Lately, I’ve been really enjoying reading The Sticking Point as Tommy and his wife travel to Seoul to finalize the adoption of a baby boy.
Little baby H. is incredible. He looks somehow different from the pictures we’ve gotten of him. The shock of hair sticking off the top of his head has mostly fallen off, and he’s got more even coverage from his fine black hair.
He’s quite a jumper. If you hold him under the arms, he will squat down then quickly extend his legs to try to jump, and he did this almost continuously during our visit. He almost seems ready to stand, though he’s only 22 weeks old. He smiles quite a bit and sticks out his tongue. He’s very curious about what’s going on around him. So much so that he prefers to be held facing outward, rather than toward you. From this position he can get a better look at what’s happening.
[…]
It was an overwhelming experience. So much so, that it’s left me a bit numb and unable to process it all. It think I’ve taken in so much emotional stimuli that I am unable to gather and sort an of it. We visited with a baby…but it’s my baby…but it’s not my baby yet. It’s a hard feeling to describe.
Tomorrow (Wednesday), at 2 PM, we will receive our little boy. Today is our final day as a family of two.
Being able to experience the adoption through Tommy’s eyes has been rather touching for me, as some time ago I was somewhat involved in an adoption from the other side of the process.
A few years ago, I was dating a girl with a two year old son, and another baby on the way — not mine, though, we started seeing each other when she was right about three months pregnant. An unusual situation, perhaps, but as with many things, it “seemed like a good idea at the time.”
She knew that keeping the baby wasn’t going to be a realistic option at that point in her life, and so as her due date grew closer, we started looking into the various adoption possibilities available. As it turned out, some old friends of my family (a flying buddy of my dad’s from the Air National Guard and his wife, who had been friends with my parents since shortly after they moved to Alaska in the mid-70’s) had been talking about adopting. My parents helped us get in contact with them, and all the necessary arrangements were made.
While making the decision to put a child up for adoption is never easy, it ended up being a really good arrangment for everyone involved. My girlfriend was able to be very confident in the family that her child was going to grow up in, and the adoptive parents were able to be in Anchorage for the birth so that they could take the baby immediately. Every so often over the years, I’ve been able to get updates from the parents, and have been assured that the baby (named Nathan, and not so much of a baby anymore, he’d be about eight years old by now) is doing fine — in fact, a little Googling just led me to a 1995 picture of the family and Nathan at three months old!
That relationship eventually ended (rather spectactularly, unfortunately), and it’s been years since I’ve heard from that particular girlfriend. Still, being able to be part of that process was an experience I’ll not soon forget.
“Mack the Knife” by Spacey, Kevin from the album Beyond the Sea (2004, 3:04).
