BABY CAR SEAT SALE

Day 43 of 365: a year in songs and photos

Song: Social Distortion, Mommy's Little Monster

Subject: My nephew, David (this photo was actually taken last year and retouched today)

There's a reason I chose this photo of my nephew for today. While his birthday was last month, today is what my sister and her husband call "Gotcha Day." It's a celebration of the date that David was officially adopted and welcomed into his new home.

I wrote this story about David's birth and adoption in 2001, when he was 1. I've printed it (and updated it a bit) every year since on my various blogs. And it's time once again to tell the tale of David.


"Tim called. I'm going to get a baby in two days. I have to go meet the mother now."

She was a bit dazed, to say the least.

There was a baby boy, born on November 20th and the mother, an illegal immigrant who had just come here from Burma, could not keep the baby. She was ready and willing to sign papers giving him up. My sister and her husband had known about this woman since the boy was born, but said nothing to any family member, remembering what happened the previous times.

But now she had to tell me because Tim told her to be ready to be a mother in two days. Two days. After years of waiting and hoping and being disappointed, she had two days to get ready for a baby. She was to leave work immediately and head to to the woman's apartment in Queens, where Tim was waiting for my sister and brother in law. The mother wanted to see them first, to know who she was giving her baby to. I walked my shaky sister out to her car and wished her luck. She made me promise not to tell a soul. I told her to trust me.

As soon as she was gone, I called my mother. Don't ever trust me with a secret like that. She should have known.

Two hours later, my mother and I were on a mission. We hit Target, spending a small fortune on baby supplies. Clothes, diapers, bottles and every accessory both useful and extravagant, were piled into our cart. By the time we got home, my father had spread the news to every relative within shouting distance. Basically meaning everyone in town. Friends and family kept pulling up to the house, dropping off supplies. A bassinet. Enough diapers to last a month. More clothes, baby blankets, crib sheets. There were moments where we felt like we were jinxing the whole thing, pushing our luck, but we decided to test fate and stock up anyhow.

Any woman who has ever had a child will tell you that nine months is barely enough time to get everything ready. Imagine only having two days to prepare. We figured it was better to have this stuff ready for her than to have nothing ready at all, and have to run out that day to buy all the things they would need.

Some time that night my sister called and said it was definite. The baby was theirs. He would be delivered to their home, by Tim, the next night. She still wouldn't believe it, wouldn't talk in definite tones until the baby was in her arms. Can you blame her?

The next day was a frenzy. There were still so many things to get, so many people to call. My sister was frantic, her husband was neurotic. By 9pm, there were 20 people, friends and family, sitting in their living room waiting for David. We had champagne ready. We waited. We got in each other's way with the pacing. Waited.

Finally, Tim pulled up at around 10pm. My sister freaked out and wouldn't go to the door. She was afraid Tim would be standing there empty handed, come to bring the bad news that the woman had changed her mind. I looked out the window and saw Tim lifting a little baby out of a car seat. My heart skipped a beat. A baby.

I shoved my sister toward the front door and told her to chill out. She opened the door.

Tim walked in, held out David, and put him in my sister's waiting arms.

It was as if we had all been holding our breath until then and we all exhaled at once. And then the crying started. My father was crying, the neighbors were crying, we were all teary eyed and relieved. David was here. David was ours.

I thought my sister and brother in law were both going to pass out. They held David and stared at him for the longest time and nobody moved, nobody talked. Finally, someone popped the cork on a champagne bottle and we all cheered. For the next hour, David was passed from person to person and we all stared in wonder at the baby we had waited so long for.

David is a seven years old now. Not a day goes by that I don't think about the birth mother he has out there somewhere, and I wonder if she knows what she gave up. I look at his engaging smile and listen to his loud laugh and kiss his fuzzy little head and I wonder.

I see my sister and her husband with their child and I am so happy for them, and so thankful that Tim and his organization afforded them this opportunity, that this adorable child was not abandoned in a dumpster in the dark of night because the mother had no one to turn to.

December 13th is what my siste

On Saturday, my grandma died.

She had been declining for years, a long and painful shutting down of her body. Over time she lost her ability to drive, her ability to live independently in the house she’d been in for fifty years, her ability to walk, occasionally her ability to differentiate between a.m. and p.m. Her organs began to lose their ability to function.

Last fall, when my cousin and I were both pregnant, she declined rapidly and was moved from her assisted living facility to a hospital. The doctors told us it wouldn’t be long—a few hours, maybe a few days. But she made a miraculous recovery. Her body was still falling apart, but she kept herself alive, swearing she was going to live to see her great-grandchildren.

After The Bean and my cousin’s baby were born, she got worse. But she was always so happy to see the babies; whenever we took them to see her at her nursing home she lit up and stopped talking about how much pain she was in.

Last week she started going downhill again, unable to stay coherent for visitors, to stay awake, to talk on the phone (her favorite activity for years and years). Saturday morning my mother requested that she be transported from the nursing home to the hospital. The nursing home said they’d call once the transport was taking her to the hospital. They called in the afternoon, and I went with my mother to the hospital. When we got there and walked into the room in the ER where my grandmother was, she was lying on the bed, her eyes rolled back in her head, an oxygen mask across her face. She didn’t look alive, but she was still breathing. A doctor came in right away and told my mother that my grandmother was not going to survive. He said she wasn’t suffering, wasn’t in any pain. Her blood pressure was very low and her temperature was high. He said he could have the nurse start an IV but it wasn’t going to do anything for her. While the nurse was trying to start an IV and I was crouched down on the floor, next to the baby in her car seat, trying to reach my brother on my cell phone, my grandma stopped breathing.

The doctor and nurse noted the time of death and told us to take our time, and then they left the room. It was as if my grandma had been waiting for us, so we could be together one last time, four generations of women in the same room. Once we were all together, she could go.

It’s so strange to think she’s gone. My grandma has always been in my life; I saw her every week growing up. We took her along on family vacations. Every holiday, we spent with her. For every birthday, every wedding, every funeral, she was there. She had five children and a husband who left her. She didn’t finish high school. Her mother died when she was ten. Her sister died of polio when they were children. She had it rough, but she kept her sense of humor. She gave herself to keep her family going.

My mother’s selfless devotion to her has been an inspiration to me. I hope that if my mother is ever in the same situation my grandmother is in that I can be as loving and patient and caring and selfless as my mother.

I’ll miss you, Grandma. My uncles keep looking at The Bean and saying she’s your reincarnation, with her red hair and her ceaseless babble and her round, chunky cheeks. “That’s Marge in there,” they say when they look at her. I hope they’re at least a little bit right. I could stand to have a baby with some of you in her.

I love you. Someday we’ll all be together again, and forget about the sadness and pain and crying. Someday we’ll hold hands and dance in a big circle, and we’ll laugh about all the good times.