Blending families

Reality Checking In


Recent traffic surges and an uptick in subscribers has left me feeling oddly pressured and blogging with the feeling of “daily chore” about it.

I’m also feeling less comfortable with personal revelation now that some of my readership dwells in my real world as opposed to the – as my daughter puts – “internet people” I’ve become accustomed to in my bloggy version of the reality show confessional.

And there is the fact that I am slowly inching back into the world of working … at a real job … for money. Not much money. You’d either chuckle at my audacity of referring to it as “work for pay” or fear for my survival if I were suddenly called upon to be the breadwinner again. Very little bread could be purchased with the bread I am making.

Pool all this and the end result is me not blogging much … again.

Regardless, there’s little news in the neighborhood to blog about at any rate.

Summer finds me in full-blown stay at home mom mode much more so than at any other time of year. Swim lessons. Camps. Weekends off in the wooded or mountain areas.

Last weekend we got away for a quickie to Garner Lake and this coming weekend, we’re off to a family reunion weekend a way up north near Grande Prairie.

Shelley’s family gathers every fourth year at one of the area’s community halls to pitch tents, horseshoes and bocce balls. There’s a big dinner followed by a dance on Saturday night and judging from the tales I’ve heard, I will be even more completely out of my elemental self than I normally am around Rob’s late wife’s family.

Trepidation is running at high enough levels that I’ve even tread back into nightmare territory – a sure sign that my exterior zen is squaring off with my internal misgivings and fears.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, Shelley’s family has been nothing but polite and graciously so to me and Dee, but feelings have flared out of sight.

Rob thinks I am being overly pessimistic and that everything will be fine, but every time I have been around that side of the family, heavy drinking occurs*. And I already know that most of the extended family are keenly aware of what my presence symbolizes which puts both me and them on sharp edges.

This is the first family reunion since Shelley died. Her mother, step-father, father and both her mother’s brothers have died in the interim. I can’t help but think that this is something that will not hit people until everyone has gathered … and had too much to drink.

Of course, it could all just turn out peachy.

I am crossing fingers for peachy. And taking my yoga mat.

*One of the sisters-in-law is an alcoholic who appears to only deal with her issues when she is completely shit-faced, which is clever because no one in the family can call her on behavior she has conveniently blacked out.

Sarah Coleman Needs a Reality Check


As in … it’s not all about her. In fact, adoptive parents, in general, can step away from the victimization angle any time now. I am tired of hearing about how marginalized they are by the red-necking DNA loving society that picks on their lack of genetically connected family.

Why? Because from the way I see it, in the adoption triangle, they are the ones that come out the overall winners. They couldn’t, or preferred not to, physically reproduce. They adopted. Problem solved. Birth parents are the ones who relinquish their rights and their baby due to circumstances that are beyond their control to alter. Babies, by the way, have no say, no rights and are somehow expected to deal with a loss they are too young to mentally or emotionally wrap their wee minds around and equally too young to verbalize – and later when we do, we are mollified with fairy stories and ultimately end up feeling guilty for not being more grateful for being saved from the fate of being raised by people who loved us just as much as our adoptive parents do.

Being adopted is an emotional Kobayashi Maru. The no-win scenario that can’t be cheated.

Normally, I can muster up a bit of sympathy when adoptive parents sound off about the annoying media practice of pointing out the genetic status of celebrity children. It’s unnecessary, but I get the curiosity factor that drives it because many folks don’t know anyone who isn’t genetically tied to the family who raised them.

But what irritates me to words is the victim feel to the rants of adoptive parents driven to blog or otherwise express themselves. Sarah Coleman is the latest adoptive mother to cry “foul” when what is considered the “alternative reality” of adoption finds its way into the mainstream.

Official party line is that though there may be bumps and adjustments, the adopted children are all right. And mostly, we are. We aren’t maladjusted. We live and love and don’t seek therapy or take psychotropic medications any more than those of you blessed with “flesh of my flesh” families.

Coleman had her panties in a twist over the new movie, Mother and Child, which tells the story of a birth mother, her daughter and an infertile woman who eventually adopts in a way that portrays – in her opinion – adoption in a negative light. But the reality is that there are birth mothers whose lives stopped in any meaningful way when they gave up their babies. There are adoptees who resent having been adopted for reasons as complex as they are as people. There are adoptive parents who will admit – without guilt – that they would have preferred to have had genetic offspring and that adoption was their second choice.

Oh, wait. That last thing. The second choice? Yeah, I’ve never heard anyone admit that. Even though it’s true.

And maybe that’s Coleman’s real problem. Her inner Queen Gertrude feels guilty? If so, she should get over it. It’s not as if adopted children don’t know the score and – news flash – we still love our parents anyway.

My bottom line is this – as the baby in the whole adoption scenario – I am the only one with a legitimate right to take offense and I’m not. Why?

I know that birth mother. She’s my youngest sister who gave up her daughter at birth. And I know that bitter adult adoptee. My younger brother. I know the woman struggling with infertility who saw adoption as the last resort – she would be me. They are not far-fetched inventions of Hollywood. We are real. Our point of view should get equal play.

Curse You Walt Disney


Friday night movie in the hamlet was Disney fare called The Game Plan with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He starred as a quarterback for a make-believe Boston team on the verge of its first championship. Completely self-absorbed, he is missing the one ingredient that will take him from “almost” to “legend”.

That missing ingredient?

A long-lost eight year old daughter from a barely remembered college marriage.

His ex-wife withheld the information due to his immature behavior and eight years didn’t age him much.

Being a Disney flick, Dad is inept. Daughter is wise-cracking. The agent (Kyra Sedgwick – looking very, very old) is the foil who is holding Dad back by reinforcing his selfishness and, of course, Mom … is … dead.

Yeah, it wouldn’t be a very Disney story without a dead parent. Mom’s seem to be the corpse of choice anymore, but it’s not a given.

It’s convoluted. The death isn’t revealed until close to the end, but Dee perked up and caught it like a terrier and didn’t let go. Angst about parents who “split up” and worry about dead people followed for a goodly amount of time after the movie ended.

“I don’t want you and Dad to split up,” lip quivering.

It took strength not to roll my eyes. Most of the time she complains that we kiss too much.

“That won’t happen,” I assured her.

So much insecurity and always when I think she is grounded. She’s been calling Rob “Dad” most of time for the last little bit and is busily plotting her eventual name change. Moving first from the diminutive of her given name to her given name (Will insisted she have a “grown up name”. He thought this was important though he seldom used his own “William”) in grade three. In grade four, she plans to adopt Rob’s surname and drop Will’s (her call completely and I refuse to influence her one way or another).

Between Rob and I, the dead parent/spouse thing in movies is something of a joke, but for Dee it is an unsettling reminder of the ease with which life can flip end over end.