I’ve been mulling over a post about “naming” in response to Mel’s excellent post here (if you haven’t read it yet, I strongly urge you to) about the English, Hebrew, and “secret” names that she’s given her children.

Like most American Jews, I was given both an English first and middle name and their equivalents in Hebrew. I’ve had a life-long love/hate relationship with my English first name.  It’s not terribly common although there is a more common French equivalent.  My middle name is far more common but not overly used and as a kid, when all of my friends were getting pencils, bookmarks, room plaques, and just about everything else with their names on them, I really wished I could swap my names around.

Now though I’m glad that I didn’t.  In some ways having a name that is more unusual has suited and shaped me and hey, now its possible to have anything printed

My Hebrew names have gotten very little use.  I’m not overly thrilled with either one of them and they get stuck in your throat when you say them together.

While hubby and I have had a much easier time of agreeing on most of the adoption questions that have come up than I would have expected, we’re a bit at odds on the issue of naming (well, the discussion has been tabled for the moment).

We are adopting from Bulgaria where the names are very long and highly identifiable as Eastern European. Having grown up with an uncommon name, I know how cruel kids can be.  I also know how much trouble even adults have in dealing with names they don’t know. Also, the Jewish tradition of naming children after dear and departed relatives is something that deeply matters to me.  I have a number of relations who will never have their names carried on unless my children are gifted with them (or some variation of them).

To add to the issue, hubby is Scottish.  I have a freelance career that is Irish in nature.  We both have a strong desire to stay within the Celtic realm.  Also, I’ve also read articles about the ramifications of renaming adopted children.  Done at the beginning, it can give the child a true sense of “new start” and also help them fit in better with their peers and extended family than an unpronounceable name would.

Certainly we have a lot to talk about.  Ideally, we’ll have a list of names that we both approve of and then, once we have a referral, we can see if any of those names come close to the child’s birth names.  But I’m also hoping that we can come to a meeting of the minds on this one and give our child a name as we would have given a birth child a name.  Something that carries meaning for both of us and that we’re both on board with.  And of course, eventually our child will have Hebrew names as well and hopefully they’ll like them more than I like mine.

Does anyone know a Bulgarian-Celtic-Jewish name??????

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Just for a quick update it sounds like our home study will FINALLY be done next week and in our hands shortly after which will allow us to file our I-800A.

We now have our dossier instructions and forms in-hand and if I thought that immigration or the home study involved a lot of confusing paperwork, I had no idea.  I’ll write more on the crazy types of things that we’re having to compile, have notarized and then appostiled (verified by our local Secretary of State) before it can be sent off.  I’d initially thought that this could be done by mid-January but now…..well, we’ll just have to see!

In August 2001 I began a project called 100words.net under a different pseudonym.  You write 100 words a day – exactly – and posted it on the website.  It was a good exercise in discipline.  In culling out what was really important about the day; what was noticed.

Having looked back at years previously where I really had no memory of the ins and outs of my daily life, I found this project to be a way to capture at least the essence of a day; in this case 74 days that are very much on my mind today.

August 12, 2001 was my 36th birthday.  I was living in NJ, in an apartment I’d been in for many years but was about to move to Queens as I was starting to spend more and more time in the city after work.  In fact I had double leases in August so that I could paint and prep my new apartment.  One foot in each life. I was a little out of sorts that year – truly single for the first time in years and enjoying it.  There were a number of men in my life but none were relationships.  Some were exes, some were friends, some were people collected in odd ways including the bland cousin of a major celebrity who’d decided that I was his dream girl (regardless of the fact that I felt VERY much the opposite).  It was a time of introspection.  I felt the change in the air.  My life was in flux but I had no idea what direction things would take me in. I was excited and, honestly scared, about where things were headed.

In late August I went to a music show at the World Trade Center.  Not only was the show amazing but I met a colleague that I’d only known by phone and email and who continues to be a close friend.

I’d renewed some old friendships while having scheduling problems getting in touch with current friends. I ended the month by piggy-backing on a trip to a science fiction convention that two close friends were going to.  It was one of those frivolous spontaneous things that I was able to do as I had no commitments and, for the first time in my life, a little extra cash. Looking back, I think it’s funny as the last thing I probably needed, given my frame of mind, was to be thrown into the alternate universe of a scifi convention.  But the weekend was fun if a little too intense and I’m shocked at the positive reactions that other people have to me. I meet someone although, back in the real world, any thought of it being a real relationship quickly dissipates.

Early September is filled with my tangling and untangling myself from that meeting.  And looking expectantly towards my move and my October trip to Ireland. I was emotionally high and exhausted at the same time.  Very uncharacteristically, I wasn’t really sleeping.  Instead I was going to hear live music, staying up all night on the phone, wandering around my neighborhood hoping to burn off the emotional intensity that seemed unshakable around me.

I wrote last year, here, about my 9/11 experiences.  Listening to WNYC internet radio as I write this, they’re talking about how the city has been split between those who were there and those who weren’t. And how those who weren’t just can’t understand.  That was true at the time and I’m sure it is still now.

Mere days after 9/11 I moved to Queens – the day the bridge from NJ reopened.  I remember not being able to watch TV or listen to the radio unless it was news or one goth album that I’d bought at the scifi fest and that was frighteningly appropriate.  I unpacked. I volunteered at ground zero.  I walked around in a fog, trying to find joy in the things that I loved – even though that was hard there was a solidarity, a certain comfort about being together with people you didn’t have to talk about it with.  People who understood.

Somewhere in that time, my life settled.  It felt uncomfortably and uncharacteristically calm.  So long as the wind didn’t blow in just the “right” direction, so that you couldn’t smell the charred metal, life seemed to return to a new version of normal. I spent early October visiting friends, mending fences, trying to hold onto the new-found perspective that we all seemed to have in those days.

Mid-October was spent getting ready for my Ireland trip.  My first trip abroad, I was taking it alone and was thrilled by that.  I was planning on spending a few days doing nothing but listening to music. Of course, that isn’t really what happened.  On my first night there, (yes, while in a pub listening to music), I met hubby. And from there on, it’s a different story altogether.

I look back and who I was during that time and I know that there are things that I’ve learned.  And also, things that I’ve lost.  In some ways I like myself better then but when I step back, I see that it’s the feeling of being in the center of a tornado that brought certain things out in me.  I was focused but unstable in the intensity of my options and my life. I wonder now if it’s possible to retain the good out of that; to live in a (literally) calm place far removed from the glorious tumult of NYC and to hold those lessons in your heart.

Throughout the course of our 2+ years of infertility treatments, I let a lot go.  Including other types of doctor’s appointments.  My GYN visits were particularly disrupted by my cycles and having pap smears done by the RE’s office and not being able to do a mammogram close to cycle, etc.

So I’ve made a list of visits that I need to start squeezing in and the first was to get the gyno out of the way.  Unlike NYC where it’s possible to find comments and reviews of any doctor worth their salt, Music City is…um…silent.  It’s very hard to get info here and even if you do, trying to get in to see the doctor of your choice can me a 6-month wait.  I’d selected a GYN who is also a highly-touted OB and it therefore came as no surprise to find that his next available appoint was for DECEMBER!  Um…no.

I was offered the chance to see a nurse practitioner in the same office who does also the gyno stuff plus infertility (i.e., IUIs).  I figured that at least she’d understand my charts when I gave them to her.  So I saw her and she was lovely and switched on and pretty much “got it.”  She also mentioned that I needed to move the endocrinologist up higher on my list as my potential thyroid issues might be our infertility culprit.  That’s fine but I’m still 44 so……

Anyhow, I’m completely happy with her, happy with her interest in rerunning a thyroid panel and checking my levels of various vitamins.  Her blood person did a great job and used a butterfly without a fuss.  It was one of the least painful paps I’ve ever had.  In fact she’s great, her staff is great, the location is great but her physical office sucks.

Okay, I wasn’t there for infertility treatments but I’m still sensitive to those issues and guess I always will be.  Her exam room had one of those digital picture frames in it with constantly revolving photos of her kids (grandkids? niece and nephew?)…the same two kids were pictured in huge photos all over the office.

When I was in NYC, my clinic was thankfully low on kid pictures.  Every once in a while a woman would thoughtlessly bring her unruly toddler (I never did see a well-behaved one there) in with an ineffective husband or grandmother to run around the waiting room while she was in for her exam.  But the clinic itself had the sensitivity to understand that a woman having an ultrasound where she’s being told that the doctor can no longer find a heartbeat or on her last ever IUI before she gives up her dream of a biological child doesn’t need to see photos of laughing, beautiful children.

I came very close to saying something to my new Gyno.  And at some point, I probably will.  Perhaps she’s unaware and woman here just aren’t as vocal as they are in NY but are still seething inside.  She seems like a caring person so hopefully she’ll take it in the right way.

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I’ve always been a bit of a video game freak.  I was the first one on the block with Pong, had the first nintendo, etc. I never got into online gaming of any sort but if I had a PDA, it had some sort of roll-playing game on it.  So I got a game the other day for my iTouch.  The “game” is really to just take care of a little family.  You start with 2 adults and take it from here.  You drop one on the other in hopes that they’ll try to make a baby and be successful.  The first time I did this, they were.  But then they were resistant.  If I could get them to hug, they never got to the next step.  If they tried to make a baby, they failed.  Or they argues about whether it was the right time to even try.

I did manage to get three kids out of them.  And then I noticed that one of the things in the character’s “store” was vial of medication that increases the chance of having kids as well as of having twins and triplets.  Virtual IVF (except this one $500 vial increases their fertility for life.  It’s too late for this generation but believe me that one of their kids is gonna get a hefty dose of that.

Yeah…I’d pop that $500.  Where do I get one for myself?????

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Our agency agreements are now signed and notarized. Okay, I haven’t had a chance to actually read them yet but I will before they’re sent off next week.

Next step the dossier.  We don’t even know what that will entail as they don’t release the instructions until we return these current pieces…but I’m sure the paperwork will be tons of fun (not!).

It’s sometimes great to feel like you’ve got a large support system working for you and many people pulling for you.  Then there’s today!   No, no, we’re grateful for the support of friends and family all.  And I have to say that we’re lucky to be one of the few couples that I know of anyhow, to receive only positive comments from friends and family about our plans so THANKS!

That beings said…I can not WAIT until we’re completely done with our home study agency (okay, we won’t be “done” for about a decade as there are post-placement reports, etc….but that bridge is so far away that I’m not even thinking of crossing it at the moment).

Today’s drama consisted of an email from our SW with a form attached that was sent to her by our placing agency.  The form, which has to be notarized, is meant to be filled out…not by us…buy by the friends that we specified as “guardians” should anything, you know, happen to us.  The choice of guardianship kinda happened as a spur of the moment thing.  We figured that we’d get a child home and then have to write wills and would sort it out then. But one of my best friends inserted something into her letter of support about being the guardians (which was pretty darn inspired), hubby and I had a short (very short) conversation about it and then we said “yup! works for us and we can still sort it out later if we need to”.

Anyhow the form needs to be filled out by said friend and her husband (who I’m not even sure knows about all of this).  And notarized.  Hmm….she’s starting a new job next week and he has a 2-hour commute to work.  When’s that notary thing going to happen I’m wondering????

So I wrote to both the SW (who couldn’t care less about the form anyhow) and the placing agency (who needs the form but really wants this all to get a move-on) numerous times and in various combinations.   We now have a consensus that our home study can be finalized without said form that we can file our agency agreement paperwork and start work on our dossier and the dreaded I-800 while waiting for this form.

I sense that this is only a glimpse into what the next few months is going to be like…..

Other than all of this, life continues on (thankfully) and work continues to be a complete pain in the lead-up to our biennial convention this fall.  I did get a thank you note from my boss today, which is one of the things that makes working there a good thing.  I don’t need the thanks but, hey, its sometimes nice to hear that you’re doing a good job.  And our two weeks of Phase one of South Beach diet are thankfully coming to an end.  I’m not sure which of the phase 2 additions I’m looking forward to more: fruit, red wine, BREAD (okay, whole wheat but still….).  At least I lived through the french fry craving I had last night at around midnight that almost had me in the car and heading to McD’s.  Thankfully hubby parked me in and his Jeep scares me after dark!

I just received an email from our placing agency that we’ve been accepted into their program.  I know that there was no reason for them NOT to accept us but the way things sometimes work, you never know !

Next they send us an agreement which we send back with the initial payments.  After it taking 4 months to get our home study done, I have to wrap my head around the fact that our placing agency is more efficient and on the ball.  That means that my initial estimates for payment are going to be a month + off so I’m going to have to either sit on some forms or do a bit of juggling.

Then they give us all of the information on how to create our dossier. That gets sent back with the last round of large payments that we have to pay until we receive a referral – which gives us a few years probably…..

Somewhere in there we fill out the I-800A, the US government’s problematic book of a form.  So there is a lot of financial juggling to do and a lot more paperwork coming our way.

AND I’m probably going to take a stab at applying for some adoption grants.

But in the meantime, we’re now officially signed with an adoption agency and that feels quite good!