A Turning Point

In history class, students are often asked to identify turning points. It's considered a critical thinking skill to identify a specific event that changed the course of history, a defining moment if you will. There have been a few turning points in our open adoption journey, one of which happened when Lily was about six months old.

Our first two meetings with Fiona and Nate had been at the agency. I haven't written a whole lot about the agency we used. It is a small, local agency that doesn't facilitate many domestic adoptions, and therefore has little experience with open adoptions. The social worker assigned to our case was a horrible communicator, downright odd, and extremely frazzled, disorganized, and easily confused. Her "facilitation" actually resulted in countless miscommunications and misunderstandings that caused the beginning of our relationship to be a bit rocky. Things only started progressing once she was out of the picture. After our second meeting at the agency, I got the sense that Fiona was just as frustrated if not more frustrated than I was with the social worker. So when we left the office and were out in the parking lot, I asked her if she would want to go out to dinner the next time we got together. She said yes, and neither of us ever spoke to the social worker again even though the adoption wouldn't be finalized for another five months or so. She never called us, and we never called her. I know that the attorney we hired to finalize the adoption did communicate with this social worker, but the fact that she never followed up with us or Fiona and Nate illustrates her complete ineptitude.

It took a while for us to set up the dinner we had talked about that day in the parking lot. I sent several emails and left several voicemails that went unanswered, and I got the first feel of what it was like to worry that we might lose touch. It was really scary, and it helped me realize just how much I wanted our open adoption to work. We finally set a date and time for this dinner, and there would be a new dynamic added -- Ferb. Fiona and Nate knew about Ferb and he knew about them, but they had never met. Ferb was five at the time, but he really wasn't a typical five-year-old. He had a tendency (and still does) to ask very hard-hitting, probing questions. He once asked my father why he divorced my mother, and when my father gave an admittedly lame answer, Ferb followed up with, "No, what's the REAL reason you wanted to divorce her?" So I was a bit nervous about Ferb's first meeting with Fiona and Nate because a) I really wanted them to like each other, and b) I really didn't want Ferb to say or ask something that would make them uncomfortable. So Ferb and I talked a lot about Fiona and Nate before our first meeting. I even made him a little book about the story of how Lily came into our lives and how Fiona and Nate were now part of our family too. It was a bit tough to explain to Ferb why Fiona and Nate made the decision they made. Every time I gave a reason, he would come up with another question that attempted to delve deeper. He's a tough audience, for sure.

The day of our dinner, as it turned out, Ferb was getting over a cold so he was a bit more quiet than usual. He loves to draw, so he spent a lot of the evening drawing and keeping to himself. To be honest, I was fine with this because I was just so nervous about what he might say. Toward the end of the dinner, Fiona left to go to the bathroom, and suddenly Ferb looked at Nate and said, "Nate, can I ask you a question?" I held my breath. Word for word (except for the names), here's what they said:

"How much do you miss Lily?" Ferb asked.

"I miss her a lot," Nate answered.

"You should come over to our house," Ferb explained. "You could see her all the time."

It had been six months, and we had yet to invite Fiona and Nate to our house. I don't know exactly why. They knew our full names, and I knew our address was easily found on the Internet, so it wasn't that I was afraid of them knowing where we live. But I was afraid of something. Maybe I just wanted to get to know them better. Maybe I was influenced by all the people in my life who were telling me "be careful" and "don't let them get too close." But here was my five-year-old son, once again pointing out the obvious to me. Fiona and Nate live 10 minutes from our house. Of course they should come over to visit. At that moment, I felt like a total idiot.

That conversation between Nate and Ferb was definitely a turning point in our open adoption. Since that day, Fiona and Nate have been to our home many times, and now I can't imagine it any other way.