Robin and I decided to officially live together just around the time we became engaged. I had remained enamored of the ease of life on the mainland, so much so, I was willing to stay in the city if that’s what Robin wanted. He didn’t. His visits to the Island with me during the year worked its magic. He wanted us to move back there together.
The half-hearted joke I uttered before leaving the Island that year kept ringing happily in my ears. All you have to do is say “I’m going to the city to meet a guy and bring him back,” and it actually happens? I didn’t think life worked like that. Maybe the Yiddish expression “Man Plans, God Laughs” wasn’t always true. No laughter here.
I had much to be thankful for: my sweet little Island home, my wonderful neighbours, a welcoming community to live in, flora and fauna at our doorstep. At last, with Robin by my side, I was beginning to understand what my 1960s mantra of “peace and love” was really all about.
It wasn’t easy for Robin to move into “my home,” “my Island” and “my community.” But we were lucky to have a house to come back to. For over twenty years, and at least ten since I had arrived, Islanders had been fighting to save their households, which the local government and developers threatened to dismantle. No one knew whether they’d have a house to live in from one month to the next. Time was running out. Bulldozers were revving their engines. Hundreds of homes on Centre Island and Hanlan’s Point (where some of the most beautiful Victorian gingerbread-style homes once stood) had already been razed. The homes in our 150-year-old community were next in line.
We fought back with a vengeance. With strong support from mainlanders and the media, we lobbied the metropolitan government to reverse its plans. After a two-decade fight that included drawn-out court cases and a showdown with eviction notices from a real live sheriff complete with badge, we finally saved our Island homes. In 1989, the newly elected NDP government stepped in and passed legislation to save our Island community, giving us a 100-year lease on the parkland our houses sat on.
By the time the legislation was passed, Robin and I had purchased a different house, two Island blocks away. With our future clear, we settled in and headed to the garden to plant asparagus, lilacs and apple trees — plants that would take time to mature and bear fruit.
Three months after our move to the Island, Robin and I married. The ceremony was held outside our community clubhouse on the water’s edge, overlooking the Toronto bay and city skyline. It was a beautifully clear fall day in September, the air alive with the sound of cicadas and the scent of sweetgrass in the surrounding meadow. Sailboats cruised past and Canada geese squawked overhead as we said our vows under the folds of a homemade cloth chupa, the traditional Jewish marriage canopy.
Though my father had grown frail, I knew nothing would keep him from coming with my mother to Canada for our wedding, and it didn’t. I truly believed he was keeping himself alive for the day. I chose not to tell him at the time, just in case, but I was also planning something else he’d want to stick around for. More grandchildren to add to the four my sisters Sharon and Barbara had already given him. Becoming a mother was suddenly high on my agenda again.
All was not perfect in Paradise, though. I did not find a rabbi who would marry us because Robin was not Jewish. I was upset after unsuccessful attempts to find a rabbi in Toronto or nearby Buffalo. Not a good thing for a bride-to-be. I had the good sense to stop looking.
For the Jewish rituals I wanted in the ceremony, I asked a friend to stand next to the minister and provide Jewish content. One of my specific requests was to recite the Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers, a blessing I had loved since my childhood.
“You look beautiful,” my teary-eyed father said, seeing me in my white knit wedding dress with fresh purple, pink and white Lisianthus blooms woven through my thick curly hair. We were standing in the Island clubhouse, waiting to hear the homegrown Island string quartet play its first notes, telling us it was t-i-m-e.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I have never been as sure about anything in my life.”
He took my arm, wrapped it around his and walked me out the door into the open air. Family members and friends stepped aside as we slowly weaved through a self-styled aisle until we reached the chupa. My father kissed me, unwrapped my arm from his and passed me to an equally teary-eyed and smiling Robin.
To my great joy, after the official bits of the service were over, Gerry stretched his arms in the air over both Robin and me and recited:
May the Lord bless you and protect you.
May the Lord shine His face upon you and be gracious unto you.
May the Lord lift up His countenance on you and grant you peace.
Amen.
I never expected to change my last name when I married Robin. It went without saying considering Robin’s last name being Christmas. How exactly could I spend thirty-five years as Linda Rosenbaum, which when you introduce yourself is tantamount to saying, “Hello, I’m Linda Jewish,” then overnight switch to “Hello, I’m Linda, Jesus’ birthday?”
I wasn’t going to give up my name when we married, but what about our future children? I had always been clear with Robin that I wanted to have children and I wanted to raise them Jewish.
As Robin wasn’t practising any religion, I didn’t think it would be a problem. He knew how much it meant to me. I didn’t know for sure what I would have done if it had been a problem; something would have had to give and I didn’t think it could be me.
Robin had long been a committed atheist. He believed the world’s fractious, bigoted and war-like ways were and remained founded in the slurry of religious zealotry of one kind or other. How was I going to argue with that? I secretly hoped that he was going through an extended, rebellious adolescent stage and would eventually come around.
I would have liked to marry a Jewish man, but obviously not enough to make sure it happened. Nonetheless I was determined to raise my children Jewish and have a “Jewish home.” I believed with Robin it could be possible. I made it clear that it was a need, not just a hope. Without a moment’s hesitation, Robin gave this to me with grace.
He did, however, have one thing to ask in return.
“I would like the children to have my last name.”
I was startled. I figured the worst-case name scenario would be the ridiculously attenuated “Rosenbaum-Christmas.”
“You mean Christmas?”
“That’s the one.”
Christmas? Little Jewish children running around with the name Christmas? Registering for Jewish Sunday school with the name Christmas? The rabbi blessing our Christmases at their bat and bar mitzvahs? My parents taking the kids to shule, beaming proudly as they introduce their little Christmas grandchildren to friends? Hard to picture.
I had to work fast. “Why don’t we compromise,” I said.
“I give up Rosenbaum, you give up Christmas, we both take the name …Tannenbaum … like in the song ‘O Tannenbaum.’ It means Christmas tree, so it’s very close.”
“I’m surprised the name means so much to me,” Robin responded. “Especially since my father left home when I was so young.” Yes, difficult to understand the loyalty. Yet, as far as Robin knew, the Christmas name was not held by any of his dad’s living family members other than his younger brother Stephen. Stephen, however, didn’t expect to have children because of his chronic medical condition. It would be up to Robin if the family name were to continue.
“So Tannenbaum isn’t going to work?”
“Wasn’t even in the running.”
I had known Robin long enough to know he gave much, asked little. When he did ask, I took it seriously. It was clear we were not to become a gaggle of Tannenbaums. I didn’t give up completely, however. I would make sure our children’s birth certificates carried the name Rosenbaum as an additional middle name. Either they, or I, could whip it out when, and if, we desired to do so on any given occasion.
5.
Our Baby�
��s Homecoming
Toronto Island, 1985–1987
I WASN’T GETTING PREGNANT, but it didn’t come as a complete surprise. At sixteen, my mother hauled me off to a gynecologist because my periods had only just started. The doctor diagnosed polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), a common hormonal disorder among women of reproductive age and a leading cause of infertility.
I didn’t pay much attention to the condition at the time. When you’re sixteen, babies seem so far off. And becuse my girlfriends were complaining about mood swings, cramps and bloating, what was I missing, anyway?
The reproductive part of my body had never worked well. I began to doubt it ever would. I actually became scared of what would happen if I did get pregnant because of what my messed-up organs might do to me or my unborn child. Why would “down there” suddenly start working properly just because I wanted to get pregnant? Fortunately, by the time I met Robin, I knew it was being a mother I cared about, not how I got there. I still hoped to give birth, but didn’t bet on my chances.
“I might not be able to have babies,” I told Robin when the relationship began to deepen. I was so worried about his response that I blurted the words out quickly, hoping if I said them fast, he wouldn’t notice them. Everybody takes for granted they will bear their own children.
Robin was quiet momentarily, then took my hand. “We’ll try, see what happens. Of course, my first choice would be to have our own child. I’m sure it’s yours, too,” he said. “But if we can’t, we can’t. Like you, I want children. I won’t care how.”
I believed he meant it. If so, it was a godsend, since the news must have come like a wrecking ball. If he really believed what he said, it could spare us the grave sadness, disappointment and marital misery many infertile couples live with. I wasn’t naïve, though. Only time would tell.
We went from one fertility specialist to the next. After twelve months of pills, prodding, and procedures, the prognosis was not good.
The fertility business seems to have become just that since our experience in the 1980s. I presume customer service has seriously improved because of it. But at that time, the doctors we ran into were cold, distant and perfunctory.
I’d walk into a treatment room and a doctor I never met before would say, “Lie down and put your feet in the stirrups, please.” Uh, could you tell me who you are first? A name would be nice. Even a hello would do. Nice you said please, though.
While examining me, doctors would speak to students they had invited into the room, not to me. “This patient has one of the most common female endocrine disorders. It affects approximately five per cent to ten per cent of women of reproductive age. She’s extremely high risk for infertility, and in later years, obesity and diabetes.” I wished I had a hankie to wave in the air at him and say, “Yoo-hoo, doc! Sorry to interrupt, but I’m over here! I was just overhearing your conversation about my body and thought, Hey, I’m kinda interested too.”
I was seldom, if ever, introduced to a student about to give me an internal, a fairly intimate encounter, even for a PCOS woman like myself who had endured many. Nor was I told why he or she was in the room in the first place. No one seemed to have yet taken a course in bedside manners. I would be passed from one unnamed professional to the next. Each asked the same, highly personal questions, which included details of my sex life with Robin.
I never had the courage to tell them how I felt about my visits with them. I “should have,” but I was vulnerable and at their mercy.
Sometimes I walked out of the examination room in tears. An anxious, sympathetic Robin would be hunched down in his seat in the waiting room with a stack of abandoned magazines piled on the chair next to him, waiting to hear how I was. I wouldn’t have cared so much about the doctors’ social skills if I were there for a tonsil swab or tetanus booster. It wasn’t meant to be a social call. Seeing a fertility doctor was different. I was dealing with my sadness and dreams.
On the day I came out from what would turn out to be my last appointment, Robin was again in the waiting room. His lower lip curled above the upper and every muscle on his face was furrowed. A thick line of sweat hovered above his upper lip. I knew it meant, “Enough. There’s too much unhappiness going on here.” And that was that.
We’d have to try something else. I wanted to be a mother. I adored children, always had. Though I had always questioned social and political conventions, I was a sentimental sucker when it came to family, the most traditional social convention of all.
Fortunately, Robin and I were both open to adoption. We were no longer youngsters. Traditional notions we once entertained about how old you were when you got married, who you were supposed to marry, what a wedding dress was to look like and when and how you made a family had vanished somewhere with the passage of time.
“You’ll have to find your own baby to adopt,” said Alan, the adoption counsellor on our first visit in 1986. “There are few available. Children’s Aid has a three-year waiting list. Considering your age, I think it best you start looking now.”
We were stunned. Find our own baby? Like from where? Alan might as well have been telling us to go to Borneo in search of the rare Asian Slipper Orchid. We didn’t have a clue where to begin.
“The best I can do is make suggestions on how to go about it,” he continued. “Then, if you find a willing birth mother, I’ll meet with her, counsel her and arrange all the administrative aspects of the adoption.”
I saw Robin’s body tighten and his eyes become moist. Before I even registered how I felt about what Alan said, I wanted to make his disappointment and sadness go away. “We’re only looking for one baby,” I said with false cheerfulness. “Really, how hard can that be?” Both Robin and Alan turned towards me quizzically, neither bothering to respond.
Fortunately, Alan was full of ideas. “Let everyone know you’re looking, from your butcher to your hairdresser,” he stressed, “especially your hairdresser. Write letters to doctors, particularly rural physicians or those in small towns.” Put ads in newspapers. Talk to people at teen health clinics, high schools and community centres. Get on the Children’s Aid waiting list. Start thinking about adopting from another country and be open to a special needs child. Alan didn’t say it, but I was sure it would be smart to make friends with fundamentalists, anti-abortionists and other people I would normally not make nice to.
“Sure thing,” we said to all the suggestions, and then basically did nothing.
For some inexplicable reason, we didn’t act like we were in any rush. Other than going weekly to our appointments with Alan to get ourselves approved for adopting, we kept on with our lives, including our work.
When we decided to adopt, I was doing communications work for the Ontario provincial government. I was in my late thirties and still held other career possibilities in the back of my mind, which included opening “Linda’s Detroit Bagel Shop,” modelled after the store in Detroit I went to every Sunday morning with my dad.
I was also flirting with the recent and unexpected offer made from a television producer at a start-up cable TV network, courting me as an on-air host for a new talk show about health issues. I said, “Great, I’ll get some head shots taken,” then did.
All speculation about future careers abruptly stopped the night we received a telephone call.
“Will you be around tonight?” asked Lynn, our neighbour. “I’d like to talk to the two of you.” Her voice was particularly no-nonsense. Having known Lynn for thirteen years, it meant business. It was Lynn’s house that Sandy Ross and I stayed in our first summer on the Island.
Lynn arrived with a bottle of red wine and a look on her face that said there would be no small talk. “Kira is five months pregnant,” she said.
I had only once met Kira, the daughter of Lynn’s partner. However, in the three years Lynn had been with Don, I had repeatedly heard stories about his troubled daughter from a previous marriage. This pregnancy was not happy news. Kira was not in a steady relationship with
the baby’s father, and had already given birth to two daughters when she was sixteen, now being raised in Czechoslovakia by her former husband’s parents.
“Kira plans to put the baby up for adoption. She’s due in May.” Lynn then paused. “Would you like me to talk to her about the baby?”
Robin and I looked at each other and froze. “Oh, my god,” was all I could say. Robin couldn’t muster that.
Asking Lynn to speak to Kira was neither simple nor automatic. In some ways it seemed like guardian angels were channelling down a child. But could Kira be trusted not to change her mind? Was her decision to give up the baby a momentary whim while things were sour with her boyfriend? What if he sauntered back tomorrow, next week or six months after the baby was born? If she wanted the baby back, could we live through that kind of heartbreak?
Such stories are legion in the adoption world. Though not completely avoidable, we wanted to minimize chances. Ontario law said a birth mother could change her mind up to twenty-one days after the child is placed with the adoptive parents — a reality we’d have to live with, but it would be hell. We needed to know how definite Kira’s decision was.
We had other questions, too, harder to ask, even harder to answer. Kira had been leading a walk-on-the-wild-side life. Even her father didn’t know all the details. She had given birth to two other children she wasn’t raising; she was in and out of bad relationships, wasn’t working and had little money. Was she taking care of herself during the pregnancy? Were the two other children she gave birth to healthy? Was she drinking alcohol? Doing drugs? We had read terrible stories about crack babies. And, as it was now 1987, what about the recently identified HIV?
We called our adoption counsellor.
“We don’t know what to do,” I said. “There are so many reasons to say yes. I believe in taking chances. No baby comes with guarantees. Not even one you give birth to yourself.” Every child deserves a loving home, yet what if we make the wrong decision?
Not Exactly As Planned Page 7