Day in the Life of an Idiot

 Today marks the anniversary of my legal adoption of Mason.  

I was thinking about this yesterday at the Holiday Geek Expo, because a friend and I were talking about Trump (like you do.) I have no idea if married straight people who conceive via artificial insemination even have to think about 'second parent adoption.' (Given that I just Googled scone parent adoption to see what it's history was and ONLY found GLBTQ+ links, I'm guessing not.) I'm pretty sure dad just gets to put his name down on the birth certificate, whether or not it was his sperm involved.  That was not an option for us.  

Of course, neither, at the time was legal marriage.  

The process of adopting Mason was a lengthy one. I was not required to have a home inspection, because I could prove that I'd been living with Shawn since before the conception.  (And, since we did insemination in a clinic, we actually know the EXACT date of conception.)  Not that that mattered, at that point I'd been with Shawn for nearly twenty some years.  I was still required to gather affidavits, however.  Character witnesses, basically.  Our lawyer (whom we had to hire and pay for) suggested that, if possible, I should try to get as many family members on-board as possible.  We hired a lawyer who knew the judges likely to grant second-parent adoption, but she still wanted to stack our deck as much as possible.  

I knew my parents would write one, but that kind of tapped me out for my side of the family, since I'm an only child.  I picked a couple of long-time friends as well, and then... tried to suss out who would be the most likely on Shawn's side of the family.  I initially thought that one of Shawn's brothers would be a good pick.  

It turned out I was wrong.  

This whole moment in my life has a lot of echoes in the current political climate.  

A lot of people are being 'woke' as they say, to the idea that maybe the people you interact with--friends, relatives--don't actually support you.  Maybe, you've come to realize, these people you've broken bread with, joked with, bought Christmas presents for... would actively block your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. FOR REAL.  They actually don't want you to have the same things they do, because they don't actually think you're like them, that you're not worthy in the same way.

They'll take your offers of genuine love and affection, and shit on you in return.

It's an awful feeling.

And is something I've lived with, in Shawn's family, for a long time now--since that day, when Shawn called to remind her brother that the deadline was coming up for the affidavit for me and, after some back and forth about things he needed to do instead, finally admitted "Yeah, you know, I'm not comfortable doing this.  What if Mason gets out of Rounds' control?" Shawn and I puzzled over this term "Rounds' control" for a while, but whatever it meant specifically, it clearly meant, generally, that I was not family. He did not think Mason was MY child. He thought that if Shawn died, Mason should stay with his BLOOD, which did not include me. He did not want to grant me the ability to adopt a child I was living with, raising, loving... as a parent. He wanted to be able to have the legal option to take Mason away from his other mother, if Shawn should die.

Can you even imagine?  And I would have had no legal recourse, because the law would not have recognized me as ANYTHING to Mason.

This, try to remember, AFTER Shawn and I had both lost Ella. This brother was very much there, during our grieve process.  But, apparently, no part of that made him think I was Ella's parent, either.... 

And, then they wonder why I'm not super-keen to come over for a holiday dinner....

Anyway, luckily, we had enough time to find someone else.  On a whim and though I thought it was a long shot, I asked Shawn's father( who was still alive at that time).  Shawn's dad wrote the affidavit for me so fast and with so much love, it let me forget, most days, about what happened with the brother. 

The actual adoption was very formal, very quick;  We had a court date, and went though the process. The one thing I remember about that court appearance is that at one point the judge goes through this whole thing about whether or not I approved of Mason's legal name (I guess people sometimes use this as a chance to add or change a last name), and I had the weirdest impulse to lean into the microphone and say, "No, his name shall henceforth be Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate!" 

We were later married in the EXACT same courtroom as the one I adopted Mason in.

How cool is that?  Take that you bigots and haters!