Three Years

There was a time before her. There were thirty-three years before her. Why do they seem like an old movie that I saw once? Fun, enjoyable, distant. After her, my life is in color.

Animals: Friend or Foe?

Yesterday we arrived home to a very friendly local stray cat. We have lots of local cats that are fed by people and eat heartily at the pier in warm weather. It hurt Fin's heart, though, so she made a plate of food for the cat and took it downstairs, but he had gone.


She was worried about him, though, so she took a bucket of water and left it on the porch for him. I asked her why she wrote her name on it and she said, "So that if the policeman sees the cat drinking out of it, he will know it is our cat now." I love Maggie and Charley in this pictures, saying, "You have two perfectly good cats right here, can we have the cat food?"


Also yesterday, she discovered that a raccoon had left us a smelly package and had dug up one of her seed pots. She was so angry. So, she built a raccoon trap.



As it was explained to me, the heart was drawn in the bottom of the box so that the raccoon would know it was a "good place". The pink tissues are bedding. The food and water are the draw. Apparently, the raccoon is supposed to go into the box to get the food then not be able to get back out because of the metal lid. The toy fishing rod is to get the top on and off. Looks fool proof to me! I am sure I will have pictures of the captured raccoon soon for you.

Oh, and I asked her what she would do with the raccoon if she caught it... "Feed it to Maggie" was the immediate and expected response.

Adventures With Bandit

Maybe this isn't the right way to start this tale. Then again, maybe it is.

I hate raccoons. Let me say that again. I HATE raccoons. Growing up in the country, I thought they were adorable. I rarely saw them. In the city, they are everywhere. I can't leave a bag of trash on the porch overnight because they rip into it. They ate every last vegetable from the container garden the first summer I was in my condo; the container garden that I planted by hauled tons of potting soil and supplies up the three flights of stairs. I even had a cigarette-smoking raccoon (that's a whole other story) living in my crawl space for months until we figured out how he was getting in.

Given my hatred of these way-better-in-pictures animals, perhaps I should have driven right past when I saw this on my way home...

a scrawny, stumbling baby raccoon.

But, I showed him to Fin, pulled up for a closer look, and then knew I couldn't just drive off because that little &#%&^@ would have ruined my whole, damn weekend. I called Nancy, Animal Rescuer, (Diego was unavailable) who told me which city agency to call, and I did.

We sat in the car, Popsicles melting, for almost an hour. The little vermin stumbled and shuffled along the side of this house, cleared a spot in a downspout to get some water, refused my offer of a perfectly nice banana because it wasn't organic or something. Fin drew a very helpful map she insisted upon showing the animal control officer when they arrived.

(In case you are looking for a raccoon, they are between the house and the bush, under the fence, near the downspout.)

I told his sad tale to the officer, who followed him in the backyard of the house and emerged not with the frail waif I described, but with a snarling, spasming, devil who tried to eat her shoes.


Before we left, she held him up so that Fin could get a good look and I could get a picture. He growled and hissed and threatened my family.


Told you they were evil.

Sunny Days, Sweeping the Clouds Away

We took advantage of the beautiful spring weather and met Debbie and Elizabeth for pizza and the park. It was nice to kick back and chat, in between saying, "We don't hit friends," "I can't hear you when you whine," and "Sitting down means on your butt." One of these days, Debbie and I are just going out for a drink, sans kids.

Stevie.


Yippee!


Speedy.


Giddy.

To Be a Mother

If you hear about adoptive parents in the news, they are usually either selfless martyrs or heinous abusers. The recent extravagant rejection of Justin Artyem Hansen by the woman who adopted him had led several people to ask me, "What do you think?"

My opinion is shaped by the media reports I have read. Torry Hansen sent the boy she adopted last fall back to Russia alone. I think that is horrific. I also think she was never this child's mother. She didn't commit to him. The boy may well have been violent, but there is no evidence she took him to a psychologist, that she contacted her agency to ask for help, that she called DSS and asked them about her options for getting him the psychiatric assistance he needed. She returned him, like an ill-fitting shirt. If she was his mother, she would not have done that. Some people end up having to relinquish rights to their child, adopted or biological, so that they can live in a therapeutic home or group setting for the child's benefit and the safety of the family. It is a last resort, though, not a first option.

Adoption papers don't make you a parent. They make you the legal parent of a child, but they can't issue the ability to be a mother or father any more than they can hand out that capability in the maternity ward. That is what makes a story like Artyem Hansen set the adoptive parent's radar pinging. Torry Hansen's actions create an atmosphere where the authenticity of adoptive families are questioned. The news cycle has progressed to covering the "whys" of the story, talking to other people with difficult adoption stories, and making us all a bit defensive. "That's the problem with adoptions."

Here's the thing, though. It isn't about adoption. Adoption offers its own set of challenges, but doesn't having biological children? I don't know about you, but I hear some horrible stories of parents who abandon, abuse, even torture their biological children. I don't hear, "That's the problem with having babies." There are good parents and bad parents, no matter how your children come to you.

Torry Hansen did an awful thing. She didn't try hard enough and long enough. She didn't commit. Maybe in the end, she still would not have been able to keep Artyem at home, but at least she would have acted like his mother.

I am not a martyr or a monster. I am a mom, though. To a silly, morbid, willful, wiggly, giggly, adopted daughter. I couldn't love her more. I could not be more her mother.