Snipperoo.

So on Friday, Mr. A got the old snipperoo.

The week leading up to his surgery was a solid week of jokes about his genitals.  I think at one point I may even have made up a little song.  Do you know how hard it is to find rhymes for scrotum and testicles?

We were expecting the worst.  Whenever we mentioned that Mr. A was going to get snipped, there was a resounding chorus of sympathy.   Men couldn’t seem to help but share one of the following: A) Stories about how they would NEVER agree to let someone cut open their balls, B) Stories of how a friend of a friend of a friend had a vasectomy and their penis rotted off, or C) Tales of their own snippage and the suffering that followed.

As for Mr. A’s surgery, I am unimpressed.  I dropped him off at 6:45, came home to drop M off at school at 7:50 and picked Mr. A up by 8:30.  They gave him some decent drugs and after I went to procure an “anti fungal athletic supporter*, Mr. A really didn’t seem that uncomfortable.  The suffering certainly didn’t hinder his ability to spend two entire days and nights playing with the playstation he borrowed from a friend.

It isn’t that I really wanted him to suffer, exactly, but it really doesn’t seem fair that he got off so easy.

I have managed almost all aspects of the pain in the ass that is modern birth control since I was 17 and that includes 12 years of this relationship .  Suffering that included discussing birth control with my mom while I was in high school, taking pills that made me sick/break out/gain weight, carrying around a diaphragm and spermicide and having to remember to use it, 100% of the blame when our birth control failed ONCE in all those years, an IUD that makes me bleed like a stuck pig once a month, etc.

I also trudged through the indignities and discomforts of 9.5 months of pregnancy.  I won’t go through them all, but I even got stretchmarks on my CALVES for crying out loud.   My CALVES.   And my sideburns grew in so thick I looked like a short, fat, hairy MAN.   No one tells you about that when they talk about “glowing” pregnant women.  The only glowing I did was when my face was red from living in a  neverending hot flash that lasted two months.

So far, Mr. A’s surgery looks more pleasant than the first week of pregnancy was for me, not to mention the following 4o after that (Need I mention that M was born a solid week overdue?  One of the worst weeks of my entire life.)

Anyway, he lived and so far, his package hasn’t fallen off from gangrene.  Hopefully, the surgery on his sperms (as M called it) will be a success and I can wash my hands of birth control for the rest of my life.

Halle-freaking-llujah!

(*Seriously, Antifungal was written in enormous font on the packaging.  The thought of fungal athletic supporters haunted me throughout the rest of my trip to Target.)

Our Daughter

Dawn had a great post up today about sharing parenting with her daughter’s birthmother.

If you are going to read on here and what to know why the eff I am referencing Barbie, go read it, because I don’t have time tonight to summarize it (not to mention I wouldn’t be able to do justice to the way Dawn writes anyway).

Go ahead, go read it.  I’ll wait.

This week, I have been  preparing a Chinese New Year care package for L’s orphanage.  Whenever I send a package, writing the accompanying letter and gathering photos is. . .difficult.

How can I sum up who L is in about one page of writing?  How can I tell the ayis all the things she has learned since they last saw her or since my last letter?  What frame of reference will these people living in rural China have for Razor scooters, beach vacations, tumbling classes and library storytime?  What will they think when they see pictures of her in her octopus Halloween costume, bike helmet or in the  fancy schmancy professional photo shoot?

It isn’t a language issue.  The letters can be translated into words they will understand, but there is something bigger than words in my way.  We are  simply living in two completely different worlds.  Our world and their world is so different, they may as well have packed L up and put her on a rocketship to live with Martians.

I think about these things when I think about searching for L’s parents.

(And yes, though I am moving slowly, I am looking for them.  I started right when we came home, then I found some information that paralyzed me and made me take some time out to process it.  Now I am back to taking babysteps in that direction.   But I digress…)

If we find them, Barbies will be the least of our worries.  There are so many things that will be roadblocks to openness — language; culture; history; wealth disparity; health, parenting and educational beliefs– the list goes on and on and on.

What won’t be a roadblock?

L.

As far as I can imagine, she is the only thing in the entire world we will have in common.

Could we make it work?  Could we somehow find a way to bridge a gap that is unimaginably wide so L can know them and know her story?

Is it fair to L to ask her straddle two worlds that are so very distant from each other?  Can we help her find a way to balance between them?

I don’t know.   I don’t know how we would do it.  Sometimes,  I wonder if we should even try.

I go around and around about it in my head, but I always come to the same conclusion:  Knowing is better than not knowing.

Knowing where she came from.  Knowing why.Knowing who her parents are.  Knowing what they are like.   Knowing who she looks like.  Knowing them.

I don’t know if they love L or if they could love her if the knew her.

I hope they do.  I hope they could.

If we find them and they are willing, I will write the awkward letters.    I will send the confusing photos and videos.   We will visit them and try to understand the world they live in.   I will do my best to learn to share my daughter.

L is part of us.  She is part of them.  They are part of her, too.  We are all intertwined whether we have contact or not.  L is our daughter.  The collective our.   That is bigger and more important than all the roadblocks.

At least, I hope it is.

Winter entertainment

Every winter, we subscribe to Netflix so we can watch all the movies and shows we missed over the last year.  Then, once the weather warms up and we have other things to do, we unsubscribe.

This year, the pickings seem pretty slim.  I have already watched Dexter (really good), Weeds (good) and am working on the Tudors (eh, but I will finish the series).   As for movies, my queue only has Son of Rambow and Saint Ralph.

Aren’t there more shows and movies I should be watching?  I know the writer’s strike really decimated TV last year, but shouldn’t there be good movies?  I tried the Netflix recommendations, but I didn’t see much that looked interesting.    It is a huge bummer.

It is getting cold here and I want to curl up on the couch rather than going out.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Paging Dr. Gupta

Maybe it just goes to show how shallow I am, but when I saw that Obama is contemplating Dr. Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General, he was just doing it to up the hotness quotient of his administration.

Seriously, Dr. Gupta is HAWT.

Two Years

Yesterday was the two-year anniversary of L’s referral.  Two years was the pinnacle of waiting what felt like forever for something that seemed like such a preposterously possibility.  After all that time and bureaucratic bullshit, who could believe that there was  a real-life person out there who would soon become my child?

Two years ago yesterday, I looked at her little picture and felt…well, honestly, I felt not much of anything.  But in two short years, I can no longer remember my life without this little girl.

These first two years with L have been hard.  Harder than I imagined, but in different ways.  It was really hard to parent a child who  lived through the trauma of separation and loss (not once, but twice!) and whose only purpose in life seems to be claiming me (which is different from loving, I learned over time).  It was hard to patiently wait for her scars to heal over so she felt safe enough to hug me instead of trying to hold on for dear life.  It was hard to wait for her to decide that we were probably sticking around so she did not have to look out for the next possible cargiver.  It is hard to look back on these two years and see so clearly the places where I made mistakes that made things harder for L.  But always, from the moment I touched her, it has been so very easy to love this little girl.

In other ways, I am sure are facing different kinds of difficulties in the future.   We have only started talking about adoption.  L’s language isn’t developed enough yet for us to discuss it in too much detail.  Right now, L is trying to wrap her head around the idea of an ayi.

She pretends she is a baby and I pretend to give her a bottle.  “I used to give you a bottle when you were a baby, right after you met us in China!”  I say.   “What means it a Ayi?”  she asks because she knows the Ayis had something to do with her being a baby.  “Your Ayis took care of you when you were a baby and  you lived in China.  They changed your diapers and gave you bottles and put you to sleep in your crib.  Then Mama and Daddy came to China and we became a family when we adopted you, so Mama gave you your bottles then.”  Then,  I pretend to give her a bottle and she says “I not a BABY!”  and we both laugh because she isn’t a baby any more.

Right now, looking backward and looking forward, I can see the loss and hurt that L will carry.  As her mother, that is hard.  I would take that pain for her, if I could.  Instead  my job is to help her trudge through it and smooth out the rough edges where I can.

It has been a long two years, but it also seems like it was just yesterday my hands were shaking as I clicked open my email and saw her face for the first time.  That day, I remember saying to Mr. A, “She just looks like a random baby.  She doesn’t seem like she is ours.”

But now she is ours and we are hers –for better or worse–and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

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