Conversations With My Daughter ~ by Jay

Can I hang out in front of school instead of going to orchestra practice this morning?


What do you think I'm going to say?

I dunno.

Guess. Just take a wild guess.

You're going to say no?

Very good!

Missing My Kid ~ by Jay

When Eve was small, I attended two or three professional meetings a year. One was three days, one four, and one five days long and required a full day of travel, so I was gone for a week. I just loved those trips. Even the plane flights were restful, because nobody needed me to do anything and my beeper couldn't go off. I might have to stand up so someone else could go potty, but they could go all by themselves, and I didn't even have to wipe them. Plus a hotel room all to myself? Heaven.

Eve certainly didn't care. She had her Daddy and her teachers and her friends and her blanky. She was fine. My friends and colleagues were all sympathetic about how hard it was to leave my baby, and I just nodded. I never admitted to them that the primary emotion I felt was relief. I was always happy to go home, but I didn't mind leaving - not one little bit.

When Eve was six, one of those conferences was in Monterey, and Sam and Eve met me there toward the end of the week. I didn't know exactly when they'd arrive, so it was a surprise when we left the room to walk toward lunch and I heard a familiar shriek. I turned to see my daughter running as fast as she could towards me, arms held high so I could pick her up for one of those off-the-ground hugs. At that moment, traveling without her stopped being quite so enjoyable.

Now Eve is 12, and she has made it clear she doesn't like it when I go away alone, especially when I go visit her beloved Grandma and she has to stay home. That's where I am this weekend, taking care of some family business with my mother and attending the memorial for Uncle Fishy tomorrow night. I know it makes sense for me to be here by myself - neither Eve nor Sam would be at all interested in tomorrow's event, and the meetings we had this afternoon were not any fun, and she has dance class tomorrow for the last time before the recital...but she was pretty mopey this morning when I took her to school and I'm feeling kinda mopey tonight. Everything's OK, but I miss my kid.

The Party's Over ~ by Jay

The current Open Adoption Roundtable asks, simply, "how do you feel after a visit"?

Tired....after a house full of kids and a day full of vigilance (will Laura like me? Will Eve be OK? Will the kids all get along? Will there be enough food?)

Relieved....that it went well, and everyone had enough to eat.

Apprehensive....because I know that Eve is also exhausted, and let down after days of excitement and planning, and that the web of grief and loss and love that is hers can feel overwhelming when you turn out the light.

Sad....that Eve is feeling grief and loss and I can't make it all better.

Grateful....that I am going through all of this with Sam.

Proud....that we are building this family on a blueprint none of us have ever seen. So far we have a solid foundation and some framing in place. In a few weeks, Laura and her family will come for Eve's dance recital, and as we sit over dinner that night with my mother and brother and sister-in-law, we'll add the roof.

Sorry, This Conversation Is Not Real ~ by Jay

I just love reading articles that tell me I'm contributing to the collapse of Civilization as We Know It.  Or at least, according to Sherry Turkle in today's NYT, the collapse of conversation.

We’ve become accustomed to a new way of being “alone together.” Technology-enabled, we are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere, connected to wherever we want to be. We want to customize our lives. We want to move in and out of where we are because the thing we value most is control over where we focus our attention. We have gotten used to the idea of being in a tribe of one, loyal to our own party.

Everyone is tweeting and texting and surfing all the time. Offices are too quiet now because young lawyers wear headphones while they work.  No one talks anymore.

We are tempted to think that our little “sips” of online connection add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don’t. E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, all of these have their places — in politics, commerce, romance and friendship. But no matter how valuable, they do not substitute for conversation.

I don't use Twitter, but I have substantial, meaningful, life-changing conversations over Email. Facebook has helped me rejoin my hometown community. Next Saturday, I'll join hundreds of people at the dedication of the new high school theater to the memory of Mr. Fish - a dedication that would not have happened without Facebook. Those connections are real.

Turkle says "In conversation, we are called upon to see things from another's point of view". Yes - and I when Renee and Tami and Resist Racism and Muzik share their view of the world, mine expands beyond the borders of the small town of my youth and insular valley of my adulthood. Muzik and other adult adoptees have helped me give my daughter what she needs. I've already explained how important the online open-adoption community is to our journey. That connection, too, is real.

In addition to her concern about The End Of Conversation, Turkle also bemoans our disconnection from the world around us.

I spend the summers at a cottage on Cape Cod, and for decades I walked the same dunes that Thoreau once walked. Not too long ago, people walked with their heads up, looking at the water, the sky, the sand and at one another, talking. Now they often walk with their heads down, typing. Even when they are with friends, partners, children, everyone is on their own devices.

Yes, it's a problem when people are disconnected from their surroundings or withdrawn from their companions - but there are a lot of "devices" that serve the same purpose. I used to use books in precisely the same way many people now use iPhones - as a way to retreat from the world and avoid encounters with real people. My parents had to forbid reading at the table just as Sam and I have told Eve that we won't tolerate texting during dinner. And those who walk on sand dunes without looking where they're going will find that has its own consequence.

We require human connection and conversation just as we require air and water, but water from my tap will hydrate me just as well as water from a stream. Sometimes technology gets in the way of that connection, but it can also facilitate it. It's up to us to use it in healthy and wise way.

The Balancing Act ~ by Jay

Tempeh over at Mothers in Medicine wrote a great post about speaking up and making our lives visible - in particular, the parts of our lives that involve walking out the door at a reasonable hour and/or working part-time so that we can be present for our families and ourselves as well as for our jobs. She says "it's time to end the stigma of working parenthood", and she's right.

I wrote about this early in the life of our blog - when I was still working part-time - and it wasn't just about part-time work. The macho culture that prizes long hours is prevalent here, and it's not enough to be here from dawn to dark. We know who the really hard workers are because they're visibly overwhelmed. They look tired. They eat protein bars in the hallway because they don't have time for lunch. Their desks are piled high with charts and un-filled-out billing sheets and unread journals. They never answer their Email, and their voicemail is full. If they're male and not entirely obnoxious to their support staff, they have a coterie of women hovering around them urging them to take care of themselves, to eat a little something, to slow down, and offering to take just one thing off that pile.

For the last four years I was in primary care, the group management miscalculated my productivity in a way that underestimated it by about 30%. This didn't change my salary, which was related to the money collected, but every quarter they'd publish a list of our productivity, and every quarter I'd remind someone that they were calculating mine wrong. Finally, the last quarter before I moved over to hospice, they fixed it - and I went from being in the middle of the pack to being the second most productive primary care physician out of 60 in the group. Our regional manager came to see me and said "I made them run the calculations twice, because I couldn't believe it". Why couldn't she believe it? "You never looked like you were working that hard".

I love my work. I'm lucky to have a good visual memory and to be able to process written information very quickly. But I worked hard over the years to acquire good time-management skills and to build systems that supported me so I could get my work done. That was all invisible, and in some ways it made me invisible, too.

I agree with Tempeh that we need to make ourselves visible. We need to speak up about the toxicity of a culture that prizes exhaustion and inefficiency and devalues self-care. And the voices speaking up have to be men as well as women. It's not just about part-time work - that's only one strategy. It's about self-preservation.

Spring ~ by Jay

After an essentially non-existent winter, we had summer-like temperatures in March and we've got spring on steroids in April - trees and shrubs and grasses that normally follow a sedate pattern, blooming in sequence over a six-week span, have all burst into profuse blossom at the same time. Every time I turn around, I'm surprised by something else. This morning, I looked down from our bathroom window and noticed the bright pink azalea in the side yard. The bleeding-heart in the back garden is growing a foot a day.

This blog, too, lay nearly nonexistent over the winter. 1 post in January, 4 in February. A smattering in March, and here we are with more than half of April gone. For a while I thought I'd shut it down, but I never got around to writing a hail-and-farewell post, and every now and then I'd be motivated to write something. For once, procrastination and indecisiveness worked in my favor, and now I have a reason to keep blogging.

Heather from Production Not Reproduction has somehow found time and energy to create a new space for Open Adoption Bloggers. The Open Adoption Bloggers site is up and running, and if you look closely at the blogroll, you'll see us there. You'll also see us on the list for the Adoption Blog Hop from Adoption Magazine. I signed up for both because it's important to me to remain an active part of the open adoption community. We have a strong network of adoptive families in our physical community, but none are open adoptions. Rebecca captured my feelings about our role in her post The Adoption Illusion - by our very existence, we make things visible that are often hidden. Eve tells her friends about Laura, and they tell their parents, and their parents squirm. We are committed to this path, and we know it's right for us, but it's challenging. I find strength and hope and new ideas when connect to other adoptive parents, and my commitment is renewed when I hear from adoptees and first mothers about the importance of knowledge and access. This community is important to me, and I am here to stay.

I even have a plan! You'll see some older pieces on adoption re-posted, and I'll write something new at least once a week (not just about adoption, I'm sure). Take a look at the other blogs on the OAB and Adoption Magazine blogroll, and please talk back to me in comments. I hate blogging alone.

Conversations With My Daughter ~ by Jay

Laura thinks I should be allowed to go on Facebook.


Yes, I know, but Daddy and I don't see it that way.

Well, she's my mother.


She's one of your mothers.

She's the one who made me. She was first. So I think you should listen to her.


Laura is the mother who made you, and I am the mother who is raising you. If you asked Laura which one of us gets to make the rules for this house, what would she say?

You and Daddy.


Yup. So no Facebook.