Being here with baby Leo has made me realize what we missed when Tin came into our life. I remember the day perfectly, 14 degrees, Gary, Indiana, and rushing in and rushing out (wanting to get as much distance between me and Tin and there. I did’t get a chance to meet his great aunt, I didn’t get much of a chance to digest the city he was born into or the people. Instead I was on a mission, pick up my son and head home.
The experience here has been a positive one and I have to say that although a lot of people don’t quite understand their feelings about adoption – whether it be those giving up a child, those accepting a child, the child – like many things in life it is complicated.
Isn’t it the luck of the draw to really think you had fabulous parents? Or do you have fabulous parents because you were a fabulous kid? And isn’t that the luck of the draw? I don’t remember ever feeling rah rah rah about my parents although in hindsight I do feel as if they uniquely created my framework and for that I am grateful.
You know how it is when you travel far away from your home and in some way you feel this blessed freedom and then you stumble upon someone’s dog and it almost brings you to tears for the dog you left behind waiting for its master to return. Well being holed up in a hotel room while the weather outside is dismal and staring at the little bundle on the bed next to me makes me not only miss my son enormously, but makes me miss profoundly the newborn he was who I did not meet.