Diversity Curtains, and Other Stories

So, the shopping is going extremely well.

So far we have managed to buy:
Two bags of cotton wool balls
A baby activity book with jingles and tags
A top and tail bowl
That's it.
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It's not for lack of trying, I swear. But we're kind of hampered by not knowing how many there are going to be, what size they will be, what gender they will be, oh, and also some chronic indecisiveness. We went out on Monday afternoon (which was a bank holiday) to get the process started and did nothing except make giant fools of ourselves and seriously confuse some shop assistants. We wanted to suss out the double pushchairs (because, as it turns out, a good double pushchair is hard to find) but for some reason neither J nor I felt comfortable spilling our entire life story to the pram lady, so we didn't really explain what we were looking for.

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We looked at some of those snazzy three wheelers designed for hyperorganised hyperfertile people that have a 'doubles kit' - so that you can buy a single pushchair for baby #1, but then add an extra seat below or above the first one when baby #2 comes along before #1 is walking. But the second seat is really tiny, and after looking at one of those I said hmmm, this is really for a baby and a toddler, isn't it, not two children the same size? The pram lady said yes, you're right, are you looking for something to fit two toddlers the same size? I said No. Not toddlers. But not newborns. Older babies. Two older babies. Maybe six months. Or eight months. Or eleven months. Or not.

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To her credit, the pram lady didn't flinch. A small cloud of confusion passed in front of her face, but she didn't actually say what in the world are you TALKING about even though she was clearly thinking it. She also didn't say: you're CLEARLY NOT EVEN PREGNANT why are you asking me about twin pushchairs you bizarre fantasist? for which I am truly grateful.

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Instead: Well, she answered, for two.... (pause)

me: older babies

her: ...older babies, I recommend this model here, which has a blah and a blah blah.

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Now it turns out that her recommendation was a spectacularly bad pushchair - one of those giant contraptions that doesn't really fold down, just gets disassembled into its megalithic individual components, one of which seemed large enough to double as a climbing frame when not in use for transportation. But at least she was nice enough, even if we couldn't quite find a way to say: hello there, we need to buy a pushchair, and can we look at the double, please? We are hoping to adopt twin babies from Ethiopia.

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I don't really know why I find that so hard to say. I am absolutely and in no way ashamed of our story. I only know that on the few (very few) times I have said that to a shop-assitant type stranger, it's accompanied by my rictus grin face, my 'yes that is exciting but no I don't want to answer a lot of questions about it' face. Because I've come to realise that, to most people, our situation is a novelty situation. An interesting story. Which is natural enough, I guess, because I suppose it is unusual. But it's not an interesting story to me, dangit, it's my LIFE. The only one I've got. And these are my real babies that I'm looking forward to, not my novelty babies, and having to answer a whole load of questions about this WEIRD thing we're doing, however well intentioned, just makes me feel even more like a freak than I already did.

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And speaking of freakish, the social workers and their crazy ways have really gotten to us. One thing that goes over really well in the alarmingly in depth homestudy process here is if the physical house (furniture, decor etc) is obviously a place where many cultures are valued. Which is good, obviously, but the only two cultures getting a look in at our house tend to be the ancient civilisations of dust and cat hair, and we scored pretty low on that one. So, straight after the pushchair debacle, we were looking at curtain fabric for the baby room and came across fabric that was called something like 'people from across the globe'. It had a person next to the Eiffel tower, someone in a kimono, a big red london bus... you get the picture. And for a moment, with unspoken understanding, we actually considered decorating our child's room with curtains made from this fabric, purely to impress social services. We didn't even like it, and I doubt our child would, but I think we have now been officially brainwashed.

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Gah. Anyway, it seems like it's not going to matter for a while whether our baby room has diversity curtains, or indeed any other type of curtains. It seems that the Department for messing me around is as inefficient as ever, and yesterday they gave me an estimate of NINE WEEKS to send our papers to country. I phoned and reminded them that they promised us priority processing at this point after they messed up so hugely last time, and they've now said okay then, five weeks. Which means DTE late June / early July. And while I know, I know we would have only the tiniest tiniest chance of making it through court before closures, even if the dossier went today, I hadn't realised that I had that slim sliver of hope left until it was taken away from me (a couple last week were given a court date of June TWELVE, which is freakishly quick and fanned my little tiny hope-flame. But that now seems irrelevant).

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So anyway, I'm now tearful (again!) and extremely crabby, which is about as attractive a combination as you might imagine. I'm finding it so hard to really, really trust God with this sequence of delays. Okay, not hard, impossible. I find myself feeling really angry about it, which I know is not the right response. While I hate what's happening, I also really hate how much it reveals the dark underside of my own sinful self - the bit of me that can only imagine being happy if I get my own way, in my own time. And I've found out that delay after delay doesn't necessarily teach patience, if I don't have a teachable heart. I just keep wishing I knew WHY all this was happening - and I have to remember that I do, or at least part of it. Romans 5: 3 says:

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3 ... we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope.

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And of course, it's not talking about just hoping for a baby, or for my life to turn out okay, but something much more real than that:

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5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. 6You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

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I've got to get my priorities straight.

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I've also got to find some better curtain fabric.