Our Seven Wonders: Truly Thankful, Truly Blessed

Fallon Paige

Harrison Scott

Alyssa Jean

Ty Gabriel

Bailey Orrin

Gabrielle Marrae

Griffin Alan Kent

Meet Mr. B

Today, Bailey came to our house to live full-time, capping three months of transitioning that included several drives to Winthrop where he lived with his foster family.

The state requires a transition period, during which we were able to gradually introduce ourselves to him, and him to us. He latched on immediately, began calling us Mumma and Dadda from the start, and has always called our home his own. He came to our house a few times, for overnights. And a couple of weekends.

Because of the ease with which everything has gone, we were able to speed up the transition.

He will have to live with us for six months before we can legally adopt him. A state requirement. But as far as we're concerned, he's ours now.

Corrine served a brunch for everyone - Bailey's foster family and their adopted son, who is Bailey's biological brother. Corrine's parents came, as did her brother and his family. All of our kids - except Ty - were here as well.

The coming days, following Thanksgiving break, will be a process of getting him into a school. We have a meeting with the local school district about the details on Tuesday. His is a peculiar case that needs the assistance of special education in order to meet certain developmental needs. We are treading in unfamiliar waters here. As his new advocates, there are more questions than answers. What does he really need? What should he be getting? How do we ensure that he's not treated just as a source of income for the local school district?

It's an ongoing education for us. But what isn't in life? We're ready to tackle it, that's fir sure.

The Courage to Write

Corrine had a great idea yesterday. Why not turn our experiences in adoption into a short memoir? From a man's perspective - a father's point of view? Start from about a year ago when we took four weekends of classes together, and finish when B is legally ours, which would be sometime next June (if the current schedule holds.)

I loved the idea. It makes perfect sense, in fact. I'm a writer, a father, a man, and I think I could easily fill a couple hundred pages on the subject. I think people would read it, too.

Now, before you spew coffee through your noses this morning, please understand the motivation is NOT to profit off the adoption of our son. If you're a writer reading this, you're smiling. Because you know only about a half a percent of writers actually make money from their writing.

This is not a get-rich-quick scheme, Alice.

Corrine's argument (I was skeptical at first) went something like this: "Do you know how rich we could get off this!?!?"

She's a hustler, that girl of mine. Always checking the angles.

Actually, what she said was that a story about the adoption of a child, from a man's point of view, would be a welcomed change. People associate adoption with women, I guess. Or with sentimentality. Or with things like feelings and emotions. You know, stuff guys don't really have?

And God knows men are not sentimental creatures. Well, unless we're watching Brian's Song or Field of Dreams or The Natural.

I, on the other hand, am a well of emotion. A veritable spring of gushing sentiment. I can cry on cue, almost.

So, I agreed with her. A little memoir about my feelings and experiences with adoption. I've started scribbling notes. Some ideas about theme. It can't be just a chronology of events. That would be boring. There has to be a thread through it. What would it be? Well, I can't determine that now. It will expose itself in due time.

And as I sat jotting initial thoughts down, pieces of my life started creeping into it. Things not specifically associated with the adoption itself. Things about being a father, about having a father. Some funny anecdotes of my childhood. And poignant scenes, too, like when Fallon was first born.

And after about an hour of this brainstorming, a fear crept in. If I'm to write about my feelings, and if the sphere of storytelling continues to expand so that it includes Fallon, and Harrison and my parents, etc. ... how much do I put in? Naturally if I write about parenting, then it stands to reason I would have to include Fallon and Harrison's mom, from whom I am divorced. Do I include the sordid details of the divorce, too? And will she balk at the idea of her being in a memoir?

Ahhh, the bogeyman has paid a visit. The age-old dilemma of memoirists: can you be true to your story without violating the trust of those who share a life with you?

Now, listen. I'm not saying I want to write bad things about these people. But, you know, there are things in my life (as there are in everyone's life) that are painful. If I am to be honest - and that's what a memoir is, honest - then I need to include some events that may or may not reflect too well on myself, and therefore, not too well on my loved-ones.

How far is too far? Do I need these people's permission to even include them? Do I change their names to protect them? But then again, let's be real, people will know who they are, I mean, come on.

This is not a tell-all. It's not an expose. It is, however, an exploration of my feelings about parenting, in a broader sense, and as it relates specifically to the adoption of a child. Naturally, I don't live in a vacuum. I interact with other humans, many of whom have helped shape my personal history. Including (significantly) my first wife, my parents, my siblings, my children.

Do I tip-toe, for example, around my divorce? Do I delve into the specifics (scandalous, many would say - sorry, but that's a part of my life, too) or do I just say "Voila! one morning I woke up I was divorced)? This passage of my life affected my children both positively and negatively. And it called into question (in my mind) my skills (or lack thereof) as a father.

The thing is, some parts of my life, when exposed, will not reflect very good on me, but it will reveal me as a human, with flaws, particularly as a father. It will also delve into my relationships with my own parents, some good, and some bad. That's the whole point of this. No one wants to read a story from a guy who comes across as having nothing wrong with him, who has made all the right choices and lives a trauma-free life.

Yuck.

So back to the memoir. What was a great idea yesterday is now scaring the hell out of me. Which means I have to do it. There's no turning back. I've been presented with a challenge: to be brutally honest about who I am as a human, a father, a man, with all the blemishes, but within the context of this adoption. People I know may or may not embrace it. I will have push back, I'm sure. Resistance by some who will insist that either my version of events is flawed (and therefore a big fat lie), or that I have no right whatsoever to mention them.

Oh boy.

Deep breath.

Halloween 2009

Thoughts on B

Corrine and I both blog. Many of you know this. And many of you know, therefore, that her blog has a lot to do with the process of adoption that we have been put through been patiently enduring.

I have not blogged much about the experience because she has been diligently recording our trials and triumphs. Why duplicate, right?

What I failed to recognize, however, is that I am withholding my own thoughts. My own perspective, which differs from Corrine's, merely by virtue of being a man. My take on things naturally would be different. Not opposite. Different.

So here's the deal. Here's my whole take on the adoption thing.

1. Yes, many believe us to be crazy, given that we have six between us already, ranging from 18 to 1. Know what? We agree. But we don't care, either. Crazy is the new sanity.

2. Yes, we fear some may suggest - to themselves and their friends - that we are doing this for money. We knew that foster care provides money. We had no desire to foster. End of that debate, right? Nope. We found out fairly recently that adoption, too, offers families a monthly stipend. The child we are adopting has multiple special-needs diagnoses. The stipend will not cover the accumulated expenses. Trust me. It's a shame. So - yes, we're getting a monthly stipend. (Insert ironic laugh here).

3. Yes, meeting our son, for the first time, was surreal. There's a quality to this whole process that has yet to define itself for me. As a writer, I am at a loss for words. Here is a child born to a woman incapable of being a mother, whose negligence nearly killed him. His neglect so severe, as an infant, that at 5 he has the vocabulary of a three-year-old. He is often frustrated at not being able to articulate his emotions. But when he smiles at me, and his arms wrap around my neck, I am the one who regresses and the words fail me and I am the one incapable of expression. When he says Dadda he becomes an oratory giant and I am reduced to silence.

4. I am a man, yet live in a world of men so wretched that they cannot do something so simple as love their own child. That they can live with themselves knowing that in another corner of this universe their own blood filters through the veins of a human, yet they remain incapable of action. I wish the pulse of this young boy's heart beat so furiously that it drowns any notion of such a human.

5. Curiously, during these past few weeks - meeting B for the first time, and our subsequent all-too-brief transition days together - I have thought a lot about my own father. Yesterday he asked if B had ever been fishing. I said no. Three volumes of meaning passed between us in a single, silent moment. I could see my father's imagination, a picture of him in a boat with B.

6. I consider myself to be a fairly progressive male: movies make me cry, I love to love my wife, I write extremely sentimental poetry every so often. Yet ... I still find myself keeping my emotions in check a lot. More than I want to. I don't know why. It's in the wiring, I suppose.

7. I would be lying if I told you I wasn't afraid of what this adoption will do to the relationship I have with the other children. I've done foolish things, but I'm no fool. I know two things: they will have feelings, and they will probably not express them truthfully. That's not the same thing as saying that I think they don't support this. It's just me saying that another addition will add weight. In more ways than just to the pressure on the car tires.

8. I am already imagining B when he is 10, 20, 30 and 40, and adding parentheses next to each that displays my age in relation. And yes, it makes me swallow hard.

9. I love my wife more for this, and I can't explain why; anymore than I can explain why dark, still waters make me giddy and scared at the same time.

10. We gave B the middle name "Orrin" after Corrine's grandfather. Corrine was named after him too, with the C and the E added at either ends to make it beautiful. We kept B's first name, of course, and he will have our last name. It's the name he calls himself already, and he refers to our home as his home. Isn't a child's seal of approval the most significant gift he can give you?

I bet you're wondering why I have a new picture of Corrine at the top of this post.

It's because I couldn't use the picture of B and I together in our kitchen, taken this weekend. It would violate confidentiality where he is not yet legally "ours."

So the picture is of Corrine. A new favorite of mine because it reveals her spirit well: this woman with so much beauty and so much vibrancy in her that she can't help but burst into your life and brighten it.

B is there, too, a fuzzy out-of-focus blotch in the background.

And it dawned on me just now the metaphor: after being for so long out of focus, the time has come for that to change. And who better to bring him into focus than a woman with so much vitality and fierce love that she can add another child into her life as if he were her own?

When You Love Someone

When you love someone - you'll do anything
You'll do all the crazy things that you can't explain
You'll shoot the moon - put out the sun
When you love someone

You'll deny the truth - believe a lie
There'll be times that you'll believe you can really fly
But your lonely nights - have just begun
When you love someone

When you love someone - you'll feel it deep inside
And nothin else can ever change your mind
When you want someone - when you need someone
When you love someone...

When you love someone - you'll sacrifice
You'd give it everything you got and you won't think twice
You'd risk it all - no matter what may come
When you love someone
You'll shoot the moon - put out the sun

When you love someone

UMF, CW, CT, FHH and Me

I learned Wednesday that I have been accepted into the college's creative writing department (CW for short) as a major. Those of you who know me are no doubt scratching your heads, thinking, "Um, well, duh...?"

The truth is, I was accepted as a freshman at the University of Maine - Farmington (UMF), but my declared major - CW - wasn't automatic. You have to apply, and be accepted, before you can be officially declared. This involves submitting up to two writing samples, an application, and an essay about yourself and why you want to major in creative writing.

I've been sweating it, too. I got the obligatory "thanks for submitting your application to our department..." email, that also included this little tidbit at the end: there were bunches of applicants to fill only a limited number of slots, so, you know, good luck.

Yes, I did the rationalizing. I said to myself, "Well, twelve years as a journalist, a published novel, 41 years old....They just GOTTA take me."

I don't know what the department's criteria is, either. Truthfully, I was worried I would get a Thanks but No Thanks letter.

Now, relief. I can continue with this semester's classes (A average, thank you very much....!) and then, next semester, jump into CW classes. THAT's gonna be cool.

On another note unrelated to college, but significantly more important. (And WAY more exciting) Corrine and I met our prospective new son, today, when we traveled an hour to visit him in his current foster home.

I cannot tell you his name, out of confidentiality, but I can tell you that he is red-headed, so Corrine has started calling him Carrot Top, or CT.

CT is 5, but has some developmental delays. He has been diagnosed with mild mental retardation, but you wouldn't know it. In fact, we both think it's a misdiagnosis. Frankly, he was born in a stunting environment by his biological mother, who left him with his older brother, locked in a room, many times.

He is delayed in his speech, and we think maybe that's where the MR diagnosis comes from.

Really, he more than likely has a form of ADHD (fucking hyper as hell, or FHH - that's the technical term, by the way) but what child isn't?

CT is incredibly bright, loving, inquisitive, and the aforementioned FHH.

When you ask him a question, his "yes" is "aye", which is so damn Scots-Irish cute.

He's not Scots-Irish. He's pure-blooded American. With red hair. And FHH and ADHD.

It was surreal meeting him for the first time, knowing that in a few short weeks, he will be living with us, and in about a year, will have the last name Turner.

FA!

(fuckin A)

Man.