AUTHOR: M. DATE: 9:56:00 AM ----- BODY:

Went to a picnic last weekend, the annual picnic thrown by A Red Thread for their adoptive families and anyone else who wants to learn about the agency. It was just what we had hoped: a swirling, chaotic mess of children in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and a bunch of families with fantastic things to say about the agency (insert of grain of salt due to self-selected audience here). We spent most of our time talking with two families in particular, both married same-sex couples who had done domestic adoption (Leah, the director, pointed them out to us immediately, figuring we would have a million questions for them). One family, two men, have a 2 year old boy who was placed with them through Friends in Adoption, an agency known for its' good work with same-sex families. Somehow it came up in conversation that they had planned to adopt a child of color (the men are white), and one of their families panicked, about both gay adoption and the baby's race. They had a lot of long hard conversations about it and had come to the decision that they wouldn't raise their child with an extended family that didn't fully accept him or her or that would ever make the child feel like he or she was anything other than fully a member of the family. As it turned out, they were chosen by a white birth mother, and, when they did bring their son home, they never heard another word about why gays shouldn't adopt. They said the families are both insane about the little boy and that has been the end of the story. I.'s theory is that babies usually come to families that can handle their needs - for example, her hearing teacher who teaches in the American Sign Language Interpreter training program who gave birth to a deaf son. I wonder if that was the case with this family too - not that they would not have been able to become a transracial family, but that it may have meant ending - at least temporarily - a relationship with one whole side of their family. The other family we talked to were there with their three-week-old daughter. When we first met with Leah and were asking her about how long we should expect this process to take, she told us about this couple - two white women adopting an African-American baby. When we met with her she was rushing to complete their home study because their baby was due the following week: about three months from their first meeting with the agency until their daughter was born. The other family that we talked to, too, said for them it was about 6 months start to finish. When I told them that we were absolutely, positively not ready until May at the earliest, so we can get I. through school, everyone at the table laughed and assured us that we were definitely screwed, that in that case we would have a baby by December. We heard what we had expected to hear at the picnic, and feel just as great about this agency as we did when we first met with Leah. Next up: a few loose ends to tie up, writing our first of what will probably be many, many checks, and filing the official application to start the home study. Off we go...

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