Yay! They're in! ... And Some Reflections

The two last references finally got their stuff in this week. One had turned hers in several weeks ago and it never got to where it was supposed to go. The other, who truly is a little dingbatty, just plum forgot; she actually drove to the agency and hand-delivered it. I love her.

I’ve sent an email to A at the Agency, asking him to confirm that he’s received them. He said he’s been flipping them to SW as soon as he gets them, so I forwarded his reply to me to SW so that we’re all on the same page.

SW just replied that she now has everything. I replied. “Very cool. Thank you.”

Now I can calm down and play around with the PBM letters and whatnot again.

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There have been follow-ups to that situation I referred to in my previous post. Recently, B signed her consents and all that attendant paperwork, but the thing now is to get the father to sign his consent. The BF is not in the same state.

I was thinking about the potential (that’s still, at this point, what they are: potential) adoptive parents, the initial sense of relief they must have when their attorney said that B signed her consent and that it will be filed soon. Yet, until the father’s consent is mailed back from most of the way across the country, and only until the BF actually signs that piece of paper, everything is just hanging up in the air. The axiom about possession being nine-tenths of the law doesn’t apply.

I think about how awful it would be if the BF and his family suddenly decide to fight for the child. Here are the PAPs, bonding with the child, caring for it, taking it to the necessary appointments, introducing their “son/daughter” to everyone... but in the backs of their minds, you know that uncertainty is wriggling like a worm impaled with a fish hook.

...How awful it would be if the BF successfully challenged the adoption and was allowed to take the child after the weeks and months of bonding... how devastating.

But that’s the possibility we have to live with as we go through this process.

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As I worked on the draft of the cover letter in this case, I’ve been struck by the fact that anything someone says—whether a lawyer, a counselor, a potential adoptive parent—to anyone in the position of giving up the rights to their child sounds trite. Not cheap, not insincere, just... trite. Overdone. Beaten to death. Is that because there aren’t words to suffice? That nothing anyone says will heal the hurt and ache, that hole in their life?

High sounding words of encouragement and allusions to loving sacrifice perhaps aren’t empty, but to me, as I pounded away on the keyboard, they seem to echo sadly through the birth parents’ view to a future without their child.

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It’s important to remember the what-ifs in this process. And, as I’ve written before (and others have too), the one thing that adoptive parents lose sight of is the parental rights of the biological father. Chances are that the only contact adoptive parents will have is with the mother and possibly her family, so it’s easy to sort of block it out.

SW said it’s the one thing that consistently is left hanging in her experience, the termination of the BF’s rights. It’s the thing that drags out the process. Depending on the laws of the state, the time period for the father’s renunciation of rights may differ from the PBM’s. I think I’m going to create a to-do list for the process and check them off when the day arrives.

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I get my car back sometime tomorrow...

Back to another weekend. Lots of yardwork to do. Staying home.

Have a great one!

Until next time...
Allie