Milestones

Lookout kid, trust your heart
You don't have to play the part they wrote for you
Just be true
There are things that you could do
That no one else on earth could ever do
But I can't teach you, I can't teach it to you

- Arcade Fire, “Unconditional I”

There is a huge difference between intellectually knowing milestones in life exist, and actually living through them. When Jenny and I were married, we vowed we would be together “until death to us part.” We did not take that commitment lightly. We did not have in our thoughts “or until divorce.” We knew and vowed that we would be together until one of us died. It was a blind, unconditional commitment. We took each other in full, ready to tackle anything that was to come in between. Intellectually, we knew what we were committing to. In reality, we had no idea.

Jenny was chronically ill with End Stage Renal Disease, or ESRD, which meant her kidneys were permanently nonfunctional. I was young, at the start of my career, working for a company that had a habit of missing payroll. Our situation was specifically unique, yet universally common to all young couples starting out in life: unformed, uninformed, challenged, but blessed with our love and our common optimism for the future. We were together for thirty years and eight months, until she passed away on August 31, 2016.

Throughout our marriage we knew that it was almost certain she would leave before me. We didn’t dwell on it, of course, but we knew it. There were several close calls during those thirty years. Intellectually, I thought I would be ready should she pass first. Yet when she did pass away, the final irreversible reality of her passing devastated me so greatly and so unexpectedly and so completely that it nearly killed me. I thought I would be ready. I had no idea.

My son was twelve years old. Her passing put him in a depression neither of us understood. He lost his champion, his rock, his protector, and his main fountain of unconditional love. Deep in my own grief, I knew I had to be there for him and try to fill the unfillable void of her passing. It was an impossible task, and like all impossible tasks, I failed. The best I could do was to be there for him and love him unconditionally. He processed his grief in his own way, and thank God he inherited Jenny’s tenacity, stubbornness, and resilience. He vehemently eschewed professional therapy, but found his own support network through peers – friends – who lost their own loved ones. Over the years he developed a toughness and a level of empathy that astounds me. I have a cabinet that has pictures and mementos of Jenny, a shrine to her memory. This mother’s day he went to the cabinet and paid quiet tribute to her. He is nineteen now. I am proud of him.

My son came into our lives via adoption. We have in this society a systemic stigma attached to adoption. Unconsciously, we differentiate between a “natural” child, or a “real” child, and an adopted child, as if there is a difference in status. It seems we consider a child who comes into a family via adoption somehow a temporary resident, a sort of a placeholder, or a substitute, for the “real” child who could not come via the mother’s childbirth. Adoption is not usually a first choice for many families, and because of that, there is this unconscious attitude that this is a second-class situation, that if only the couple could bear “their own” children, the adopted child would not exist.

Let me tell you, it is fucking hard to adopt a child. I have to admit that I resented that any unready couple could get pregnant and bring a child into this world, no matter what the circumstances, whether the child was wanted or unwanted, and that the couple has the full weight of society’s laws and approval, while if you actually want to adopt a child, the hurdles to overcome the adoption process are insanely difficult. My resentment was born of the frustration of years of Jenny and I navigating the adoption web, and I admit, my resentment is unfair. However, my frustration was real: adoption should be considered a blessed event when the conditions warrant, not a dark transaction where a “desperate couple” wants to steal a child away from his or her “natural family.” A woman who chooses to bear a child and chooses to put the child up for adoption is making an incredibly difficult and emotional decision, and it is an act of extreme love.

My son’s birth mother and my wife chose each other. We were at the hospital for the birth of my son. One of the social workers at the hospital came into the area and asked to see the mother. Jenny replied, “Here I am,” and the social worker sneered, “I mean the real mother.” My God. She treated us like ghouls just waiting to snatch the baby from the poor woman’s arms. We had her replaced.

My son is my son. He is not my “adopted son.” Our son came into our lives by adoption. He is my son in all ways, and Jenny was his mother in all ways, and I really should not have to emphasize that.

I grew up with the unconscious adoption stigma, though, and I had to overcome it. I had this background irrational fear that when my “adopted son” became a teenager, he’d hit me with “you’re not my real dad!” And I had the old “fruit of my loins!” bias of having to be the so-called “natural” father. Overcoming these attitudes was involved, but it boiled down to two things. First, I remembered my teenage years, and the fights my dad and I had. We loved each other immensely, but I was his son, and he was my dad, and the reasonable expectations and demands of my dad naturally conflicted with my desire to live my life and break the bonds of home. There are songs written about this: Cat Stevens, “Father and Son.” Harry Chapin, “Cat’s in the Cradle.” Both of these songs drive a stake through my heart. And I realized, I will have conflicts with my teenage son no matter what, and this conflict is human and natural and unavoidable, and as in the case with my father and me, love would see us through. Second, the reality was that Jenny was chronically ill, and pregnancy, if it could be achieved, would be high risk. You want to know how high risk? In the movie “Steel Magnolias,” Julia Roberts’ character had ESRD, got pregnant, and it almost killed her. That movie opened my eyes. All of a sudden, how our son came to us became unimportant. To hell with “fruit of my loins.” No way Jenny should be put at risk like that. She was already living with two and a half strikes. At that point, becoming a family was the goal, no matter what the avenue.

I had an additional fear: I had no idea how I would react to a new child coming into our lives. Could I love this child? Did I have to “reason” my way into it? Could I accept the baby? The young child? Let me tell you something: Nature took care of that. We met the birth mother a little over a month before our son was born. We helped her with ultrasound and doctor visits. During these few weeks, I began to have uncomfortable and unexplainable abdominal cramps. It dawned on me: these were sympathy pains! I was dumbfounded! This always seemed like “woo” before, but now I was living it. When my son was born and I first laid eyes on him, I fell into deep and overwhelming and complete love. The love was primal. It was immediate, and full, and surprising. I loved this fabulous new being.

I looked at him deeply the first time I held him, and the reality of his newness overcame me. He literally had his entire life ahead of him, and he and Jenny and I were now forever bonded. Jenny and I decided on his name based on a constellation of names that came from our family and friends. We vowed to let him become himself and to help him find his way. To guide him into adulthood.

That is the “job” of a parent, right? To guide your child as they become an adult? That milestone day, the day they become an adult is out there, and I always knew that day would come. Intellectually, “yeah! Sure! He’ll be an adult!” I thought I was ready. I had no idea.

I look at my son today. He is nineteen. He is about six feet tall. He is huge, and fearless, and confident, and exasperating. And he is an adult. I was not ready for this. I think: nobody told me about this! and then I think: everybody told me about this! I knew this would happen the day he was born. This does not mean I am ready. I had no idea.

I look at him, and I see him as an infant, a toddler. I see him at every age. I mourn, to a degree, that he is no longer “my little buddy.” But: he is there. My little buddy is there, inside that massive teenaged body. And he is all grown up.

Well, mostly.

I am writing this on the day my son graduated high school. It was a struggle for him. He made it. I look up: Jenny would be so proud. I know I am.