Not Exactly As Planned

by Linda Rosenbaum

  It was below zero Fahrenheit outside and the ground was covered with an overlay of black ice topped with crusty snow. Robin and I were listening to “O Holy Night” as we sipped rum-soaked eggnog, made mashed potatoes and baked pies for Christmas Day dinner at our friends, Penny and Peter’s home. The phone rang. It was Alan. The time, four o’clock in the afternoon.

  “Denise has gone into labour. She is now at the hospital but nothing much seems to be happening. I’ll keep you informed.”

  I could tell he was about to sign off. “Not so fast. You mean I just sit around and pretend I’m not having a baby anytime soon?” The oddity of rolling out a piecrust while I was about to become a mother again didn’t escape me. Nor did the dreadful feeling of powerlessness and disconnect I had over something so enormous in my life. Not once in the last nine months had anyone given me a knowing smile or patted my belly.

  Alan made abrupt noises about this always being the toughest time for adoptive parents, then hung up. Not knowing what was happening, or when, Robin and I just kept on mashing and rolling. I also hummed quietly to myself, which reminded me of the annoying nervous habit my dad developed after the riots.

  At 6:00, we packed a wooden toboggan to transport Michael, food, presents, drink and amusements over to Penny and Peter’s. I dressed Michael in his snowsuit, then myself in an orange down vest, puffy lime green parka, black toque and beat-up brown suede mukluks. The finishing touch to my dashing outfit was a red-and-black-checkered wool scarf wrapped around my neck and face so only my eyes would be exposed to the brutal weather outdoors. Robin wore similar stylishly layered attire for the ten-minute walk along the boardwalk overlooking the lake, through the blustery cold.

  Icy waves crashed over the sea wall, making it slippery to walk but perfect for pulling the heavy toboggan. Freezing sprays of water splashed onto our faces. As we reached Penny and Peter’s, we slid across beautiful sheets of perfectly smooth black ice covering the beach in front of their home.

  “We can’t ruin everyone else’s Christmas by being too preoccupied with ourselves,” I said to Robin just before we went inside. “We’ll just tell them Denise is in labour and then forget all about it, okay?”

  “Sure, just forget about it,” Robin said in an undeniably mocking tone.

  Before we even had our jackets off, I blurted out our news. Penny quickly uncorked a bottle of bubbly for a toast, the one and only for that moment. “To Denise,” we all said, in unison.

  Against our protestations, our friends proceeded to indulge us by tossing around baby-naming possibilities, should the child be born before midnight. “Mary Christmas,” I said, citing the most obvious. Being one day too late to play with the name Eve, we soon exhausted the options and moved onto more Christmas-related themes. I was truly enjoying the celebrations and really tried to forget I was “in the waiting room” while Denise was in labour, but no matter how beautiful Peter and Penny’s tree was, how golden the turkey and ambrosial the perfume of sage stuffing, I was antsy and only half there.

  After dinner we played Monopoly with Alison and Kate, Penny and Peter’s children. When Michael showed obvious signs of becoming overtired, we tried reading to him, snuggling, making new constructions with his Lego, but our luck had run out. He was restless, cranky and creating a squawk. We were lucky he had remained in good spirits for as many hours as he had.

  “We should think about going,” Robin said.

  “Okay, but I’m calling Alan first. I can’t wait any longer.”

  He was in the hospital room with Denise. “She’s just now dilating,” he said. “Her labour is really slow. It’s not looking good for a Christmas baby.”

  Disappointed, Robin and I repacked the toboggan, dressed Michael and prepared ourselves for the arctic walk home. Heading towards the door, I stated the proverbial, “Now that we’re leaving, Alan will probably call.” As if the gods were listening, the phone actually rang. It was Alan. The time: 11:07 p.m.

  “It’s a girl. Both she and Denise are doing beautifully.”

  I yelled out an ecstatic “Oh my god,” then rushed to Robin. We hugged and kissed and with eyes bulging, stared at each other, laughing.

  Penny poured another round and we clinked our second toast of the evening. Besides Denise, we now had another person to celebrate. Our newborn daughter.

  “To serendipity. To order. To life,” I said. “L’chaim.”

  “I truly see this baby as a Christmas miracle,” Denise told me on the phone the next day.

  “That is for sure,” I said. But exactly how great a miracle, Denise did not know. Nor could I tell her.

  Even though we had all decided on an open adoption and would remain in contact by phone or letter after the baby was born, Alan had advised us not to disclose our last name or address to Denise. It was a precaution against unplanned visits to see the baby, now or in the future. “It’s standard practice, even with an open adoption,” he told us. “It’s better for everybody to have a built-in boundary like this. You can always make changes with the arrangement if that’s what you both want. But until you know one another better, precautions are sensible.”

  We trusted Alan. Holding identifying information back, for the present at least, made sense. These were still early times in our relationship with Denise. But “holding back” meant keeping secrets and, in this light, the idea weighed on me. It took away the equanimity in our relationship with Denise. Until and if our daughter decided to meet Denise in the future and the final details came out, she wouldn’t know the Christmas baby she had just given birth to would have the last name of Christmas. I was keeping from her just how much of a Christmas miracle her child really was.

  We gave our daughter the name Sarah as her first name, honouring my grandfather Samuel. Ellen became her middle name, to honour my mother’s mother — the grandmother-unbeknownst-to-me from Eloise, Esther. I felt this was my opportunity to ensure the spirit of my grandmother, whoever that was, was not left forgotten.

  Robin and I were on pins and needles waiting to hear when we could bring Sarah home. Other than speaking to Denise the morning after she gave birth, Alan had told us not call. It was Denise’s time, and we should respect it. So until she left the hospital and handed the baby to Alan, Sarah remained like a desert mirage, still out of reach.

  We waited for three days. “This might be the day,” Alan told us, calling in the morning on Day 4 from the hospital. “Denise has gone home, and remains comfortable with her decision. It’s looking like the hospital will give permission for you to take Sarah home today. And by the way, the nurses say she’s a gorgeous, quiet little baby. Sleeps, wakes, hardly makes a peep.”

  “Is it horrible for me to say we wouldn’t mind a quiet one this time around?” I asked. He assured me not.

  I asked Michael if he’d like to go with us to the hospital to see the new baby. Stupid question.

  “No baby.”

  Of course my friend Barbara would be going with us to pick Sarah up, this time along with her daughter Suzanne, born just one month before Sarah. We decided to take Michael, “no baby” or not.

  Later in the afternoon of Day 4, Alan called. “You can come get her.” Robin, Michael, Barbara, Suzanne and I bundled up, caught a ferry, packed into our aging Honda station wagon and drove to North York General Hospital, in the suburbs. It was the worst, blizzardy, snowy day of the year — even colder than Christmas Day. It didn’t matter. We were thrilled to have permission from the hospital to take Sarah home the same day we were to meet her.

  The hospital’s social worker met us at the front door and took us to the nursery where Alan was waiting for us. Within minutes, a nurse brought out the bundled baby, and I burst into tears the second I saw her.

  “She is the most beautiful, pink, sweet, perfect child I have ever seen,” I said. Robin and Barbara both laughed, probably because I had said virtually the same thing when I saw Michael. They become equally tearful, nevertheless.

  Michael just wanted to ride
the elevator again.

  The nurse handed Sarah to me and I immediately pressed her against my heart. I then ran my hand across her warm fuzzy head. “It feels so different than Michael’s,” I said, thinking back to the thick bush of long strawberry blond hair he came into the world with.

  We took Sarah to a room to get her ready for home, where we changed her into a warm outfit, kissed her, swooned over her, held her and took what seemed like a thousand pictures. Michael played with the wooden train his new sister “brought” with her.

  Leaving the nursery area, the head nurse came out from her office and approached us.

  “I have two adopted children of my own,” she said. “I made sure your daughter got all kinds of extra cuddles and rocks in the rocking chair while she was in there.” Her kindness was like the blue-knitted outfit Michael came home in that volunteers made for the adopted children. The gesture sent me into another motherly torrent of tears.

  We zipped Sarah into a down sleeping bag, wrapped her with wool blankets and took her out to the car after saying goodbyes to Alan and hospital staff. She slept like an angel all the way down to the ferry docks.

  The weather was so miserable, we didn’t think for a second anyone would be waiting for us on the Island as they had done when we brought Michael home. But there were our neighbours, admittedly in smaller numbers, waiting for us at the docks, balloons, band and all. Trading in summer costumes for down parkas, boots and toques, they cheered as we walked off the ferry.

  Ten-year-old Lizzie came up to Michael and handed him a set of wooden train tracks. “It’s a consolation prize, Michael,” she said. Looking at Robin and me, she added, “Will you explain to him what it means?”

  We trudged home through deep snow, pulling Sarah in a big two-wheeled handmade wooden cart packed with sleeping bags and blankets to protect her from the cold. It had been two and a half years since we brought Michael home on a glorious, blue-sky spring day in the impractical English pram. But in my mind, both occasions were bathed in sunshine.

  Sarah was a peaceful newborn, content being held, petted, pressed close to our hearts. I carried her around everywhere, hanging from my hip. At home, I’d set her in a baby seat on the dining-room table so she could follow me with her eyes as I dusted, cleaned and puttered around her. Robin tucked her into a Snugli under his down jacket for daytime outings with her and Michael. He looked like a silly puffed-up Michelin Man with Sarah hidden inside his jacket, but she slept the sleep of angels next to his chest. She’d give a few tiny little peeps now and then to make sure we didn’t forget she was there, but that was about it. Sarah was easy.

  But the waiting wasn’t. Robin and I tried hard not to spend too much time thinking about the number of days to go before the adoption became permanent, but each morning began with a countdown like an advent calendar. We had twenty-one days to wait from the first day she was home. Robin and I both tried hard to hide our worry from each other, but our frayed nerves were palpable, tempers short, but only with each other, not the children.

  Funny thing, Michael didn’t seem too worried about the countdown. When our neighbour Joanna came to visit one day, she said to him, “I hear you have a new baby at home.”

  Michael responded, “I drop the baby. I step on the baby.”

  Not a complete surprise. The previous night Robin was in bed with Michael to get him to sleep. Robin swore he heard Michael saying in his sleep, “When the bough breaks the cradle will fall … ha, ha ha.” Guess who was in the cradle?

  Though we kept our eyes constantly on him, Michael was actually gentle around Sarah, and for the most part ignored her. He retreated as usual into his own world, climbing into small snuggly spaces, banging on pots and pans and constructing things with blocks or Lego. We told ourselves that when Sarah started to smile and became more of a person, he would start coming around. What could she offer at this stage?

  My sister Barbara came up from Detroit right after we brought Sarah home, just as she had with Michael. She held and cuddled Sarah, doing night feedings so we could get some sleep.

  Because of my father’s increasing frailty, my parents were no longer travelling, so wouldn’t be coming up to see Sarah. I was disappointed, so Robin and I planned a trip to Florida in early spring. We’d then go on to Virginia to show Sarah off to my middle sister, Sharon.

  I started to lug Sarah everywhere with me, even into the city. It was easy; she was so good-natured. She became my little pal. She looked around and quietly took everything in. She remained a contented baby until she got hungry, which happened often. I fed her, played with her; we smiled back and forth, then she’d go back to sleep. I began to wonder how I ever lived without her? Like Michael, she was under my skin, part of my being. The love affair with Sarah was complete, but of course, had an edge. We hadn’t yet reached Day 21.

  I woke up thinking: today’s the day! All we have to do is get through it and our Sarah will be OURS. I was packing to go out for a walk with the two kids when the phone rang. I expected it to be Alan, but it was Robin, calling from work. From the second he said hello, I could hear alarm in his voice. I’d known him long enough to recognize the tone. It was his I’m-hysterical-in-my-own-composed, English-born-male sort of way.

  “Alan just called. Denise is having second thoughts. Issues about whether she wants to go ahead with the adoption. Alan feels that if she is in any way unclear about giving the child up, he pretty much has to take Sarah away from us. Today.”

  I became unhinged in my own, American-Jewish-Detroit-non-composed-female sort of way.

  I called Alan. “Can I talk to her?”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea. It will escalate everything. We have to be really calm and address her concerns. She has to make the right decision for herself.”

  His last line nearly killed me. I cared for Denise. I couldn’t bear to think of her as unhappy. That was why everything in the adoption had seemed so brilliant from the get-go. Not only were we making ourselves happy, but we were making Denise happy too. But if Denise’s happiness now meant my complete and utter unhappiness … well … I just knew I couldn’t part with Sarah and want to continue living. It was as simple as that.

  “Alan,” I pleaded. “Do you know how hard it is to leave something so important like this in someone else’s hands?”

  “I’m going off now to meet with her,” Alan said. “Soon as I know anything, I promise to call.”

  Robin abandoned the documentary he was working on and came back to the Island. Hours passed. We were numb, barely spoke. Nothing seemed real. We didn’t allow ourselves to think the worst. Correction: We didn’t talk about the worst. It was all we could think about.

  Sarah moved from one set of arms to the other. We never put her down. We walked around a lot, talked to her, sang to her. Fortunately, Michael was at Yolanda’s. He would have picked up how crazy we both were.

  After several hours, I had had enough. “I have to call Alan,” I said.

  “He said he would call if he had anything to tell us.”

  “I can’t NOT be part of what’s going on.”

  I called his office and got his sympathetic secretary. “He’s out of the office. He’ll call you soon as he knows something.”

  “Will you tell him I called? I just want to hear how it’s going, even if there’s no final word. It will help me adjust to whatever happens.” I knew, in fact, it would. I thanked her profusely, wondering how many times in her working life she had received calls from anxious adoptive mothers like me, desperate to hear an encouraging word.

  Another hour passed, then the phone rang. Neither Robin nor I moved. We just looked at one another. Neither of us wanted to get it. Finally, I did. I don’t think I even said hello.

  “Linda, everything is okay. Denise is clear. She wants to go ahead with the adoption. We had a good talk. She just needed a little support. She is very happy that you and Robin will be raising her baby.”

  We made it through Day 21. Sarah was ours.


  “Thief! Thief!” I yelled.

  Michael and I were on a walk in late April, pushing a sleeping Sarah in her stroller. As we reached the Algonquin meadow, I stopped by a grove of dogwoods, lifting my binoculars to the flock of blue jays flying past. I turned to Michael who looked up at me and smiled. He knew not to panic. No bandits in sight.

  “Blue jay,” he said.

  “Good going, Michael. Okay, here’s another. ‘Cheer! Cheer!’” I burbled into the air.

  “Cardinal,” he responded, proudly. I gave him a hug.

  “I think you’re ready for a harder one this time.” Unfortunately, it required me to sing.

  “O sweet Canada Canada Canada,” I trilled.

  Michael laughed at me. “White throated sparrow, Mom.”

  I was delighted that he was having so much fun guessing the name of the bird I was imitating. Perhaps Robin and I had successfully passed along our passion for all things bird during our many walks over the years. Because of Robin’s name, I had started Michael on robins when he was a baby.

  “Look Michael, there’s the first robin we’ve seen this year. Look how it hops around looking for worms.”

  I then moved on to other species. “See the bright red and orange patches on the shoulder of the red-winged blackbird?”

  “Did you see that kingfisher dive into the water for a fish? Doesn’t he look like he has a crewcut? Did you know that’s Mommy’s favourite bird?”

  Still lugging my camera along as I had for the past four years since Michael was a baby, I now also carried my beat-up copy of Peterson Field Guides to Eastern Birds. Once we saw a bird, we’d look through the guide together until Michael picked out the bird we had just seen. I’d write Michael’s initials and the date next to the bird so we’d have a record of his first sighting.

  Peterson Field Guides to Eastern Birds had become one of Michael’s favourite bedtime books. Instead of reading a bedtime story, we’d often open up the book and riffle through. Sometimes we’d look for what we thought were the most beautiful birds. Then the ugliest birds, the biggest, smallest or silliest-looking birds. Michael was always proud when he could point to a bird and identify it.