Phone Call That Turns A Mother's World Upside Down Options

[adoptionplan]

The Phone Call That Turns a Mother's World Upside Down

By Anne Lindenfeld
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, April 28, 2003; Page C10

I was standing in the market when my cell phone rang. I made a point to scowl in its direction.

I don't like to think of myself as another preoccupied yuppie taking calls in the market, but I told myself I should answer this one, because it could be my son's school telling me he's sick. That's never happened before, but I like to make room for the odd eventuality. So there I was -- rummaging through my purse, my cart blocking the ketchup from some old lady, my temperature rising with the shame of it all -- as my impossibly tiny cell phone chirped the "Hungarian Rhapsody" somewhere deep in my purse.

It was not my son's school or even my mother calling to tell me another tornado warning had been lifted from her neighborhood, a time zone away. It was our attorney, the one in charge of our adoption, of finding us a baby.

He was warm and fatherly, and efficient. He was talking about a woman carrying twins in Florida. He was thinking about me and my husband and these twins, he told me. I heard myself thank him. Then I heard myself say no. No twins. We, my husband and I and our son, we were not ready for twins, I said. I knew that we weren't, though I couldn't remember how I knew this. I thanked the attorney. He would keep us in mind. We said goodbye. I stooped down and pulled a gallon of milk out of the dairy case.

I couldn't find my cart. I couldn't even identify it by what I already put in it. I couldn't remember what I came to the store for. I stood there holding the cold plastic gallon, in front of me. All I could think of were those twins, the ones I turned down, the ones that would be too much for us. Over the next few days, my husband and I decided again and again that we'd made the right decision. Still, I knew we would always wonder about them, the two kids who had just quite not made it into our lives, but lingered persistently in our hearts.

Months have passed, but I can't stop thinking about that call and, even more, about the next one. I see myself standing in line waiting for my triple decaf soy latte, another yuppie embarrassment for me. My cell phone will ring, and there will be a brief conversation, maybe two minutes. By the end of it, we will have a second child. Sure, there will be other calls -- calls to my family and calls back to the attorney and calls to make arrangements to fly somewhere. There will be a whole world of other calls. But really, it will only be that first call that will count. It will turn every tide.

I seem to meet people everywhere who want to tell me about that first call, the one that changed everything for them. I've learned a few things. There are universals.

First, the story of the call is a tale that can't be rushed. Every detail counts. It could have happened 30 years ago, but adoptive parents remember everything. Where they were when the phone rang. What they'd been doing that day. What the weather was like. There was that call, and the world took a sharp turn and headed suddenly into a new chunk of space and never turned back. The helplessness they'd been feeling for so long -- maybe as something they fought back every day or just lived with like an erosive, muddy current that ran under their house -- that helplessness evaporated. Other parts are different. Maybe they felt the relief after a long wait. Some were caught totally off guard. "It was like a bus hit me," one adoptive parent told me. "My mother kept asking me questions and I didn't hear a word," said another. "I had to sit down." "I was scared to death." "I smiled for a week straight." "I cried."

I thought I pretty much knew all about the unpredictable turbulence that kids set in your life for good. I'm already a parent, the mom of a little boy who grew in my own belly six rapid-fire years ago. I've walked a newborn for hours in the middle of the night. I've raced to the hospital with a wheezing toddler covered, inexplicably, in hives. I've called in sick just because missing one more spring day walking in the zoo with my son seemed too glorious to let go by. I've learned, though, that even with all my job experience, I am as unready for the call as anybody else. And maybe that's just as it should be. Maybe it's like that moment when you know you've fallen in love or discovered that you are good at something you have always dreamed of trying. Maybe that first call brings a kind of joy that's predictable, but absolutely unknowable, until it arrives.

I hope I am in a crowd of people when I get the call. Maybe I'll be sitting at my desk or walking across the parking lot of my son's school or waiting in my car at a red light. Wherever I am, I swear, I'm going to stop the person right next to me. I'll roll down the window. I might tug on a sleeve. And whoever it is, I'm going to tell them. This is the big call, I'm going to say, and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to stop talking about it.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company