At Journey's End a New Life Begins

The adoption process was exhausting

Morning came. Earlier than usual cuz, well, we had a baby and they just wake up whenever. It had been a dozen years since I'd held one of my own or got up in the middle of the night so as much as I loved the weight of him in my arms, the work of fatherhood was making itself known. But this morning was looming large. We were going to meet our son's mom and she was getting her chance to say goodbye. Sometimes we have to say a permanent goodbye to our kids, sometimes they die, but to say a forever goodbye to a child you knew was going to be alive all your life?

The agency was in a strip mall in Oak Park (hometown of Frank Lloyd Wright) just west of Chicago. For the second time we sat and stared at the door. Inside was our son's mother and...what do you say? Thanks for the gift? But Tammy was a wonderful young woman whose courageous strength made the transition from her to us happen. She held him in her arms and as I held the camera she explained to him why she had to let him go. She told him that he was a gift from god, that she loved him, loved him so much that she would suffer the loss of him to get him a better life. I cried, we all cried, even Luka cried and then we laughed, nodded and hugged. It was done.

We talked a while longer and she told us about her hopes for her son. She wanted him to have opportunities and support. She wanted semi-annual letters and pictures so she'd be kept abreast of his growth. She wanted him to be all that he could be and she wanted him to be Catholic. Now I was born and raised on that stuff. Choir boy, altar boy, catechism class and fulltime Catholic education. At an all boys school. It was our family culture, diet, routines and why I'm number 7 of 12 kids but in 1981 (Oct 31, 9am) I did a 180. I decided there was no god. Life is a result of random but predictable phenomena, nature plodding forth, so no need for a mythical being.

She wanted him baptized. "Uh, ok" I said. It didn't mean we'd have to go to church or forgo meat on Fridays. They sprinkle some magic water on his head and he'd be instantly absolved of original sin and - if he doesn't fuck it up - get a ticket to heaven. It was a small price to pay compared to the $20,000 we'd spent to get to the point where we would be holding him and agreeing upon terms. And besides, how hard could it be? You call up the church, tell them you want to baptize your kid and they say "How about Sunday at 2?" I put it on the list of things to do.

Adopting a child from another country means dealing with not just the legal process of adoption, but simultaneously sponsoring someone to become a Canadian citizen. Both processes had lengthy steps that consumed the next week. We went to court to see a clerk who filled out a paper and handed it to a sheriff who tapped Luka on the head and told him he was officially being served papers to inform him that his parentage was being challenged in court. Two days later we stood before a judge to answer her questions about why we wanted to be parents, how we could provide for him and what his family life would be like. I guess she liked our answers because with a nod of her head a paper was stamped and Luka Alexander Antonio Gojevic became a legal entity.

I was a father all over again. Rejuvenated by necessity, I charged into the new life I'd created. I loved school and with all the change around me I knew I was on a highway to my future. I worked hard and graduated at the top of my class (hey, if you can't brag on your own blog, where can you?). And my transition was complete, the suffering, single dad was gone and replaced by married John with a child on his knee. The routine of a job gave a structure to the day that had been missing all those years and allowed me to climb in any direction I chose. I'd never been happier.

Then 15 years went by. Luka never did get baptized but not for a lack of trying. I called the local church, the same church I was baptized in and was directed to the nun in charge. "Well" she said, "You need to be a member of this church." "I can do that" I thought. And then I thought some more. I wasn't willing to park my beliefs to get access to a local baby and with a baby in my arms I felt even less inclined to be hypocritical. Breaking a promise competed with compromised values for my attention  and eventually lost. I chose to remain loyal to my beliefs and quietly forgot my promise.

It's cliche to say "When you're having a good time..." so I won't say it but my career flew by. I'll write in future pieces about my experiences in the downtown eastside, hospital work, a psychiatric forensic hospital in Wales and a geriatric outreach team but those years are now behind me. I'm still doing some casual work but for the most part I'm reinventing myself and writing about my last reinvention has been an attempt to look at that process from a distance to discern the key components. More than anything I needed the support of my wife who shared not just half the load but provided the encouragement I needed. And that's still here. I still have the energy but there's no stock-piled fuel for change that existed when I went through this before. You need to be unhappy to want change but I was happy in my job so no deposits to the change-fuel bank were being made.

So change this time will be different. I won't be exploding in any direction any time soon. I'm looking at a lot of things but mostly it's just looking. I'm enjoying idleness and the small accomplishments in an unstructured day and waiting. For something.