My Gay Adoption Day 144 :: You Gonna Raise That?

Way back when we attended Friends in Adoption's Get Acquainted Seminar, Kevin and I stared down a dour woman who regaled the audience with a sad tale of frustration - she'd waited quite a long time to be matched with a birth mother, and was quite forthcoming with her aggravation over the wait. Kevin and I looked at each other and wondered if we were in for the same emotional negativity.

It's strange, but we're not feeling impatient - at least not yet. Perhaps this is part of the normal emotional roller-coaster for all prospective adoptive parents. But we're happy to have a short breather before "the call."

Part of the reason is that we're just busy dealing with a new house. This is the first year I've witnessed spring in anything I've owned that's not part of the concrete jungle of Boston proper - and it's not going very well. The contractor who built our home planted some lovely foliage in front of it that clearly has not survived the intense winter we've had here; frankly, it looks like a gay man at circuit party closing time: wilted, lonely and desperate.

What the hell? Plants are supposed to be simple to grow - simply look in my backyard. Instead of grass, I have weeds and clover. I can grow those without even trying; they're healthy, spreading their happy claws over my land, thumbing their little green noses in my direction each time I walk to my car. And gawd knows I can grow trees well enough; instead of healthy little hostas along the side of my house, I'm evidently growing a species of maple tree.

This weekend, therefore, I will arm myself with hoses, fertilizer, weed-killer, and a credit card, and do battle with the encroaching vegetative vermin as if I were a Crusader fighting the infidels. The betting pool is that way: current odds are 5-to-1 that I'll be bested within an hour.

The inside of our home has likewise become a battleground. Harley is a matter of weeks gone, and we're still mourning her; she was cremated and now sits on our mantle next to her favorite toy (please, no "Fockers" jokes - my Mom has already cracked all of them for you, dear reader). But two weeks ago, a Facebook friend of ours rescued three little kittens from a barn behind her house, and we were entreated to adopt them. Adopt them we did: two feral kittens, one orange and one calico. They're named "Chloe" and "Tigg" but we've nicknamed them "Terror" and "Destruction." They're cute, but all teeth and nails and curiosity; he's a rambunctious little boy who has already begun climbing the screen doors and she's a big ol' bitch in the making, lording it over her brother and the rest of us peons who dare to live in her house. This week, Tigg discovered the touch-lamp on Kevin's end-table by the bed. He thought it was very funny to turn it on and off all night long.

This is not to say that I'm suddenly uninterested in welcoming a child into our zany little lives; in fact, I still gaze enviously at every parent I pass in the supermarket who's attempting to keep their toddlers under control, looking as if they're experiencing their own private Gethsemane in Aisle 6 between the olive oils and the salad dressings. I want a baby more than anything.

But I confess I'm enjoying this little break before the storm. Four months of intense work (not to mention big bills) ended in the "going live" moment wherein we enter an indefinite period of suspension, waiting for a prospective birth mother to choose us over the other couples in the FIA portfolio. I didn't think I'd be content to wait, placing my faith in some higher power to bring the right experience to my door. I'm Type A - I thought I'd be approaching pregnant strangers by now, asking them if the baby growing inside them was spoken for. Not so.

Instead, I'm going all Voltaire on my life, and I'm content to tend my garden and wait. Even if that means rolling up my sleeves, hefting a bottle of weed-killer in my inexperienced but enthusiastic hand, and implementing mass-scale herbicide in my backyard.