Savage River Hike

Hiking in Denali

After leaving Healy this morning we went into Denali National Park as far as private vehicles can go (15 miles) and hiked up Savage River. There's a foot bridge about one mile in, then we carried on for another mile or two after that on unmaintained trail, then back out, looping around to the other side of the river once back at the bridge.

It was gorgeous and scenic, sunny and windy, big blue sky and giant black/white striated mountains in the distance. I was hyper-conscious that I was ON planet earth. There is something anxious but also assuring when one can see miles and miles of landscape unadorned by humans - like knowing there's this true beauty in the world that no matter how much concerted effort I put into trying to create my perfect life, I'll never even get close to this magnificence made slowly, naturally, violently, arbitrarily but with purpose over quiet time. Anxious. Assuring. See?

Into the Wild (movie) Bus

Sitting in the front of the 49th State Brewing Company in Healy, AK.

Hello Dahlia

Imma kiss you, Tia

Planting day

Waiting to Adopt

There's a whiteboard magneted to the fridge. On it we write to-do lists and things to pick up at the store; we draw pictures of home projects we're imagining and sometimes when I'm on a work call I'll write down names and emails of people I should definitely be in touch with and their info might stay up for weeks until I think to erase it.

We also use it to write notes to one another. He's an early bird, gone by 7 or 8am each day and I'm a night owl (both of us avian), up late til the sun disappears in Alaska springtime. It's a way to communicate the day's final thoughts, the morning's first ideas to one another. Now I cannot get sleepy and so I wrote him all the things tonight - the intensifying daylight of spring, another round of monthly cramps, the mind-spinning waiting pool... Oh this waiting pool.

That's what they call it in adoptionland when you are done with all your tests, paperwork, classes; when you've assembled a portfolio and paid all your fees - you officially enter the "waiting pool". When people ask where we are in the process, I now enunciate wait-ting pool because it often sounds to me like I'm saying wading pool. The shallow safe one, for novices who are still getting comfortable. "Yeah, so we've been in the wading pool for about 5 weeks so far, just getting our feet wet you know, until we get get acclimated and go under all the way."

So, we're in the waiting pool now. I've always been fascinated by the specific vernacular of small groups. If I happen to become part of those groups, I don't take the usage of their lingo lightly. Clearly I don't. Expecting is another term for this period of life, anticipating a baby, awaiting parenthood. But that's a more private venture, isn't it, we're in a collective, part of a pool.

Come to think of it, I don't know anyone else currently in this place. Seems like we could have some good conversations, find some important camaraderie with other waiters. Even though they could be chosen and not us, and even though I never really desire to belong to any group and try to avoid it most times, and even though it'll probably be a short amount of time that we're in this place - it could be nice, right now, to know what others are thinking about.

Tonight I wrote on the white board: Can't get sleepy - Spring! Cramps! Waiting pool!... and the way I wrote it this time, it looked like Wanting pod! Which is not entirely inaccurate. Neither is the idea that wholly different than "wading pool". A pod of similar individuals, hanging out in our pool, all of us waiting, wanting to get soaked.

Sunset fiesta

 

Babies and Key Fobs or You Are What You Love

Twice this week I've been privy to the message that "you are what you love, not what loves you back". And I'm thinking about: babies on their way to this world, ones I will raise and ones that I will only hear about, pray for, and love whether I mother them or never meet them. Then there are much lesser things, things like choosing a key fob that represents me when it all gets shrunk down to a little key chain-sized tchotchke.

So, what DO I love and what might it make me. In two parts...

PART I - The Serious Part: This adoption waiting pool business, waiting for that call, that birth mom to pick you selection, that eventual helpless, new human that comes to live with you and needs constant care - it's a mystery and it's a process fraught with emotion and preparation and daring to hope but carefulness not to hope too much.

Even if they don't choose us, it's okay because there is someone else chosen who wants just as much as we want - and for longer even! - and isn't that just as good or even better? I've come to think so, yes. Everyone should win at this, my competitive spirit is absent in this. Good. It's not selfish-good, but it's universal-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things-good which in this case is a child's life.

Choose us or choose another, I will still love and that's this message of being what you love - doesn't matter when that baby joins us - because one will join our family someday - and until then we will, I will, hear about all these moms pregnant, unable to parent, in the most tenuous, not ideal situations, mostly desperate but still wanting to make a plan for this child to have a good life even so. And every time I hear their stories when they call to tell us "there's this birth mother who..." about 4th, 5th, 6th babies, moms overwhelmed, moms abandoned, moms who haven't had a chance to get their degree, do their life yet, find their true meaning... Women undone and needing the biggest kind of help - I just let them into my heart a little bit and I love them, whether or not they pick us.

There is nothing in my life that can compare to this, come close to that kind of wrenching reckoning. Because for every time I don't get a baby, I have everything else - love, stability, a degree, a purpose, success, options... In other words: I don't need to be loved back - by every birth mother choosing adoptive parents, by every little baby born to become someone else's child - to be something that I want to be now. I have something, I am something. And soon I'll get to be a mother. When it's right. I'm so happy to wait for right!

PART II- The Vapid Part: I recently shopped online looking to purchase a keychain for my new Lexus car key. So I started out looking for Lexus key fobs - bor-ring - then I thought, well what about something that represents what I like? So, let me tell you, this practice really boils down all that one likes in life, one's symbols so to speak, the things that you wouldn't mind representing you in some way. For me it was enlightening, sort of, to figure it out and realize the "things I like"(but don't necessarily want for gifts for birthdays, Christmas, etc...).

Herewith, ideas/concepts that represent what I like/me-in-a-nutshell figured out whilst shopping for a key fob:

• Mexican art
• Paris in the 20s
• Christina Rossetti/Emily Dickinson/Sylvia Plath/Anne Sexton or any other brilliant and tragic poetess (no key chains available for that one)
• Frida Kahlo
• Mermaids - just mermaids in general
• Sagrado Corazón
• Wonder Woman
• Music - but not music notes or pictures of instruments 

I ended up buying an inexpensive, custom made leather fob with my initial stamped into it. I love it. What's it mean? Probably nothing, but maybe ideas like simple, stylish, classic, unique and hopefully made to withstand years of purposeful use. Yes, that's good, I can work with that.