Perspective

I thought I was having a bad day Thursday when I got a parking ticket for $49 in Long Beach as I frivolously shopped for a new coat before meeting friends for dinner. I thought my luck was getting WORSE the next morning when I got another parking ticket for $49 on my block because I forgot to move my car. I never, ever get parking tickets. But I didn't know that later in the day, I would go to acupuncture and end up in the hospital with a collapsed lung.

There was a rainbow of pain: The kind that feels like a piece of glass jutting in my side on the way to the hospital. The pain of so much waiting, being treated like a junkie in the ER until they understood I had something seriously wrong with me. The pain of having a tube jammed in my chest to let the air of the pulmonary protective sac out, and to let my lung fill back up (think B-movie with a woman screaming on a table, people in white coats all around, and that's pretty close). The pain of having to be very, very still as this tube stayed in my lung overnight and the next day. The pain of fleeting sleep from so many beeps and pokes.

But of course, with all this comes the good. A good man who sat through all the gruesome parts of it and acted as my PR guy, calling my parents and my coworkers and friends and giving them updates. All the flowers. All the well wishes. That I'm OK now. And the blessing that I wore pretty underwear that day, because a lot of people saw it.

Opening to more

Quite by kismet, someone sent me a brochure for a woman who specializes in parenting issues and adoption. I feel good and like I don't have an acute need to see someone, but I also feel like maybe she dropped a breadcrumb in front of me and I'm supposed to follow this path in the woods.

I've never heard it said better

I am often guilty of being jaded, of thinking patriotism an overrated virtue, of empty threats to move to Paris or Canada if such-and-such happens.

But then I see this man, and I love him immediately, and I remember why we are all on this patch of dirt between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and why everyone else wants to come here.

Got some change

In my last post I expressed great desire for change. I got some!

I'm not sure who I look like, but it's not myself.

OK, how about now?

The people have spoken, and they miss the green. Too much now?

NEW NEW NEW

I want everything new. I want a new life and new breath in my home and new body and new hair.

But tonight I will settle for an appointment with Sue Ann on Tuesday for highlights, and playing with my site. What do you think of the new logo? GREAT help from All Adither.

Falling

My basket of knitting has been sitting there patiently all summer, by the couch. I can still only make a scarf. So I guess I'll start a long, long season of long, long scarves.

Loved this grey angora/wool one that I made on the plane this time last year. Lost it already.

The scarf for Mashi matches her hair.

For cold New York winters. I test-drove it in Maine.

Cousin Elizabeth in her orange scarf I made while at PopTech. Nothing simpler, nothing cozier.

Liz's daughter, my cousin, Miss Mary Ohannes, clearly has a brilliant future as a scarf model.
We made this one to match the color of her towel.

Hit Me

It took me a while to learn how to win at Blackjack. You can't be all intuitive about it. You can't bet on a strong feeling that the dealer has a 16 and that your next card on an 18 will be a 3. You just follow the rules -- what cards warrant a hit, what warrants a stay.

So it is with social media. The rules say that you publish relevant comments to your posts -- even if they are negative. It's part of being in an honest dialogue. So I did that with my 48 hours of hate mail from the Pregnant Teenagers on BabyCenter.com. I'd apologized profusely, but many of them still had something to say about how wrong it was to post a (supportive) reply to a girl considering placing her child for adoption.

I was scared that a prospective birth mom might read this and think I'm a monster. I considered just deleting all the posts and the comments. But, in the same way you hit on a 17 when the dealer is showing an 8, I just kept it all up there. And then, in the same way that 3 or 4 comes as the next card, the sweetness began to roll in.

"I didn't mean to come off sounding so...bitchy. I tend to have a sharp tongue. I've been on the Pregnant Teenagers site for 3 years so I know the impact adoption posts have on the girls there. I never stopped to think you would not know that. I sorry for that."

"Hello, I was one of the teenagers on that board when you posted. I did not comment, however. I understand your frustration and confusion. I did not comment on that post because I knew that you weren't being condescending, and you really thought that perhaps this forum was some sort of link to a possible adoption. I am sorry some of my cyber friends were so horrid to you, but you have to understand where they are coming from. I am a teenage mother. I am 17 years old and my daughter is one. I was planning on giving my daughter up for adoption up intil three months. Please don't be too offended. They were just protecting their rights as mothers. Hold your head up. You will get your baby."

"i was lurking on the pregnant teen boards and saw your post. i understand their reactions, but it seems as though you're not as terrible of a person as they make you out to be. keep at it. you'll get your baby soon enough."

We're all scared. We're all feeling raw and protective. We all want Blackjack.

West Coaster

I've known Joanna since 4th grade. She's always been dazzlingly beautiful, completely confident and totally talented. We spent a lot of time not knowing each other, but we reunited, better than ever, when I moved to LA in 2005. This year for her birthday, she wanted to go on the rides on the Santa Monica Pier.

On the roller coaster, they've figured out the maximum scream nexus and have placed a camera there, right as you are plunging to near-certain death. We got the picture -- we're in full-fright mode, hair all over, wide-eyed and molars out -- in order to put it in the alumnae publication that comes out once a year from our Very Proper Elementary School.

Today felt a lot like Joanna's birthday.

News came from my social worker that I am one of four families a young woman at UCLA is considering meeting, but that the baby's father is pressuring her to hold on. "That is the problem with African American placements, the families do not want to let go. I will keep you posted but it does not look too promising," the social worker wrote to me.

Then I felt all sick and like I am missing a whole chunk of information about how I should find this child. Like I'd been led on. Like adopting is only for the rich folk. So I sat at Taco Bell in Santa Ana, waiting for my support group at the agency to start. Wondering if I should cry or not.

I wandered in, early, to find the agency's director in her office. I broke down and told her that I was feeling out of information and out of ideas and out of my league and maybe I should go through the foster program and -- well, everything.

I guess she's used to people like me. She told me she loved my profile and to make 25 copies so she can send it out next week.

It's a little bit of information, and a little bit of hope. And the ride, at this particular moment, is a little smoother.

Glimmer

Here's the part about social media that I think we forget. The word "social" and all it implies.

For example, you wouldn't really barge into a group of people you didn't know and start talking about your needs. Who the f cares? People help people they know. I was aghast and ashamed at the backlash I got from the pregnant teenagers when I went to meet them in their cyberspace. But I was even more touched and moved by the people that have come out of the woodwork to help me. A guy I didn't know that well in high school. My cousins. My yoga teacher.

My social worker sent me a note yesterday. She told me to not get my hopes up, but there is a pregnant young woman at UCLA who is open to placing her child with a single white female. Will know more next week. In the meantime, I am obsessively working on my "calling card," a letter-sized flyer that serves a snapshot of my life and who I am for women deciding who they'd consider to parent their child.

No matter what happens with this one, I have to just remember to plant all my seeds, and not expect them to bloom where I drop them. They will tunnel under, swirl around rocks and weeds, push through oceans and come up in the craziest, most beautiful garden ever.

Red-faced and smacked down

Jennifer Garner plays hopeful adoptive mom, Vanessa. I know.
I've done my freaking out over all the similarities in the this movie.

My brilliant idea, like many brilliant ideas throughout time and history, has completely backfired. It has singed my eyelashes and turned my skin a deep dark red. It has made my stomach warp in embarrassment, and my shoulders turn in for shame.

Said idea I had last night was to go find the pregnant people who may be looking for adoptive parents. Kind of like fishing in a stocked pond. So I found the pregnant teenagers section and read a note from a girl who was considering placing her baby for adoption, and feeling pressure from others one way or another. I wrote and told her that she had a lot of rights and resources as a mother giving birth, and to never ever let anyone pressure her into a decision. That she could even wait until after the child was born to decide. And that there were people like me who would very much like to raise a child.

This did not go over very well in the pregnant teenager section of Babycenter.com.

People accused me of preying on young vulnerable women. They blocked me from further comment. One person sent me a comment on last night's post that read, in part: "How dare you approach vulnerable teenagers and suggest the only option available to them is adoption? In case you haven't notice the Pregnant Teenagers group on Baby Center is for SUPPORT. Support in HAVING our children. Not in giving them up."

So now I know.

And the search continues -- after I read guidelines more closely.

Crap. This is harder than I thought.