Apr
14
Adoption Journey — Day 85-ish
Well as diverting as the Friday Fun is this week, there is work to be done this weekend! Le sigh. Although I WILL be going back to our Friday Fun post, because it never fails to make me laugh. So keep your comments coming!
We have some things to tackle before the home study people come visiting later this week. There’s lots of cleaning to do, although it’s not the BIG BABYPROOFING appointment, so basically we just have to make the place clean and neat for visitors.
It is the first of a couple “paperwork and interviews” appointments, and so there are some forms to be filled out. And we were warned that this is the part of the process that gets a bit tough. This is where you’re asked a lot of personal questions, where things get emotional sometimes. So I thought I’d just take my time this weekend and get through it all.
A lot of the forms are statements that say we understand what we just read, and require a signature. Or they’re forms that okay “them” to do “something” — okay the ministry to do a background check, okay the social worker to send stuff by email, that kind of thing. But a couple of them are big ass questionnaires, and require some time and thought to complete.
Today, I sat down to do one of the questionnaires, about family history. They ask about your childhood and to describe your childhood and your parents and such. I started to fill my form out but it was really hard.
My mom died when I was young, and I was trying to describe her and our relationship and her parenting. I was so young, I don’t remember much about her. And because she was sick, she was not at her best. So I felt bad pigeonholing her and her parenting based on the few years I knew her when she was sick and struggling. I felt like I was betraying her and who she was, because when she was not sick, everyone says she was a wonderful parent and a lovely woman.
I just didn’t know that woman, that’s all. I was too little.
I was so upset. I felt like I was betraying her, and labelling her, and it felt unfair. I felt that if she was looking down on me checking off some of those checkboxes, it would break her heart. Because who she was when she was sick was not who she REALLY was.
So I stopped.
BDH and I talked a lot about the questionnaire, and the upcoming interviews. And it was hard. It was upsetting. And I didn’t want to think about it anymore.
So BDH told me to put some socks and shoes on, and took me out to the mall to get a happy movie or a nice book or something to cheer me up. He took me out and distracted me.
The form is still waiting. But I think I’m going to fill in a lot of “unknown” checkboxes about my mom, and tell them that my memories are not the best.
But I will tell them that my mom was, by all accounts, a great mom. And that she loved us with all her heart. And that’s the key to who she was.
