Bedtime Routine

TW: Adoption/Birth Mother

6:45 – It is a Tuesday evening. Your bath time. But tonight, instead of running there and leaving your clothes strewn on the floor, you knock your glass off the table in haste, the glistening shards and pieces scattering, the milk running away. You carefully help with a quick clean up job before you ask if we can do this instead of your bath.

6:47 – As you go into the freshly renovated bathroom, you ask again if you can skip your bath tonight. You already know what the answer will be and eventually relent. Naked as the day you were born—a day that I was not present—you create a world of wonder in the water.

As you play, glossy droplets gather on the edge of the brand-new bath, forming tiny connections, gathering together, growing larger. You cried when the old one was taken, despite its cracked surface and ingrained scratches.

           As the men removed the broken bath, the brand new one awaiting outside wrapped in plastic, you screamed. You wailed. You ran after it as they loaded it onto a truck to be taken away, their faces etched with confusion.

           No, don’t! That’s our bath! You can’t take it away!

           You were reasoned with, given explanations, shown the new bath.

           No! I want that one! I don’t want it to be taken away!

           It wasn’t until much later, after thought and reflection, that perhaps it was fear within you that thought it wasn’t just the bath that would be taken. Perhaps it would be you as well. Perhaps you too were broken, stained, cracked and needed replacing. You were reassured that this was not the case, that you were not being replaced. Still you wept for the absent bath, the one that had washed you since infancy.

           You had done the same with the car, when your language was staccatoed and brief. You kept asking where the car was. The brand new one would never measure up to the old one. The only one you knew. The one that took you home with us, two days after your birth.

6:53 – You grin, your shiny white teeth clamped together in perfection, a giggle emerging. Your eyes are two blue bursts of sky. As if your birth mother cut two tiny shards, fashioned them into irises and gave them to you. As you get older, they will get brighter, reflecting the passing storm that raged before you were born. Your eyes instead show splintering sunny rays, clear and blue. They constantly remind me of her. Of what she did for you. Of what she did for me.

6:57 – You start to ask questions. You always do this time of night. When your mind can settle, relax, process and stall bedtime as much as possible.

Why wasn’t I born in your tummy?

I wish you were, my love.

Does my birth mother love me?

Oh yes, she does. I bet she is thinking about you at this very moment.

You are quiet as you ponder. These questions have been asked and answered before. You make a decision at that moment, that tonight would be the night to broach the question that has not been asked.

But not quite yet.

7:05 – You conduct your nightly protest against tooth brushing, despite the Raffi song you love so much, even singing it while you refuse, turning your back to me in song. You eventually relent, spitting in the sink “like a grown-up.”

7:10 – Every night, you refuse help with your pyjamas. You must select and don them independently. You won’t face any protestations in that request.

7:15 – Bedtime stories, on the floor. Your pink walls and rainbow décor enfold us as you sit in my lap, curling into my body, as if you long for an umbilical cord to permanently attach us. You hand over your selection: A Mother for Choco, Bye-Bye Baby, Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born.

7:25 – You listen to the familiar words, pointing to things on the page, laughing along with our inside jokes. You hear the last word as the book closes. You grow quiet for a moment. You choose this time to ask the question I have dreaded since a nurse placed you in my arms hours after your birth.

Why does my sister live with Birth Mom and I don’t?

7:40 - You turn your head upwards, your slice-of-sky eyes holding

mine in earnest. Unfathomably, I see myself in your gaze. Your question hovers and my heart quickens. You have no idea how long this question has been anticipated. You probably won’t like that there is no satisfactory answer. It might even launch a full-on identity crisis. But that will come later.

                                          ***

           One day, you will hear our story in full. When your prefrontal cortex has finally matured and its neurons are myelinated and connected. Perhaps when your own primal urge to motherhood begins to loom. Only then will you fully understand your own loss. Your lack of choice. Your silenced voice in all the legalese and decision making. And you might even hate me for it.

You have been told all the essential truths. You have never been lied to. But you have not been told what happened in its entirety. And there are things you might never be told. Not because you don’t have a right to them, but because they are part of my own private shame.

You will not hear about the Bailey’s I sneaked inside Starbucks cups. The ones I carried with me to yet another baby shower. You will not hear about my sobs in bathrooms. My carefully orchestrated plans to leave early. You will not hear about the plastic grin stretched across my tear-streaked face. You will not hear about my humiliation with one specialist after another, my legs open for probing and analysis. You will not hear about the eye-watering sums we doled out from our bank account in hopes that a baby would materialize. You will never know another child almost made it into our arms, only to be snatched away through complicated and heart wrenching circumstances.

You will only know that you are loved. Loved by us. Loved by her.

Oh, you are loved beyond measure.

                                                           ***

8:04 – You climb into your toddler bed, snuggling down in your rainbow sheets. You know that your name means rainbow. You have asked about it many times, telling stranger kids at the playground. You recount the colours of the rainbow, in order. You see patterns. You notice what other kids don’t. In your tiny bed, you wrap your arms around me tightly and ask for your songs.

8:20 – Your breathing slows, your grip on my arm loosens. You twitch into sleep and slowly turn your head away from its nesting place between my shoulder and neck. You fit yourself into the space so perfectly, into the mother who never birthed you. You begin to form dreams.

8:35 – You don’t feel the brush of my lips on your tender forehead or the quiet click of the door as it shuts. You don’t hear my heartbeat and my blood pound as my head is clouded with questions of what is the best thing to do, what words should not be said, what the “right” thing should be. You don’t hear my stifled sob.

You don’t hear me pick up the pieces.