Any Other Family

Whether it was fate that made them family or the dumb luck of the universe, they are here now, and they are going to go forward together.

Elizabeth isn’t wrong, but she isn’t exactly right, either.

The problem with motherhood, Elizabeth thinks, is that it is like shaving your head. You never know how it will turn out until you do it, and by then it is too fucking late.

She remembers the women in the mothers' group she was dumb enough to go to after Violet was born, all of them smugly breastfeeding while they watched her give Violet a bottle with a critical eye, telling stories about their pregnancies and labors while she sat silently, wanting to scream. The women cooed when she told them Violet was adopted, told her how amazing she was, what a gift that was, but she always felt something underneath those words, a sense of relief and superiority that they hadn't had to adopt, because what a wonderful thing for other people to do, just not them, thank goodness they didn't need to resort to that.

It's an amazing thing, she thinks, that we marry a person because we claim to love them so much, and then punish them by making them tolerate all our worst qualities.

Now Tabitha is forced to truly consider the mechanics of things, to look at events as chance rather than luck, as coincidence rather than fate. Because there are so many families who would love to adopt this child, who have ached, prayed or wondered. Out of all of those people, how do you choose? What if you choose the wrong family for a child? How would you even know?

There is a strange trick to adoptive motherhood, she has found, a necessary blindness to the bifurcation of your child's life. if you spend all your time thinking about the life your child might have lived, how things might have been different if they stayed with their birth family, you will rob them of the life they are living, and drive yourself crazy to boot.

Adults are so often like children. She knows everyone thinks she's crazy for bringing them snacks all the time, but there's really nothing worse than being around a bunch of hangry people. It's best to keep feeding them proactively.