We went to a dinner party last night where we were treated in grand style to cocktails, dinner, dessert, tea, conversation, and all the good things one hopes to have at a dinner party. Why is it the art of entertaining is lost on so many or rather than so few find it rewarding to entertain?
I was walking through the park this morning and all the cypress have lost their rust colored needles and left them like a blanket around their trunks. Now just moss hangs from the branches and the trees look like men with hoary beards.
Then an RTA bus drove by with flashing lights that said Merry Christmas and I thought of T asking me on the way to the beach about a sign that said, Keep Christ in Christmas.
Why wouldn’t our public service buses be flashing Happy Holidays?
Hanukkah
The story of Hanukkah is the story of religious freedom. In 168 BC King Antiochus the 4th, who inherited his kingdom from Alexander the Great, set up an idol in the Jewish temple and ordered Jews to worship it. He was a zealous Hellenist and wanted all people to follow Greek ways. A revolt led by Mattathias and his son Judah the Maccabee to overthrow Antiochus raged with the odds against the Jews; they were ill-equipped and vastly outnumbered. But the Jews were fighting for their homes, their faith and their freedom as the Syrian mercenaries were not. So, in the winter of 165 BC the Jews were victorious and marched into Jerusalem. The first act was to clean the temple and get rid of the idol. When they arrived, there was only a single flask of oil to light that should have lasted one day. It miraculously lasted eight.
Later, to commemorate the victory, candles were lit for eight days. There was an interesting dispute between the followers of Shammai and Hillel. Shammai advocated lighting the eight moving downward to a single candle. Historians believe Shammai basic view was that the glory of Israel lay in the past and there had been a steady downward trend among the Jews. Hillel’s followers foresaw a glorious future for Judaism. Symbolic of their faith and hope, they advocated a rising crescendo of light. Of course, they prevailed.
The basic issue of the Maccabean struggle was religious freedom. The Jews fought for their right to worship God in their own way. Not long after the victory, war broke out again, this time Judah was killed in battle and the new colossus, Rome, bestrode the Middle East. The Hebrew state was crushed until May 1948. It is interesting to speculate on what this victory of the spirit has meant in human history. If Judaism had been destroyed in the second century before Jesus, would Christianity have come into the world, or Mohammedanism? Both were products of Judaism and both derived sustenance from the living Jewish people.
I went today to the obgyn clinic with the birthmother. Quite an experience. We were hoping to determine the sex of the baby, but it’s still too soon.
You know what I’ve learned in life? If you go about designing your own life, having a preset construct of what you want, you’ll fall short of what you need. Today, aside from the birthmother and her grown daughter, I was introduced to the the grandmother – so there I was sitting with three generations of beautiful women who were all cool in a multigenerational way and I was thinking to myself “oh the places I will go, the people I will meet, what a joyous life.”
While we were waiting to go down for routine bloodwork, the daughter decided to leave with the grandmother to go holiday shopping. She said, “Bye, Baby Mama” as the elevator doors were closing.
You know all those times where you feel like you were plucked from some alien planet and deposited on another one? This wasn’t one of those times. I feel like all of this wonder is being weaved into this incredible life I have and I’ll be damn if I don’t feel like the luckiest woman on this planet.
Along the beach we saw a flock of pelicans skirting the white caps of the Gulf and beyond, just feet away from us, was a school of dolphins, we could see the arched bodies rising out of the surf.
You have to look close to spot them as I didn’t zoom in when shooting this:
We drove to Gulf Shores and stayed at a friend’s beach house this weekend near Ft. Morgan and Dauphin Island. We got up Saturday morning to white sand beaches and perfect beach combing weather. I took a bunch of books to read and ended up reading the one that had just arrived called “Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption.”
The essays were giving voice to Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Black and mix raced adopted children. The first essays were tough – it was basically in your face “adopting a child from another race” makes you part and parcel of everything wrong with the world type writing with little mention of the families who had adopted these children and made sacrifices themselves to raise them in a good and loving home.
One of the items I had on my list to tell any birthmother we interviewed with is that I would assure the child be brought up in a racially diverse environment by proactively seeking schools, professionals, and friendships that were not from the same culture or race or religion. I told the black birthmother I would not only love a black child, but as the world is not colorblind, I would actively engage the child in his or her own culture through all means of exposure. I would proudly put a poster of Obama in the nursery as my child will be part of Generation O.
As we walked up and down the beach on Gulf Shores, we encountered very few people and lots of fish and fowl and then took Loca – exhausted – back to the house and took a drive over to the Fort. When we got there, I had this flash forward image that T and I probably had many of these kinds of historical roadstops ahead as we raise a child. As we got out of the car, I noticed the people going into the fort and was happy to see a young black girl and boy amongst the white faces.
On the way back to the beach house, when we were stopping in Tacky Jack’s for a beer, I was hyper aware of the people in the restaurant and how they stared at us – we looked different, we’re lesbians – while they were all of a type – I would say rednecks but that would be a pejorative. I thought about adding a black baby to our mix and instead of me and my “let them stare” I had a pang of sympathy for what a child would go through being on the outside of ordinary.
We talked about it – I said I could remember my father, who sounded just like Desi Arnez, always attracting attention from people, not favorable either. T said she could remember her mother dropping her at some function and her not wanting a kiss from her mom, she just wanted her mom to drive on. There is a universal embarrassment all kids feel around their parents. To some degree.
When we were driving home from Alabama, we came into New Orleans from the East and got off on Orleans Avenue and before we got to Broad we saw a line that snaked all the way down Orleans. We were stopped at a red light and I rolled the window down and called out to the crowd, real friendly like, asking what they were standing in line for, and this woman, a very attractive black woman, looked at me as if I was peeing on the sidewalk. I kept trying to engage her by repeating the question, but she looked through me, insolent and arrogant. Sadly, I took it as the affront it was meant.
Oh god, I thought as we crossed Broad and headed home. T said the line of people was going into the Zulu Social and Pleasure Club but I was still saying, oh god, under my breath. Obama, shama, I thought, down here in New Orleans, when the potential sibling of the child who I might raise said to me last week she feels more comfortable other places than here, I thought we have so so so very far to go.
And as dedicated as I am to this city, lord knows I don’t want it all to fall on the back of my baby.
Hi ho hi ho it’s off to the beach we go …
Every year on New Year’s eve they build a huge bonfire on Orleans Avenue – now suddenly the city thinks they are unsafe. Please, please, sign this petition to save the bonfires and tell the city to focus on the crime – the crime, you get it? – not the bonfires.
December has been a crazy month – a whole team of hurry up and wait and go go go and collapse. But amidst all of this nuttiness, joy runneth over. From having our first interview for adoption, to immediately having a successful second one. To knowing the moment I walked in the room that something was happening with this woman I had never met to walking out aware of my life enlarging in ways I could never imagine.
Then sitting at my dining room table and listening to T speak with her friend, I opened a box from my friend that had just come in the mail. It was a calendar and every month had a different theme in pictures and comments she had added. Tears came to my eyes to know this person has touched my life in so many ways, so many times.
And sitting around the dining table yet again last night with T’s friend in from Burma, a friend who just recently came from Argentina, and my friend who walked only two houses down and brought a celebratory bottle of Louis Roederer champagne to cheer the new baby and the holidays – again I looked around and said to myself, my blessings continue to multiply.
I walked Loca a brisk, short time this morning, heading towards the museum and then looping around by the Botanical Garden and over the lagoon and back. We’re headed to the beach for some R&R this weekend so I knew by afternoon she’d be romping in the sand and water, so I told her she is one lucky dog. And then I added, and I’m one lucky chick.
Right then, four pelicans flew overhead. And I asked once again – Why me Lord?
What have I ever done, to deserve even one, of the pleasures I’ve known?
Today was quite an amazing day! We met a woman who chose us to be babymamas! To say that we are so excited we are walking on air would be an understatement.