I have a thing for beaches.
Have you ever heard of an “accidental adoption”?
Okay, you’re probably thinking there’s no such thing.
After all, in order to adopt you must do a variety of things that you can hardly do without meaning to. Things like showing caseworkers your home. Leaving your fingerprints at the local police station for posterity. Clearing out the bedroom you’ve been using since 1995 as a place to dump everything you can’t quite get rid of but will never need again.
And there’s always stuff to buy. Organic sheet sets. Books. Curtains. That cool sliding rocking chair that your best friend slides out of holding your new baby the first time you leave them alone, risking serious head injury for both parties.Valium.
All true. I bought stuff. My friends threw me a baby shower. The fire marshal even came through my home to make sure I had a fire extinguisher in the kitchen.
But my daughter’s adoption was as close to accidental as you can get. I practically had sex without a condom. Heterosexual sex that is.
It’s not that I didn’t want a child—I did. I’d been trying to birth a child myself for what seemed like forever. I had gotten hormone shots in my bum, scopes poked through my navel, purple dye squirted through my fallopian tubes.
Pretty soon my funds ran out. I had an old house, a new mortgage, and a paycheck that never went far enough. There was no way my checkbook could endure more medical procedures or I could begin to pursue any of the expensive options for infant adoption. After a few months of sleeping until noon and eating way too many double-chocolate fudge brownies I ended up driving to a foster care class with the same spirit with which I had gone to the doctor’s office each month. I didn’t believe anything would come of it.
I should have known foster care wasn’t for me. I absolutely could not work with abusive parents. Nor could I be patient with the red tape the bureaucracy seemed to crank out by the mile. But the thought of actually adopting a child old enough to talk to me made me break out in a cold sweat.
Still, I had already had seven weeks of parenting classes under my belt. I had unpacked enough boxes in the spare room so that they wouldn’t fall over and crush the caseworker on her way through. I had found places for my old Barry Manilow records, Barbie doll collection and college term papers. And I had done some serious reflection on my previous experience in a sliding rocking chair and decided against buying one.
And so the last week of that parenting class, I again sat down in the hard plastic seat with the rounded bottom in that strange shade of peach mixed with red under the bright, humming florescent lights. I opened up my navy blue binder to week eight. This was it. The last week. I readied my sheet of loose-leaf and my pen.
But on this day, a visit from an adoptive parent left me cold. Her youngest child had been only three years old when social services placed him with her for adoption. This was young. This was rare. Every person in that class perked up, sat a bit straighter in her chair. The questions began.
“How were you able to adopt a child so young?”
“What about attachment? Did he have any problems?”
“Since he came to you so much younger than your other children, have you bonded more strongly with him?”
That mother only looked at our mouths as we barraged her with questions. She told stories about the little one’s first day of kindergarten and his fifth birthday party without raising her eyes. Unease tickled my stomach. Minutes went by as I sat back and watched her try to avoid saying whatever it was she didn’t want to tell us.
And then she said it. “When I decided to adopt, I made a commitment to be my child’s mother, no matter what. I hoped I would grow to love him. I didn’t. But I’m still committed to being his mother.”
Her words froze me. Not love your own child? Anxiety made my fingers tingle. What if I adopted a child and then couldn’t love her?
I left that class having already decided to put this behind me. I never called to make an appointment to sign the foster parent certification papers. I did not pursue adoption. I got a roommate, so the house wasn’t dark nearly so often. I fell into a hot and heavy love affair. I kept right on sleeping till noon.
Still, the caseworker called again and again. I called her back after about a week of messages piled up. Her persistence made me curious.
“We wondered if you were still interested in adopting,” she said to me. “Because if you are, I think we’ve got a little girl for you.”
What? Her voice flattened me. I couldn’t see anything but the number for the home-finding unit scratched in the margins of a yellow pizza delivery menu stuck under the telephone.
They actually wanted me to be someone’s mother?
It turned out they did. So there you have it folks. It’s your call—accidental? Or no?
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Gay and Lesbian Adoption, Parenting Adopted Children
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