Sunday, April 23, 2006
Adoption Referral: The Silent Wait
For the most part M is a clean person. He never leaves his clothes about. He cleans up after he eats anything and he just doesn’t make messes in general. He enjoys organizing the recycling bin and our grocery cart. In fact, I am not allowed to put items in the grocery cart when shopping with him because I might mess up his organized plan for arranging the items in the cart (to maximize space). I have to hand the item directly to him and then he will put it in.

However, his organizational interest, for some reason, does not cover his medical books and papers. These are scattered all over our bedroom floor, on his side of the bed. I have been told that I am not allowed to move this mess. Apparently he is able to locate what he needs easily as long as the mess stays exactly like it is.

Recently; however, I mentioned to him that every time I have ever been in any other home and have seen the adult’s bedroom- it is clean. The floor is never cluttered with books and papers. You may be thinking to yourself, well- they just cleaned up before I saw the room, but as you recall, I am not allowed to clean up this mess for any reason- guest, or no guest. So, we decided on a solution- we would purchase a new book case for our bedroom.

So, today we spent several hours going from store to store looking for the ideal bookcase for our room. We finally found it. It was a sort of modular, abstract book case, but I found it to be high quality, the right color, etc. So we got a store worker to help us out. He stood there for a long time while we debated over whether this was the bookcase for us or not. We decided that we could purchase some wicker type baskets to go on the shelves to hold papers and then just put the books in. So after a great deal of discussion we told him that we wanted it. He said that he would have it all ready to go for us at the front counter. So off he went to get it ready for us. We tried out some various shaped baskets and determined all was well with the book case.

Then it dawned on me. In a few months we are going to have a toddler in the house. You can’t have an open book shelf full of stuff with a toddler in the house. She will just toddle in to our room and get into everything she can reach. Eventually, all of our organized baskets and piles will be all over the floor. Only the things on the very top shelves will survive and that is just not enough room for everything.

I realized that I needed to completely change my way of thinking and think like a toddler. We needed an armoire, not a book shelf. It has to be closable and lockable. I started to think about all of our lower kitchen cabinets and how everything needed to be moved or locked up. Where am I going to put everything? I started to think about how our lives are going to change. It doesn’t seem real. How easy it was for me to not think about the potential problems of an open book case because it is just so quiet on the adoption front. It is not like delivering a baby with the 9 month count down. It is a lot of work and anticipation and then the wait is just quiet for so long- at least it is at this house. No paperwork, no news, no nothing. Just the silent wait that makes me feel like it is never going to happen.

But being the optimistic people we are, we brought home an armoire.

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4 Comments:
Blogger A Room to Grow said...
i'm worried about baby proofing our house. i think everything we own right now is the opposite of child-friendly.

examples: pool (no containment fence, yet...), family room coffee table with is square, glass & cast iron, family room tv stand - pointy edge and hard wood, etc etc

Blogger Maggie said...
The Silent Wait. What a perfect, but poignant title.

I hope you get word about a referral soon. I know my agency has been getting referrals pretty frequently for clients. Your turn should be coming soon.

Blogger Rhonda said...
I know, its so easy to forget. Brian keeps trying to convince me that we need a plasma TV to hang on the wall so our toddler can't pull the TV off the shelf. Hmmmm. I don't quite buy that. But we definitely need to baby-proof our home and we haven't even started yet. I think it becomes more real after the referral.

Jen - I FINALLY answered your tag - see my blog. Sorry it took so long. Things are crazy right now with my work.