's my favorite color.

over thanksgiving, my sister-in-law took me coat shopping for my 40th birthday at a vintage clothing store. and she made me try on the brightest pink coat you ever saw. below the knee, three-quarter-inch sleeves, big white buttons. fuzzy and warm with a pink satin lining. now, until fairly recently, my wardrobe was pretty much black and grey and navy, with an occassional splash of brown or deep purple. i'm definitely in a different phase of my life these days, but even so, a big bright pink coat is a huge leap. but my lovely sister-in-law made me get it, and she was right. i wear it every day, and it makes me so happy. i love it as much as i hate winter.... it may be the only thing that gets me through.

here's the rub: trixie hates it. pink just isn't her thing anymore!

2005-12-10T17:15:00.000-05:00

micah the leopard

2005-12-10T17:12:00.000-05:00

trixie the bookworm

the zen of dreaming

2005-12-10T15:43:00.000-05:00

julie says i'm always living in the future, and i guess to some extent that's true. i love to make plans, whether they ever come to fruition or not, and at any given moment i can usually tell you with a lot of certainty what the next year, or two, or five, will look like. those plans almost always change, and that doesn't bother me at all. i just like making plans.

julie, on the other hand, is all about the here and now. she sighs a big sigh and a resigned "here we go again" look settles on her face when i want to have a big talk about "how our lives are going" -- usually during long car trips, when she's captive and her only escape is to pop in a book on tape.

and my life has really become much more zen, truth be told. while i'll always be a dreamer, the days of wishing the here and now away are long gone, hopefully never to return. those would be the days of wishing i could be home full-time with trixie, despising my life as an associate at a big bad law firm, trying to get pregnant, waiting to miscarry, hoping for an adoption placement.... oh, yes, much more zen these days.

in fact, my latest big plan -- to have a third child -- is precisely because i love my life right now so much that i'm not at all ready to move on to the next phase. i love the "quotidian mystery" of it all (to borrow a phrase from kathleen norris -- and here, if i knew how, i would link you to several books by one of my favorite authors, including "dakota: a spiritual geography" and "amazing grace: a vocabulary of faith") -- the relentlessness of the laundry, the house that's never quite clean, the shepherding of kids here and there, the playgrounds, the zoo, the coffeeshops, the playdates ... and while i often feel i need to jettison some of my volunteer work, probably the relentlessness of the laundry and the picking up and the meal preparation and the shopping and the "gentle hands, micah!" would all be a little less charming without the la leche league meetings, and the helpline phone calls, and the two boards i sit on (church and trixie's school), and the church school that i run. it's a rich, full life, and i love it.

when i look forward, i get excited too -- i have plans to become a board certified lactation consultant, and i have dreams to work with underserved nursing mothers, especially in the african-american and adoption communities. sometimes i imagine combining that with a small law practice, doing adoptions and estate planning for new families, especially gay and lesbian ones. i'm also interested in post-partum and post-placement doula work. it would be sort of "one stop shopping" for the new family -- a multi-faceted job that might actually keep my interest and speak to all my passions. a "wide tent" if you will. it's all very exciting. dreaming and planning for that career kept my mind occupied during long runs when i was training for a marathon a year ago (finished in 5.5 hours!), and it still gets my blood racing when i make connections with folks who have similar interests and who might one day be interested in pursuing some of these things with me.

but the thing is, i'm just not ready yet. i thought i was. micah is two and a half, and next fall he will start preschool three or four mornings a week. two years after that, he will start kindergarten. so if i'm going to set this career in motion, the time is soon. yet all i want to do is hang on to this good good life i worked so hard to get for a couple more years. i always thought i'd have a big family, but infertility got us off track for awhile. a third kid now doesn't make much sense -- we both just turned 40, we waited a year for micah and it could take longer the second time around, it sets us back financially ... not to mention the sleepless nights, the dinners and dates and travel postponed. the only rational thing i have on the "pro" side of that con list is 1) i think it would be great for micah to have a younger sibling and 2) it would be especially great to have another black, adopted child in our family. but of course, micah will be fine without a younger black sibling, and when it comes right down to it, i just want another baby. for no good reason other than i do.

julie, on the other hand, feels like she just got some semblance of a normal life back. and she's right, the first few years with micah were quite intense. mostly because he's an incredibly spirited little boy who was passionately attached to his mamamarta for quite a long while, if i do say so myself. it was really perfect for me, we really filled each other's needs perfectly, but looking back on it, i'm not sure if the intensity of our attachment was so great for the rest of the family. i love watching now the quality of his relationship as it blossoms with julie, and the quiet space we're both able to carve out for trixie more and more, not to mention each other -- and i do undestand why she would like to just live in this moment, without contemplating a third child for awhile.

so we'll see. julie and i have always had a great process for making decisions without "winners" and "losers" -- a coming to consensus that ultimately meets everyone's needs. i have no doubt that we will do it again in this instance. and in the meantime, i'm resisting the temptation to shout from the rooftops "we're having another baby!" and instead be a little zen in my dreaming.