Saskia spent some portion of her birthday learning to hold up three fingers. Two fingers held aloft, easy-peasy. The three middle fingers, though, that takes some training. In recent weeks, doubtless because we’ve been talking so very much about the whole turning-three concept she’s lost the fwee pronunciation and can just say three.
We began the day in party mode. A passel of small people came bearing gifts, played, ate maple cupcakes (with maple frosting), and left with tiny tokens of gratitude in return. Note to parents of young children: waiting for a birthday party to start is pretty much guaranteed misery for the young-but-older-than-ever-before honoree. Our solution has been to have morning birthday parties. Pretty much every single guest is fresher in the morning. There are no naps to conflict with. You even have the rest of the day to burn off whatever excess sugar may have been ingested. There’s even time to play with your new stuff, if you get new stuff.
This was a remarkably happy little group of kids playing. There was some jumping for the sake of glee—and jumping. Add, a little biking about on tiny toddler bikes and hoppity-hopping and dancing. Duplo was constructed. A collaborative drawing was created. There was some hiding under the dining room table (always a good time). There were older people (tween to adult) chatting.
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That’s the simple part. Remembering that three years ago, this most delicious and gorgeous and happy little girl emerged evokes instantly the complicated truth that this delicious and gorgeous and happy little girl lives with us because her first mama let it be so—and letting her go, regardless of whether it was right for all—remains a huge, hard thing. Her being with us remains a huge, indescribable thing. A word like gratitude doesn’t really say enough.
The more I learn about adoption, the more I realize it’s like putting a mountain into your familial landscape. It’s bigger than an elephant in the room. It requires your acknowledgement and probably some technical skills over time because you’re going to want to do more than just look at it or try to ignore it. And whatever’s on the various sides of the mountain—for some it’s a whole other part of the world—there’s curiosity and wholeness made by traversing in order to know it, even if you know your home’s side of the mountain best.
And as a parent, there’s a desperate wish—one you realize over time as your kids get older is both understandable and unrealistic, even, when you let yourself think about, undesirable—to shield them from any sadness, any struggles, any complicated feelings or situations. You come around to a realization—well, you make the same realization many, many times over, truthfully—that life isn’t perfect or perfectly easy or perfectly simple. Better to help equip your child with whatever it is that it takes to live in the morass, the jumble of up, down, happy, sad, bored, mundane, scary, disappointing, thrilling, etcetera.
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Saskia and I went (and wholly interrupted, with our just-turned-three year-old inability to remain perfectly silent) to the annual Roe Event co-hosted and created by Tapestry Health, NARAL and the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts after nap. The most stunning part of what’s happening now—call it the Tea Party emboldened stance writ large, even in this bluish state—is that family planning services are really, truly way-more-than-you-realize in peril. I’m including this in a birthday-related essay, because this is the statistic: half of all pregnancies are unintended.
If, like for so many of your friends and mine, this happens in the context of a family alreaday in motion, that pregnancy is referred to as the oops baby—and might well join the fold pretty seamlessly. That wouldn’t be the case for, say, my teenager or your teenager if oops happened.
But back up. Erase any parental freak out about when or whether you want your child to become sexually active. Erase even the fact that you hope you’ve laid the groundwork that your child will come to you—add, hopefully before becoming sexually active—to request some support getting contraceptives if that’s on the potential agenda (or even potential wish list). While I hope I’ve been open and accepting enough to have my kids comfortable to come to be for that assist, what I really want is for my kids to be able to access contraceptives and counsel. Period. I don’t want my kids unable to find those things independent of me because they are no longer available. That’s not why Saskia and I went to the event (we didn’t go to make noise, either, but to cheer on Marlene Fried receiving an award for her amazing work in reproductive justice). However, that is why I’m glad that for Saskia words like equality and justice and respect for women will echo in the unconscious memory of her third birthday.
