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.