My life flashing before my eyes….

02 Nov 2010 4 Comments

by blackberrysmoothie in CAS, Update

So I was all tied in knots last week about our first home visit – should I make the bed, madly clean, stock the fridge with appropriate food?

As it turns out, no.  There was no home inspection at all.  It was more of a brain inspection.

Our social worker sat with us and went through the forms we filled out about our childhoods, our relationships with our parents and their relationships with each other.  She was pleasantly surprised to find that both of us have parents who are still married (41 years for my parents, and 50 for Peter’s) – apparently that is quite rare to find these days. We also got good scores for having bad stuff happen to us, but getting appropriate help and coming out the other end.  Yes, we’re well practiced at that around here.

All in all, it was a positive meeting.  We demonstrated that we are able to deal with whatever comes our way, and that we can turn to each other as well as a support network in those difficult times.  Once again, her verdict was that there was nothing to prevent the adoption process from continuing.

It was tough to do, though.  It was like going back over all the therapy I’ve ever had in my life (a not inconsequential amount) in one hour and fifteen minutes.  But first I had to listen to Peter do the same thing.

I didn’t sleep well that night, or the night after; it brought up too many memories of things I hadn’t thought about in years, some of the most difficult things I’ve been through in my life.  I thought too much about the little boy and little girl who were painfully shy and lonely, the teenagers who dealt with death too early, the young adults who abused alcohol…. and we had pretty OK childhoods compared to many people.

It always amazes me that we, as humans, keep going in the face of all the crap that life hands us.  But we do, and we do, ad infinitum.  We keep going.  And we, Peter and I, have to deal with all our crap before we get these kids who will have had so much more unfair crap than we do.  Because they don’t need any more crap.  We will be a soft place to fall, a haven and a home where they are always loved.

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