Fertility Tree

Adoption: Part 2

Merging onto the highway and I dial the head of the India adoption program. Before I hit the first mile marker he's already told me that we don't stand a chance. The older parent cannot be more than 45 years older than the child at the time of custody. And the wait time is three years. I do the math. Steve will be 50 by then so the child will be five.

The counselor explains that the US has outsourced so much to India that the middle class has 'exploded', and now domestic adoption is more accepted. Plus, and naturally, parents of Indian decent in the US and abroad get first priority.

By evening, Jess, Holly, and I sit in the living room, putting together a bathroom cabinet in as many incorrect ways possible, talking about adoption programs in other countries. Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Zambia. It's a great sentiment to think than any country will do, any child will be the destined child - of course, any child that needs a home is perfect. And yet....

India has been in my consciousness for as long as I can remember thinking anything. When I walk the streets there, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, seemingly out of place, I feel at home. From train windows, buses down the road, I catch glimpses of faces, eyes lock with mine for a second, and I know we share something essential. I can't name what that is, except it's strong in the eyes.

I'm discovering that motherhood has many, many branches. Our biological children come from the roots, from the dirt of ancestral stories. Our other children come from different sources, rivers deep underground, traveling across histories that we don't know in our body, yet they come through us nonetheless, over time.

In sadness over not birthing my own child, I've watered and prayed over roots, and talked to the earth these last two years. Now I find myself looking to the sky, watching prayer flags fade in the wind, and the image of eyes that live in my soul -- wondering if I need to let it go.

*****
Fertility: Part I

I walk in the bedroom late last night, carefully step up and lay my body down. "How's your back?" he asks. "Better," I say. Just home from a chanting Kirtan with Dave Stringer, I tell him how I stood in the back of the room, slowing swaying my hips, and that helped.

"We need to talk, you know. Our appointment at the fertility clinic is in two days and we need to be on the same page." He's reading, doesn't look up. I pause, it's tricky. "So I don't know when it's the right time. You seem to be busy with one thing or another. Maybe you can let me know when you're ready to discuss it." I say a few things about IVF , that I want to go ahead with it.

"Are you going to be able to handle another pregnancy? You seem to have a lot of problems with your back. Have you thought about that?" I settle into the pillow a little further and try to remain steady. "Well, no, I can't handle it this minute. And, yeah, I think about it every day." I reflect a moment. "Women do all sorts of things to bring their children to the world. I would have to prepare, that's all."

I fill the bath. In the dark I imagine having another c-section, the fourth time my abdomen would be cut open. How many times can that happen, I wonder? Maternal death rates roll across the film. The US does a wonderful job of hiding the shockingly high rate, and I wonder about my own fate. Is that the way I would go? And then I check out the fear, the way I could so easily bag the whole idea of another child.

Thirty minutes later he's in the kitchen pouring milk over cereal. "You really want to do this, don't you?" he says. "Yes," I repeat for the hundredth time, "I'm willing to go through whatever it takes." I say good night and walk down the dark hall, the presence of another being just over my left shoulder, patting me on the back.

P.S. I just read this article and feel, again, that we must pursue this path.