Twenty Years Ago Today, Feb. 10...

. . . I was at school, counseling a single mom on ways she and her daughter could make better use of their time and sadly, their somewhat limited talents. At 4:00 p.m., the school secretary yoo-hooed down the hall to tell me I had a phone call. I excused myself (getting tired of talking to the mom anyway, she had been there for and hour and a half), and took the call.

And in that instant, my life changed forever.

It was a caseworker from our local children's services agency. There was a 4 day old baby at a local hospital, did we want him or not.

Just like that.

I had been contemplating going through the highs and lows of foster/adoption again, but hadn't screwed up enough courage to talk to DH about it again. He had resigned himself to our family status. I told the case worker I needed to talk to DH first and would call her back. "How long will that take?" said she. "He's at work and I'm at work," says I, "I'll call you back as soon as I can."

I told the Mom something had come up, here's your hat what's your hurry, and flew home. Of course, you can never find a ranger when you want one, and that night was no different. The dispatcher located him for me and passed along the message to come to the 223. (That's 10-code talk for home.) He arrived just moments before the caseworker called again. She was pretty aggravated sounding, which didn't calm my nerves at all.

"When do they want the baby to come here?" says I.

"Tonight," says she. "The hospital says he's healthy and they don't have room for him." (Here read: they didn't want to foot the bill any more.)

By now it's nearly 7 p.m., and there was no way in hell we could put up a tiny newborn that night. We asked if we could get him the next night, after school. She hangs up. She calls back. Says she, "The hospital says they can keep him one more night. We'll bring him to your house tomorrow at 3. See you then." Click.

Holy cow. Now what do we do?

Twenty Years Ago Today... Feb. 7...

. . . I still hadn't quite decided if I should once again broach the subject of trying to adopt a child or not with DH. It was snowy and all. . . we seemed content. Maybe I'd wait until school was out in the summer to think about trying again.



Twenty years ago today, unbeknownst to us, our first son was born.











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But last week, I worked on more blocks for kid #2. (There's part of the surprise ending, if you hadn't figured this out already....)

I've got lots more Hobo Quilt blocks done, but Blogspot is just not being very nice about uploading pics, so here's just three more.

Twenty Years Ago Today...

... I was sitting in my barely-heated-over-the-weekend classroom, thinking there had to be more to life than going to work on the weekend just to grade papers, pretty much because I didn't have anything better to do.

DH and I had tried for seven years to get pregnant. All the the testing showed it was me. Nothing worked properly. Damn. We finally decided to look into adopting~~my Mom had been watching the news, when one of the stations showed weekly stories about kids waiting to be adopted through our county agency. The summer before this day, 20 years ago, we started taking that step. Before the ink was dry on our license to foster/adopt, two little brothers came to live with us. Then their birth mom showed up and the court let her try parenting again. (Within 3 weeks, it all went to hell, and they were assigned to yet another home. The rules have changed somewhat to avoid this situation, thank goodness.) DH was spent after this episode and resigned himself to a life with just he and me and his daughter. We'd be a tiny little family of three. I tried to wrap my head around this and was succeeding pretty well, until that day, 20 years ago.

I told myself that pretty soon, I'd talk to him about maybe sorta kinda looking into trying it again.

Maybe.

The 12th Day of Christmas, my Son came to me.

Nineteen years ago, on the 12th day of Christmas--January 6th--we finalized the adoption of our older son, FTD the special delivery. He came to us in the dark, early evening, during one of those snow showers that makes you glad you're inside. We heard about him 24 hours earlier. He was supposed to show up right after school. I was teaching fourth grade at St. Richard Elementary in Swanton at the time. My class had scheduled a press conference, of all things, to announce the opening of their community recycling center. I had to be there that day, to tie up loose ends, get my lesson plans in order, and explain to the kids why I'd be gone for a while.

We didn't have anything for babies in the house. CSB (the local child welfare organization) staff made it clear that there would be no healthy white babies coming through their doors. We said fine, we'll be very happy with a couple of rowdy little pre-school aged boys. So we had two twin beds, dressers, all sorts of stuff ready for toddlers. When our caseworker said the child was 4 days old, did we want him or not, all I could think was, "What's wrong?" She said, nothing and since he's healthy the hospital wants him out a.s.a.p. .

Holy cow. I've always maintained that you can never find a ranger when you want one, and I couldn't find mine. He was closing gates in the sloppy snow. When he got home, BadAmy came over, too. She was just 21, and needed more cash for college. Talk about a weird evening, college tuition and diaper pails all in the same conversation.

We decided to give it a go.

I got to school early the next morning and was greeted by a co-worker. She said, "Why are you here so early?" "I'm expecting." "That's fantastic!! When?" "Today at 3." Dead silence.

Baby didn't arrive at 3. We waited. We paced. We looked out the window at the storm. Our house was on a road with no other homes, and for city folks, it always seemed to be so far away from civilization. And yes, it is dark out here. All sorts of horrible scenarios raced through my head. The hospital changed its policy. The birth mother took the baby and ran. The agency found someone else. . . . the list went on and on. Finally, out the window, I saw two sets of headlights, slowly creeping down the road. Our caseworker came with the baby's caseworker to be sure they could find our house. The baby had spent the entire day at CSB, where there are lots of kids, but not too many 4 day-old, 6.5 oz. babies. He so enamored the staff that they didn't want him to leave. But he had to come home. He had a borrowed onesie, 2 bottles of formula, couple of diapers, and a quilt. That was it.




During that day, my sister had rounded up the troops and by the time we got home, there were bottles (I had no idea how to use 'em), diapers, clothes, car seats, high chairs, etc. etc.. (Baby crapanalia, I calls it.) We didn't have a bassinet, but like so many babies before him, he fit nicely into a dresser drawer.

The next three weeks held few memories for me. It's like a dream now. We did run into some issues later, given that he was our foster son, in a program called "legal risk adoption." We nearly ran that risk, but just under a year later, on Epiphany, he was ours. What joy.


Yep, the gifts of the 12th day of Christmas are the best.