The last day

I haven't quite figured out how to post pics here. But I will give it a shot I've been putting it off. Bad me, always putting stuff off. Tonight, I put off laundry, dishes, removing my nail polish...then I realized that at least one member of this family might have to "go commando" tomorrow, and I decided to put a load of clothes in at 10:00pm.

Yeah, I've talked to my therapist about my "Aww...it's 'good enough'" attitude. It really isn't sinking in, other than I'm thinking about it more.

But that's not why you called.

There are so many dates that stick with me where Isaac is concerned. I wonder if they are permanent memories or something that will fade, in time, like an old address or phone number. March 15, 2004, the day we found out about his birth mom.
(oddly enough, I don't remember the day she chose us. It was whatever Friday came after the 15th, I think. It happened fast.)
March 30, 2004, the day we found out he was a boy. We didn't want to find out, but she wanted us to know.
May 4, 2004, the day he was born.
May 7, 2004, the day he left the hospital to live with his foster grandparents.
May 8, 2004, the first time I heard him cry, on the phone, when I called his foster grandparents.
May 9, 2004, my first Mother's Day...and the last one I had without my son.
May 12, 2004, the day his birthmother went to court to terminate rights.

and today, May 20, 2004, the day he and his birth mother saw each other for the last time.

We were waiting out the 10 (business day) waiting period during which his birth mother could change her mind. She asked the social worker if she could see him again. They met the foster grandparents at a McDonald's. She held him one last time and took some pictures. When she got home, she wrote him a note. Copies of those pictures, with a few others, that note and information from the agency are the only tools we have to explain to him where he came from. And we have no information on his birth father at all, other than he was African American, tall (judging from Isaac's height) and he might have been a truck driver.

The note she wrote him on the last day she saw him is written as if to a much older kid. Perhaps she was clever in doing so. He will not read it until he is much older. It says that he can call or write her. It is very simple. The best she could do.

We will not know how to get in touch with her if the time should come that he wants to meet her. The agency lost touch not a year after he was born. We sent letters and pictures, as promised, but she never came to the agency and asked for them. She had been a bit of a drifter, would be 45 now and who knows, with her lifestyle as it was, if she is even still alive. Sad, but true.

I had no intention to get so morose when I sat down here to write.

But there you have it.

I try not to be a fool about such things, but part of me believes that he will just roll with it and not be interested in his birth family. It will be natural that he is curious, and I hope I'm ready for the stormyness of adolescence when it comes. I know I've got a long time to wait for that, but it will go by fast. I think he will probably want to know more about his birth father and that will be hard because we don't even have a name.

Everyday I hope that we're good enough. That he will always grow up feeling like he got the parents he was meant to have and our family belongs together.

Today, we remember the last day he was ever in his birth mother's arms.
Next week, we celebrate the day he came into ours.