Hyper natural
I was walking Loca to the park this morning in a daze, and at the corner of Carrolton and City Park burst into tears. A friend was driving by taking her child to school and she rolled down the window and asked if I was okay and I blurted out the birthmother changed her mind. There wasn’t much she could do or I could say more than that so I kept walking into the park.
I started to run to lose myself and Loca was behaving better today than yesterday – animals feel stress and yesterday Loca was a nutball because I had woken up with an apple in my throat. Then Loca slowed down because she had to go to the bathroom. I watched her wrangle and circle and circle until I just said, “Loca, why can’t you go to the bathroom like a normal person?”
But then I thought how would I like to go the bathroom while being on a leash. Good grief. And I thought about PETA and how the real radicals out there think owning a pet is a horrible thing. Akin to slavery. And even though I think I am all nicey nice feeding, loving, and shelthering this wild dog, really I’m nothing more than an unenlightened worm.
Yesterday, while I was trying to deal with the grief of learning that our baby due in a few months was no longer coming to live with us, I thought what the fuck does it take to have a baby for godsakes? I mean ten miscarriages, four attempts for T to get pregnant, and now two birthmothers who have changed their minds and decided to keep the baby and I’m like what? I went online and seemed to encounter one too many websites that are vehemently opposed to adoption – in PETA fashion almost insinuating that there is something disgusting about a person like me wanting someone else’s baby.
And I wondered, am I an elitist imbecile for believing that there are children out there who might benefit from having me as a parent? Are kids meant to grow up in worn torn families, with drug addicts, or violent mothers and not here in the comfort of the LaLa with neat lesbians and loving animals?
I got back to my desk and went through the normal course of work and a friend called and again I just blurted out that the birthmother changed her mind and started crying. I asked my friend if she thought adopting is some ridiculous thing that stupid people like me engage in but really children shouldn’t be adopted? She said that I am really overreacting.
So is it bad to own a dog, a cat, a pet? Is it bad to want to be a parent when you can’t have your own baby? Is it crazy to be sick to death of wondering what the fuck is wrong with this universe when I have so much to give a child and yet this remains the most elusive child on the planet.
Give me that old time religion where Moses floats down the bayou because the mother knows she cannot provide and she recognizes someone who can. And get me out of this modern world where everyone is so self-absorbed that a mother would hand over her baby to a man with a serious addiction problem because he is pounding his chest and roaring in the jungle.