Patience Thy Name is Adoption

I haven't spent much time with my poor, little, neglected blog over the past few days. I think it's starting to get a complex, but I can't help it. I've spent plenty of time in front of the computer obsessively checking email, but not so much opening the flood gates to my thoughts via the blog.

Why not, right? Surely, your thinking to yourself, she's had plenty of nothing to write about before. It can't be that her kids have stopped providing her with humorous anecdotes or witty reflections on life, can they? Perhaps the mundane has become just too, well, mundane to write about it. We did make a big family outing to Iowa, for Pete's sake, are you telling me we're losing our edge?

While all those things may be true, it's not my excuse. It would have been far easier to sit down and write about those things, than allowing the cathartic release of emotions relating to this current adoption. So, instead of my typical ramblings, there is silence. Probably a hallmark of passive-aggressive behavior or some other certifiable tendency.

If you've ever stood on the edge of a swimming pool, waiting to take that first jump in, you know where I am. More specifically, if you've ever been an expectant mother (birth or adoptive) you know exactly where I am. From the moment you know that your child exists, you want to protect it. The instinct to mother is strong, perhaps the strongest instinct we as mothers possess. And in a pregnancy, from the moment that little pink line appears, you wait for milestones affirming the safety of the new life you carry--blood tests, heart beats, ultra sounds, etc...reassuring you that life, literally, goes on. In adoption, the instinct is just as strong. And once you *know*, both literally and figuratively, that a new life waits for you, your heart lives outside your body--until you are able to hold him or her safely in your arms.

But right now, we're still waiting for the line to turn pink. And it's the longest three minutes I've known.