I don't want to throw this word around too cavalierly. I know that it has a lot of social and emotional baggage saddled with it, but it also has a literal meaning that feels appropriate in this season of my life. I have been feeling more and more acutely that even though I had lost both of my parents at age 31 and was certainly capable of "fending for myself", I am an orphan.
Too strong? Maybe. My parents had both been there through my babyhood and toddler years. They even came to my high school plays and saw me graduate from college. I already knew how to drive, how to do my own taxes, how to do most Adult Life Tasks independently. How to keep myself out of trouble. They celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary just before Dad died. I am hardly what most people would think of when they hear the word orphan. I get it. Maybe I'm just fishing for sympathy. Deep down, though, losing my parents has completely changed my life in a thousand tiny subtle ways. Paper-cut style.
They were not at my wedding. They will never meet Les. I can't call them for advice, or to celebrate, or to mourn. Every time Mothers Day, Fathers Day, milestone, birthday, anniversary, or another big event rolls around, I grieve. It didn't occur to me that so many celebration days must actually be very very painful for huge swaths of the population. Celebration, loss, keeping it together. Private pain with a great big smiley face taped over it.
I suspect that this new keen sensation of parentlessness is probably stirred up by my own half excited/half terrified first inquiries with adoption organizations here in NC. Les and I have talked a lot about our family lately, and we both keep coming back to adoption. Specifically, special-needs adoption. I suddenly find myself lying awake at night thinking about babies, toddlers, and even older kids who will grow up without parents because of birth defects, treatable diseases, even severe birth marks. Watch the video at www.rainbowkids.org for an idea of what I'm talking about (have tissues within reach). Let me just tell you this - it SUCKS to not have parents. It sucks. Even at 34.
Sentimentality isn't really what I'm going for, though. Adoption is not a picnic. I've started subscribing to blogs and poring over websites and talking with parents that I know who have gone through the process. Even once you have cleared the flaming hoops and come up with the cash and brought the kiddos home, there is a lot of our human brokenness and mess and pain stitched into the new fabric of your family. It definitely ain't all puppies and rainbows. Neither is parenting by procreation, surely. But most people, myself included, tend not to charge head-first into something that they KNOW to be incredible difficult. Possibly resulting in a lot more heart ache than warm fuzzies, especially at first.
But it actually seems to make perfect sense to me. Here I am, a woman who is creeping up on 35, who has never had the gut-rattling deep deep desire to have a baby. I envy women who have had that, actually. I never have. Would it be sad to miss the infant stage? To never hold my own snuggly newborn against my chest or watch a tiny tiny mouth that looks just like my mouth, or Les's mouth, shape the word "momma" for the very first time? Wouldn't it toooootally suck to know that this child who is looking up at me and trying with all his might to imagine me as his "mom" has already suffered more trauma, abandonment, desolation, and fear than most of us probably ever will? Yes. That totally sucks. It already breaks my heart, and we haven't even gotten any farther than requesting adoption agency info via email.
Here's the thing, though. I miss my parents every single day. Every day. Every day that I cannot call my mom and tell her about my lemon tree. Every day that I can't ask my dad what he thinks about something I heard in a sermon or saw on TV. Every single day that I remember that for 31 years I was a daughter, and now I am not. Not a daughter, not a mom. Those are not the only important things in life of course. I am a daughter of God, a wife, a friend, a sister. A PupMomma. We'll see if the Lord sees fit to add Mom to that list someday. In the mean time, I've got a reading list and blogroll that is quickly getting out of hand. Trying to get into other people's stories while figuring out where God is leading us at the next bend in the road.
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