The Homestudy

"And, would you mind opening that for me?" This from the social worker doing our adoption homestudy. She's asking D to actually unlock the toolbox we claim has medications tucked inside, as if we fabricated the claim in order to deceive her. In this moment, I remember she's not a home appraiser, or here to repair the dishwasher. Besides my friends and family, these are the sorts of visitors I've grown accustomed to hosting in my home over the years.

No, she is assessing our home for safety and appropriateness to house a child as determined by the State of California.

Every once in a while, in a pent-up outburst, D will express frustration over the red-tape and checklists we must succumb to as we navigate the process of adoption while children are born every day to people who can barely navigate an intersection with a 4-way stop. Or a checkout stand at Safeway. Or the basic concept of putting another person's needs before their own every once in a while.

The irony is notable, of course, that while some of us who will presumably make decent parents and actually really want to parent children must toil through endless bureaucracy before we get a shot, while others can actually procreate on their own with much less expected capability to parent and certainly less intention.

Despite the seeming unfairness of this equation, it's really out of my hands. So while I certainly notice the weirdness of having to get a physical and fingerprints and build a gate on my apparently hazardous steps to the basement, I'm kinda into it. Even though it's not quite the same as watching my belly grow and having morning sickness, you could say I'm, "pregnant with possibilities." And if this is what I have to do so I can be a Mama, then I'll go ahead and put my Advil in a toolbox with a combo lock and....wait for the baby to kick.