Life, Death, and Christmas

Death

Our kid: Why did Grandma Shirley die?

Me: She had a bad boo-boo in her tummy.

Our kid: What did she say?

Me: ‘Oh, no, I have a bad boo-boo in my tummy’

Our kid: What did you say?

Me: I was sad.

Our kid: What did you say when she died?

Me: I was very sad.

Our kid: Did you cry?

Me: Yes.

Our kid: What did Mommy say?

Me: She was sad.

Our kid: Did she cry?

Me: Yes.

Our kid: What did Grandpa Shirley say?

Me: He was sad.

Our kid: Did he cry?

Me: Yes.

Our kid: What did Grandma Shirley say?

Me: .....she didn’t say anything.

Our kid: Why?

Me: Because she had died.

Our kid: Why did she die?

Our kid likes to talk about death. She started asking about my mother’s death a few months ago. I teared up the first time it happened. Other times, I can’t help but chuckle, especially when it gets circular the way the above sample does. She doesn’t understand the concept of death and the other day we had a conversation about my bike light’s ‘death’.

Christmas

As a child, like many children, I liked Christmas. I think kids like the flashiness of it and the gifts. As I got older, I liked Christmas less and less. For one, I don’t care much for flash, but I also grew to see 25th December, not as Christmas, but as my mother’s birthday. I always felt she got a raw deal because, other than her immediate family, no one cared about her birthday because it was her birthday; they cared about it because it was Christmas Day.

As an adult, I focused more on my mother’s birthday than Christmas. I stopped wanting any kind of gifts for myself. It got to the point where the only gift I would get for someone in December, would be my mother’s birthday gift. Christmas became this thing that happened to be on my mother’s birthday, not my mother’s birthday happening to be on Christmas.

Life

My mother’s birthday in 2009 was the worst 25th December I’ve had. My mother had been diagnosed with cancer a couple of months earlier and I knew she wouldn’t make it her birthday in 2010. I was in California, nursing a cat that had just had surgery that cost me a month’s salary. My mother was on the other side of the country, in Maryland. She would only make it a few more months.

The only thing I remember of my mother’s birthday in 2010 was walking along a sidewalk in Mesa, Arizona, by myself, in tears. I remember nothing else of that day. I’ve dreaded 25th December in the years that followed.

I’m looking for a word that is close to ‘hate’, but not quite there. That’s how I’ve felt about Christmas for the past several years. It all reminds me of my mother. Because of this, I’ve disliked decorations, lights, any kind of Christmas event where people gather. The only people I want to spend time with in recent Decembers have been my family.

When someone is alive, you don’t realize just how and what their death will affect in your life. I became Mr. Anti-Christmas after my mother died. I didn’t want to be that guy, but there I was, looking forward to January, not for the new year, but for all the decorations to be put away and the celebrations to be over.

Now I’m at a stage where our kid likes Christmas. We have gone to the Edinburgh Christmas Festival (I’m not sure the official name, but that’s what we call it in our house) multiple times. She really likes Christmas trees and cards and decorations. I’ve had to change my tone a bit about Christmas.

For the sake of our kid, who was born exactly 29 months after my mother died, who seems to want to talk about my mother’s death so much, I have to separate my mother’s birth and Christmas.

It’s hard. But I’m trying.

Half-life

Half a life ago, I was picked up by two people I hadn't known very long. They put me in a car and drove off; I left the only home I’d ever known. I slept on the drive back, and didn't seem too worried about what had just happened. They took me to their small flat, took me outside that afternoon and we looked at a cat.

Half a life ago, my life drastically changed. I went from a family of four other people and a dog to a family of just two other people, and no pets at all. I went from a family that spoke with the only accent I’d ever known to a family with a very different sounding, foreign, accent.

Half a life is a long time, and I'm not sure how much of that first half I really remember. Was I really in that house with four people and a dog? What was it like to live there? What was it like to run through the hallway in that house, play in the living room, and ride in their cars?

My life now has a much smaller hallway, a much smaller living room, and I don’t remember the last time I rode in a car; we ride buses, if anything, where I am now. We have a big park I can walk to in a few minutes; the park where, half a life ago we looked at a cat.

Today marks the day when our kid has spent exactly half of her life with us.

There are times when I feel like she’s been with us forever and there are times when I feel like I don’t know her at all.

Who our kid is and who our kid was are two very different things, and I often wonder how much she wonders about her first half of life.

She’s no longer the kid with the thick Scottish accent who would say ‘Wee’ before just about everything ‘Wee car’, ‘Wee man’, etc. She’s not the kid would say ‘Ta’ on a regular basis; getting her to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ have been a bit of a struggle as of late.

She is a kid now, who gets so excited at the prospect of going in a car, that the first 30 minutes of a car ride is a constant stream of ‘We’re in a car!’, or some variation of that. She’s a kid who can tell you (with some help) what bus we take to preschool or to mommy's office. She’s a kid who, I wish we could provide a longer hallway to, so she can run like crazy, because running outside at this time of year is not my idea of fun.

I think a lot about who our kid will become; if she’ll be the kind of adult who wants to know about her life before us or the kind who just doesn't care. Will our kid become an adult who will wonder about the life that might have been or mainly think about the life they have? As I sit and write this now, I don’t have a strong feeling one way or the other. There is a part of me that hopes that, when she’s older, she’ll want to go on a mission to find out where her genes come from and there’s another part of me that worries she’ll want to do just that.

Although the past half of her life has been one of the more trying times of mine, the joy I have felt has been so much more greater than anything bad. The memory I have of her seeing that cat on that first afternoon, or any animal on any day, is far stronger than any memories I have of her worst tantrums.

The week before our kid came home with us, we were walking with her and her foster father, on a windy day. One of the first things I learned about our kid was on that day, when he said she loved to stick her face into the cold wind.

Just the other day, our kid asked ‘Daddy, did I like the wind when I was a baby?’ I told her that she did. She then said she wanted to pretend to be her as a baby and I would be me; I obliged, because it’s pretty easy to pretend to be myself. She closed her eyes, and stuck her face forward into the driving wind and made what she felt was a happy baby noise. I couldn't help but chuckle, being reminded of one of the first things I learned about this kid, and had the same thought I had half her life ago. ‘Man, this kid’s really Scottish.’

I don’t know what’s in store the next third of our kid’s life, or the quarter after that, or the fifth after that. I just hope that all of those portions are filled with better times than worse.

5 years in the EDI - wow!

Today marks 5 years since I arrived in Edinburgh.

It's weird to have lived in a place for this long and still feel like a newbie several times a week. That's the big difference between relocating within a country (which I did in the US several times) and international relocation. I still don't know how to pronounce names of places; a couple of weeks ago, I had to ask a coworker how Oban is pronounced and every time I am in the vicinity of Restalrig, I have a feeling that the way it sounds in my head is not the way it's actually pronounced.

I do use my not sounding like a native Scot to my advantage from time to time, like when someone stops me in the street and wants me to donate to some cause; 'I'm not from here' I say, and keep on walking.

That being said, in many ways, I feel more a sense of belonging here than I ever thought I would.

Lauren and I in June 2010; 2 months before moving to Edinburgh

I was at a Fringe event the other day and we were asked where people were from. Every time I answer 'Edinburgh' to that question, I don't think the asker is satisfied with my answer. But what am I supposed to say? I'm not an American tourist; I live here. More often than not, I'm more 'from here' than the person asking the question.

I never thought I would like it here. Edinburgh is the whitest place I've ever lived (by far) and many a US visitor we've had have commented on its whiteness. Because of this I think it's so odd that the whitest place I've ever lived is the place where I've had the least personal experiences of racism - I can't think of one in the last 5 years (in Edinburgh); I've had a few in the past 5 years when I've gone to the US.

I never thought Edinburgh would be home, and it still doesn't quite feel like home, but it's close. We own a flat in the city, we have a Scottish kid, with a popular Scottish name, who has spent all but a few days of her life in Scotland.

That being said, I do miss parts of being in the US. I miss Target and Trader Joe's and decent Mexican food. I miss the feeling of belonging when I speak to a stranger and not the automatic assumption that I'm not from here. I miss not being the only brown person when I'm in a room of 200. I miss wide roads and playparks/playgrounds that have toilets (I don't get why the playparks in Edinburgh don't have toilets - it drives me crazy!). I miss watching College Football on Fall Saturdays and College Basketball in March.

I do miss those things.

I don't miss the racism I experienced, and the endless political arguing that goes on in the US. I don't miss the reliance of having a car, or driving on those wide US roads at 20 miles per hour. I don't miss calculating sales tax and I don't miss baseball. I don't even miss US weather - I can't believe I just said that, but it's true.

I don't know if we will be here in 5 years. I assume we will, but who knows? I've called myself a global citizen, so I'm sure that if we're here, or somewhere else, I'll be happy enough - I'm adaptable.

Picture taken by our kid in July 2015

Citizenship

I'm not someone who claims to care a lot. As a university student, a friend of mine once said that if I wrote a book it would be called 'I don't give a rat's ass'. I'm the guy who, as soon as I pick up a telemarketing call, say 'I'm not interested in what you're trying to sell me' then hangs up if they attempt to continue with their spiel.

The one thing I do care about, to the extreme, is my family. So, the passport situation we went through with our kid over the past several months really bothered me.

I should say, if you 'don't give a rat's ass' about citizenship adoption law, stop wasting your time, and stop reading this - you're not interested in what I'm trying to sell, so hang up now.

What I've taken away from the passport situation is just how interesting and weird citizenship is. 

Almost exactly 5 years ago, I wrote a blog about being a global citizen and how through my experience in life and family, I had a more global experience than most. How, if my parents had wanted to, I probably could have had tri-citizenship. This was just about the opposite experience we thought our kid would have, when people - including an immigration lawyer - said there was a good chance our kid was stateless. 

Stateless. Nationless. A person who is not a citizen - in the legal sense - of any country. Yes, the child of the 'global citizen' might be a citizen of nowhere. I don't know what the opposite of a global citizen would be, but our kid would be that. A stateless person can't get a passport, can't leave the country they're in, and depending on where they live, receives no benefits of being a citizen of a country, because they have no country they can call their own. Stateless.

Citizenship is weird. What I'm about to write is what I think I know about citizenship, but I'm no lawyer, so I could be wrong.

The United States of America:

The U.S. has birth right citizenship. This means, if you're born in the U.S., you have the right to be a U.S. citizen. It doesn't matter where your parents are from, you can be a U.S. citizen. To be honest (and this is not the most liberal thing to say) I don't agree with birth right citizenship. I just think there should be more than being born in a country to be a citizen of that country - live there for a year, or something. I'm imagining a case where a child with parents from Jeffersonia is born in the US then moves back to Jeffersonia at one week old and never sets foot in the US again - I don't think that person should be a US citizen, but I digress.

A tie-on - sort of - to U.S. birth right citizenship is this: if, when you are born, at least one of your parents is from the U.S., you can claim U.S. citizenship anywhere in the world you're born. I actually fall into this category. I was born in Nigeria, but my father is from the U.S - I have been a U.S. citizen since birth. I'm not completely on board with this either. If I were to never live in the U.S., and lived out my life in Nigeria, should I really be a U.S. citizen forever? I don't think so. If I had only lived in Nigeria and never set foot in the U.S., and if I had a child, also born in Nigeria, that child could, technically, claim U.S. citizenship. That doesn’t seem right to me. At some point, I think the link needs to be broken. The question is where/when. 

It gets complicated with adoption.

When a kid is born in the U.S. and then adopted, they are American, by the birth right rule. When a kid born outside the U.S. and is adopted by Americans, the kid can get U.S. citizenship only after the kid comes into the U.S. and goes through some process I still am not sure about. We happen to fall into this situation. We are Americans, who adopted a kid born outside the U.S. This is where the problems start to arise. To get our kid U.S. citizenship, we have to get our kid into the U.S. To get our kid into the U.S. our kid needs a passport of some kind.

No problem, we thought, while going through the adoption process. Our kid will, of course, be a British citizen and will be able to get a British passport….

The United Kingdom:

The U.K. does not have birth right citizenship; at least not anymore. Prior to 1983 it did, but since then, to get British citizenship, one has to show that at least one of their parents is/was also British. This is where our problems started.

We aren't British, so when I started the online passport application form for our kid, it took me on this wild goose chase, asking where Lauren's and my parents were born, when and where our parents were married, and I thought 'Why is all this needed?'. That's when I learned about the 1983 birth right rule. The online form doesn't know our kid was adopted, so by the letter of the law (which the online system follows, because it has no heart), our kid can't be British. We aren't British, our kid was born after 1983; therefore our kid can't be British.

You would think an immigration lawyer would have a heart - or at least a brain - to realize that we were in an odd circumstance that the law was not designed to handle strictly as written. The lawyer said that once the kid was adopted, everything was transferred to us 'not just the good'. I didn't think much of that comment when she said it, but 'not just the good'?!? Seriously? Who says that? She then said, that our kid could not be British, because our kid's legal parents (us) aren't British. The lawyer said even she thought it was weird, but that was the case. So, according to her, by being adopted, our kid LOST her British citizenship, which, any rational person would think, sounds insane! 

Before I called the lawyer, I had spoken to someone who works at the passport office who I was passed on from 3 different people. He had given me basically the same information, saying we had to apply for her to be a British citizen before we could get her a passport. He then wanted to talk about how crazy the Super Bowl was, which had happened the night before. Thanks passport worker guy – good to see you care about people’s actual problems!

Needless to say, at this point, we didn't know what to do. We had a stateless child. Every non-lawyer/non-passport worker we told this to thought it was crazy that she would stateless - everyone thought she should be British.

After a several weeks of sitting on this, I said we should just apply. We should show she was British at birth. Our social worker got in touch with a legal expert at the British Association for Adoption and Fostering - this person agreed with every non-lawyer/non-passport person we had talked to about this. We decided to apply. Now, we just needed to show our kid was born British.

This was tougher than I thought it would be.

If we could show our kid's birth mother was British, we would be done. The obvious way to do this would be to produce the birth mother's passport, but that's not the sort of thing we had access to. Being that there was a delay in the adoption because the birth mother was contesting it, I don't think trying to contact her to get her passport info, so we could get a passport for the kid whose adoption she was trying to prevent, would be the best thing to do. So, we got her birth certificate.

Our kid's birth mother was born after 1983, so having her birth certificate was not enough to prove that she (the birth mother) was British. We had to show that one of her parents were British, to prove that she is British, which in turn would prove that our kid is British. We were able to track down the birth certificate of our kid's birth mother's father. We applied for a passport for our kid.

About a week later, we got a letter from the passport office. The birth mother's father's birth certificate was not good enough to show that the birth mother was British. Why is still a bit unclear to me, but to show the birth mother is British, we would need to produce either the birth mother's mother's birth certificate or the birth mother's father's birth certificate accompanied with the marriage certificate of the birth mother's parents. Lauren called the passport office and asked why this additional thing was needed for the father of the birth mother but not the mother of the birth mother. They gave some hand wavy answer which clearly showed that they had no idea why - it was just the way it was. Because someone said so, I guess.

We were able to get the marriage certificate of the birth mother's parents, which, with the birth certificate of the birth mother's father, showed the birth mother is British. By having the birth mother's birth certificate, along with her birth child’s original birth certificate, we could show that the child of that birth mother is British. By having our kid's post-adoption birth certificate, along with her pre-adoption certificate, we showed that that child is now our kid, with a different name.

After rereading the last two paragraphs, I'm a bit lost myself.

In proof-ish language:

We need to show our kid is British

1. Birth mother’s father’s birth certificate + Birth mother’s parent’s marriage certificate ⇒ Birth mother is British.
2. Birth mother’s birth certificate + Kid’s original birth certificate ⇒ Kid is British
3. Kid’s original birth certificate + Kid’s post-adoption birth certificate ⇒ Kid is now our kid, with a different name.

∴ Our kid is British

Three days later, our kid’s passport arrived. So, the immigration lawyer was wrong. The Super Bowl guy who worked for the passport office was wrong. Our kid was never stateless. Our kid was British, and now had the passport to prove it.

The documentation to show that our British kid, is indeed British (and her passport)

The hour from 1:30-2:30 on 5 June 2015 is one of the happiest hours of my life. I got home with our kid and saw the envelope, not knowing what it was, then saw it was her passport. I said 'Hey, it's your passport!!!!' and gave it to her. Thinking it looked like a book, her response was 'Read it, daddy!'

I know I’ll never write a book called 'I don't give a rat's ass', but I'll gladly read an empty passport that belongs to my kid. 

So in the end, our kid, who we thought was stateless, may be, one day, a dual citizen, and like her parents, a global one.

My Mother, March Madness, and Zucchini Bread

I was woken up by Emily tapping on my shoulder. She said something like 'The nurse said it's almost time. She hasn't got much time left.' 

I was on a sofa, college basketball was on TV. It wasn't a sofa or TV that I knew. I came to in the next couple of seconds. It was late at night on the 20th of March 2010. I was at the Gilchrist Hospice facility, in Towson. My mother had been here for slightly over a day. 

I would watch her take her last breath in the next few hours, during the early hours of the 21st.

The days that followed are a blur. There was letting people know my mother had died, there was organising a funeral, there was deciding where to bury her. There were phone calls, and emails, and visits, and more phone calls. Then there was the funeral.

The weeks that followed were odd. There was the film I was an extra in, there was a sense of not knowing what to do with myself in Towson for the next few months, there was the offer to teach a statistics course, there was the declining of the offer. Then there was the chicken pox.

The months that followed were depressing. There was the trip to Ghana for the Ghanian funeral, there was the move to Edinburgh, there was the difficulty in finding a job, there was the Thanksgiving where I wanted to be alone, there was a snowstorm that shut down the city. Then there was a new year.

The years that followed have felt unstable. There was the moving from job to job, not feeling like any of them were 'right', there was literal lack of stability with the fall my father took in Sierra Leone, there was the seemingly never-ending adoption process. Now, we're in the seemingly never-ending citizenship process. To be honest, I'm thankful my mother isn't around for a lot of this stuff - it would have driven her crazy.

It took about 3 years to come to terms with my mother's death. 

In the hours after my dad fell, 2 years after her death, I kept saying to myself 'You better not die on me. Not here. Not now. Not in this way'. I was thinking a lot about my mother during those hours. My mother's death was still haunting me.

Three years after her death, I went to Ghana, and saw how everyone had moved on and I very much enjoyed my time there, seeing people for the first time since her funeral. That trip brought a sense of closure that I needed.

Still though, I feel like I'm missing an anchor, and my ship just doesn't feel as steady as it did while she was alive. I've come to terms that this will probably never go away and now try to put my energy into being an anchor for the next generation.

So I'm here now, 5 years after Emily woke me up. 5 years after my mother died. To honour my mother tomorrow, I'm going to make zucchini bread. 

During her funeral, I talked about how she taught me to bake, and how one of the more meaningful things that happened between us was when she devoured a loaf of zucchini bread I made, a few months before her cancer diagnosis, which was the moment I felt that her teaching had finally paid off. 

To thank the people who helped us out after she died, I made each of them a loaf of zucchini bread. 

Zucchini bread, like March Madness, now always reminds me of my mom, so to thank the small family I have around me now, who's helped me not get too down this week by distracting me with requests that I laugh; requests to say 'oy vey' or 'dios mio' in crying/laughing/happy/sad voices; reading children's books in odd accents; and having tantrums, I'm going to make us zucchini bread. 

It's only fitting, since we can't all stay up late enough to watch college basketball.

I miss my mother

18 March 2010

This is from a journal entry I wrote during the Summer of 2010:

As I was waiting to get onto the bus, Lauren asked me what my mother's full name was; Lauren wanted to dedicate the Twi book she was working on to my mother. I teared up, as I had done a number of times in the previous few weeks, knowing that I would be going back to Towson on March 18; knowing that this would be the last time I was going home to see my mother.

I don't remember much about the bus ride to the airport, or boarding the plane, or what movies were playing on the flight, and what movies I may have watched. I do remember that the flight was delayed for an hour in Heathrow, because of some kind of technical problem.

Two things stick out for me on this flight. I developed a fear of flying at some point in my 20's, but had no fear as I sat on the plane. I remember thinking that no amount of turbulence on this flight would even begin to compare to what my mother had been going through over the last few months. I remember thinking that I was so much luckier than so many people who, like my mother, were suffering in that moment as I buckled in to fly across the Atlantic.

The other thing I remember is the guy from Kenya I was seated next to. He had no bags with him, which worried me a little - who doesn't carry anything on a transatlantic flight. After we were in the air, he borrowed a pen from me, and we started talking. He showed me an old picture of him with dreadlocks, which he no longer had; he told me about his turbulent flight from Nairobi to London, and how he had lived in Baltimore for a few years, but wanted to move back to Kenya.

He seemed like a nice guy, and when he asked if he could get a ride into the city after we landed, I didn't think much of it, and said I would ask my sister, after we landed. He used my phone once we were on the ground, and then we both went through customs. After we met up again, we both complained about the treatment we got from the customs officers at BWI - they took a bunch of spices he had hoped to bring from Kenya; I was asked "How did that happen?" to my being born in Nigeria - I considered going through an explanation of how it happens that children are born to the officer, but I was nervous about seeing my mother, knowing she was in bad shape.

I talked to my dad soon after landing. He seemed to want to talk about everything but my mother - the flight, the customs people, the delay we had in Heathrow. To this day, I don't know if he was doing this because he didn't feel comfortable talking about it, or if he was trying to shield me, for one last time, from the shape my mother was in. Part of me would have liked it if he would have been a little bit more graphic about her condition; a bigger part of me is glad he never did. I can't imagine what the experience was like for my father to go through that with my mother, and in the months since I have grown to admire my father more than anyone I know. We've always kind of teased my dad about his geekiness/nerdiness but, because of what he went through, I have come to see my father as the toughest man I know.

Emily picked me and the Kenyan guy up, and we dropped him off at a parking garage his cousin worked at. We then headed to Towson. Emily had not said anything about our mother until after we dropped him off. She tried to prepare me for what I would see, and said she was worried about me, because I hadn't see the slow deterioration of our mother. She said she would rather be in her position than my own, because she had seen my mother on a daily basis, slowly get worse - I hadn't seen our mother in two months.

I now think of Emily much the same way I think of my dad. I wrote a blog once on how, even though she was the youngest of our clan, during the last months of my mother's life, you would've guessed she was older than her brother and sister, who are 5 and 16 years older than her, respectively. I remember thinking on that drive back how much I admired my little sister, and how much braver and tougher she was than me. I don't think I could've handled taking care of my mother the way Emily did and for that, the rest of my family will be eternally grateful.

I got home, but I didn't want to go upstairs. I was scared to see my mother in the condition she was in. I talked briefly to my dad, but then had to go up there, to see my mother. I went upstairs, not sure what what to expect. She was in bad shape; lying on the bed in an L shape on her side, mumbling incoherently, her eyes were somewhat glazed over, kind of staring into nowhere. She was tiny compared to the person she was last Summer, the last time I saw her completely healthy. She was lying in the bed, seemingly unable to move much.

Emily and my dad said "Jeff is here, Jeff is here." Her sister, Mary, who had arrived from New York that same day, said to her in Twi "Jeff is here, Jeff is here." My mother, in the midst of her mumbling, then said the last word I would ever hear her say in English - she said "Jeff".

Many people have said to me over the months since she died "remember the good times you had with her", and I do, and remembering those times bring some level of comfort. But every single day, I see what I saw that night, sitting on the edge of my parents' bed, my mother in very bad shape, saying my name. And every time I remember that, I am filled with unbelievable sadness. 

My 2014 Moment

2014 is going to be one of those years that stick out in my life. In many ways, it was a year that was the opposite of 2010. 2010 was filled with misery and grief; 2014 with happiness and joy.

You'd think with the events of 2014, the fondest memory would be meeting our kid for the first time (when she walked right up to Lauren, pointed to her face, and said 'glasses'), bringing her home for the first time, or the day the adoption was granted by the courts. But my fondest memory happened on the evening of 21st June.

My dad, sister, and niece were coming to visit - the first family to visit us since our kid had moved in, in March. They were due to land in the early afternoon. I had the grand plan of taking the kid to the airport and they would meet her for the first time then.

We drove to the airport, played on escalators for a while; my family's flight landed, passengers came off, and they were nowhere to be seen. Not until that point did I check my email to see that they had been delayed and would not be coming until that evening, about the kid's bedtime.

We drove back home.

Even though it was late in the day for the kid, I decided the two of us would go to the airport for the second time that day. 

We got there, and my family's flight had landed already. We had missed the chance to see them as they entered the terminal. We saw that their bags were already at the carousel.

That's when it happened. The moment that sticks out most for me in 2014 - a moment I will never forget.

I was looking for my dad, sister, or niece and I couldn't see them. All of a sudden, our kid starts shouting 'Aunty Em?!' over and over - she had seen my sister, Emily, before I had, and was so excited to see her in the flesh, after seeing her on Skpye every weekend for a couple of months. She kept saying 'Auntie Em?! Auntie Em?! Auntie Em?!' She was bordering on tears of joy, as I was - and I am, as I write this. 

When Emily came to the partition that separates the passengers who are getting their bags from the rest of us, our kid was more than happy to have Emily give her a hug (and maybe even hold her, I honestly don't remember). Our kid was SO hesitant to even be around a new person that this was mind-blowing.

I love my sister with all my heart - the person who is most like me - so in many ways it made sense that our kid would have no problem going to this person she had never met. But witnessing that moment is one I can't ever forget. The moment the two Tuesday-named ladies with the last name that's a first name, met for the first time.

Our kid walking with Auntie Em while my niece points out something to my dad, at the Edinburgh Zoo

Four Court Dates and an Adoption

The wildly popular podcast Serial got into the issue of how well people remember things around the time of a major event in their lives - where they were when it happened, what they remember from the day, etc.

I'm amazed at how un-climactic a day of a recent major event was for me, and how uneventful the day was. The day was slightly over a week ago and I honestly do not remember much about the day.

The day in question was the day the adoption of our daughter was granted, who had been living with us for nearly 9 months.

I've thought about writing about the entire adoption process, but that would be a boring blog to read - to be honest, I'm not sure focusing on four court dates will be any more riveting, but at least it's a shorter read.

We weren't supposed to have 4 court dates, not the way it was presented to us by other adopters and social workers. '2 or 3 minutes' they said; all that would happen would be the Sheriff (Judge, for those in the US) would grant the adoption and we'd be done with it.

Court Date 1:

The day before our first court date, our Solicitor (Lawyer, for those in the US) emailed us to tell us that there would likely be a 2nd court date. Our solicitor couldn't locate the birth mother of our kid.

There are 2 steps to the legal process - relinquishing parental rights from the birth parents, then granting the adoption to the new parents. In some cases, the first step is done before adoptive parents are even found, but ours wasn't one of those cases. We technically were parenting the child whose legal guardian couldn't be found by our solicitor.

In court, our solicitor didn't seem like the brightest of the bunch. The Sheriff pointed out that there was a difference between the solicitor not locating the birth parent, and the birth parent being impossible to find. Our solicitor hadn't tried too hard to find the birth mother, so the Sheriff told our solicitor how to do their job, and gave a list of possible ways to locate the birth mother. We had a different solicitor (from the same agency) for the remainder of the process and I haven't seen this solicitor since.

A 2nd court date was set. We went home.

Court Date 2:

The Courthouse on Court Date 2

We went into Court Date 2 feeling pretty confident. The birth mother had been located and she had been served papers notifying her that she would lose the rights to the kid, and was told when and where the court date was going to be, should she want to oppose this. No one had heard from her, or a solicitor representing her, by the morning we took the taxi to court. 

We took the kid with us (as we did the first time), took pictures of us in the taxi, pictures of the kid walking around the courthouse, went into the courtroom feeling pretty good that this would be it.

It wasn't.

There was a letter that was sent directly to the Sheriff, that was received the afternoon before. The letter stated that the court time was too early for the birth mother to be there, her circumstances had changed, and that she wanted her baby back. 

We were floored. We didn't see this coming at all. The birth mother chose to gave up her kid before the kid was born, and had never been responsible for the child. Now, over two years later, she wanted her baby back?!?!

We had met the birth mother shortly before bringing the kid home with us. As the letter was read, the one thing that went through my mind was that the woman we met did not write that letter. The woman we met couldn't seem to speak in more than a couple-word sentences and here was this well-written letter. The letter never mentioned any names; not the kid, not the birth mother. To top it off, it was written on the back of the notice that was sent from the Sheriff notifying her about the court date.

I don't think the birth mother wrote that letter. No one can ever make me think otherwise.

Her circumstances had changed. She had a new partner now, and I think he wrote that letter, or they went to some sort of advice place and an advice person wrote down what such a letter should look like, and that written suggestion was sent to court. If you really wanted your kid back, why would you not say the kid's name in the letter? Why wouldn't you even sign off at the end of the letter.

In light of the letter, the Sheriff had to set a new court date. It was set at a later time of day, to give the birth mother a chance to get to court. We would have to wait 4 more weeks with our lives in limbo.

Between Court Date 2 and Court Date 3:

It's hard when you think that a kid, who you're raising as your own, could be taken away from you.

We read horror stories of kids taken away from their adoptive parents - reading stuff online is never good in times of stress.

Everyone said the birth mother had no case and everything would work out - it would be a question of when, and not if, it would happen. It's one thing to hear this, and even think it. It's another to live it. Hearing this didn't make me feel any better. 

I lost a lot of sleep after Court Date 2.

I felt like every conversation I had over those 4 weeks would, at some point, circle to the adoption court dates, and the possible outcomes.

It was hard to even play with the kid, with that in the back of my head all the time. Just the other day, I was talking to Lauren about it, and she said it was going from feeling like you are the kid's parent to be the kid's foster carer. Not that you love the kid any less, but thoughts of seeing your long-term future with the kid seem to fade. You focus more on the day-to-day.

As Court Date 3 approached, I was very nervous. It was this part of my Adoption Leave that I really wished I could be going to work everyday, as a distraction.

We decided that Lauren and the kid would not got to Court Date 3. I would meet our solicitor and go in with her. The thought of the birth mother being there, and the kid being there, was something we didn't really want to experience.

Court Date 3:

I don't remember much of what happened before court on Court Date 3, or after for that matter. I know that I was home alone that morning because Lauren had taken the kid to the weekly library singalong that I usually go to with the kid.

I was nervous; I didn't know what to expect.

I got to court and our solicitor found me. She said the birth mother was here, with her partner, but didn't have a solicitor. Our solicitor predicted that the Sheriff would set a continuation hearing date, so the birth mother could have a solicitor with her at that time.

It was odd to be sitting across the table from this woman who I had met months earlier, who I had taken a picture with, who seemed not particularly upset that we were adopting her kid then, but now wanted the kid back. I didn't make eye contact.

The Sheriff asked her some questions. Questions she couldn't really answer: 'What is your hope in doing this?' is the one that stuck out. Her answer was that her hope was to get a solicitor - clearly not understanding the question. The question was asked twice more, with some clarification, before she gave an answer basically saying she was hoping to have the chance to get the kid back (again, no mention of the kid's name). 

The birth mother's partner was not allowed in the courtroom, and I would guess he would have done most of the talking, if he was in there. Our solicitor had talked to the both of them outside of the courtroom and described him as 'slick' - not really sure what she meant by that, but he did do all of the talking when she talked to them.

As predicted, the Sheriff set a continuation hearing date. Birth mother was told she would need to get legal advice, and was told by the Sheriff exactly where to go to find a solicitor who handled cases like this. Our solicitor again pointed out where they should go, once they were out of the building.

I left court feeling somewhat relieved. I won't go into much more detail of what happened in court but it was clear this was not a person who was able to take care of a child - she seemed to barely be able to take care of herself. 

I asked our solicitor what happened next. She said that, if birth mother and/or her solicitor showed up at the continuation hearing, there would a trial date set, where witnesses would be called and things would be settled then. That would be Court Date 5, but as the title of this post implies, that Court Date never happened….

Court Date 4:

The walk to court was awful. 

It wasn't raining when I left home, but I carried my rain jacket to be safe. Less than 5 minutes after leaving home, I was soaked. It was windy, the rain came at such an angle that no rain coat could have protected my face. 10 minutes after leaving home, I got under some cover and wrung rain water out of my trousers and watched it dribble onto the pavement beneath me. I thought about going back home, or calling Lauren and asking if she could go - as long as our solicitor was there, we didn't need to be.

I kept going.

When I got to court, 15 minutes early, I was completely rain-drenched. My torso was the only dry part of me. My sleeves got wet from rain going up my rain jacket sleeves, my face was wet, my legs were wet. I thought to myself, is this how I want to go into court? But what else could I do?

Our solicitor arrived 5 minutes later and said nothing of my soaked-ness. We talked about the rain, went through security, and went upstairs to where the courtrooms were.

Our solicitor had never heard anything from the birth mother's solicitor (if she had a solicitor). I asked her if this was normal. I'll never forget her response: 'Nothing in adoption cases is normal' 

We got to the outside of our courtroom. There was no one there. 

I was told I could go into the courtroom and wait. Our solicitor went to other courtrooms nearby to see if the birth mother and/or her solicitor where around somewhere.

She came back a couple of minutes later - she didn't see anyone. I started to get hopeful that things would be wrapped up.

The Sheriff came in, made mention that she picked this time so the birth mother could get here on time. She asked the court security guard (I would call him a bailiff, but I'm sure that's not the correct term) to go look for them in other courtrooms. 

He came back in a few minutes. He couldn't find them.

Adoption:

That was it. The Sheriff granted the adoption on the grounds that no one from the opposition came to court. 

She apologised to me for the delay, saying she wanted to cover all bases, should an appeal be lodged.

There was no grand moment, no tears of joy. It was done. We just had to wait a few weeks, because the birth mother had two weeks to appeal (as of this writing, we are still within those two weeks).

If no appeal is lodged, we'll be done with this in mid-January. If one is lodged, we will still likely be done with this very soon, because when you don't show up to court when you should, your appeal will almost certainly be dismissed.

Just after I left the court (of course the rain had stopped for my walk home), I called Lauren to tell her the news. She was happy.

I went to pick up our kid from nursery school - because of a bumped head at nursery that day, I had to sign a form acknowledging this. I gave the kid a big hug, and we walked home as we do every nursery day; kid eating the fruit snack I always bring for pick up. Kid walking very slowly, focusing on the snack instead of the walk home.

I don't remember anything of that afternoon. I was tired, as I usually am. Kid took a nap, as usual. We went to a grocery store, as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary. 

That night, the kid got ice cream for adoption day. Kid didn't care much about Adoption Day, but was very excited for ice cream. Lauren recorded the ice cream excitement. We were all happy.

4 court dates and an adoption are done. We can now move on with our lives.

Scotland Decides

I want to start at the end - my prediction.

To the question: Should Scotland be an Independent Country?

I predict the vote will come out this way:

Yes - 46.4%

No - 53.6%

I want to preface the rest of this post by saying this is entirely based on my observations and thoughts, with no real sources to back up anything.

Scotland votes tomorrow to decide if it can break away from the UK. We should know the result early Friday morning.

As someone who likes following elections, I've loved this. I've loved the back and forth, I've loved looking at polls, I've loved the whole thing.

I can't vote, I have no say, and to be honest, if I could vote, I don't know how I would vote - I would probably make a decision in the final seconds before I cast my vote.

For me it's a heart vs head thing.

My 'go out on your own' heart says break away, venture out, and become independent; do your own thing. I've made this 'heart' decision several times in my life. I wouldn't be in Scotland now if not for the heart decision to leave De Anza College, and a very good job, with the idea of doing something new, being someone different, not knowing what would lay ahead of me.

My heart says this will be good for Scotland, but my head says it won't.

My 'analytical/business-minded' head says don't do it, don't take the economic risks that lay ahead of you, stay with what you know. I've made this 'head' decision several times in my life. I tell people that leaving Berkeley was one of the best life decisions I've ever made. It was made with my head. I didn't think (and still don't) that it was in my economic best interest to pursue a Ph D, when I was in a job that paid me more, and gave me a better lifestyle than I would have had, if I had gone through with getting the Ph D.

Again, I can't vote, so I listen and I analyze what I hear.

The polling has bothered me because the percentage of undecided voters are more often left off the polling numbers than left on. The numbers exist somewhere, but I think those are the most important numbers of the polls. There is also little mention of margin of error on the polls - again, one of the more important factors in polling data.

According to a lot of polls, things stand at about 51-52% No and 48-49% Yes (of course, there is no mention of undecided voters in most of these polls).

Here's why I think the votes will go slightly more with the No votes.

First, I think undecided voters who do vote (some may decide not to) will vote more with No than Yes. My gut feeling is, if you're unsure about something, you tend to stay with the status quo. Maybe I'm wrong; again I have no facts to back this up.

Second, historically, older people vote in greater percentages than younger people. Some polling data have shown that younger people are more likely to vote Yes than older people. Even though there is expected to be a very high turnout, I still expect a higher percentage of older people to vote, tipping in favor of the No side.

Lastly, and this is sort of out-there thinking, I think there are a group of people who want to vote No but have some irrational fear that by saying No, they will be unpatriotic, so they may have lied to pollsters. It has been far cooler to say you're voting Yes than voting No - it's a lot easier to advertise a brand new world, than saying 'let's go status quo, just say No to something new'.

As a foreigner, I don't think I'm in the position to say which side I prefer, and I'm not even sure I have a side I prefer. I'm happy that I've been allowed to live here and have been made welcome, regardless of how different I may sound and look, so I'll be happy with whatever Scotland decides. I just hope the losing side is able to accept the outcome.