Gotta get a Gund
I was reading Oprah this morning over tea before walking Loca. There was an article about straight women turning gay and most of them have kids in some configuration. I was looking at the ad in the front of the magazine that had a little black boy all dressed up in Ralph Lauren or something and I felt like the caption should have read The Next President.
I had warm fuzzy feelings about us having a child and I left with Loca still warm from those feelings. We ran into my neighbor, who came off her porch and said “Rachel, I heard about the adoption, I’m so sorry.” And I burst into tears. I told her it wasn’t the mother’s fault – she had her demons to deal with herself and I’m not angry at her. Then she proceeded to tell me her stories – the sister who had her Guatemalan baby in hand and lost her to the process because the mother changed her mind but then later, luckily, she was successful. And about her own desires to parent that were not fulfilled.
I told her a colleague of mine told me a few years back when she was turning 50 that her single biggest regret was not adopting after she couldn’t get pregnant herself. I’ll never forget that and it actually propelled me into the next phase of my life even though here I am near 50 myself.
I told my neighbor, who is slightly older than me, about the woman I had met who was adopted as an infant by a woman who was 72 years old. That is the story that most fills me with hope.