Happy Adoption Day!

Today is our fifth (!) Adoption Day. This year, I'm going to let Mark describe how adoption feels from the kid's point of view...this is an awesome paper he wrote for class last year, which immediately brought me to tears. 

Happy Adoption day, Mark--I love you!

My Best Gift
By Mark Dinsdale

It was a gray, dingy, dreary, and uninteresting day. I was tired of moving from place to place. This day I didn’t realize that I was going to a place where I was going to stay forever.

Once a week, a lady called Heather would come and play with me. I thought she was a person who just came to play. One day when I was playing in the freezing cold, frosty air I had to pick up all my favorite belongings. I had no idea where I was going.

After I loaded up all my favorite belongings, I had to put them in Heather’s car. It was Thanksgiving Day when I went to her clean, tidy house. There was not a speck of dust in the huge house (although it was only one story). After five minutes of being in the home, unknown people started pouring into the house. I started to flip out and dove under my soon-to-be bed.

About ten minutes later, I came out from under my bed. After Thanksgiving, I went to my real house and I was explosive with anger. I did not want to go back to my real house; I wanted to stay at Heather’s house forever. When I finally got back to my house, I sprang to my bed.

About a month later, I was adopted. I had no idea! No one told me, until about fifteen minutes before my new mom came to the house. The person who adopted me was Heather.

“I should’ve known,” I whispered to myself because Heather came to my house every so often.

I still had a lot of stuff in the garage. Heather yelled, ”Holy cow, that’s a lot of stuff.” I looked for all my absolute favorite stuff. I got most of it and shoved it into the smooth, sleek, black car.

I bet if I was never adopted I would probably be at my fifteenth or sixteenth house. I’m glad I was adopted. Now I am the happiest kid on earth. 

One sundae with extra sugar, please

On Saturday, I took Mark out for our belated Adoption Day celebration dinner. We celebrated with two humongous ice cream sundaes and a whole lot of sugar-induced giggles.

Mark mulled over his choices carefully before we left. He was afraid he'd forget something, and I was afraid they wouldn't have the nutritional values readily available. So we ran through the various ice creams and toppings, with Mark screaming out his choices and me writing down the carbs.

He ended up with half-mocha/half mint-chip ice cream, cookie dough and coconut mix-ins, and caramel syrup, all in a waffle bowl. I added up all the carbs for that, then had a minor heart attack -- 150 grams of carbs! (He usually averages 60-80 per meal.)

That was his previous highest carb intake EVER, after a huge meal at Soup Plantation. He was so excited by his massive carb count that he called my mom to tell her, "Grandma, I'm eating ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY carbs!!!" She was suitably mortified, which made him smile even bigger.

But it was our Adoption Day, so I didn't care. Needles and insulin be damned, we were going to have ice cream for dinner!

Mark bounced all around the store as the woman scooped up his sundae. He posed for me, but refused to stop eating long enough for me to snap the pic:



It didn't take long for the sugar to kick in. Within 10 bites, Mark asked, "Who needs a spoon anyway?" and dunked his face directly into the sundae. (Apparently, spoons are not a quick enough delivery mechanism.)


However, while not quick, spoons do provide other advantages, such as civility and good table manners! Neither of which were evident at this meal...


The sugar was almost too much for Mark -- his little body couldn't handle it! Pretty soon he was dancing in his seat, and singing. He finally couldn't take it anymore, and had to burn off some energy. With a loud howling noise, he jumped out of his chair and ran through the Pavillion's next door. He returned, passed me by, screamed "Ooooga booga!" and repeated his laps three more times. I was falling off my seat with laughter.

By the time we left, he was hopping up and down, pulling me through the parking lot. "Let's go!" he shouted, scaring an elderly woman nearby. "It's time for the VROOM VROOMIES!"

He dove into the back seat of the car. As I drove away, he shouted at every passerby. "VROOM VROOM!" he called out, cackling. When we hit the street, he decided to pant and bark like a dog at the other cars.

I couldn't take him home in that condition -- he'd wreck the house! So instead, we went shopping for Halloween costumes. He raced up and down the aisles excitedly, like every other kid was doing. He was, however, the only kid dancing in the aisles.

We shopped until the sugar rush finally wore off, then headed home. I checked his blood sugar religiously two hours afterwards, then at four and six hours later. Ironically, that six-hour window was the lowest his blood sugar was all weekend!

By bedtime, he was exhausted but happy. He had a new Halloween costume, a full belly, and a happy memory.

As for me...I was just happy the sugar finally wore off!

How could I forget??

With all the craziness of our previous weekend (birthdays, Disneyland, a houseful of guests, a soccer game, a birthday barbecue), I completely forgot one of the most important days of my life.

Kathleen arrived early to help with the last-minute details for the barbecue. She handed me a card, and I just said, "What's this?"

Turns out "this" brought me to tears.

It was a card that said Happy Adoption Day, and a gift card to Coldstone Creamery. Kathleen smiled again, and said, "The ice cream sundaes are on me!" (Last year, on the first anniversary, Mark and I decided to celebrate every Adoption Day with a trip to Disneyland and sundaes for dinner.)

I immediately welled up and hugged her. And then I smacked myself for forgetting. (Bad mom!!!)

I kicked myself mentally all day long, until finally, I stopped. I realized maybe it wasn't such a big deal after all -- maybe it was actually a really healthy thing that I forgot. I don't think in terms of when we legally became a family anymore; I just think of us as a family.

See, the thing is, sometimes I actually forget Mark is adopted. I never think of him as my "adopted" son, and he never thinks of me as his "adoptive" mother. We're just Mom and Mark.

We talk about adoption occasionally, but not nearly as much as we did that first year. In fact, I think we talked about it so much that year, he's had his fill.

Which is not to say we ignore it, either. He talks about his birth parents sometimes, when something reminds him of them. But he calls them by their first names and with each passing year, the distance grows a little farther and he talks about them a little less.

I bring them up if he hasn't in a while, especially on days like Mother's or Father's Day, when he's sure to be thinking of them. I tell him how grateful I am they gave birth to such a wonderful little boy, and how lucky I am to raise him. I tell him I'm glad he's had so many people throughout his life who love him.

I asked Mark how he felt about our second Adoption Day, and he just shrugged. The he immediately asked, "When do we get our sundaes?"

"Soon," I promised. I tried a different tact, asking, "Have you been thinking about the adoption? I bet that was kinda scary for you, being adopted into a whole new family."

He just shrugged again, and said simply, "Nope." Then he asked if he could go back to playing with his cousins.

I know he does think about it, even if he won't admit it, and I'm glad. I don't pretend he doesn't have a before...a history, a lifetime, heck, even another family, before he had me. I had all of those things, too, if in a completely different way. But nobody ever tried to quash my history pre-Mark, or pretend like it never happened, and thankfully, they've never tried to ignore his either.

Last year's celebration was a huge sigh of relief, commemorating a day that took two long years to happen. It was joyful because the previous two years were so fraught with emotion. It was bittersweet, because while it was the beginning of one family, it was also the end of another. But mostly it was loving, because wherever we looked, wherever we turned, we were surrounded by love, by friends, by family hugging and congratulating us.

So it was fitting that we spent this same day, two years later, celebrating with many of those same people. We were celebrating someone else, my cousin Kathleen (it was her birthday), but that didn't matter, because we were still surrounded by love and family.

And really, at the end of the day, that's what matters most. Not where you started from or how you came to be loved, but simply that you are loved.

525,600 minutes

"Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?"
----"Seasons of Love" lyrics from the musical Rent

Today is our official Adoption Day--exactly one year ago today, Mark and I (and our family and friends!) sat nervously in the Children's Court and listened to a judge finalize our adoption.

It was the legal beginning of our lives as parent and child, and the happiest day of my life. But not for the reason it should've been...

I'd always imagined adoption day would be joyful and proud because I officially became a mother. But honestly, it felt more like...well, not the end, really, but the sense of closure was much stronger than anything else. The biggest benefit to the adoption was the state now recognized me as Mark's legal mother, instead of treating me like a glorified babysitter with no legal say in Mark's care.

The thing is, I'd already had Mark for two years. I'd struggled, learning what it really meant to be a mother, and a single one at that. It was so much more than making sure he had clean clothes, hot meals, and a band-aid when he cut himself.

I struggled with Mark's diabetes--how to manage it, how to recognize Mark's high and low blood sugars, how to feed him and when. As a single person, I slept all night long without a care in the world. As a new mom, night time became the scariest time in my life--would Mark go low while I slept obliviously? I woke often at night to test and correct him, and placed a baby monitor in his room and mine. But even that wasn't enough--I spent lots of time standing in his doorway, watching him sleep, making sure he was still breathing.

I struggled with Mark as an angry little boy. He hadn't been told anything prior to moving in with me, and what he knew made him mad. He was shuffled between families (birth, foster, and the newest family, me), ordered to visitations by a court that knew nothing about him or his best interests. He was interrogated by the many, many, many social workers, lawyers, and other child advocates required to visit him, all asking the same questions. He had no sense of control, with his old life or this crazy new one, and it drove him nuts. He was five years old, and acted out accordingly, with tantrums, and fits of rage. I can't say that I blame him.

But we got over it all. Slowly, we learned to navigate his diabetes together. He learned to communicate instead of raging, and to trust that I wasn't going anywhere. He learned to adapt to a new home, a new school, a new mom, and a big, extended family. I learned that my family and friends exceeded all of my expectations of love, that they were giving and supportive beyond belief, and without expecting anything in return. Their love and support got me through the toughest times in my life.

I learned patience, with a scared little boy and with a messed-up, red-tape bureaucratic system that functioned solely to complicate my life and drag out the whole adoption process (that's what it felt like). I learned to trust that while social workers didn't always bring good news (another birth mother appeal granted--again??), they fought for us again and again, as overworked and underpaid as they were. I learned that they didn't like filling out all the reams of paperwork any more than I did, and yet, they never complained.

I learned to function sleep-deprived, and Mark learned to ignore me when I was cranky and tired. I learned that beneath all that fear and anger was a happy, sweet, funny little boy who smiled easily, laughed loudly, and loved freely. He learned that there wasn't anything I wouldn't do for him, and I learned that I could love someone, little as he was, more than I ever imagined.

And that was where we were at a year ago today, arriving at the judge's chambers. We'd settled into our lives, and when the judge proclaimed us a forever family, it was only a formality. It was just the official stamp on the paper. Because I hugged Mark tightly, and as I watched my family and friends do the same, I knew that no matter what the date on the adoption certificate, we'd been family since that very first day.

So, happy Adoption Day, Mark. I'm proud to be your mom, and I love you.