The Authority of the Ordinary.

So…have you seen the coverage of the Michael J. Fox–Rush Limbaugh controversy? It involves the campaign ad that Fox did in Missouri for Claire McCaskill in support of stem cell research; followed by the Rush rant on his radio show in which he accuses Fox of “faking” his symptoms on the ad; followed by Fox’s interview last night with Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News, in which Fox explains that when he filmed the campaign ad, he was overmedicated and thus experiencing dyskinesia–not unmedicated, and definitely not. faking. it.

The larger context here is the controversy over stem cell research in general, and, more specifically, the VERY FIRST VETO of George W.’s presidency in July of this year, when he signed the veto to a bill that would have eased restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. For the veto’s official signing ceremony, Bush appeared surrounded by couples who had received donated embryos as part of an IVF process and their resulting babies.

But this isn’t really a post about stem cell research, the veto, or even the upcoming election. It could be, but that would be too obvious. I can end any mystery that might surround my voting booth pretty quickly, right here and now: I won’t be voting for war, establishment, hatred, or fear. Go figure. I actually wish it was more complex than that, especially since I am a registered “NonParty” member, but it isn’t. The Bushy has made it very, very simple.

What I want to write about instead is the overwhelming reaction I had to the coverage of that Bush veto ceremony in July and to the Michael J. Fox–Rush Limbaugh debacle this week. My reaction was immediate, visceral, and borderline pathological. I had this overriding sense that the media and the pundits and the spin doctors and the politicos and even most of my friends and family had better shut up and/or get the hell out of the way, ’cause NO ONE COULD SPEAK TO THIS ISSUE BUT ME. Yeah, slightly bizarre, I know. But it’s true. I felt suddenly proprietary like I’d never felt before. BIG, WILD, TIGER-MOMMA PROPRIETARY.

I remember when I was in graduate school studying literature, there was a debate at one point among the Ph.D. candidates vying for that year’s open job positions in the national academic market about whether Anglo-American professors could or should be able to teach African-American literature. It included the parallel argument about whether men could or should be able to teach women’s literature (the inverse considerations didn’t work the same way, since the fact that blacks live in a white world and women live inside a patriarchal one was pretty well accepted and thus made it easy and appropriate for them to teach outside their own race or gender).

The real question being asked was, “can you teach (or pontificate about or speak on or have authority about) a subject matter about which you have no personal experience and little personal investment?” If you haven’t lived as a black person in this country, should you be trying to teach about that experience of blackness to others? If you haven’t lived as a woman, should you be trying to teach about that experience of womanhood to others?

And if you don’t have an embryo–frozen for future use or perhaps non-use–should you be trying to tell others what to do about it?

Because I do. I DO have an embryo. He or she is six days old. He or she is a very lovely blastocyst, now on ice, after having survived five full days in a petri dish. He or she struggled at first, being only five cells big on the third day of embryonic life. Not developed enough to be considered for use in the IVF. But hanging on. And, now, he or she is considered a tough little thing, with much better odds at implantation, should I decide to go ahead with that at some point, than he or she would have had initially. And full of stem cells. Full of those basic building blocks of life that can morph so outrageously, so impossibly, into many of the mature cell forms that we know of in the human body. Capable of saving lives already. Potentially capable of saving many more by curing terminal diseases. Like Alzheimer’s. Like Parkinson’s.

And so it gets even better. Another sort of question could be asked: If you don’t have a close friend or family member dying of one of these potentially curable diseases, should you really be trying to tell others what to do about it?

Because I do. I DO have a family member dying of one of those potentially curable diseases. My father has Parkinson’s Disease. He is 73 and can’t walk very far and won’t be walking at all in another couple of years. He slides down until he’s “sitting” on his back when he’s in chairs. When I talk to him on the phone, we have the same conversation over again three times because he can’t remember that we’ve just covered that territory. And I end up having really terrible conversations with myself, like “at least it’s not Alzheimer’s. Then he wouldn’t remember who I was. At least he remembers who I am.” GAH.

So my reaction to the veto and to the Fox-Limbaugh debate is to close ranks to some extreme nth degree and tell all these people trying to control my life–MY LIFE FOR REAL–to go screw off. Because I have a frozen embryo AND I have a dad with Parkinson’s, and I’ll be DAMNED if you do, George W. OR Rush Limbaugh. This is MY business and MY experience and you’d better walk in all my shoes in this matter before you start telling me how to think or feel about it. It’s MINE. (See? Proprietary.)

Please understand that I recognize the irrationality behind my reaction. It surprised me when it happened. I’m not a proprietary person, and I especially like to dialogue with other people. But I suddenly understood in a way I hadn’t before that an authority–an expertise–forged from experience is one that you can’t dismiss. It may not be the only kind of authority. It may not be the only way to expertise. But it has value, and it has rank.

I used to think that if you couldn’t learn about and, then, potentially, teach about a subject outside yourself and your experience, you lacked imagination, you lacked empathy, you lacked ability. So, yes, I thought that men could and should teach women’s literature; white teachers could and should teach black literature; and I could and should teach 16th-century literature, even though I did not grow up in that time or culture.

But now I also understand the power of the personal experience.

The Wait, Post-Match

Today elsie elsewhere asked me this question in one of her comments:

So how are you handling the wait post photo/post knowledge of the Bee?

She’s actually already addressed this question’s topic for herself–as she is a Woman With Referral–in this post. I have also read other bloggers’ reactions to the “waits,” pre- and post-referral, and it does vary some, although typically folks have a harder time once it becomes real. When it was just merely abstract, the wait was hard but the abstraction of what you are waiting for–who is she? what does she look like? where is she? how old? does she have hair?– kept the fact of her distance at bay. At least, that is my interpretation of how other people talk about their experiences with the two kinds of waiting. That the waiting post-referral is much more wrenching.

I guess I am a contrarian. (Surprise, surprise.) For me, the wait is SO MUCH EASIER now that I know who my daughter is. When I was waiting for an idea, it felt like a huge blanket of blackness spread out in front of me. Like I couldn’t see, and–worse–like I couldn’t believe. I lacked total and complete faith that *this* could ever happen for me. I suppose that might come from years of infertility and miscarriages, when the sense that the idea of a thing is all you’re ever going to get pervades your life.

It doesn’t really matter why I felt this way. The fact of the matter for me was that DTC and LID were just acronyms; that my social worker’s blessing was just that, a blessing, not a baby; and that money spent was…well…money spent. I had spent money before in this quest for a child, and I understand very well that all you can really purchase is a service, not a guarantee, and, certainly, not a child.

Which, of course, is all well and good when it comes to adoption.

The minute I was “matched” with my daughter by my agency, everything changed. My heart sped up. In fact, I could actually feel it rumbling around in there, as if it was having hunger pains. And that was good. That was life. Feeling. I allowed myself to want something, and I wanted HER.

I have four photos of her post-lip repair, and two photos of her before the repair. All of them are in frames around my house. The week I was matched, I drove to Lin3ns-n-Things and stocked up on frames of all sizes. Wherever I go in my house, I can see her. I have two photos by my bed; one on my dresser; a little one in an enamel frame by my bathroom sink; two in the TV room; two stuck with push pins over my office desk; one as the desktop on my computer screen; one in the car; one sitting on a shelf above the kitchen sink (I call it: eyes for doing dishes by); and the I AM A BEE 5 x 7 on the kitchen island, where I can hear my husband humming, “I am a bee” under his breath as he makes his morning tea.

This is REAL. She has a name, a face, a birthday, an orphanage, the deepest eyes I’ve ever seen, no hair, and a nickname courtesy of some truly creative photoshopping. She laughs out loud when the nannies play with her. She is learning to walk, holding on to one of their hands.

Speaking of hands, I am guessing she is a lefty because in all four recent photos of her, her left hand is busy holding, clutching, pulling, or rubbing. (There’s a photo I haven’t posted of her, which is the most bizarre yet–she’s got a small piece of rope in her left hand, and a bunch of bananas sitting on the floor in front of her. Yep. You heard me.)

Bottom line: I get to call myself a mother. That’s why this type of waiting is so much easier for me. I get to learn how to be a mother. And, yeah, she doesn’t know I exist. I’ve never wiped her bottom, I’ve never wiped her milky drool, I’ve never wiped her tear. Yet. But, in my heart, I’m growing something for her. Just for her. And it is so much better this way.

I’ve been a bad, bad girl…

well, not really…I don’t think. I just did me some shopping!

I’ve never posted any shopping shots before. I wanted to show you Emme Lu’s Christmas present that I bought her yesterday–so you could laugh at me a little:

This is the dragonfly rocker from One Step Ahead. I am so loving its cuteness, its colors, its little knobby antennae. Horses are great rockers. I had one as a child. I bought my nephew a fox terrier rocker-rider toy. But I saw this smiling bug, and I just knew that was the one.

Okay, so say it. Go ahead. Say. It.

IT’S A FREAKING BUG, SBIRD!!

Not only is the rocker a freaking bug, but there’s a FREAKING LADYBUG stuck to its behind!!!

And, not only that, but at least one of the traditional DTC groups–about which you complained relentlessly in an earlier post–is the Dragonflies. WTF?

Um, er…yeah. What can I say? It’s cute. And I couldn’t find a bee.*

Of course, to top it all off, Emme Lu won’t even be home for Christmas this year, unless there is some mighty huge act of the universe involved between now and say…next week. We won’t go pick her up in China until next year. But we do know who she is, we have her pictures, and so I plan on celebrating Christmas with my daughter by wrapping her some presents and putting them under the tree. Then it’ll be Christmas in February when she gets home. She can work out the fact that her momma is date-challenged later in therapy.

Kidding.

* Although, later, I did find a bee to give to The Bee:

Gotta love the expression on that one. It’s from Zebra Hall.

Okay, I’ll take my public flogging now.

Where we are…

in the process….

APP 1-17-06 (NSN girl, AYAP)

DTC 7-14-06

LID 8-3-06

FOD 9-6-06 (FOD=find our daughter)

—waiting to receive updated reports, photos, etc.—-

APP 9-29-06 (new agency=new application)

LOI 10-11-06 (+ notarized addendum to our HS sent)

RFT 10-19-06 (RFT= request for transfer, NSN to SN, and agency to agency)

PA ??

TA ??

I made up a couple of those acronyms, by the way. Just in case anyone thinks they’re real–they’re only as real as SBird’s brain right now.

We aren’t sure what will happen next. It’s usual to get a PA (pre-approval) within a month of LOI (letter of intent)…unless you’re already DTC…which we are…sort of. If you’re already DTC, then you just go straight from LOI to TA, although it takes longer for a SN TA than it does for a NSN TA post-referral. Usually about three months…sometimes two, sometimes four. The reason it takes longer is because the travel approval process for SN is when they actually review your dossier, go through all that lovely paperwork, and decide you’re fit to parent this kid.

The reason I say we’re only “sort of” DTC now is because it will depend how quickly our dossier gets re-routed to the auspices of the new agency and then to the SN room. The good news is that the dossier doesn’t have to come back to the States. It should have gone through the translation room already, so we won’t have to wait for that. But there is not a lot of oversight when it comes to dossiers making their way around the CCAA. So, it will depend. If our dossier transitions quickly, then we will probably be considered LOI/DTC almost immediately, and then we will probably wait for approval to travel about three more months.

There are some folks on The Bee’s SWI site that are going over for their children pretty soon, however. So maybe…MAYBE…when they visit the orphanage in the next month or so, we can get updated photos or info about her.

And, I hope no one thinks this is crass, but for those folks who are curious about the money situation…we really didn’t end up spending that much money to make the switch between agencies, especially considering that we are saving the money we’d spend on renewing our I-171 and our homestudy.
Of course, all that sort of thing is moot when you find your daughter.

That’s all the bird sang.

Why China?–Tagged!

Woohoo! I get to join the meandering thread…Johnny started a discussion a while back, asking a-parents to explain why they decided to adopt from China, as opposed to anywhere else. Check out his links to see how the thread has wound around…

to here…I actually thought his idea was such a good one that I posted about it a couple weeks ago. Check out my original response here.

Now I get to tag the next hapless blogger. I’m going to elect elsie elsewhere because (1) she’s got her referral (yes!); (2) her TA is nearly here (yes, yes!) ; (3) she’s got a cool new look at the PAD now; and (4) we want to hear about it before the adorable Elsie arrives.

And she’s got packing woes…so what better way to take the edge off the suitcase frenzy than by blogging about your originary impulse for choosing China…? Check it out.

Lessons Learned…and Learning.

Thank you to all my blogging peeps, who came through for me about the stacking cups issue I had a couple days ago. I found the ones I wanted at buybuybaby. And walternatives also sent me a cool website that explains why this particular toy is such a good one for enabling both a child’s cognitive development and her fine motor skills.

I also got a lot of great suggestions for bottles and sippy cups, and wzgirl over at buttercup directed me to a great cleft website with all sorts of suggestions for babies born with cleft issues.

There was also a section of this site devoted to dolls that can be specially stitched so as to appear to have a facial difference, such as a repaired cleft lip, like Emme has. This was a totally new idea for me. I have been thinking for quite some time now about how important it will be to encourage Emme to believe in herself as a powerful, beautiful human being (which is, of course, how I already think of her), despite her abandonment, despite the role that her cleft *may* have played in that. But how best to do so? Perhaps a doll like this could become an important tool to open up conversation at a young age and start presenting her with language that will help her make sense of what happened to her. It is the opposite approach to the “don’t make a big deal about her scar/facial difference, and it won’t seem a big deal to her.” I’m not sure I want to take the risk that it won’t seem like a big deal to her. And I highly suspect that the surgeries she will have to have to correct her palate will only serve to emphasize that there is something “wrong” with her that needs to be corrected.

Not only will I at some point have to field her questions about why her birth parents left her on the courthouse steps back in China, but I’ll have to address how and why her cleft lip and palate played a role in that. Whether it actually did in reality will probably be a moot point to her. It will seem like it did since it marks her as different from other children and–in a society like ours, predisposed to “normative” values–could offer an all-too-easy explanation for the abandonment.

This link to the dolls also offers a brief discussion of the “people first” style of talking, in which you avoid such phrasing as “cleft baby” or “cleft-affected baby,” which tends to emphasize the condition before the person. Re-phrasing into “she is a child born with a cleft” puts the person first. As a big believer in the power of language, I am grateful for such suggestions. While I understand the frustration that circulates over the seemingly endless expectations of Political Correctness when it comes to language, I also have some sense–as a professional language guru–that it matters.

Freaky Friday Head-Fog

So, I had to return a couple things to Target today. I bought a shirt and a belt in August that didn’t ultimately fit/work when I tried them on at home…and, no, I didn’t try them on in the store before I bought them. I have a weird quirk about not trying stuff on in stores. It’s not a fitting room hang-up or anything…it just takes too darn long. I’d rather use all my time shopping and none of it taking my clothes off and on and off again. If that makes sense.

The other reason I was in Target was to look for stacking cups. Ah, yes, you say, the interminable stacking cups. The One Toy every Chinese girl wants to wrap her little hands around in the hotel in China that every a-parent Must Be Sure To Bring With. Or so I’ve heard. And so I trust to be the case.

So I set off with my handydandy cart to find me some stacking cups.

First, I went to the baby and toddler section.

Last, I went to the baby and toddler section.

Because, my friends, I basically got SABOTAGED in the baby and toddler section by the amazing assortment of STUFF they have for babies and toddlers, about which I know NOTHING. No. Thing.

I bought some socks because somebody somewhere on a blog said “buy socks at Target because they have the no-slip rubber stuff on the bottoms.” Check. I bought navy, white, pink, and gray socks with the no-slip stuff, thanks to my bloggy pals.

I looked at the spoons. They had Gerber spoons with beautiful, long, slender, stainless handles with fun, colored, rubberized spoon-heads on them. They had long, slender plastic spoons in spastic colors that you could use or lose and not feel bad about it. They had short plastic spoons and forks in spastic colors that your toddler could use or lose and not care one way or the other about it.

They had thermometers for your butt. Thermometers for your mouth. Thermometers for your ear. And the new, “temple” thermometer that has a rubber ball on the end of it that you just run across your kid’s forehead and down her temple that measures the temperature of some artery right through the skin. Totally non-invasive. Now what?

They had cups. At first I thought they were the aforementioned stacking cups. Eureka, I thought. But no. At least, I think but no. They were colored, plastic stacking cups, but they seemed to have lids, and the packaging suggested they were to keep food (read: Cheerios) inside of. I don’t think that’s the same thing as the stacking cups. Although they are cups and my child COULD certainly stack them. Uh oh, I think.

They had sippy cups. So. Many. Sippy. Cups. So many: sizes, colors, shapes, widths of sip-nozzle, handled, non-handled, see-through, opaque, squat, tall, “gaseous” versus “non-gaseous” versions, “non-skid” this, “unbreakable” that…I mean, if there’s a “non-gaseous” version, why would there ever even need to be “gaseous” sippy cups again?

I was paralyzed. WTF? How come no one told me about all this stuff I am supposed to know? And it’s not exactly like I have a test subject at home, on whom I can try out all the options, now do I?

And then the ultimate humiliation…bottles. Bottles and nipples. Holy canoli. What is a new old mom to do? Sizes…small, medium, large…light flow…heavy flow…why does this sound like I’m shopping for menstrual pads? And, of course, I’ve read enough to know that Chinese infants are raised with rice mixed into their milk, and so they often need wider nipples younger than American infants do. Okay, check. But then I think, Emme Lu is a cleft baby. Cleft babies have special bottles/nipples to help them feed easier. Oh, crap. I’m back to square one. Not to mention that even if I knew which size opening to buy, the nipples come in both silicone and latex options, and then each of those multiple options come in both a “wide” and a “narrow” neck fit for the bottle. So, then I think: okay, SBird, you must first choose a bottle, so that the neck of the bottle can dictate the neck fit of the nipple.

Talk about a bottleneck.

I had been there about an hour, and I had four pairs of socks in my cart. And I felt totally, completely, overwhelmed. Geeeeesh.

I never did find the stacking cups. I bought a teething ring, the kind you cool in the fridge, and then I immediately wondered whether I would even have access to a fridge in the hotel room in China. Okay, that could be for home.

I bought some alphabet letters for the tub. (Yay, score!)

Then I wheeled my way over to the toy section and got even more freaked out. I did manage to find a Parents Magazine-recommended toy cell phone that you could record your voice into, and I again remembered that some blogmom had recommended doing this for your care package to your daughter. And it was on sale. I bought one.

But still no stacking cups.

And still no decision about anything without having Heard It On A Blog.

So, basically, people, I learned today that I cannot function without bloggy advice. Or assvice. Or whatever it’s called.

Because there are no seminars on sippy cups, as far as I can tell.

So I am depending on the University of Bloggers to educate me. Fast.

The Episode of the Underwire

The first time I walked into an undergraduate classroom to teach, it was 1989. I was 22 years old–almost 23. I was young. I was green. But I did have a lot of enthusiasm. That was 17 years and four institutions of higher education ago.

Since then, I have pretty much seen it all. BTDT. I have fallen down in the classroom; tripped over students, their stuff, my stuff, furniture, and other professors who happened to be sitting in; spilled coffee, water, papers, student files, and the contents of my purse all over the floor; been called a bitch in front of the class by a student; been left love notes and valentine’s cards in the classroom by students; had ink explode all over me during class; had countless embarrassing mechanical malfunctions with equipment…well, you get the picture.

But this was a first.

I returned to the classroom after a two-and-a-half year hiatus last week. First day back in almost three years, mind you. I am now She.Who.Can.Fly.Above.The.Fray.

Ha.

I consider myself a seasoned veteran, mind you. I am She. Who. Is. Unflappable.

Ha.

So there we are last Tuesday, discussing the idea that everything is a text, capable of being read. People are texts. Rocks are texts. Poems and novels and articles (of course) are texts. Songs are texts. Buildings are texts.

I take off my lime-colored, corduroy jacket to prove the point. See, everyone? That’s a text, too. The Jacket. Is a text.

Underneath, I am wearing a white T-shirt. It is nice, new white cotton with a little spandex built in. Not as thin as a man’s undershirt, but not that heavy thick cotton either. Kind of thin and stretchy.

As is usual for me in the classroom, I am gesticulating wildly to prove my point. I happen to glance down.

Protruding out of my chest–the one that is covered in the nice, thin, white, stretchy shirt–is a wire. A pointy, very unhuman-like, which is to say mechanical-like, WIRE. Sticking straight out. Like fucking perpendicular to my body. Into space. Except, of course, it’s held back from its trajectory into the area above the seminar table by my nice, thin, white, stretchy shirt, so that it looks like a little pole holding up a tent. In the middle of my fucking chest.

It is the underwire from my bra.

It has apparently, unbeknownst to me before this point in time, popped out of its little runner in my brassiere, and is now poking into space about three inches. I deduce all this in a split second, inside my head, while something entirely else about texts is coming out of my mouth to my students.

I do not let on that I have noticed that I have a fucking wire emerging like a spring from my torso.

I do not skip a beat.

I imagine in my head (while something else continues to come out of my mouth) that they are now wondering one of the following possibilities:

(a) wow, our instructor is some sort of artificial intelligence automaton that has mysteriously sprung a wire…because lord knows that whatever is springing out the front of her right now is definitely Not Human; or,

(b) wow, our instructor has a pacemaker, and–holy shit–it is about to malfunction right here, right now, in front of us; or,

(c) wow, that is some weird-ass jewelry our instructor wears…does she really think that’s attractive?

As soon as I can, I redirect their attention to the article we are discussing on the table in front of them and put my jacket back on. I basically teach the rest of the class with my arms close to my body, pinching the front of said jacket closed as much as possible.

Later, in the bathroom, I thread the wire back into place.

Time for some new undies, folks.

Camping Close to Home

When we want to get away from home without really leaving home, we retreat to the top of our hill. There’s a small tent-cabin there, a fire ring with chairs nearby, some trails, and a lovely view of Black Mountain, the extinct volcano that lords-it over the valley where I live.

Yesterday we felt the need to get away. So we threw our toothbrushes and some water jugs in the truck, and R. drove to the top. I hiked up with the dogs.

So, there we were in front of the fire

the dogs happily munching on their dinner with one ear cocked toward the sound of coyotes singing in the distance,

a couple of burgers on the grill, some red wine, the moon coming up…and..um…a photo of The Bee sitting right there in between us. She was really, finally, a part of the circle. (Well, okay, not really, not finally…but coming closer….)

When I went to bed in the tent later, I left her next to me so she would be there when I woke up in the morning.

Yes, it now seems necessary to carry her with us just about wherever we go. So she’s “there,” in a manner of speaking.

Now all we have to do is get her there there. Or here here. Sigh.