Reading and Thinking

Read this excellent post over at Kohana’s, then this heartbreaking one at Tamara’s.  What do we need to demand here?  How can we get to a place where mothers get what they need to raise the children they birth?

“This child needed a system that would have allowed her to go somewhere and be with her baby while she got an education and a job. She doesn’t need someone else bonding with her baby while she struggles to do things that are, for her, nigh unto impossible. I do not know how she will do these things…

I don’t want to adopt this child if the system just throws this young girl to the dogs. Cookie’s case was extreme – beyond any doubt. Ginger has a mom who wants her and loves her and needs help. If she were just a little younger, she would have been placed in foster care along with her baby – which is exactly what I feel needs to happen now. But it won’t.”

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Seven Year Itch: Scratched

 

This past Sunday afternoon Attic Man disappeared into our house after a family shopping expedition, having commanded us to “sit tight.”  Thinking he had spied something amiss about a door or window, I sat in the car envisioning his death by robber-stabbing, only to see him jounce out of the house with a bundle of some sort, which he then threw in the hatch.  We commenced to a local park by the river, where he found a spot, spread out a blanket, and revealed a baguette, Irish swiss cheese, and a bottle of Franziskaner swathed ever so elegantly in a paper bag.

I melted.  I knew our anniversary was coming but I also knew we didn’t have a babysitter and our chances of the classic romantic dinner were slim.  Attic Man remembered how we had lunched (and dinnered, after a pricy but scrumptous Indian meal at the beginning of our time together nearly bankrupted the trip…blast unlisted prices!) on the patch of grass between the canal and the Corrib in Galway, munching on baguettes and cheese and drinking F. during our courtship in Ireland.  I spent a semester there studying (should that be in quotation marks?) abroad and he flew over for the last two weeks to play while I took final exams.  After my exams we took a bus around the ring of Kerry to stay in a hostel in Waterville, then visited his mother’s cousins in Armagh.  It was a rekindling, and as far as I’m concerned it was the real beginning of our relationship, though we had been together for about nine months prior.

It’s strange how much has changed and at the same time how much hasn’t.  We’ve gained and lost weight, lived in four different houses, been poor and flush and poor again, owned three dogs and buried one, got degrees and started others, and became parents.  And now I think the next seven years are going to top the last.

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Catching up

 

Our connection has been acting up–sorry for the lack of updates. Here’s what’s bloggable:

1. The boy is great. I’ve gone very quickly from eagerly awaiting each developmental milestone to saying no! slow down! He’s not a tiny infant anymore. He’s a strong little boy, already crawling (!). I just want him to curl up in my arms and nurse. Thankfully he still does that ten times a day

2. I’ve just finished The Mommy Myth and am getting re-feminist-ized. Go read it.

3. Umm…we just rearranged the house so that the Snapper is now on a different floor (sigh) but I have a much nicer workspace. I’m so dependent on a good environment to work and I’m hoping this arrangement will make me more productive. I’ve started my first chapter over once and I’m probably going to scrap the second try, too. Scariest thing I’ve read to date? “Professor X (who is on my committee) thinks this stuff is boring. Convince him it’s not.” Yikes.

4. A few months ago, Dawn asked if having the Snapper made me reconsider how I felt about the woman who decided not to place not-Boomer. At the time I said no, not really. But six months in, as I look back and see that it was (and is) really hard, but now that I have done (and am doing) it, I’m seeing that parents are capable of an awful lot when it comes to their kids.  I don’t know not-Boomer’s mother as a person but I am more willing to see that people can and do raise kids in such circumstances and do a good job of it, too.  I know that I will approach the adoption process differently the next time around.  I have a lot more to say, but I’m just bulleting right now.

5.  We’re not buying a house.  The interest rate we could get was far beyond what anyone should accept, and for once we’re going to turn down the golden opportunity to borrow a truckload of money at an exorbitant interest rate.  In a couple of years the picture will be quite a bit rosier.  We like where we are so it’s no big deal.  And there’s something to be said for a house and neighbors who are known quantities and for not having to move in the middle of a midwest summer.

I’m off to see what becomes of Tony.  Hope you all are well.

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