The writer Jane Lazarre, author of The Mother Knot and Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness, Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons said: The only thing that seems eternal and natural in motherhood is ambivalence.
Somewhere in my brain I had the idea that when you choose to adopt, ambivalence is a word that is not allowed in your vocabulary. Even if ambivalence is a part of life it was not a part of adoption-or shouldn't be. However, Lazarre's comment did not draw a distinction between the ways people chose to parent. Like it or not, it referenced everyone. These simple words provide deep comfort.
At the time of our decision to adopt, I was in a writing workshop. The assignment: write about an action you'd taken that very day. I wrote:
Today I called the lawyer.
I, a somewhat apprehensive woman inching toward a new wrinkle in my life (and many more on my face) punched in the numbers on the portable phone, paced the narrow hallway between my home office and the little bedroom, and stood for a moment in the doorway of what would become the child's room.
Cheek pressed against the threshold, I had one foot in, one foot out. It was like straddling the boundaries of two separate universes, not knowing which was home. My fear had the power to pull me in one direction, my longing to explore a depth of unfamiliar love, union and family in the other. The latter was silent, patient. My fear, however, was not: What will happen to you after you become a mother? and Who the hell do you think you are imagining yourself a mother in the first place?
