Another call

Last week we got another call from DHS about a potential foster to adopt situation. J is a happy and healthy six month old baby boy who has been well cared for by his grandparents, who want to be grandparents and not parents at this stage in their life. The caseworker had me at "mellow".

When I asked her about J's ethnic background, she was a little taken aback. She said "He's caucasian, but does it really matter?" I briefly explained that while it isn't a deal breaker, we think it would be nice to have another non-caucasian child so that M won't stand out as being the only one physically different. She said "Well, he's 1/4 Jewish, if that counts." I don't think she was offended when I laughed at her.

We did go meet J and his grandparents. He truly was a happy and easy going baby, and the grandparents were really nice too! I don't know why I didn't feel any kind of connection with him. I really didn't feel anything at all, so I took that as my sign that J is not meant to join our family. After praying about my decision, I didn't feel any differently. P didn't feel anything either, but he's not expecting as much as I am either. He thinks that I'm expecting to feel like I've been hit by lightning. I don't think that I am, but I don't think it's too much to expect to feel strong feelings.

I already know that it's going to be different when we're talking about a child that is already here (and a greater risk that the adoption won't happen when doing foster to adopt) than when we adopted our girls as newborns. Although we were scared about both adoptions - whether everything would work out for us to bring the girls home, or where the money would come from - we felt very certain that we should pursue both opportunities, and that if the girls were meant to be ours that everything would work out. I'm sure that we would have been heartbroken had either girl not become our daughters, but it would have happened within weeks of our even becoming aware that we might be able to add to our family. Now we could have years of loving a child and then not being able to make them a permanent part of the family, not to mention taking into consideration how a failed situation could affect our girls. I just don't want to take any chances unless I feel confident that this is what we should do.

It's hard to understand why such a happy child shouldn't be part of our family. It's even harder to explain to caseworkers and especially the grandparents why we weren't going to take J. Understandably, I think the grandparents felt that it was a personal rejection - which it absolutely was not. Perhaps his case won't go the route of adoption after all, or perhaps there is a better family for him, or maybe our employment status is about to change and we just shouldn't be taking on the extra responsibility now. We may never know the "why".

On an adoption related note, I had an interesting little experience at the swimming pool last week. Most people don't give my little transracial family a second look, although I do occasionally have someone ask if M is adopted. This time a woman asked me if I was M's babysitter! I assured her that both girls were mine. She looked a little confused, but I didn't elaborate. She probably just came to the conclusion that I get around.