Baby Names Book
There would seem to be a basic logic about the way relationships work that suggests the more opposite you are, the better it works. Nothing about the human condition can be reduced to an axiom, but the wisdom in this case does seem to be conventional. Yin and Yang. North and South poles. Introverts and Extroverts. Milo and Otis (just checking to see if you are still reading). Lindsay does children, math, process, clarity, and the denotative. I do authors, words, routine, intuition, and the connotative. The most enviable part of this to me is that the world seems to have been drafted for Lindsay. She finds things like Ikea instructions, tax forms, and human adult communication breezy.
So inept am I at some of these menial left brain tasks that come naturally to Lindsay, that we now have an unspoken cue that exists between us when I’m ordering at a restaurant where I look at her, which means she has to interpret between me and the server because, for whatever reason known only to linguistic fallacy, I can’t seem to communicate properly with the server.
The point of this post is not about my relationship with Lindsay and so I don’t want to get too far into the weeds, but there is an important derivation of my relationship with her, that helps me make sense of my relationship with Mabel, who is, only by genetic definition, my daughter. All of Mabel seems to have been derived from Lindsay.
Of my four children, Mabel has remained the most mysterious to me. I think for that reason I’m also the most fascinated by her. Lindsay recounts a story from when Mabel was three in which Mabel asked Lindsay to play ponies with her. Lindsay was choked with tears. Mabel, fiercely independent since birth, didn’t just not need playmates, she preferred not to have them. The pony exchange represented a rare moment in Mabel’s paternal interest.
Because of both her independence and aptitudes, there is a real sense in which Mabel is already navigating parts of the world I can’t. Those same tasks that come effortlessly for Lindsay, come effortlessly to Mabel. And while she’s too kind to insinuate something about my inability, she’s gently growing into that world without need of me, probably in part because she’s already intuiting that I can’t. This means Mabel has a confidence that Lindsay also possesses. I notice most recently in Mabel’s ability to parent, an occupation that Lindsay was gifted an honorary PhD in, by the universe, when no one is looking and that Mabel seems also to have inherited.
One of the great surprises of my life has been that Mabel, who I characterized as Wednesday Adams as a child, has a near infinite supply of love for our foster children. In fact, it’s almost as if their marginalized status elicits fiercer love from for them.
A few months ago, we were placed with a pair of little girls and I was tasked with the first full day home with them. When it became clear that this was the case, I put in a request with Lindsay to have Mabel stay home from school and help me. I’ve been thinking about that reflexive ask, which is the surest sign that Mabel possesses the same parenting superpowers that her mother does.
In our family archives, Lindsay and I keep a book of baby names that we purchased while we were dating in high school. That seems wild to me now that I have kids in high school, but as a tool for charting our imagined future together, it was effective in helping us cast a vision for what the world could be. Etched inside of the book are possible name combinations of the four bio kids we’d planned on having the three we wanted to adopt.
As foster parents we are licensed to foster-to-adopt. Part of that training is about orienting foster parents to hold out hope for and work towards family reunification, which is always the first goal, an and which we gladly do. And also, I, who need the emotional runway the length I-35 to make life decisions, like to slowly work out possibilities in my body and head before I make them. This process led me to ask each of the kids how they would feel about adoption. I like to take the temperature each time we have a new placement and get to know the precious souls that we are stewarding.
I recently posed the question to the four of them with our current foster children in mind. Like me, Roy, Wendell, and Lillian work through their logic with analysis of all that the decision might imply. Mabel’s answer is clearly distinguishable by two features, its brevity and resolute nature. “Yes, of course we should.” In her five words sits a clarity of moral calculus that has no time for what it might cost her because it is given entirely to prioritizing the compassion she feels for her little brother and sister. She is not naive, she is assured.
As for me, I’m trying to keep up with her.
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