Masochism 101

Why do I do these things to myself?

Every month about this time I get all worked up about adoption. I suspect that this is a hormone thing -- the last, frustrated gasp of my aging ovaries as they realize that they have once more been thwarted by Captain Vasectomy. There will be NO BABY this month. Or any month.

Not that even the tiniest corner of my being wants to go through another pregnancy and delivery, which for me means c-section. No thanks. But my baby, my real, live, refusing- to- be- potty-trained baby has all of a sudden grown so tall and gotten so heavy, that her babyness seems in danger of evaporating all together.

Adoption, as a topic, is not new in our house. I actually had a little article tucked away in a drawer from before I was married, when I vowed to adopt if for some reason I never met Mr. Right. Then, when baby number one proved harder to conceive than we'd thought and we were told that I had some "issues" which might prevent me from either conceiving or carrying to term, we never hesitated. In fact, the morning I realized I might actually be pregnant I was on the verge of calling an adoption agency to get the ball rolling. Little did I know that the ball had already dropped (or the rabbit died, or however you want to phrase it). Again, after our second child was born, we considered adopting at that point, but we got a little sloppy with our birth control and that was that.

Or so we thought.

This desire to adopt, for me at least, has never really gone away. It went dormant for a long time as we struggled to adapt to a third child, but in the last 6 months it's come back with a vengeance and I can't seem to shake it. Over the years my vision for adoption has changed. I no longer really want an infant. In fact, I'm no longer sure I even want a child under 2, though I could probably be talked into one.

I am on a couple of waiting child groups and lists and occasionally get emails about children who need homes and each time my heart breaks a little for all the kids (so, so many) who need families. Once in a while a child just tugs at my heartstrings and I find myself really anxious over his or her future. Sometimes it's a little one, but lately it's been older kids -- 6, 7, 8 years old -- whose ability to find families dwindles every day because of their age. And while the little girls always make me smile, I find I worry more about the boys, who are less likely to find homes because they're boys. Sometimes kids get under my skin to the point that I wake up in the night to pray for them because I can find no other way to relieve my anxiety.

What I should do is take myself off these lists. My husband seems no closer to embarking on this process, and with the economy as it is, it's unlikely we'll ever have a spare $20grand lying around. Then, too, there's the issue of how we'd really cope with another child. It took us forever to be able to cope with a 3rd -- heck, she still derails us at least once a week -- could we really manage our life with a 4th? And one who came with whatever baggage derives from orphanage life? One who probably speaks no English? And would disrupt our birth order? I must be crazy even to think about taking this on.

And yet....and yet I am once again smitten with a picture. A little boy in China with a repaired heart defect who is all of 6 years old. Much older than I ever thought possible for us in an adoption scenario. Right now I'm just praying for him, because that's all I can do. But oh how I am asking God for a family for him. He's so cute, so handsome, and he made a face for his photo just like my son makes; that face that says "I may be cute, but I am about to get up to some serious mischief!" He is breaking my heart.

Damn these hormones.

Dreams, Deferred

Today I wanted to write about hot, steamy sex. Unfortunately, I am not having any hot, steamy sex right now, so I find my mind sadly blank.

After nearly 12 years of marriage, middle age has begun to take its toll on our sex life. Prior to this year, we enjoyed active, fully participatory encounters 2 or 3 times a week. But this year...this year we just can't seem to make it all click.

And by "it" I am referring not to the act itself -- that still pretty much works -- but to the milieu of our sex life; the thousands of interactions that occur throughout the day leading up to the Big Nasty (remember that term? Ah, high school). It's all that extraneous stuff that seems to be consistently derailing us.

One of the most pernicious is the sudden realization that we are not hip, young twenty-somethings anymore (or, sadly, even thirty-somethings). We are not as slim, toned and unlined as we were when we got married. One of us has been through 3 pregnancies, which do such a whammy on the bod that's it's often hard to feel desirable. Things just aren't as perky as they used to be. One of us has had to curtail his weight-lifting regimen in favor of gymnastics and Little Ninja classes. We both bring a lot of insecurity about our older selves into the bedroom with us now, and that occasionally makes us circle each other like embarrassed teenagers ("will she notice my zit?" "what if he finds out I stuff my bra?")

I mean, we knew we weren't getting any younger, but somehow that has been made blindingly clear in the last few months.

Then there's the constant round of childcare for our three monkeys that often leaves us too tired for sex, no matter how much we've been thinking about it (like, all day. Or whatever.)

There's also the Mandatory Waiting Period in the evening, so you can be absolutely certain the kids are fully asleep. This is a dangerous time because one or both of you might get too wrapped up in either working out or watching TV and opt not to have sex so you can finish Law and Order or get in that last set of bicep curls.

And then there are the Romance Killers. For me, these take two forms. First and foremost is any sound that indicates a child might be a) awake and/or b) about to burst in on us in such a way that s/he will see things requiring years of therapy to exorcise. We have a lock on our door, but that doesn't entirely relieve me of stress in this area. The second mood-killer is something I like to call Negotiations. This is like the Yalta Conference of Sex, when you have to look each other in the eye and say "are we having sex later? I can do it before 10, but after 10 is a no-go." and your partner says, "Well, Lost is on at 8, so 9 looks pretty good. But if we don't do it tonight I'm not free again until Friday because of basketball." Or my personal favorite: "We can have sex now, but it's kind of late, so no foreplay." (No what? ) Nothing ruins the romance like Negotiations. If I have to hammer it out like this, ain't nobody gettin' laid, least of all me.

It makes me nostalgic for the days when we reached for each other in the dark, heedless of the time because what did we care about the next day? All we had to do was stay awake and maybe explain the dopey grins on our faces. Desire never had to take a back seat to breakfast or bus schedules. The sheer scarcity of our encounters now makes each one that much more critical, which increases the sense of pressure we have to really make it count -- and sometimes you don't want to be the author of fireworks and love poems; you just want a good roll in the hay.

On the other hand, the odd firework wouldn't necessarily be unwelcome.