Free God and Jetfire by Amy Seek Page B

able, personally, to give them permission to parent the child. No one at an agency or in court can do that with the same authority.”
    She told me other ways Jevn and I could help. We could let them name the child, for example. We could let them stand by at the hospital to meet the baby right after delivery. We could have a formal “entrustment ceremony,” like a wedding, during which our friends and families would gather to witness our bequeathal of parental rights to the couple.
    Of course they could name it, I thought. And they’d be welcome to be at the hospital. And yes, we could have a ceremony—with poems from Kahlil Gibran and scripture and coffee and refreshments, whatever it takes. Why would I not do everything possible to help the family to whom I was giving my child succeed in loving it?
    That night I returned, as usual, to the profiles, and I really thought I could see it, that struggle to find a way to love. Sheldon and Toni offered what they called a forever home and a forever family , and though I was insulted by the implication I had only transient and trivial things to offer, I realized that if a couple thought that, they’d feel more than entitled—they’d feel obligated to parent. Just as I consoled myself with the image of all the worthy families in need of babies, they were working toward entitlement by imagining all the poor babies in need of homes. What would it do to us, I wondered, to know the actual facts of one another?
    And perhaps the couple who’d given detailed specifications for what they wanted in a child— no African Americans, but a Caucasian-Asian mix is an acceptable alternative if Caucasian isn’t available, and disabled is okay if disability is mild or medically correctible —were just being realistic about the limits of their love. Maybe they felt they could only guarantee love if the child resembled them—or perhaps they thought the baby might need such deception, like a nestling who will only accept food from a convincing puppet bird. Better they be sure than take on a child they couldn’t love.
    But was it not enough that I’d let them name the baby, and be there at the birth, and tell them, wholeheartedly, that I’d chosen them? This was the advantage, Molly assured me, of openness. I could give them entitlement and free them to love in a single stroke.
    â€œBut with openness,” Molly had said, “they also see your pain,” and the way she said it, it was a warning. The window of open adoption would open both ways. They would feel responsible for my sadness, which I’d struggle to hide, while the very thing that would enable me to overcome it, and give them my child, and let them name it and be at the hospital—a selfless, strong, and unconditional love—would be an ever-present measure of their own love. My presence could strengthen the structure of their family, but it would have an unpredictable capacity to bring it down. Which explained why some couples negated me even in their letter addressed to me—Bill and Julia, for one, assured me: this will be our child, not our adopted child. Entitlement was just more assuredly achieved in the absence, real or imagined, of the birth mother.
    And maybe that was why, the way Molly said it, it sounded like I had some kind of responsibility. As if, although I might not be able to make myself perfectly invisible, I would need to make certain things invisible. But whatever the complexities, what was certain was that the structure had to stand. I couldn’t give my child away without confidence that it would be loved, and I wouldn’t sacrifice that love for my privilege to peer in the window.
    *   *   *
    Exhausted, I put the profiles aside and stood up to make dinner. Even more difficult than weighing all our possible futures was imagining the child I was doing it for. The couples seemed to have a clearer image of my baby than I