Thriller

In an effort to jump on the bandwagon – when I was about 5, my brother introduced me to Michael Jackson. He loved him some Michael. He dressed up in his best Michael Jackson gear in 5th grade and did the moonwalk during a choir concert – I don’t remember it, just love looking at the pics of it. What I do vividly remember is that he would set up cardboard pieces in the basement of the house we lived in at that time, and spin my sisters and me in different breakdance moves. He tried to teach us to moonwalk. When we moved to the house that my parents still live in, I was in 2nd grade. My brother and older sister set up a spooky room, and had the song “Thriller” playing on the record player as they had my younger sister and I walk through the spooky room. I don’t even remember what made it spooky except that it was dark and the music loud and scary, but I think one of them jumped out at my younger sister. She screamed and cried, and the scary room was disassembled.

Sometimes I wonder if Ezekiel will be an older brother. One who likes to scare his younger siblings, and teach them all about good music. We’ve had many people asking us that question about having additional children lately. If I had to answer the question today and have that be my final answer, the answer would be no. We’re content and busy enough with one right now. The other part to that answer is that we couldn’t even start another adoption from the Philippines right now if we wanted to. I know that we could adopt from other countries, but for some reason we felt like if we decide to adopt again, we would want to do the Philippines. We’ve already been there, done that, so that would make us more comfortable the next time around. Then Eze and his sibling/s would share that part of their history. Also, the Philippines has a 1-year rule where we couldn’t even apply for another adoption until Eze’s been home a year, and then they wouldn’t even consider us for a match until he’d been home 2 years. And then there’s the moratorium that’s been placed on Philippines adoptions right now. We couldn’t request a child 3 years of age or younger, and we don’t want to adopt out of birth order. And still another part to that answer is that it’s taken us longer to recover financially from the adoption of Ezekiel than we thought it would. It’s going to take us much longer than we thought it would to rebuild funds if we ever do decide to adopt again.

So I’ve kind of been starting to dislike that question lately. Because even though right now I know we’re not ready, I know in my heart that someday we will probably want to have more children. And it stings to be reminded that we can’t get pregnant (still stings, after all these years), and have a baby nine months later (which doesn’t even happen all of the time, so many people in our lives have lost babies recently). I guess I’m feeling pretty negative about it all, but this has been on my mind for a while now. And since my blog is my therapy, I needed to get it out. Doing another adoption just sounds exhausting to me right now. The paperwork daunting. The wait unbearable. The attachment process hard.

There are people out in the adoption world who I admire very much that are starting (or are into the process) of adopting their second or third. I wonder how they do it. Did they have the doubts that I have right now about it all? Or was it an easy decision for them? And then other questions run through my head. When will people stop telling me that I’ll get pregnant now that we’ve adopted Eze, because it happened to their friend’s friend’s friend? When will that quit stinging so badly? I feel like I’m being whiny and woe-is-me-y. I keep reminding myself that there are parts of my life that others aren’t as fortunate to have. I hope I can keep that in my mind and be sensitive when speaking with people, being loving toward them in my words and actions. I feel better getting this off my chest today. Phew.