adoption

It is probably stopping suddenly after a bout of relentless bowing and then eating too much birthday chicken mole and drinking the best marguerita I have ever had (Thank you Jo and George) that did it, but this morning I had a very disturbing dream. I dreamed that Julian and I were in a supermarket and we had adopted a little boy. Julian was doing some beautiful fun fathering in amongst the canned tomatoes and fresh meat aisles and it was very sexy to watch, especially as he had his leather jacket on. I, however, was left paralyzed in the toilet roll section, desperately packing yet another suitcase for another journey and feeling utterly unable to bond with this kid or draw on any kind of mothering instinct. I woke up with sorrow weighing down on my eyelids, no little ones around to reassure me that it was just a silly nightmare.
Recently J and I went to see the new Tavernier film together in Avignon called 'Holy Lola' about a couple adopting a child in Cambodia. I think we were both a little apprehensive about what feelings, after our traumatic IVF and pregnancy history, it would cause to surface. (One of the characteristics we had come - with difficulty - to accept was that, though we were going through the process 'together', actually we went through a lot of it quite separately, having very separate emotions at very different times).
Leaving the cinema would one of us, we wondered, be saying "Right. That's it. I'm getting on the next plane and I will not stop till we succeed in adopting a cute Cambodian", whilst the other would be rejoicing in the confirmation that it was the last thing on earth they were ready to put themselves through? As we emerged, very touched by the movie, it turned out to be one of the most harmonious moments in our healing process: Over a beer and a tartine, we acknowledged a new acceptance - that, following the last three years, it would just be too much to go through yet another agonizing 'process', that we were feeling too old; that we wanted to spend some simple time together..... We felt a new excitement at the path not exactly chosen but which upon which we have happily stumbled, of music, art, cats and a Provencal wreck, above all of a rich journey together as husband and wife.
We still cry, and we still dream. The sadness and the longing will always be there, but here I am in paradise, my husband in the kitchen putting today's new bijoux tiny landscape paintings up on his site, and I, typing with one finger, have a small silver cat-soul on my lap gazing up at me as if I were the best Mum in the world.