Wind of change

We were saddened, G- and I, and perhaps S- too, when we stood at the window and watched M- drive away. Our social worker had just paid us a final visit: it was more in the nature of a social call than a statutory meeting.

Over the last few years M- has been an ever present in our lives. She was both mentor and guide to us in a time of rapid and total change, and a faultless advocate and adviser as we navigated our way through the emotional turmoil and legal rigmarole of S-’s adoption. She as much as anyone has helped us get to grips with being parents, too.

When we first met M- she informed us that she would be many things to us but she wouldn’t be one of our friends.

She was almost wrong.

There’s a part of me that wants to send this link to M-, so that she can see how profoundly G- and I appreciate the support and help she gave us. On reflection I know it would be the wrong thing to do.

I’m enough of an amateur psychologist to know that part of my, our, sadness is that we’ve reached the end of a significant chapter in our life. The fact of M-‘s leaving us has made us realise that we’re the authors of our own lives again. Scary stuff!

I know, too, that this is the beginning of the end of adoptivedad. There won’t be many more posts before I stop writing this blog. My regret about this is real, but tempered with anticipation and relief.

We – G-, S- and I – are out on our own now, about to start a new chapter as a family together.

Alone again or

Am I allowed to say I’ve just deleted two links from my blogroll? Well, I’m going to anyway.

Oh, you know how it it is: these were not relationships that were going to go anywhere! It was always take take take, as far as I could see.

One guy couldn’t even raise himself to despam me, so everytime I tried to post a comment on his site it just bounced back. The other seems to have run out of ideas, and anyway didn’t even have the courtesy to read what I sent him properly.

I’m probably flouting every known rule of international, not to say personal relations, but stuff ‘em.

This isn’t special pleading but everytime I look around I realise that I am in a unique situation: a stay-at-home dad and a parent by adoption. So I’m always on the look out for friends.

I have actually been on a play date where I met a bloke in a similar situation – but I don’t know what happened. He never writes, he never calls!

Joking aside, it would be good to know if there’s anybody else like me out there in the blogosphere.

Crossroads blues

This blog and I have had a bit of a distant relationship lately. The family has been away a lot, first with friends and then with my parents. Sometimes writing needs to take second place to life!

I’ve also reached a point where it’s difficult to decide what to do next. The blog has grown beyond what it was originally meant to be – the simple diary of a [simple] stay-at-home dad – to cover a lot of other subjects. Now there are almost too many ways to go, eg:

• More cute stories about S- [the straight ahead road]
• More about adoption and perhaps even on the potential relationship G-, I and S- herself may have with S-’s birth parents [the torturous route]
• Something more serious, eg on child development or adoption politics [the right fork], or more comedic [the left-hand turn]

For the straight ahead road I think most people already get the picture: how many more times can you say something before it becomes a turn off?

For the torturous route I’m not sure I have the right to talk about people I don’t know and whom S- is likely to come to have strong feelings about. And anyway mining recent history is hardly going to be of interest to anyone other than G- and I – and possibly S- in the future.

The other options seem to require a significant change to my approach and committment – a re-think, if you like, of my on-line identity.

Hmmm.

Actually I’ve also been getting through quite a few books recently. I’ve just finished reading Born on a blue day, the memoir of a guy growing up with Asperger’s syndrome. It’s a fascinating book and I found it personally relevant in a number of interesting and surprising ways [no, I'm not claiming to have an An extraordinary mind!].

Now I’m just about to start re-reading Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, a book I first read in my early teens.

When I picked up Zen in the bookshop last week I got the strong sense that here was a book with a function. There was something within the pages that demanded to be said, and for reasons other than simple authorial cartharsis.

Reasons to be cheerful

G- tells me that a mother she knows locally used to go out to work while the husband was a stay-at-home dad. The fellow gave up and went back to work eventually, not because he didn’t enjoy domesticity but because he was fed up of being ostracised and ignored.

The straw that collapsed the camel, apparently, was that whenever he put his child on the swings at the local park the women nearby would pick up their own children and walk off.

It’s not uncommon, this deliberate rudeness. It happens to me occasionally, and I’ve been irritated, amused and/or offended by it at different times.

Maybe that’s the key. Like many situations, how you react all depends on your mood at the time. If you’re finding things tough anyway, then other people’s ignorance is only going to make things worse. Conversely, if you’re feeling ok, you can shrug it off.

What really helps you to keep your chin up is company, support, conversation. To be frank, being a lone homedad in a sea of mothers can make finding these important qualities [and a group of friends] rather difficult.

I have been on a few play dates, with varying levels of success. The best ones are where you just visit other people’s houses, have a cup of tea and fondly watch your daughter spray biscuit crumbs all over your hostess’s lounge carpet.

But most days I seem to spend all my time [and not insignificant amounts of money and petrol] driving to far-distant playgroups where, to misquote an old tune, nobody knows your name.

It’s not healthy – either for adoptivedad or beautiful daughter – to dwell on these things. Before you know it you’re increasingly on your own, spending all your cash in branches of a well-known Italian restaurant chain and morosely perusing imported plastic bent into incongrous shapes in the Early Learning Centre. Then the personal hygiene starts to go … and it’s a steep downward slide from there on in.

I’m just kidding. Really I am.

But there are mornings when the world seems against you.

Then you notice that S- has put her shoes and her gloves on by herself. For the first time. And when you’re out walking the dog and pushing the buggy passers by, both pedestrians and drivers, are smiling because your 19-month-old daughter has insisted on wearing the crazy, wraparound sunglasses you thought you’d hidden and is waving at everybody from behind them like an A-list celebrity.

Then you realise how blessed you are to have these moments.

You’ve got a friend

Not that I’m ever one to blow my own trumpet [yeah right, G-], but there’s some nice comments about me here. Apologies for the puff, but I need all the friends I can get!

Seriously, aside from the obvious attractions of a positive review of this blog, the author talks about the struggle to have her own family through adoption with humor, passion and honesty. Take a look.