1940's Plumbing

Our house was built in 1940. Before I bought it, 12 years ago, some contractors flipped it, making cosmetic improvements. But, they also cut corners, as I have discovered. When I first moved in there was a leak under the kitchen sink that took a long time for my dad to fix. He finally ended up buying new parts. It seemed like some of the plumbing was new, but not all of it. Ditto to the electrical wires. I am not handy. This fact is something I struggle to accept because I really want to be handy. I want to be self-sufficient. The combination of these things – old house parts and my stubbornness to do it myself – make for a perfect storm in failed projects.

 

We have one bathroom in our house with one large, old clawfoot tub. It has a shower, connected to the faucet, but the small rubber stopped inside the faucet broke in February. We have been bathing ever since. It’s fine, we still get clean, but I’ve really been longing for a shower, especially in the heat of summer. So, I finally bought a replacement faucet/shower combo. I was trying to find a nicer one, with a hand shower component, but either I pay $90 for the same one we have, or I pay $300 for one with a hand shower. So, as you can guess, I bought the cheaper one. It seemed straight-forward enough to install. Just take out the old one, put in the new one. Only, that isn’t how it happened.

 

First, Primero promised to help me do it on Saturday but he then got a better offer from his friend and left. He had started the project and then put the tub back together in haste in order to leave. I was irate. He couldn’t let the project go because the only way to prevent flooding was to turn the water off to the whole house. We have only one shut-off valve. Apparently, turning water off to singular appliances was not common in 1940. So, on Sunday, when Primero and I resumed the work, the water was turned off. The new faucet was installed, the shower hooked up, the curtain restored, only when we turned the water back on the pipe behind the tub leaked. So, Primero tightened it. But, it would not stop leaking. And, I’m not talking a little drip, drip, I’m talking spraying water, causing a leak in his bedroom below. We tried plumbers tape, we tried a special pipe glue. Nada. The leaking persisted. So, what did we do? We installed the chandelier my mom bought for my room four years ago. This we managed to do successfully. And I *love* the light! I can’t wait to paint my bedroom (the only room in the house that has never been painted – in 12 years!) and replace the flooring.

 

Monday I left work early and called a plumber recommended to me by a friend on Facebook. They came right over, a father and son team. The piece that was leaking had been stripped. The only solution was to replace it. Except, this is a piece from 1940. So, like you need a DeLorean to go back in time and find a new one. Ok, not quite, but the plumber told me it would take two days. He did cap the leaky pipe so we could turn the water back on, but we cannot use the tub. We can’t even use the cold water because it could make the other pipe leak. So, we are forced to carry water from the kitchen sink to the bathroom to bathe. I’m glad I know how to take a bucket bath from my time in the Peace Corps, it makes the situation slightly less awkward. Oh, just in case you don’t live on the East Coast, it has been in the 90’s the past few days, we’ve been under and excessive heat warning, so bathing is a necessity.

 

And, just in case that wasn’t enough, school started for Chica Marie on Monday and I had two days of training for work, which always puts me out-of-sort. And, I’ve been trying to handle things with my mom (I will explain more about this later), concerned about how things are going with her. It has been a very long week!

What is Fair?

Last week I interrupted a conversation between my supervisor and my co-worker friend. Our supervisor had come over stating one of us (there are three of us in the department) would need to go to a training to become a tester for the new IEP (Individual Employment Plan) form being added to our computer system. The supervisor was basically going to voluntell my co-worker friend she needed to do it and it might involve traveling and staying overnight. The reasoning was, our male co-worker did not want to make the drive (how nice that he gets that option? He is the newest, but also her current favorite because he’s kind of a yes-man) and I had kids. So, here is where I butt into the conversation. Yes, I have kids and yes, it would be a logistical nightmare for me to work it all out, but the bottom line is I *could* work it out and my status as a parent should not eliminate me from any job-related tasks. I have done trainings an hour away and managed to make it work. Luckily, our daycare is accommodating that way, plus Primero can drive so that helps as well. I was pretty angry that our supervisor would just turn to the only single, childless member of our group and make her take on this task due to her personal life. She was also flabbergasted. I insisted all of our names could be tossed into a hat and have one picked out to make it fair. Of course my name was chosen, but we don’t have to do the traveling, as previously thought, so no logistics to work out.

 

A few things to note, my supervisor is a woman. She has an adult daughter my sister’s age. Our male co-worker was allowed to “not want to” based on his dislike of driving. He is married but has no children. His wife (they were both married previously to other people) has grown children. My co-worker friend has a dog, so if she needed to go away she would need to find someone to watch her dog. Sure, it’s not as much as children, but still the male co-worker has no pets and lives with his wife. The entire exchange made me very angry and extremely frustrated. Here we are in 2018 and still dealing with the same feminist issues. I’m glad I stepped in. I could have sat back and stayed out of it, but that would not have been fair for me to do. I needed to speak up, to call attention to the false and unfair assumptions being put upon my friend and women in general. She is single and has no kids, therefore her time is expendable, she should be inconvenienced more than a parent or someone with a partner? We do the same job, all three of us, how is singling her out based on her personal life even remotely fair? When it comes to work, I won’t let my children be used as an excuse, whether it be to my advantage or disadvantage. And I have little respect for anyone who does use their parental status in that way.

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Safe Landing Spot

I can’t remember if I ever posted about this before, but I was just thinking about a conversation I had with Primero probably sometime last summer. I had been reading information from former foster youth and adult adoptees and I shared some of the information with him because one adult said they didn’t like how their adoptive parents never talked about adoption. I asked him if he felt that way and he said he doesn’t feel the need to talk about adoption all the time. We read a snippet about a former foster youth who wasn’t adopted but still returned to his foster family as a young adult for help and guidance. It prompted me to ask Primero how he thought things would have gone if he had returned to his mom. I guessed we would still talk and I would see his life through social media. “Nah,” he said, “I’d still be over here all the time because my mom wouldn’t keep it together and I like it here.” It warmed my heart because that was really the focus for me as a foster parent – to give kids a safe landing spot when they needed it.

Tune It Out

Last Friday I my co-worker friend and I left work early for pedicures. It wasn’t planned for Primero to go along, but he happened to be in the office and so he decided to go with us. He wanted a manicure because he never had one before. The nail salon was pretty busy and we had to wait. Primero was across the room in a chair waiting for his manicure. Another patron came inside for a scheduled manicure and while her nails were cleaned she struck up a conversation with Primero. At one point I heard her loudly exclaim, “She’s your mother?!” Later, when she walked past my chair, she reiterated her disbelief that Primero was my son, accusing me of having a child at 2 years of age. I have written about this topic a lot and I always feel like I don’t handle it well. This time, I mostly followed Primero’s lead. If didn’t out myself, like I usually do, instead I just smiled and agreed I looked too young to have a son Primero’s age. I thanked her for the compliment, backhanded or not. I chuckled at her thinking we were siblings and pointed out that meant we have a close relationship. I know people mean well, or I choose to believe they do, but it’s not always easy to be scrutinized that way. And, I am always reminded that Primero’s mother is my age, just a few months older than me (4 to be exact – both of our birthdays are on the first of the month). I need to learn to take Primero’s approach – acknowledge what has been commented and then tune it out.

Opening a Line of Communication

 After seeing the little one’s mom at the pool, I promised to send her some pictures of the kids. She asked me to give them to her mom, to send along to her and I complied. I also enclosed a note for her. It read:

 

“I hope you enjoy the pictures I’ve enclosed. I’m not sure if you like getting them or if perhaps you would rather not. Chica Maire really likes having a picture book with photos of you and all her family. She sits and looks at the pictures and rearranges them in her picture book. Both of the kids really enjoyed bumping into you at the Cinco de Mayo festival and the pool. We would really like to be able to see you more often, if you would like. I have been considering setting up a private Facebook account, if you would like, and I could post various pictures and videos there for you to see. It would be a nice way to keep in touch. If not, I will put my personal information below. I just know it would help the kids to know they could see you from time-to-time. I don’t know how you feel about that, but if you are up to it, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Hope you are well!”

 

I didn’t really know what to expect, but I wanted to try to open a line of communication. I was surprised when I got a text message stating:

 

“Hello. This is [kids mom]. I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate you writing me that touching letter. I was so happy to run into you those few times. It took me so much courage to walk up to you but I knew if I didn’t that my heart would regret it. I would love to be involved in anything that you see fit. Whatever it is that you would like I am more than willing to participate. Thank you so much for loving the kids the way you do. This is my phone number please connect with me anytime.”

 

I know it took a lot of courage for her to come up to us. I know it wasn’t easy and she didn’t know how I would react. I’m glad everything went as well as it did and I truly hope we are able to arrange some time for her to spend with the kids on a regular basis. And I am so happy to see her in a much healthier place in her life. I know what she has been through hasn’t been easy. We shall see how things are going forward, but at the very least, as the kids get older, they can see how hard we both tried to keep them at the center of it all.

Adoption Collateral

In March, Esperanza moved out of state with her boyfriend and his family. It wasn’t long before she expressed being unhappy and during a visit for Easter, she told me she had been staying in touch with a previous love interest who was incarcerated. She felt more like herself with the guy who was in jail and stated her boyfriend was controlling and allowed his family to talk bad about her without sticking up for her at all. Ultimately, she decided to move back to town, with the help of me and Primero. Once back, she seemed to be doing well. She got a job and while she didn’t love it, she managed to do good at it and things seemed to be moving in the right direction for her. Time to self-sabotage! She had been talking to the out-of-state boyfriend and he talked her into moving back with him, which she did this past weekend. She didn’t tell anyone she was leaving until the last minute. When she finally text me about it and I expressed concern, she insisted the boyfriend had done a lot of growing since she left. Hmm… ok. But, when he came to fetch her (I was not home) Primero said he was the same and just as controlling. He snidely promised Primero to bring her back if “she started her shit” and wanted to come back home. I worry this second time around won’t be any different but Esperanza will feel even more determined to stay in a bad place than she did the first time around because she wants to save face. I think that is part of the reason she left quickly without notification. Both Primero and I are bracing ourselves for another long trek to upstate New York.

 

I don’t usually claim Esperanza as my kid, but, especially lately, I feel like I should. I care for her just like a daughter, I worry about her as if she were my child (even though she is an adult), and I only want to see her successful and happy. More than once Esperanza has declared she feels like I’m a mom to her, so what holds me back? I don’t give her the same advice I dole out to Primero, I hold back. I feel like I’m always trying to not scare her away. I’ve been wanting to reach out to her since she’s been gone, but I haven’t because I don’t feel like it’s my place. I don’t like how she left, I don’t like that she seems to want to keep her absence a secret. I don’t think that bodes well for this move and it hurts her relationships here at home. And, of course, I miss her. I miss her popping up at the house, chatting with me about various things, hearing about the crazy customers who came to her job. I wish her well, I hope she will finally get what she wants, but I sense that she will have many more self-sabotaging episodes in her life. I wish I could go back in time and find younger Esperanza and hug her, tell her she is worth more than she thinks and to never devalue herself. I see some of her brokenness but I don’t know how to heal it, I don’t know how to reach her to help her. I just keep trying to be there, if and when she needs a helping hand. These are the things that foster care trainings do not address. These connections are the unexpected collateral to open adoption.

Kissing Frogs

From time-to-time I look back over my life and think about how things have turned out based on the choices I have made. Life is funny in that sometimes you only see the fork in the road looking back. Occasionally, you can see if moving forward with big life decisions to make and whatnot, but other times the choice doesn’t feel like one until you’re further down the road. Looking back recently, I’ve seen how what I didn’t think was a conscious choice was certainly a decision I had made. I guess at some point, perhaps subconsciously, I decided being childless was a greater loss than being single. And so I pushed all of my energy into not being childless, focusing on staying open and available to accepting a placement and becoming a mother. Could I have channeled that energy into finding a mate? I suppose, in some warped way, my mind decided adopting a child(ren) was easier than riding the tides of dating, surfing for that one fish in the vast ocean who would be my match.

 

But, lately I’ve been feeling lonely. For a while, I longed for someone to be a helper-partner; someone to conqueror and divide all the things that needed to be done with the kids and around the house. Now I seek companionship; someone to talk to before I fall asleep at night. Someone to text or call just to see how their day is going or to tell them something that is on my mind. I miss intimacy, just sharing and knowing so much about someone else. The boyfriend I broke up with in January has been talking to me lately. He wants us to be friends, but I think it’s more than that. I think he thinks he can convince me to fall in love with him and I just wasn’t before, thus why we broke up. If I’m honest with myself, which sometimes I am not, I like Toxic Friend’s brother more than I let on and his abrupt departure still has me longing for more, which is stupid because I want nothing to do with him. I deserve better than being treated the way he treated me. Still, having someone around was nice.

 

If I had changed gears after Flaco left and focused on seriously dating, might I have kissed enough frogs to find my prince instead of all these toads? I don’t know. For whatever reason, it seems like the two things – becoming a mother and finding a romantic partner – were mutually exclusive; a one or the other situation. Before Toxic Friend’s brother popped up I as fairly content on my own. It seems he kicked up this old longing that I keep stuffing away, unrequited. Stupidly, I put a new profile on a new dating app and I’m being bombarded with messages that I just can’t keep up with. I have more date offers than I do the time to go out and date. And, I hate the whole thing. I find it exhausting and most of the time I end up being uninterested – just another toad. Soon I’ll get tired of it, delete the app, and go back to being alone.