Free God and Jetfire by Amy Seek Page A

courage and generosity.
    My sister was the first to call it: vultures . She wrote from China, in response to the letters I’d sent her. She said all those long nights waiting for a baby, they weren’t dreaming of a birth mother. They were only feigning compassion as they hovered, gliding in graceful circles as they waited to dive in. They wouldn’t dare admit that I was merely a means to an end. That as soon as I supplied the vital ingredient to create their family, they would perceive me as a threat to it. That we were natural enemies.
    Her mistrust was disheartening, but I knew that there were deep dynamics in play, and I was prepared to be vigilant. I understood the advantage of my position. We were tall, well educated, and white; we didn’t do drugs; we’d decided on adoption together and had the support of our families; and we planned to give up our child as a newborn—all of these things, Molly said, would be highly desirable to potential couples. The only sensible thing was to make the most of that, to scrutinize everyone fully, to indulge every doubt, and to demand all the information they were reluctant to give us. Because after we signed the papers, the asymmetry of our positions would be fully reversed.
    The letters closed in the spirit of their openings, full of joy and excitement, with easy promises about how much affection the couples had to offer. Couples assured me my baby would be loved and cherished with all their hearts , and I wanted to believe them—but by then I’d grown so wary that even those guarantees, so grandiose, so sweeping, so certain, gave me pause. It had been among the very few things I hadn’t doubted: I hadn’t doubted that the couple who adopted my child would be well equipped to parent, and I never thought my child would be adopted and not loved. Tragedy of tragedies.
    *   *   *
    I went to visit Molly alone one afternoon when Jevn had class, but I didn’t talk about my worries. I knew she’d tell me what I could easily tell myself, that writing a Dear Birth Mother letter is difficult, that couples have no idea how to represent themselves, that their letter is only the first step in getting to know them. She addressed my concerns all the same. We had arrived at the chapter in our workbook called Entitlement; Molly explained that it could be a long, hard process for love to develop between an adoptive parent and a child.
    â€œI’m sure it seems strange, since you can see how much they want a family. But it’s not automatic. Adoptive couples go through so much scrutiny and red tape—it can be hard for them to really accept the child as their own.”
    The midwinter gray pressed against the windows of the counseling room as she spoke, and from my seat the skyline wasn’t visible to orient me. Openness was at that moment the least of my concerns. I needed to know my child would be loved. But how could a couple make such a promise?
    â€œAdoptive parents need to feel entitled to parent in order to feel free to love. But because they don’t have the baby growing inside them like you do, they have to accept their parenthood on the basis of legal procedure—and that’s really difficult. It can feel abstract and shallow compared with your connection, and it can make bonding with the child challenging.”
    I got it, and I even felt sympathy for it. Adoptive parents wouldn’t be biologically duped to love. After persuading me of their worthiness to parent my child, they would have to persuade themselves of the same. After bypassing nature to acquire a child, they would have to work against nature to love it. And yet every single couple gave me a guarantee of their love. This was a high-stakes experiment; how could we be sure they would succeed?
    â€œOpenness can really help,” Molly said. “Adoptive parents benefit so much from knowing that, of all your options, you chose them. You are