Her name is Jamilet — Jamie. For the past seven
issues, I’ve been calling her Christa in this column.
For seven months, she was our foster daughter, and I
called her Christa to protect her privacy. We adopted
her April 28, and now, she is as much our daughter as
Jacob and Liam are our sons, so her days of privacy are
over — with a mom who’s a columnist, the
best she can hope for in terms of privacy is that her
brothers will do newsworthy things more often than she
does. In yet another God-incidence (not coincidence)
the court-decided adoption date of April 28 was Bill’s
mother’s birthday, and she is also adopted.
Jamie’s older biological sisters named her, and
while Bill and I already have a Jamie as a brother-in-law,
a Jamie for a boy cousin and a Jamie for a good (male)
friend of the family, we figure we can handle one more.
Keeping her name is one way we can honor her family of
origin. We hope it will also be one fewer question to
answer when she’s older.
The question I hear the most since the adoption is, “Does it feel different?” I
wish I could say it did. I wish that I had some dramatic story to tell about
how, at the moment of adoption, everything changed. I never liked those questions
on my birthday as a kid, either. “How does it feel to be eight?” an
uncle would ask. It didn’t feel any different.
For me, growing to love Jamilet as a daughter began the first day I met her,
as a foster daughter. Just as I didn’t know newborn Jacob and Liam, I didn’t
know 1-year-old Jamilet. Yet, with all three, I felt an almost instant sense
of responsibility and protectiveness. I’m not a fan of babysitting for
other people’s children, and one of my fears before I had Jacob, and then
again, before I became a foster parent for the first time, would be that I would
feel about the child like I did about my friends’ children — fondly,
but not passionately.
But with both of my biological sons, my two foster daughters, and now, with adopted
Jamie, the passion kicked in right away. For me, there was something about knowing
I was a child’s mother — whether for a month or for a lifetime — that
clicked on a sense of interest and purpose I do not feel for other children.
With Jacob and Liam, with my other two foster daughters, and now with Jamie,
the passage of time deepens the love. I can’t say I love Jacob more now,
at 10, than I loved him when he was 2, but I can say I love him more fully now.
Jacob is a more complex person now; there are more aspects to love, and as I
discover those aspects, I can more fully know him as God knows him. The same
is true for Liam and Jamie. As they grow into who they are, I love them more
fully.
In Jamie’s adoption, the court recognized officially what Bill and I had
long felt. She is a member of our family. There is a bond here that cannot be
broken.
On adoption day, we went to the courthouse with both sets of our parents, Bill’s
sister and her family, Jamie’s original foster mother, and my grandmother
and uncle. We brought with us a bunch of pink helium balloons, and an enormous,
20-foot long, 3 foot wide pink banner, made by Liam, proclaiming, “Happy
Adoption!” in big first grade block letters. He taped it to the front of
the judge’s bench. I got so choked up on the first question (“Please
state and spell your name”) that I wasn’t sure if I’d be able
to continue. Jamie raced around the courtroom in a pretty white dress and brand
new patent leather shoes, excited that everyone she knew was all together in
the same room. And after all the questions were answered and the forms were signed,
the judge invited the boys up to the bench. They each got to pound the gavel
and say, “This adoption is final.”
Finally final. We are so thankful.
(Scobey-Polacheck and her husband Bill have two sons, Jacob
and Liam, and a foster daughter. They belong to SS. Peter and Paul and St. Monica
parishes. Scobey-Polacheck welcomes dialog regarding her column. E-mail her at <ascobey@hotmail.com>.) |
