Annabelle's Story. No More Rumbling Tummy or Grubby FeetDec 08 '04 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Adoption is such a sterile word ...
If you've read any of my Kids & Family related reviews you may have read a little about my former neighbor Jane, her daughter Annabelle and their more than chaotic family life. When we first moved here Jane and I really didn't speak; her and her husband were "the popular" people who always had events to attend, charities to donate to and played their social status card to the max. Things changed when Jane needed someone to help her move some furniture and no one else was around. We started chatting and soon became "friends". Over the years we started hanging out more and more and when she started going to the gym on a regular basis I started watching her daughter Annabelle for a few hours a day. My boys immediately took her in and showed her "the ropes" around the house. She was such a precious little thing with blond hair, big blue eyes and a voice like a little mouse. As the weeks passed Annabelle started spending more and more time at my house, what started out as three days a week turned into every day. She would run across the back yard, up the back steps and through the doggie dog. She'd stand on the porch and knock on the door and if I didn't answer it quick enough to please her, she'd start crawling through the doggie dog to be met on the other side by one of the normally rough and tumble dogs. They'd lick her face, help pull her through the door and bark a few times to let me know that the little princess had arrived. Jane and I started hanging out a lot more often and every couple weeks we'd hit a few clubs and raise some hell but most of the time it was the soccer mom stuff that we'd do - fast food runs, shopping, holiday events etc. Jane's few hours at the gym grew into eight hours a day when she got a job doing public relations, or at least that's what she told everyone. Her husband and I never really got along, to him I was a bad seed with purple hair, too many kids and listened to grunge music. Oh how the tables have turned over the years. To make a long story short, Jane was a methamphetamine addict. This was something that she hid from everyone in her family for a long, long time but looking back on it, I should have seen the signs. Not sleeping, sudden twitching, nervous energy, disappearing for days at a time, borrowing money when she had plenty of cash at the beginning of the week and the worst part -a daughter that was being neglected. Add into the mix her teenage son that was left in a vegetative state after huffing glue and spray paint. That in itself should have been enough to make her get some kind of help or at least let someone know she had a problem. Alas, addiction is an ugly creature that knows no boundaries. Annabelle is often mentioned in my reviews and a lot of people assumed that she was my daughter, no, but in less than three weeks she will be. Her father decided to move to Seattle since he was offered a huge promotion and he has his hands full with his son. He's made some real progress but he still needs 24 hour care, is in a wheelchair and is starting to speak again but it is going to be a long road for him. Her father made the decision to sign over full custody to me and he'll fly her out a few times a year. This wasn't something that he just decided over night. When I started talking about moving he saw a real change in Annabelle; she started sucking her thumb again, wetting the bed, refusing to go to sleep in her room. All the tell tale signs of emotional trauma, something she'd had way too much of in her life already thanks to her mother. Since Jane has absolutely no parental rights at this point in time it has to go back through family court but all the lawyers involved don't think that there will be any problems. We sat down with her last week and asked her where she wanted to live, if she wanted to move with me and where she was happiest. Since she is so young it's hard to truly gauge her but she made it pretty clear that she wanted to live with me and the boys. Her father was a little upset that she said it so quickly and he went through a lot of Kleenex sitting at the kitchen table. He asked me if he was a bad father for working 50 - 60 hours a week or if there was something that he wasn't doing right. I guess it was an emotional enema for him to realize that money isn't everything. To be completely honest he doesn't have a clue when it comes to his daughter; what her favorite snack is, her favorite television show, that she has to wear pink socks on Saturday and green ones on Tuesday, that she is allergic to olives and blueberries or even something as basic as how to braid her hair. I can't admonish him for not knowing but I had to sit there and restrain myself when he was looking for pity. But that's just me, the one that he called a "f-king weirdo", the one that was raising his kid. So with the move happening in less than a week Annabelle is completely happy that she'll be flying out after all the papers are signed. For a while she was sticking to me like glue and hiding in the boxes; "pweese, I won't make a peep". So now I am going to be a mother again, this time to a girl. Thankfully she thinks Barbie is lame, skateboards are cool and loves to help me make cookies. Someone said I needed to get my head examined for taking in a kid that isn't mine, "wasting" thousands of dollars on lawyers and dealing with her emotional issues. This is a human being we are talking about, not some inanimate object. I look at it this way, I already have four kids so what's one more. It's just as easy to make a pound and a half of spaghetti as it is a pound, ten cupcakes instead of eight or a few more pairs of jeans in the laundry. I'll still get "the looks" when we walk through the grocery store and the snide remarks like "I bet she's on welfare with all those kids". Whatever. I have something that they'll never have - kids that love me, respect me and can talk to me about anything. I hate to use the word adoption. It sounds so cold and mechanical - like going to the pound and getting a dog or cat. I guess that is the word / term I'll have to use until they come up with something a little less sterile ... I'm sort of flying blind here raising a girl - she didn't come with an owners manual or any kind of instruction book and at times she's like a piece of gum stuck to me shoe but you know, at the end of the day when she runs up to me with a book and asks me to read it with her, not to her, I really want to break down and cry. Cry that her mother chose a drug over her, that her father can't relate to her, that she could have ended up in the court system or a foster home, that she would come to my back door barefoot and hungry asking me for something to eat. People might say that she isn't "mine" or that I'm not really her mom but she isn't a piece of property or something to be used as a bargaining tool. She is in innocent kid that could have easily been a victim in all this, swept under the carpet and forgotten. Last night she fell asleep on the couch, one leg hanging off the side, one sock off and snoring like a bear in the dead of winter. I looked over to see my youngest on the other couch; in almost the same position ... I poured myself a cup of coffee, opened the sliding glass door on the patio and enjoyed one of the last nights on the west coast. I looked up at the stars and thanked whoever was watching over all of us, said a few words to Chris and smiled. In the middle of all this chaos, packing, moving and selling of the house and vehicles ... in the midst of all the confusion, packing tape and lost silverware ... it felt so good to be surrounded with such love. Annabelle is a little angel. Oh, she can be a little devil at times but what kid isn't a little mischievous at some point in time? When she was asked by one of the lawyers if she wanted to see her mother again she got a puzzled look on her face; I was sitting about ten feet away but behind a few other people and she leaned to the left and smiled at me. "I can see her just fine from here". Jane never came to any of the hearings for child custody and she never replied to any of the letters that were sent when her husband made the decision to sign over full custody to me. This wasn't easy on him and I am sure when she gets on the plane in a few weeks it will really hit him. Hopefully this will make him really think about his relationship with his son. I don't want to sound bold and say that her living with me is "what's best" but when we weighed out all the options and took her opinion into consideration - it sort of was the best thing for her. She deserves a chance at a good life without the possibility of her mother rehabbing for a few months only to relapse when things get too tough. The one good thing about all this - no diapers!!!! Thanks for the visit ... ^V^ Freak ^V^  |
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