Jody Cantrell Dyer's Blog: What's your story? Maybe I can help you write it., page 16

Theory 25: Dang you Tupperware ladies, dang you. But I do love your products.

                                                                                Read a new post to Theories: Size 12 each Friday!


Last week, in Theory 24: Teachers are money hustlers, ya’ll, I closed by quoting Downtown Queen. She said, “I was so happy when I retired from teaching so I didn’t have to buy any more junk from my colleagues! If other teachers are so broke they have to sell stuff, what makes them think their teacher friends can afford to buy it? Every time I went in the teacher’s lounge there was some product or some catalog laid out by the microwave.”

Don't we all have a Tupperware drawer?
Here is a related quote from Wikipedia. Yes, students, I am quoting from Wikipedia. I don’t have time to find a journal article, identify evidence in the text, and use MLA citation to credit the source. I’ll save that for my master’s thesis. Remember, I’m busy hustling. Anyhoo, here’s what some unknown but, in my opinion, totally accurate contributor says: “Tupperware pioneered the direct marketing strategy made famous by the Tupperware Party.” Who doesn't love a dish that can fly? Well, Tall Child, actually. 

Thanks so much you direct marketing pioneers. Yes, you’ve liberated some housewives but also forced us to sell and shop by capitalizing on three issues (urges) women constantly struggle to balance: being good mothers, shopping, and guilt.

I totally understand the three components of the Trifecta.
1. Time for Family - Women want more time with their children. Tall Child backs out of the driveway to deliver Sharky and Gnome to their respective schools early each morning. I pick them up. We are apart MOST of the day. That stinks.
2. Shopping – We are gatherers. Ya’ll, women are very different from men. We are talkers. We need to say lots of words and gather lots of things. We are (most of us) service-oriented. Why not shop, talk, and help our friends all in one man-free location?
3. Guilt - Most women work. When I was a housewife, I felt guilty for not helping Tall Child pay bills. I concocted schemes (see Theory 24), sold flowers, substitute taught, and hammered his real estate signs into the ground. I wanted to contribute, but I didn’t want to sacrifice time with Sharky and Gnome. Catch 22 guilt – not uncommon for modern working mothers.
This Trifecta of female characteristics has made Tupperware a legendary household name and made millions for the companies who followed suit:
AvonAmway
Pampered Chef
Rodan & Fields
AdvoCcare
Mary Kay
Thirty-One Gifts
Matilda Jane
Park Lane
Arbonne International
Premiere
Southern Living
CandleLite
Scentsy
PartyLite
Stella and Dot
ViSalus
Tastefully Simple
Creative Memories
Discovery Toys
Stampin' Up
Cloud 9 (intimate apparel)

Whew, and these are just the companies with which I’ve had direct marketing contact. By the way, my friends have sold this stuff and I wish I could afford to buy more of it. Why? For one thing, I love the products. They are high-quality, aesthetically pleasing, functional, and they last forever. Plus, I am a contestant in the battle of the Trifecta! I want to support my girlfriends’ independence, I love to buy stuff, and I feel guilty when I can only order the cheapest thing in the catalog. But, remember, I’m a teacher hustler. One day my ship will come in! Maybe you readers can buy my book, The Eye of Adoption, and help my ship set sail! Ooooh, maybe I could host a book party! Hmmmm, this teacher hustler has an idea.

Delicious and I talked one day about how teenagers “go goth” to be different but then find themselves in hundred-person packs of black-clad, silver-studded gothness. They conform to non-conformity. Kind of like all those “individualistic” mountain menin Asheville, NC who have the exact same facial hair-do’s.
I particularly like the conforming to non-conformity explanations we women give when we pick up the direct marketing banner. Here are a few I’ve heard or, ahem, said:
I’ve had an epiphany.
I really wanted to contribute to the financial security of my family.
This product has changed my life.
I love the products and get a huge discount.
I enjoy spending time with my friends and talking about household products.
The Lord called me to sell _______. (Did nothear this from the intimate apparel saleslady).

Honesty is refreshing and actually a really good sales strategy. Maybe “direct” saleswomen should be just that—direct. They could say:
I am tired of hearing my husband gripe about the grocery bill. I need my own cash. I want Dollywood Gold passes. Every year.

I miss working but I don’t want to get up at 6:00 a.m. and put on panty hose and have a boss.

I want any reason to hang out with my buddies, drink wine, and shop. 

Simple math. If twelve women come to my house, one man will leave.

I’m saving up for a divorce.


Of course, there’s also the super guilt, guilt component. Let’s call it G2(Guilt Squared.) I go to the party even when I’m broke because I’m afraid no one else will go to the party and I buy something because I don’t want the hostess to think I’m a mooch. So confusing. Teachers get paid once a month. Delicious says, “I just don’t feel right until I’m almost broke.”

Once, I asked her, “Do you ever balance your checkbook?”
She said, “No. I like living on the edge.” Direct salesladies, if you are marketing to teachers, host the party on a payday. Hustle smart. Ladies, doesn’t it seem like we get invited to these parties when we are flat out of money? 

Also, “market” your products appropriately. A work buddy told me that his Sunday school classmates were telling praise and prayer requests when a fellow Christian said, “I’d like to give praise to my four-year-old son for bringing me my morning AdvoCare Spark.” Not cool. Can I get an “Amen”?

So, say you are a “living on the edge” and down to your last dime and get the party invite. How can you conquer Guilt Squared and regret the direct marketing party with pride and with respect to your friend/cousin/co-worker hostess? Stick with the theme. Be direct. Maybe say:
You are serving alcohol and I’m only three weeks out of rehab.
My boobs are too big for those blouses.
My butt is too big for those skirts.
I have edema. Can’t wear boots.
I’m not smart enough to figure out how to complete your order form.
My husband is a tightwad.
[Child’s name] has basketball/baseball/football/ballet/guitar/unicycle practice.
My mother-in-law buys all my children’s clothes.
I’m allergic to latex.

~ ~ ~
I have deduced the ultimate, sweetest, most considerate, tricking-of-the-Tall Child solution to the problematic Trifecta and Guilt Squared: I buy all my Christmas presents at these parties!

I shop efficiently and guilt-free. I support my friends. And, I score some high-quality loot for my family. One day, when (not if) the zombie apocalypse finally happens, you’ll all thank me for those Pampered Chef pizza cutters.


Bring it on. You are no match for this shopper!


Why don’t men shop in little parties? Couldn’t they all drink beer and watch a friend do a grill set demonstration? Maybe they could cook nachos in rubber dishes and try on different designs of belts. Don’t they ever feel guilty? Even at Christmas time? Which brings me to Theory 26: In the Christmas season, men just need to do what they are told.
See you next post! Until then, think outside the barn. Merry Christmas!
Let's talk! Find me and friend me!



Facebook: Theories: Size 12  (See each post, comment, share, and talk directly with others readers and me!) I'd LOVE to hear your theories!Facebook: Jody Cantrell Dyer Facebook: The Eye of Adoption GoodReads.com: Friend me! Let's talk books. Google+: The Eye of Adoption Google+: Theories: Size 12 Twitter: @jodycdyer Author website: www.jodydyer.com Buy The Eye of Adoption here: Amazon.com

Theory 24: Teachers are money hustlers, ya'll.

Reader friends, I have really missed my weekly exercise in sarcasm (it’s the only exercise I do). To all of ya’ll who read and shared the first five chapters of The Eye of Adoption (my blog posts in November—National Adoption Awareness Month), I shout out a huge THANK YOU!!! I took a risk there, but it paid off. New readers, particularly waiting mothers, found The Eye of Adoption and found a new friend—me—on every page. Ya’ll would not believe the stories I hear from families battling infertility or riding the complex currents of the adoption. Those chapters will stay in the blog archive and are also on The Eye of Adoption Facebook page in the notes section. Share at will.

If I were independently wealthy, I’d write a separate blog (maybe even a book) detailing the incredible stories I hear from waiting and adoptive mothers. But, I need insurance and a paycheck, so, for now, I’ll just post our Friday laughs to this blog, write my little “Stop and Think” article for the local Hibu magazines, guest post for other bloggers, and market the heck out of The Eye of Adoption.   Working girl 
I am a middle aged, mid-sized woman going through the daily grind in a middle income and wonderful teaching job. I’ve always been an overachiever and pretty ambitious. Heck, I get up at 5:00 am to write. Hmmm, I don’t have time to exercise, but I make time to write. My rear end definitely shows my preference. Tall Child thinks I’m nuts but, between you and me, he spends more time on Sunday battling my cousins and friends in Fantasy Football than I do writing all week. I guess our gambles are similar. He hopes to win the pot. I hope to sell more books. By the way, this blog will morph into a book and I want YOUR theories! Mint Julep and Delicious have given me some stellar ideas. Y’all need to like Theories: Size 12 on Facebook so we can chat it up and you can be part of the Theories: Size 12paperback and Kindle.
See how fluidly I “sold” my Facebook page? I just mentioned the book four times and Facebook 4 times. See how I am warming you up to one day purchase ten copies of Theories: Size 12? Did you know Kindle sells the Theories: Size 12 blog now for only $.99 a month? Smooth.
In Theory 23: God and prayer are most definitely in schools , I wrote of my first year teaching in an urban school. I couldn’t pronounce some of the students’ names (the school is an English as a Second Language hub and quite diverse), so I nicknamed them based on behavior. One day, it dawned on me that fast typists could make some cash tapping out other kids’ papers. I said so aloud, and my student named “Always Stands” shouted, “Mrs. D, you a hustler. You always tryin’ to make money.”
I replied, “Well, Always Stands, I paid $1800 in daycare before I got my first teacher paycheck for Knox County, which was $1900. So, yes, I have to hustle.” I told my affluent friend OMGG the sum of that first paycheck and she laughed the mascara right off her face. Honestly, Tennessee isn’t exactly known for its high-paying teaching jobs. Most of us love teaching, but we also seek financial security, so, we hustle.
I’m tossing out only a fewadventures in money-making my teacher relatives, friends, and I have attempted. I labeled each with cautionary headings in the vein of Theory 3: You should be nice to everyone you meet, because you will meet again, especially if you were not nice in the first place .

Fellow educators, I hope you like your nicknames, and I hope you’ll share these anecdotes with students (after semester exams, of course) and save us some summer stress.

Cautionary Tales:
Finish your homework for English class. Your teacher may stir your green beans this summer. Teachers know concessions stands, so transition to restaurant work is natural. Plus, living in a series of tourist towns that lay a path to The Great Smoky Mountains gave my teachers ample hustling opportunities. Delicious, Mooch, Big Booty J, Moon, Baby, and others tossed salads and dished desserts to nine million tourists gobbling their ways through Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. Delicious and BBJ made appearances at Hobie’s, Howard’s, The Green Valley Restaurant, and Applewood. I don’t know many Gatlinburg teachers who didn’t serve a tour at The Heidelberg Restaurant at Ober Gatlinburg (where the Tram lands). Even the grammar school music teacher, “The Instrumentalist,” donned lederhosen and played brass and percussion for the Oompah Pa Band. Gatlinburg-Pittman Highlander teachers quickly shed their kilts to make some German dough.

See Theory 7: Everyone should work in a restaurant (Part 1, Part 2)  for more entertaining and embarrassing adventures in food service.
Once, in the teachers’ lounge at Gatlinburg-Pittman, a then chunky Delicious joked, “I am sick of waiting tables. I may try prostitution this summer.” Her co-worker “Πr2” asked, “Are you going to charge by the pound?”
Don’t eat the yellow snow cones if you smarted off in history class.Handsome teacher “Magnum P.I.” chipped and flavored ice for hot tourists on Gatlinburg’s main strip. Our Honors Typing (that’s what we called it) teacher “Goose” powdered greasy funnel cakes in his own booth just a few yards away.

Late for practice? That may cost you extra at the baseball card show!Magnum P.I. also hosted the occasional baseball card trading show in a borrowed hotel conference room – usually the Howard Johnson. Cousin Roscoe (son of BBJ) and friends (then ages 12-14) helped him out. Once, Roscoe begged me, “Bug, give me just one of your summer paychecks and I’ll double it at the baseball card show this weekend.” Hustlers beget hustlers, ya’ll. FYI – Don’t have a car wash at the top of a mountain. Hustle smart.

Teachers get physical in the summer. “Mystery Coach” loaded—hand-under-hiney style—tourists into sight-seeing helicopters.

Grammarians with gusto make Great Tour Guides – Tell Your Granny!Teacher “Tush” ownedthe microphone when she hopped on crowded tour busses as they cruised into the Smith Family Theater parking lot in Pigeon Forge. By the way, Smith Family Theater entertainers are former teachers. My cousins. Mentioned elsewhere in this blog. They really don’t want to go back to teaching, so please see their show when you visit The Smokies. Best Show in The Smokies for years running—as determined by The Mountain Press readers! Hustlers hustle for other hustlers, ya’ll.

Want extra credit? Bring your married aunt and uncle who make a combined income over $60,000 and have decent credit to Coach Bama’s timeshare booth!Timeshare booths perch at busy spots along the PF and G-burg drags. Calm, sweet, honest Coach Bama raked in a few good sales before he had to start basketball camps. Camps. Consider these the super hustle. Coaches spend entire weekends managing schedules, phone calls, disputes, money, and snacks. Exhausting. I tried it.

Student parents: Support your teacher friends when they hustle. They will return the favors!I held a “Jody Camp” a few summers ago. I toted and hollered at 5 campers for 5 days. Sharky, Gnome, “Brother,” “Boyfriend,” and “Angel #3” picked blackberries, swam, played monopoly, and cruised the farm. I scored a little cash but a priceless week with my friends’ children. That was some of the hardest money and those are some of the funniest memories I’ve ever made. “Brother” (who was my oldest camper at age 12), later used me as a reference to apply for a camp counselor job. My recommendation surely seal his hustling deal!

Prefer a sanitized inner tube for the lazy river? Get your pronouns straight.Teacher “Wild Onion” expertly doled out tubes to SPF’d tourists at a local water park. Meanwhile, just across the cement pond, sweet science teacher “Daisy” served up nachos and fountain drinks.

Practice your clarinet like a good geek because your band director may soon be your boss, or worse, your employee.As a teen worker at The Track, I handed out skee-ball prizes to indecisive goobers. I rescued fat tourists with no hand-eye coordination as they frantically circle spun strained rubber boats in the center of bumper boat pools. I handed out golf clubs and neon balls in the putt-putt booth. I labored under the watchful eye of my high school band director, “Music Man.” Music Man moved up the management ladder quickly. Track owners trusted teachers to separate scraped up tourists from go-cart asphalt and serve concessions. Teachers are used to saying “Wash your hands,” “Wait your turn,” and “Do the math” (mini theory: people can’t count once they leave home). But teachers who applied took the risk of being managed by a former student. That’s just a gamble teachers take.

Don’t underestimate your teachers. They are trained researchers and industrious risk-takers. Delicious and I made a gamble once. We bet on Mother Nature’s bounty on The Crippled Beagle Farm. We heard that one of my elementary teachers—let’s call her “Ginseng Guru”—was digging and selling ginseng for over $1,000 a dried pound. We freaked; $1,000 is serious money. With student loan and medical debts out the yin-yang, Delicious and I were gonna dig out of the recession with some Crippled Beagle ginseng! We made a plan. I scoured the internet and learned to locate ginseng using companion plants, to dig only plants with three or more prongs and five years of maturity. I knew how to dry and sell the roots and even lined up two buyers. I watched videos and printed pictures. We set a digging date. Obviously, plants are easier to find in the spring. But we were fired up, so we started our hunt on a cold, wet, January Saturday. We wore old farm clothes and carried grocery sacks and different size shovels. Delicious did no research, so when I told her ginseng grows on steep hills, she choose to support me from below. Delicious poked her walking stick through mud and black walnuts behind the barn and made a verbal shopping list while I climbed, slid, and cussed. My miserable hunt lasted 90 minutes and resulted in three plants. I think that, with my misted hair, aching knees, and desperation for easy money, I saw mirages in the undergrowth. I dug some kind of ginseng fool’s gold green stuff. Now, listen, poaching is a big issue for ginseng farmers, so let me make this clear. No hunting is allowed on The Crippled Beagle Farm. Ever. For critters or roots. Plus, if there were Ginseng on my farm, I’d wouldn’t be hustling so hard at school teaching, now, would I?
 

 Thar's gold in them thar hills!
One of Knoxville's greatest ladies—"Downtown Queen"—taught PE for many years. She once confessed to me, “I was so happy when I retired from teaching so I didn’t have to buy any more junk from my colleagues! If other teachers are so broke they have to sell stuff, what makes them think their teacher friends can afford to buy it? Every time I went in the teacher’s lounge there was some product or some catalog laid out by the microwave.” They were hustling, my Queen. Which brings me to Theory 25: Dang you Tupperware ladies, dang you. But I do love your products.  

See you next Friday! Until then, think outside the barn.
 
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The Eye of Adoption: Chapters 1-5

Readers, lots of folks have enjoyed Chatpers 1-4 of The Eye of Adoption! Thank you for spreading the message! Today, I add Chapter 5, "Small Talk." You can read Chapters 1-5 in this post.

I’ll be back to my humor theories December 6 with Theory 24: Teachers are hustlers, ya'll.
Until December, my writing efforts are focused on promoting adoption as a modern, healthy option for infertile couples and couples facing a crisis pregnancy.

I’ve also teamed up with other adoption authors to give our books away throughout the month. Be sure to check the links at the end of each post for information on how to receive other authors' download dates. In one weekend, The Eye of Adoption was downloaded over 4,000 times!
So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7 (NKJV)
 
Friends, I am the same everywhere I go, and that includes my writing style. I promise you will laugh and I know you will learn, so I hope you will read and share these chapters and my message of hope and humor, faith and family.  Besides, doesn’t everyone love a good adoption story?



 
 

Do you see the baby in the clouds? An ethereal ultrasound?
 
~ ~ ~
  THE EYE OF ADOPTION


the true story of my turbulent wait
for a baby
 

Jody Cantrell Dyer
 
 
~ ~ ~



This book is protected under the copyright laws of the
United States of America.  Any reproduction or unauthorizeduse is prohibited without express permission of the author,except brief quotes for use in interviews,newspaper or magazine articles, or reviews.For information, contact author.email: jdyer415@yahoo.com ISBN-10: 1481040138ISBN-13: 978-1481040136 
Bible verses quoted within are from the following versions:THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.The King James Version is public domain in the United States of America.Front cover photograph obtained from fotolia.comBack cover artwork by Houston DyerCover design by Sherri B. McCall 





 ~ ~ ~  
Chapter 1 No One “Just Adopts” 


Hope deferred maketh the heart sick:but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.—Proverbs 13:12 


When I was a toddler, I entertained relatives by singing this little song:
 Special, special, I am very special            God made me this way!
 
I would draw out the word “way” as “waaaaaaaaaaay” like an operatic trill, a crowd-pleasing ending to my parlor trick performance. That song rings true for every child. My children are no more special than your children or the child for which you pray and wait. However, adoption is special. It was divinely designed and serves as a living example of God’s graceful, abundant love for humankind.  I have two friends who, years ago, placed babies for adoption. Each was in college when she was surprised by a crisis pregnancy. One friend told me her experience when she found out my husband Jeff and I were trying to adopt. She gave me crucial advice regarding the birthparents’ extended family. Her help later proved vital. The other friend is unaware that I know she placed a baby for adoption. When she sees us, she asks to hold my child. I think holding my baby gives her assurance and peace about the decision she made so many years ago. My initial purpose in writing this book was to chronicle the sweet and sour elements of our adoption story for my children. I am a public school teacher, not a writer, but I wanted my children to understand the extremes to which their father and I suffered and succeeded to create our family. Our children will have a colorful, descriptive, documented account of a story that tested love, endurance, commitment, and faith, a story they can learn from and someday pass on to their families. As I revisited my journal entries, mined through letters and emails from friends and relatives, and studied countless pieces of medical documents and adoption paperwork, I realized that my story could benefit people outside my little family. For that reason, I expanded the book to reveal details regarding every step my husband Jeff and I took toward our second child. In these pages I will candidly present information to intimately describe how Jeff and I clumsily but successfully battled through the uncontrolled currents of infertility and adoption.  To protect my adopted child’s most personal history, I kept much of the birth family’s biological and social background information private. My intention in writing this book is not to expose my child, but to expose the raw and rewarding aspects of adoption.Throughout each section of this book, I divulge friends’, relatives’, and strangers’ commentary, support, criticism, and reaction. I share the effects of all of the above on my marriage. I also try my best to illuminate God’s concern and involvement in every moment of our trek toward a baby.I hope my story will benefit people who wish to become adoptive parents, regardless of where they are in the process. Whether you decide to adopt after failed fertility treatments, lost pregnancies, a lost child, no chance of conceiving, have a dozen children already, or feel “called” to adopt, I respect you. No matter the circumstances, adoptive parents share a special bond. I hope “waiting parents” will relate to my emotions, experiences, tribulations, and triumphs. I hope by doing so, you find camaraderie, relief, and optimism. Because adoption is a spiritual transaction conducted within a commercial industry, success in adoption requires involvement from what seems like everyone connected to the adoptive parents. Thus, adoptive parents’ friends, relatives, co-workers, and even pets will find themselves here, too. I urge anyone connected to waiting parents to read my story to empathize with the adoptive family and perhaps alleviate, not complicate, the inevitable burdens. Do not underestimate the depths of suffering and lengths of endurance required of adoptive parents. Do not underestimate the difficult choice to find a child through adoption. No one “just adopts.”My mother thought of the book’s title, The Eye of Adoption. She has a particular gift for naming pets; my aunts, uncles, and cousins often contract her to name their animals, so I asked her to name this book. After reading the book, her critter-naming gift prevailed once more. Adoption is a storm of faith, fear, paperwork, people, hurt, healing, words, work, devotion, divinity, rawness, revelation, days, and, hopefully, a delivery. I was not strong on my own. I relied on my husband, my mother, my friends, my family, and my faith to prop me up during my doubtful and weak moments. I hope my story is a clear window through which you can visualize your potential adoption experience. I hope my story comforts you as you live in the eye of adoption. The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ MenGang aft agley,An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,For promis’d joy!—Robert Burns, “To A Mouse”   ~ ~ ~

Chapter 2
The Master Plan

 Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.—Benjamin Franklin
  Though I am a “lonely only” child, I have nine first cousins who enjoy close relationships with their siblings. As a child I did not particularly want a brother or sister. I relished the one-on-one attention and communication I had with both of my parents. They talked with me and included me: we enjoyed a tight bond. When I was nineteen, my father died. It was June 1993. He was forty-four. I had just finished my freshman year of college. My father’s death altered my way of thinking. I suddenly grasped the quantitative nature of my and my mother’s existence, life’s fragility, and death’s finality. I, erroneously, felt responsible for my mother’s well being. From then on, I longed for a sibling. I desperately needed a brother or sister, someone who knew exactly how I felt, someone with whom I could commiserate. Also, already known for my smart mouth (a high school teacher nicknamed me “tongue-lasher”) my sarcasm and cynicism sharpened. A week after my father’s death, I applied for a summer job at IHOP in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. My cousin Toby, a return summer worker, championed my cause and implored the restaurant manager to grant me a coveted breakfast shift so I could be home at night with my mother. I did my best to model southern hospitality as I teased customers who ordered the Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity pancake platter, but grief and anxiety accumulated like the plates precariously stacked up my left arm. Often, when I was exhausted from my trancelike trudge through a day of waitressing, I fibbed to customers when they ordered desserts, “We are out of that.” I just wanted the giddy tourons (my father’s term: half tourist, half moron) to pay and go back to their hotels so I could go home and be miserable with my mother. The fry cooks felt sorry for me and routinely treated me to rich chocolate chip pancakes with hot syrup, Cool Whip, and vanilla ice cream. In August, I took my plumped up rear and sour attitude back to The University of Tennessee’s Humes Hall filled with carefree co-eds. College and the future took on new meaning for me. I became an impatient control freak, worrier, and planner. I wrote papers the same day professors assigned them. If my mother did not answer her home phone, I freaked out, figuring she had died of a heart attack like my father, had a freak accident (she did almost run over herself once), choked on peanuts…. My mind went into orbit with any hint of mystery as to her well-being. I set my sights on graduating early to save my mother, a high school English teacher, money. I majored in finance to secure a lucrative job; if I became a young widow like my schoolteacher mother, I would be better able support my family. I mapped out my entire future: graduate early, earn a high income, take care of my mother, find a husband, have a big family, and hit all my goals in case I was going to die in my early forties. At nineteen, I had already made the decision to have three children when I got married.  ~~~  Chapter 3 Blueprints for Footprints

 In dreams begins responsibility.
—William Butler Yeats, Responsibilities


Jeff and I married on April 15, 2000. What a deadline. I was twenty-six, and he was thirty-six. We were not naïve. As an only child whose mother suffered two miscarriages, I did not take pregnancy for granted. I sincerely hoped to become pregnant as soon as possible. I even promised my mother-in-law! I wanted those three children.           Jeff and I lived in a one-level, three bedroom ranch home with a flat backyard and a big kitchen. It was in the perfect proximity to hospitals, libraries, and parks. I saw no reason to move until we had a school-aged child. But Jeff wanted to. That was one of our first lengthy arguments. Jeff put a For Sale by Owner sign in the front yard. Daily, after Jeff backed out of the driveway and turned out of sight, I jerked the sign up from the grass and threw it in my backseat. When I got home from work, I pushed it back into place so he would never know. Weeks later, overcome with guilt, I admitted my crime. My forgiving husband hired a realtor to find us a house, so I stuck the For Sale by Owner sign in the grass and left it. Not long after that, I negotiated the sale to a co-worker.So, just four months after Jeff and I married we began looking for a new home in Knoxville. Jeff wanted to move closer to his friends and be in the “right” school zone. My parents raised me in Sevier County in East Tennessee on seventy-two acres of Appalachian hills, hollers, and creeks. I could see Mount LeConte from my Gatlinburg-Pittman High School parking lot. My mother (who taught at my high school) and I drove through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park every day on the way to and from school. Sevier County has grown tremendously, but when I was growing up, trips to the grocery store, school, hospital, or church were long and tiresome. As a new wife and habitual worrier planning a three-child family, I desired a safer, more convenient location in which to raise my family. My must-haves were much more specific than Jeff’s: in my search, I combined my future children’s needs and my desire to re-create my best childhood memories. I thought through the details and played out all kinds of scenarios. My children needed to grow up close to a hospital. All the bedrooms had to be together so, in case of fire, I could grab my bra (The Red Cross does not usually get my size over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders in their donation bags) and my children and “head for the pines” for safety. I wanted to be able to wash dishes and watch my children shoot basketball. My cousin Claire says you know you are in East Tennessee when someone misses a rebound and the ball rolls fifty feet downhill and then a fight ensues about who is responsible for its retrieval: the shooter or the rebounder. We also needed a spot for spinning Big Wheels. I grew up in a one hundred year-old cold farmhouse, so I was low maintenance. I was not picky, just specific. Our realtor found several pretty houses near Jeff’s friends, but the homes either had split bedrooms or no basketball goal within kitchen view. No deal.           My in-laws lived in Knoxville at that time, so our plan was to stay with them during the old house sale and new house purchase gap. One Sunday, I had had it. Married only four months and not too eager to live with my in-laws, I decided to rush the process. Jeff was playing at least eighteen holes of golf that morning, so I took off on my own to find a house. I started at Kingston Pike, the main thoroughfare that juts through Knoxville, and took roads left and right until I happened upon a realtor open house in Glen Cove subdivision. Lyons Bend, the road just before Glen Cove, reminded me of Gatlinburg’s steep, snaking, sun-dappled roads. I was still unfamiliar with that area of Knox County. Having driven in all directions all morning, and being naturally “spatially challenged,” I thought I was out in the boonies but went in anyway. I was surprised when the realtor informed me that youth baseball fields and Lake Loudon were only a half-mile away. She further explained that Glen Cove was zoned for Jeff’s sibling’s old elementary school, and was only a few miles from our church. The house was ten minutes from the UT campus, ten minutes from Children’s Hospital, and two miles from Food City.          The 1956 basement rancher contained three bedrooms all on the northern edge of the house and a large guest room with its own bathroom and sunroom on the southern edge of the house. I could store my children on one end and my mother on the other! The basement–just a huge playroom–was a bonus. The Poplar and pine-shaded backyard offered a safe place for children to explore. The sunny, sloped, grass-covered front yard was ideal for a Slip-n-Slide. The back patio, my favorite spot, was the perfect place to spin figure eights on a Big Wheel. Best of all, when I stood at the kitchen sink, I looked out the window to see a basketball goal, slap in the middle of the backyard.           I called Jeff and exclaimed, “I found our house! You need to come over here right now.” I stood guard at the open house until it was over, making small talk with the listing agent and shooing away any other lookers. When Jeff arrived, I used every ounce of my newlywed allure, wit, and equity and took advantage of his eighteen-hole beer buzz to sell him on the house. He agreed to make an offer. I called our realtor. He came and we drew up a full offer contract.           When Jeff and I got home, we talked about our new house. He asked, “How big was that garage?” I told him there was not one. I had whisked him through that house and completely manipulated the deal but it was too late then. I was determined to have that house; the location and the important things—to me—were there. Within days, our full-price offer secured for us a wonderful place to raise our three children. We stayed with Mr. Dyer (Mrs. Dyer was visiting Jeff’s brother, who was working in Africa at the time) for three weeks. Each afternoon, Jeff and I would leave work, go to his parents’ house and change clothes, and then go to Glen Cove to pull up filthy, decades-old carpet, score and strip cigarette-smoke stained wallpaper, and paint. Jeff’s daddy (also named Jeff) brought us supper almost every night. When Mrs. Dyer returned from Africa, she bragged on our remodeling work but admonished us for our combined fifteen-pound weight gain. Jeff and I moved to Glen Cove.           In May 2001, when we had been married a year, Jeff’s sister Jenny came to Knoxville to visit for Mother’s Day and Jeff’s birthday. Coincidentally, Jeff’s birthday fell on Mother’s Day that Sunday, May 13th. The Friday night before, Jenny announced to all of us that she was pregnant with her first child. Thrilled for her, I was sad for me. I had been trying to become pregnant since my wedding day, and I was getting worried. I happened to be a few days late in my cycle and had actually stopped at CVS to buy a pregnancy test. After hearing Jenny’s big news, I over-celebrated slash self-medicated with a few vodka tonics, forgetting until just before I went to bed that I had a pregnancy test in my purse. With liquid courage, I went into the bathroom, took the test, and waited the three minutes. I was shocked to see two pink lines appear. I looked at that little stick, expecting that second pink line to fade away, but it remained. I was pregnant! I stared at the test for a moment, then walked into our bedroom and told the always-calm Jeff I was pregnant. He responded, “Are you sure? Take another one in the morning.” He was hesitant. I was elated. Saturday morning, I tested positive again. Jeff and I smiled and savored the momentous revelation all day. Sunday morning, we attended church with Jeff’s family and celebrated Mother’s Day and Jeff’s birthday with brunch on the Dyer’s back porch. Jenny was happily babbling about her big news. Jeff and I, still in shock, mentioned nothing about ours. Women’s intuition never fails. Halfway through the meal, Mrs. Dyer looked at me and asked, “Jody, how long have you been pregnant?” I delighted in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.“About three weeks.” Screams of delight filled the patio; we sounded like the bird exhibit at the Knoxville Zoo. I visited my gynecologist the next morning. He tested my hormones. My progesterone levels were quite low so he prescribed vaginal suppositories. I had to insert the progesterone “tubes” at 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. each day and lie still for thirty minutes after each insertion. I was a bank branch manager in downtown Knoxville at the time. We had these ridiculous weekly “call nights” each Thursday. From 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. we phoned customers and tried to set appointments to sell bank products. To accurately maintain my 7:00 p.m. suppository schedule on those nights, I sneaked to the ladies room two floors beneath my office, near the hefty main vault filled with hundreds of safe deposit boxes. I inserted the medicine and laid flat and still (there are no pillows in bank basements) for thirty minutes, just as the doctor instructed, praying my male boss did not ask where I was. God was looking out for me because, for the six weeks in a row I did drugs in the vault, my boss never caught on. Other than that, my pregnancy was healthy and surprisingly easy; I never threw up, and I had no issues that I knew of other than low progesterone. Just days before Christmas, Jenny gave birth to my precious niece Ellie.  On January 7, a week before my due date, I visited my obstetrician. I begged her to induce me the next day. She agreed. I was so keyed up, I mistakenly took the wrong Interstate 40 ramp and drove miles out of my way before I realized I was headed to Nashville. I went home, called the bank human resources department and my boss to tell them I was beginning my maternity leave. I called my mother who squealed in delight. She planned to stay with us the first week after I gave birth. My matchless mother, a hyper-thinker, has mastered the art of anticipation. She loves to make lists and pack coolers (a throwback to her University of Georgia days of partying) and suitcases. She had packed her bags, made a list of suppers and treats she would cook for Jeff and me, and purchased birth announcements, stamps, and envelopes. She was ready to be a grandmama! On the phone, she told me she had cleaned and ironed a particular bold-colored shirt so her infant grandson would “immediately notice” her. She hung up the phone and carried her suitcases to the driveway. She carefully draped the outfit over her suitcase and went to make sure the stove was off and to lock the front door. Then, in a typical fit of excitement, she cranked up the car and backed over her own suitcase. When my frenzied mother got to my house, she showed me her black shirt, embellished with large, bright puppy faces and muddy brown tire tracks. The next afternoon, family and friends eagerly waited at Fort Sanders Hospital on The University of Tennessee campus for the arrival of Jefferson Houston Dyer III. At 5:21 p.m., January 8, 2002, Houston was born. Jeff walked into the waiting room to a crowd of Houston fans and proudly announced, “He looks just like me.”  
 ~ ~ ~  Chapter 4
The Enemy: Infertility

 
A whippoorwill on a window still-it should have made me smileBut everything sounds lonesome to a melancholy child

—DiPiero& Tillis, “Melancholy Child”
 
That year I turned 28 in February and Jeff turned 39 in May. Aware of our progressing ages and my master plan, we had no time to waste. I began trying to conceive our second child in October of 2002, when Houston was only nine months old. The annoying things I had to endure with pregnancy were minor compared to what was coming. As a child, I loved hearing the story of my mother’s pregnancy. Birth stories are full of happiness and gratitude with unique details that make children feel loved. While my mother was pregnant with me, she and my paternal grandmother Wimmie began writing journals for me. Throughout my pregnancy, I kept a journal for Houston detailing my and Jeff’s excitement, plans for Houston’s future, and how much we already loved him. I daydreamed on paper. I kept a journal for “Baby #2” but in a much different format for many reasons. Initially, I used the journal to vent my frustrations and record efforts in the fertility battle. During that time, Jeff and I happily welcomed our lively niece, Anna Kate. I loved being an aunt. My desire for another child intensified.For two years, I used ovulation kits and timed our love life. When trying to conceive my second baby, I spent a couple of years in denial. I reconciled that, since my first pregnancy went so smoothly, I would soon be pregnant. I blamed the negative results on Jeff’s being out of town for business, my misreading ovulating kits, my diet, and everything imaginable and reasonable. I also blamed my infertility on my stressful job. I worked hard, but I was consumed with trying to conceive. I was a mother to toddler Houston and an extremely busy branch manager, so I kept one fat daily appointment book. Once, a male co-worker glanced at the open book on my desk and innocently asked, “Why do you have a heart drawn on Thursday?” I bluntly admitted, “That’s when I ovulate so Jeff and I have to have sex that night.” He blushed, left, and never looked at my planner again. In December 2004, I quit my job as a bank branch manager in hopes that the lower stress lifestyle of a housewife would help me conceive. Jeff had switched from a career in sales to become a realtor and could support us on his own. The change in lifestyle definitely made life with Jeff and a three-year-old Houston more enjoyable, but, sadly, being a stay-at-home mother did nothing to boost my fertility. Houston was potty-trained, and I was utterly frustrated. I sought help from a specialist. Our first appointment cost $1,900.00. We rapidly used up money and months. Two months into treatment, I jokingly threatened the doctor, “If I’m not pregnant in six months, I’m going to start smoking. If I’m not pregnant in a year, I’m doing meth. Smokers and drug addicts get pregnant all the time. You don’t want that on your conscience. The pressure is on, doctor.” Jeff and I answered awkward questions and endured embarrassing procedures for the next four years. A friend teased Jeff, “I hear you’ve been treating your body like an amusement park.” Below is an excerpt from my Baby #2 journal, dated August 8, 2006, two years into the fertility treatment trials.
Dear Hopefully Baby #2,I’ve been trying to have you for four years now! No luck but a big effort this week should help. My fertility doctor performed hysteroscopy, laparoscopy, and dilation and curettage. He said he could barely identify my reproductive organs; they were encased in scar tissue, likely a result of my birth defect, gastroschisis. He diagnosed me with a clotting disorder (MTHFR). He said I have been pregnant two or three times since Houston and wrote in the post-op report, “There is no rational explanation for the patient’s previous pregnancies.” That includes Houston! I am hoping for another miracle. Am I selfish? I am emotionally, physically, financially, and mentally exhausted but I feel you are on your way to me somehow. I will do everything I can to make you, my dream of a baby, real.I love you,      Mama
 I include that letter not to dredge up pity but to remind readers that the devastation of infertility is a monthly cycle fraught with anxious anticipation and gut-wrenching disappointment. I kept a detailed log of ovulation, menstruation, and sexual activity for my doctor. I hated the necessary invasion of privacy. By this time, Jeff’s parents had moved back to Nashville, which meant a three hour drive and usually an overnight visit for us. I swear on the Smoky Mountains, for years it seemed like every time we visited them, no matter where I was in my cycle, I either ovulated, which meant I had to skip that month of trying (I could never have sex in the same house as my sweet in-laws—gross) or I spontaneously menstruated, which meant I had to suffer another round of disappointment without the needed privacy for my monthly crying jag. I actually carried pregnancy tests to Nashville with me. Once when I started my period there, I had a meltdown. In a tantrum, I took Jeff’s car keys and my pity-party attitude to Walgreens Drug Store. I stomped through the store to find the feminine hygiene/family-planning aisle. I bought the biggest boxes of tampons and pads I could find, thinking, Okay God, I just spent twenty-five bucks on supplies; if the laws of biology won’t help me, maybe Murphy’s Law will!
Throughout my years of trying to conceive, I took sixty-five pregnancy tests. They were all negative.
Friends and family should not underestimate how such a systematic dose of failure hurts. I spent six years, wasted thousands of dollars, and humiliated my husband and myself trying to have a second child while people all around me easily became pregnant—or so it felt to me.  I suffered bouts of anxiety and depression, often related to high doses of hormones and fertility drugs. I wrestled self-doubt, weight gain, poor self-esteem, mood swings, and bitterness toward pregnant people.To battle the hormone and depression-induced bulge, I exercised almost daily. I would drop Houston off at school and head to Lakeshore Park, near our house. The park contains flag football and the previously mentioned youth baseball fields, as well as a two-mile walking trail. Ironically, the park surrounds Lakeshore Mental Health Institute. I felt pretty “mental” as I paced around that track each morning. For a long time, I took heavy doses of Clomid and progesterone. I never felt suicidal, but I was down. Because I took such strong doses of medicine, I understand the mind-altering power of drugs. I remember walking across roadways during my exercise routine, leering at oncoming cars, and not really caring if they hit my bloated blubber butt. My melancholic attitude only worsened as I plodded past skinny, fit, young mothers jogging behind their babies’ strollers.


~ ~ ~   Chapter 5 Small Talk Dispute not with her: she is lunatic.—William Shakespeare, Richard III
When you are a young married woman and/or a young mother small talk often surrounds the topic of family planning, so by this point friends and acquaintances knew that I was trying to get pregnant. I hated baby showers, and when I did go to one, I usually cried all the way home. I dealt with all kinds of remarks and “advice.” I would be sitting at the pool with a bunch of mothers watching our boys do pencils and cannonballs off the diving board or I would be downtown Knoxville eating lunch with my work buddies, and the topics of children, parenting, or having more children would arise. Inevitably someone would say to me, “Just stop trying and it will happen.” Depending on my mood or hormone level, I either gently replied, “Oh, you are probably right” or curtly responded “If I don’t have sex when I am ovulating, I will not get pregnant. I have to try.” I truly despised the comment “Just relax and you will get pregnant.” I tried to bite my tongue, but my usual reply was, “I’m not sure I can relax that right fallopian tube out of a medical waste facility and back into my body, functioning properly!” Another thoughtless comment that an early obstetrician made was, “Just go to Victoria’s Secret and buy something sexy.” Even if Victoria’s Secret did sell negligees large enough to contain my Dollyesque boobs, it could not fix my problem. I despised the comment, “Wow, I just look at my husband and I get pregnant.” Perhaps I should have replied, “Well, I’ve looked at your husband, and I still don’t see how you got pregnant!” My fertility specialist said people mean well but cannot relate and just want to say something. Another statement I endured pretty often during fertility treatments and the adoption process was, “Just be thankful you have Houston.” Really? One should never feel selfish for wanting another child. I wanted a sibling for Houston. I felt Houston wanted a sibling. In retrospect, I think the pains of infertility and later adoption trek only amplified my love and appreciation for Houston, and likely made me a better parent to him.  I slowed down and enjoyed Houston’s unique personality, moments of soulful abstract thinking, and comical stunts. Men and women who are seeking to be parents for the first time, through infertility or adoption, have my sincerest empathy.  During my “low tides,” I often reminded myself, At least I am a parent and get to enjoy the life-altering and life-enhancing experience of simply being someone’s mother. I felt (feel) acutely sorry for those struggling to begin a family, and I pray this book is a comfort to them. “Childless parents”—as I like to call them—deserve elite prayer and extraordinary consideration. ~ ~ ~   
Readers, do you want to continue to Chapter 6-"Sweet offers and sex advice?" It is funny! If so, download The Eye of Adoption on Kindle ($4.99) or purchase the paperback ($12.60) via Amazon.com.  ***Matchbook Pricing! Purchase the paperback for a friend and enjoy the Kindle version for  only $1.99!*** See http://www.jodydyer.com for brick and mortar locations.
  
 Readers, please help others find hope through humor. Share these chapters with anyone you know who is/has been touched by infertility, adoption, or crisis pregnancy.

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See you next Friday with Theory 24: Teachers are money hustlers, ya'll. Until then, think outside the barn.

The Enemy: Infertility

Readers, lots of folks have enjoyed Chatpers 1-3 of The Eye of Adoption! Thank you for spreading the message! Today, I add Chapter 4, "The Enemy: Infertility."  Each Friday in November, I'll post an additional chapter of The Eye of Adoption. You can read Chapters 1-4 in this post.

I’ll be back to my humor theories December 6. I miss them and can't wait! 
Until December, my writing efforts are focused on promoting adoption as a modern, healthy option for creating families and helping men and women facing crisis pregnancies.

I’ve also teamed up with other adoption authors to give our books away throughout the month. Be sure to check the links at the end of each post for information on how to receive other authors' download dates. In one weekend, The Eye of Adoption was downloaded over 4,000 times!
So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7 (NKJV)
 
Friends, I am the same everywhere I go, and that includes my writing style. I promise you will laugh and I know you will learn, so I hope you will read and share these chapters and my message of hope and humor, faith and family.  Besides, doesn’t everyone love a good adoption story?



 
 

Do you see the baby in the clouds? An ethereal ultrasound?
 
~ ~ ~
 THE EYE OF ADOPTION





the true story of my turbulent wait
for a baby
 




Jody Cantrell Dyer
 
 
~ ~ ~

This book is protected under the copyright laws of theUnited States of America.  Any reproduction or unauthorizeduse is prohibited without express permission of the author,except brief quotes for use in interviews,newspaper or magazine articles, or reviews.For information, contact author.email: jdyer415@yahoo.com ISBN-10: 1481040138ISBN-13: 978-1481040136 
Bible verses quoted within are from the following versions:THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.The King James Version is public domain in the United States of America.Front cover photograph obtained from fotolia.comBack cover artwork by Houston DyerCover design by Sherri B. McCall 




 ~ ~ ~  
Chapter 1 No One “Just Adopts” 

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick:but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.—Proverbs 13:12 

When I was a toddler, I entertained relatives by singing this little song:
 Special, special, I am very special            God made me this way!
 
I would draw out the word “way” as “waaaaaaaaaaay” like an operatic trill, a crowd-pleasing ending to my parlor trick performance. That song rings true for every child. My children are no more special than your children or the child for which you pray and wait. However, adoption is special. It was divinely designed and serves as a living example of God’s graceful, abundant love for humankind.  I have two friends who, years ago, placed babies for adoption. Each was in college when she was surprised by a crisis pregnancy. One friend told me her experience when she found out my husband Jeff and I were trying to adopt. She gave me crucial advice regarding the birthparents’ extended family. Her help later proved vital. The other friend is unaware that I know she placed a baby for adoption. When she sees us, she asks to hold my child. I think holding my baby gives her assurance and peace about the decision she made so many years ago. My initial purpose in writing this book was to chronicle the sweet and sour elements of our adoption story for my children. I am a public school teacher, not a writer, but I wanted my children to understand the extremes to which their father and I suffered and succeeded to create our family. Our children will have a colorful, descriptive, documented account of a story that tested love, endurance, commitment, and faith, a story they can learn from and someday pass on to their families. As I revisited my journal entries, mined through letters and emails from friends and relatives, and studied countless pieces of medical documents and adoption paperwork, I realized that my story could benefit people outside my little family. For that reason, I expanded the book to reveal details regarding every step my husband Jeff and I took toward our second child. In these pages I will candidly present information to intimately describe how Jeff and I clumsily but successfully battled through the uncontrolled currents of infertility and adoption.  To protect my adopted child’s most personal history, I kept much of the birth family’s biological and social background information private. My intention in writing this book is not to expose my child, but to expose the raw and rewarding aspects of adoption.Throughout each section of this book, I divulge friends’, relatives’, and strangers’ commentary, support, criticism, and reaction. I share the effects of all of the above on my marriage. I also try my best to illuminate God’s concern and involvement in every moment of our trek toward a baby.I hope my story will benefit people who wish to become adoptive parents, regardless of where they are in the process. Whether you decide to adopt after failed fertility treatments, lost pregnancies, a lost child, no chance of conceiving, have a dozen children already, or feel “called” to adopt, I respect you. No matter the circumstances, adoptive parents share a special bond. I hope “waiting parents” will relate to my emotions, experiences, tribulations, and triumphs. I hope by doing so, you find camaraderie, relief, and optimism. Because adoption is a spiritual transaction conducted within a commercial industry, success in adoption requires involvement from what seems like everyone connected to the adoptive parents. Thus, adoptive parents’ friends, relatives, co-workers, and even pets will find themselves here, too. I urge anyone connected to waiting parents to read my story to empathize with the adoptive family and perhaps alleviate, not complicate, the inevitable burdens. Do not underestimate the depths of suffering and lengths of endurance required of adoptive parents. Do not underestimate the difficult choice to find a child through adoption. No one “just adopts.”My mother thought of the book’s title, The Eye of Adoption. She has a particular gift for naming pets; my aunts, uncles, and cousins often contract her to name their animals, so I asked her to name this book. After reading the book, her critter-naming gift prevailed once more. Adoption is a storm of faith, fear, paperwork, people, hurt, healing, words, work, devotion, divinity, rawness, revelation, days, and, hopefully, a delivery. I was not strong on my own. I relied on my husband, my mother, my friends, my family, and my faith to prop me up during my doubtful and weak moments. I hope my story is a clear window through which you can visualize your potential adoption experience. I hope my story comforts you as you live in the eye of adoption. The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ MenGang aft agley,An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,For promis’d joy!—Robert Burns, “To A Mouse”   ~ ~ ~

Chapter 2

The Master Plan

 Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.
—Benjamin Franklin
  Though I am a “lonely only” child, I have nine first cousins who enjoy close relationships with their siblings. As a child I did not particularly want a brother or sister. I relished the one-on-one attention and communication I had with both of my parents. They talked with me and included me: we enjoyed a tight bond. When I was nineteen, my father died. It was June 1993. He was forty-four. I had just finished my freshman year of college. My father’s death altered my way of thinking. I suddenly grasped the quantitative nature of my and my mother’s existence, life’s fragility, and death’s finality. I, erroneously, felt responsible for my mother’s well being. From then on, I longed for a sibling. I desperately needed a brother or sister, someone who knew exactly how I felt, someone with whom I could commiserate. Also, already known for my smart mouth (a high school teacher nicknamed me “tongue-lasher”) my sarcasm and cynicism sharpened. A week after my father’s death, I applied for a summer job at IHOP in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. My cousin Toby, a return summer worker, championed my cause and implored the restaurant manager to grant me a coveted breakfast shift so I could be home at night with my mother. I did my best to model southern hospitality as I teased customers who ordered the Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity pancake platter, but grief and anxiety accumulated like the plates precariously stacked up my left arm. Often, when I was exhausted from my trancelike trudge through a day of waitressing, I fibbed to customers when they ordered desserts, “We are out of that.” I just wanted the giddy tourons (my father’s term: half tourist, half moron) to pay and go back to their hotels so I could go home and be miserable with my mother. The fry cooks felt sorry for me and routinely treated me to rich chocolate chip pancakes with hot syrup, Cool Whip, and vanilla ice cream. In August, I took my plumped up rear and sour attitude back to The University of Tennessee’s Humes Hall filled with carefree co-eds. College and the future took on new meaning for me. I became an impatient control freak, worrier, and planner. I wrote papers the same day professors assigned them. If my mother did not answer her home phone, I freaked out, figuring she had died of a heart attack like my father, had a freak accident (she did almost run over herself once), choked on peanuts…. My mind went into orbit with any hint of mystery as to her well-being. I set my sights on graduating early to save my mother, a high school English teacher, money. I majored in finance to secure a lucrative job; if I became a young widow like my schoolteacher mother, I would be better able support my family. I mapped out my entire future: graduate early, earn a high income, take care of my mother, find a husband, have a big family, and hit all my goals in case I was going to die in my early forties. At nineteen, I had already made the decision to have three children when I got married.  ~~~  Chapter 3 Blueprints for Footprints

  In dreams begins responsibility.—William Butler Yeats, Responsibilities


Jeff and I married on April 15, 2000. What a deadline. I was twenty-six, and he was thirty-six. We were not naïve. As an only child whose mother suffered two miscarriages, I did not take pregnancy for granted. I sincerely hoped to become pregnant as soon as possible. I even promised my mother-in-law! I wanted those three children.
Jeff and I lived in a one-level, three bedroom ranch home with a flat backyard and a big kitchen. It was in the perfect proximity to hospitals, libraries, and parks. I saw no reason to move until we had a school-aged child. But Jeff wanted to. That was one of our first lengthy arguments. Jeff put a For Sale by Owner sign in the front yard. Daily, after Jeff backed out of the driveway and turned out of sight, I jerked the sign up from the grass and threw it in my backseat. When I got home from work, I pushed it back into place so he would never know. Weeks later, overcome with guilt, I admitted my crime. My forgiving husband hired a realtor to find us a house, so I stuck the For Sale by Owner sign in the grass and left it. Not long after that, I negotiated the sale to a co-worker.
So, just four months after Jeff and I married we began looking for a new home in Knoxville. Jeff wanted to move closer to his friends and be in the “right” school zone.
My parents raised me in Sevier County in East Tennessee on seventy-two acres of Appalachian hills, hollers, and creeks. I could see Mount LeConte from my Gatlinburg-Pittman High School parking lot. My mother (who taught at my high school) and I drove through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park every day on the way to and from school. Sevier County has grown tremendously, but when I was growing up, trips to the grocery store, school, hospital, or church were long and tiresome. As a new wife and habitual worrier planning a three-child family, I desired a safer, more convenient location in which to raise my family. My must-haves were much more specific than Jeff’s: in my search, I combined my future children’s needs and my desire to re-create my best childhood memories. I thought through the details and played out all kinds of scenarios. My children needed to grow up close to a hospital. All the bedrooms had to be together so, in case of fire, I could grab my bra (The Red Cross does not usually get my size over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders in their donation bags) and my children and “head for the pines” for safety. I wanted to be able to wash dishes and watch my children shoot basketball. My cousin Claire says you know you are in East Tennessee when someone misses a rebound and the ball rolls fifty feet downhill and then a fight ensues about who is responsible for its retrieval: the shooter or the rebounder. We also needed a spot for spinning Big Wheels. I grew up in a one hundred year-old cold farmhouse, so I was low maintenance. I was not picky, just specific.
Our realtor found several pretty houses near Jeff’s friends, but the homes either had split bedrooms or no basketball goal within kitchen view. No deal.
My in-laws lived in Knoxville at that time, so our plan was to stay with them during the old house sale and new house purchase gap. One Sunday, I had had it. Married only four months and not too eager to live with my in-laws, I decided to rush the process. Jeff was playing at least eighteen holes of golf that morning, so I took off on my own to find a house. I started at Kingston Pike, the main thoroughfare that juts through Knoxville, and took roads left and right until I happened upon a realtor open house in Glen Cove subdivision. Lyons Bend, the road just before Glen Cove, reminded me of Gatlinburg’s steep, snaking, sun-dappled roads. I was still unfamiliar with that area of Knox County. Having driven in all directions all morning, and being naturally “spatially challenged,” I thought I was out in the boonies but went in anyway. I was surprised when the realtor informed me that youth baseball fields and Lake Loudon were only a half-mile away. She further explained that Glen Cove was zoned for Jeff’s sibling’s old elementary school, and was only a few miles from our church. The house was ten minutes from the UT campus, ten minutes from Children’s Hospital, and two miles from Food City.
The 1956 basement rancher contained three bedrooms all on the northern edge of the house and a large guest room with its own bathroom and sunroom on the southern edge of the house. I could store my children on one end and my mother on the other! The basement–just a huge playroom–was a bonus. The Poplar and pine-shaded backyard offered a safe place for children to explore. The sunny, sloped, grass-covered front yard was ideal for a Slip-n-Slide. The back patio, my favorite spot, was the perfect place to spin figure eights on a Big Wheel. Best of all, when I stood at the kitchen sink, I looked out the window to see a basketball goal, slap in the middle of the backyard.
I called Jeff and exclaimed, “I found our house! You need to come over here right now.” I stood guard at the open house until it was over, making small talk with the listing agent and shooing away any other lookers. When Jeff arrived, I used every ounce of my newlywed allure, wit, and equity and took advantage of his eighteen-hole beer buzz to sell him on the house. He agreed to make an offer. I called our realtor. He came and we drew up a full offer contract. When Jeff and I got home, we talked about our new house. He asked, “How big was that garage?” I told him there was not one. I had whisked him through that house and completely manipulated the deal but it was too late then. I was determined to have that house; the location and the important things—to me—were there. Within days, our full-price offer secured for us a wonderful place to raise our three children. We stayed with Mr. Dyer (Mrs. Dyer was visiting Jeff’s brother, who was working in Africa at the time) for three weeks. Each afternoon, Jeff and I would leave work, go to his parents’ house and change clothes, and then go to Glen Cove to pull up filthy, decades-old carpet, score and strip cigarette-smoke stained wallpaper, and paint. Jeff’s daddy (also named Jeff) brought us supper almost every night. When Mrs. Dyer returned from Africa, she bragged on our remodeling work but admonished us for our combined fifteen-pound weight gain. Jeff and I moved to Glen Cove. In May 2001, when we had been married a year, Jeff’s sister Jenny came to Knoxville to visit for Mother’s Day and Jeff’s birthday. Coincidentally, Jeff’s birthday fell on Mother’s Day that Sunday, May 13th. The Friday night before, Jenny announced to all of us that she was pregnant with her first child. Thrilled for her, I was sad for me. I had been trying to become pregnant since my wedding day, and I was getting worried. I happened to be a few days late in my cycle and had actually stopped at CVS to buy a pregnancy test. After hearing Jenny’s big news, I over-celebrated slash self-medicated with a few vodka tonics, forgetting until just before I went to bed that I had a pregnancy test in my purse. With liquid courage, I went into the bathroom, took the test, and waited the three minutes. I was shocked to see two pink lines appear. I looked at that little stick, expecting that second pink line to fade away, but it remained. I was pregnant! I stared at the test for a moment, then walked into our bedroom and told the always-calm Jeff I was pregnant. He responded, “Are you sure? Take another one in the morning.” He was hesitant. I was elated. Saturday morning, I tested positive again. Jeff and I smiled and savored the momentous revelation all day. Sunday morning, we attended church with Jeff’s family and celebrated Mother’s Day and Jeff’s birthday with brunch on the Dyer’s back porch. Jenny was happily babbling about her big news. Jeff and I, still in shock, mentioned nothing about ours. Women’s intuition never fails. Halfway through the meal, Mrs. Dyer looked at me and asked, “Jody, how long have you been pregnant?” I delighted in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.“About three weeks.” Screams of delight filled the patio; we sounded like the bird exhibit at the Knoxville Zoo. I visited my gynecologist the next morning. He tested my hormones. My progesterone levels were quite low so he prescribed vaginal suppositories. I had to insert the progesterone “tubes” at 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. each day and lie still for thirty minutes after each insertion. I was a bank branch manager in downtown Knoxville at the time. We had these ridiculous weekly “call nights” each Thursday. From 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. we phoned customers and tried to set appointments to sell bank products. To accurately maintain my 7:00 p.m. suppository schedule on those nights, I sneaked to the ladies room two floors beneath my office, near the hefty main vault filled with hundreds of safe deposit boxes. I inserted the medicine and laid flat and still (there are no pillows in bank basements) for thirty minutes, just as the doctor instructed, praying my male boss did not ask where I was. God was looking out for me because, for the six weeks in a row I did drugs in the vault, my boss never caught on. Other than that, my pregnancy was healthy and surprisingly easy; I never threw up, and I had no issues that I knew of other than low progesterone. Just days before Christmas, Jenny gave birth to my precious niece Ellie.  On January 7, a week before my due date, I visited my obstetrician. I begged her to induce me the next day. She agreed. I was so keyed up, I mistakenly took the wrong Interstate 40 ramp and drove miles out of my way before I realized I was headed to Nashville. I went home, called the bank human resources department and my boss to tell them I was beginning my maternity leave. I called my mother who squealed in delight. She planned to stay with us the first week after I gave birth. My matchless mother, a hyper-thinker, has mastered the art of anticipation. She loves to make lists and pack coolers (a throwback to her University of Georgia days of partying) and suitcases. She had packed her bags, made a list of suppers and treats she would cook for Jeff and me, and purchased birth announcements, stamps, and envelopes. She was ready to be a grandmama! On the phone, she told me she had cleaned and ironed a particular bold-colored shirt so her infant grandson would “immediately notice” her. She hung up the phone and carried her suitcases to the driveway. She carefully draped the outfit over her suitcase and went to make sure the stove was off and to lock the front door. Then, in a typical fit of excitement, she cranked up the car and backed over her own suitcase. When my frenzied mother got to my house, she showed me her black shirt, embellished with large, bright puppy faces and muddy brown tire tracks. The next afternoon, family and friends eagerly waited at Fort Sanders Hospital on The University of Tennessee campus for the arrival of Jefferson Houston Dyer III. At 5:21 p.m., January 8, 2002, Houston was born. Jeff walked into the waiting room to a crowd of Houston fans and proudly announced, “He looks just like me.”  
 ~ ~ ~  Chapter 4

The Enemy: Infertility

 
A whippoorwill on a window still-it should have made me smile
But everything sounds lonesome to a melancholy child
—DiPiero & Tillis, “Melancholy Child”
 
That year I turned 28 in February and Jeff turned 39 in May. Aware of our progressing ages and my master plan, we had no time to waste. I began trying to conceive our second child in October of 2002, when Houston was only nine months old. The annoying things I had to endure with pregnancy were minor compared to what was coming. As a child, I loved hearing the story of my mother’s pregnancy. Birth stories are full of happiness and gratitude with unique details that make children feel loved. While my mother was pregnant with me, she and my paternal grandmother Wimmie began writing journals for me. Throughout my pregnancy, I kept a journal for Houston detailing my and Jeff’s excitement, plans for Houston’s future, and how much we already loved him. I daydreamed on paper. I kept a journal for “Baby #2” but in a much different format for many reasons. Initially, I used the journal to vent my frustrations and record efforts in the fertility battle. During that time, Jeff and I happily welcomed our lively niece, Anna Kate. I loved being an aunt. My desire for another child intensified. For two years, I used ovulation kits and timed our love life. When trying to conceive my second baby, I spent a couple of years in denial. I reconciled that, since my first pregnancy went so smoothly, I would soon be pregnant. I blamed the negative results on Jeff’s being out of town for business, my misreading ovulating kits, my diet, and everything imaginable and reasonable. I also blamed my infertility on my stressful job. I worked hard, but I was consumed with trying to conceive. I was a mother to toddler Houston and an extremely busy branch manager, so I kept one fat daily appointment book. Once, a male co-worker glanced at the open book on my desk and innocently asked, “Why do you have a heart drawn on Thursday?” I bluntly admitted, “That’s when I ovulate so Jeff and I have to have sex that night.” He blushed, left, and never looked at my planner again. In December 2004, I quit my job as a bank branch manager in hopes that the lower stress lifestyle of a housewife would help me conceive. Jeff had switched from a career in sales to become a realtor and could support us on his own. The change in lifestyle definitely made life with Jeff and a three-year-old Houston more enjoyable, but, sadly, being a stay-at-home mother did nothing to boost my fertility. Houston was potty-trained, and I was utterly frustrated. I sought help from a specialist. Our first appointment cost $1,900.00. We rapidly used up money and months. Two months into treatment, I jokingly threatened the doctor, “If I’m not pregnant in six months, I’m going to start smoking. If I’m not pregnant in a year, I’m doing meth. Smokers and drug addicts get pregnant all the time. You don’t want that on your conscience. The pressure is on, doctor.” Jeff and I answered awkward questions and endured embarrassing procedures for the next four years. A friend teased Jeff, “I hear you’ve been treating your body like an amusement park.” Below is an excerpt from my Baby #2 journal, dated August 8, 2006, two years into the fertility treatment trials.
Dear Hopefully Baby #2, I’ve been trying to have you for four years now! No luck but a big effort this week should help. My fertility doctor performed hysteroscopy, laparoscopy, and dilation and curettage. He said he could barely identify my reproductive organs; they were encased in scar tissue, likely a result of my birth defect, gastroschisis. He diagnosed me with a clotting disorder (MTHFR). He said I have been pregnant two or three times since Houston and wrote in the post-op report, “There is no rational explanation for the patient’s previous pregnancies.” That includes Houston! I am hoping for another miracle. Am I selfish? I am emotionally, physically, financially, and mentally exhausted but I feel you are on your way to me somehow. I will do everything I can to make you, my dream of a baby, real.I love you,      Mama  I include that letter not to dredge up pity but to remind readers that the devastation of infertility is a monthly cycle fraught with anxious anticipation and gut-wrenching disappointment. I kept a detailed log of ovulation, menstruation, and sexual activity for my doctor. I hated the necessary invasion of privacy. By this time, Jeff’s parents had moved back to Nashville, which meant a three hour drive and usually an overnight visit for us. I swear on the Smoky Mountains, for years it seemed like every time we visited them, no matter where I was in my cycle, I either ovulated, which meant I had to skip that month of trying (I could never have sex in the same house as my sweet in-laws—gross) or I spontaneously menstruated, which meant I had to suffer another round of disappointment without the needed privacy for my monthly crying jag. I actually carried pregnancy tests to Nashville with me. Once when I started my period there, I had a meltdown. In a tantrum, I took Jeff’s car keys and my pity-party attitude to Walgreens Drug Store. I stomped through the store to find the feminine hygiene/family-planning aisle. I bought the biggest boxes of tampons and pads I could find, thinking, Okay God, I just spent twenty-five bucks on supplies; if the laws of biology won’t help me, maybe Murphy’s Law will! Throughout my years of trying to conceive, I took sixty-five pregnancy tests. They were all negative. Friends and family should not underestimate how such a systematic dose of failure hurts. I spent six years, wasted thousands of dollars, and humiliated my husband and myself trying to have a second child while people all around me easily became pregnant—or so it felt to me.  I suffered bouts of anxiety and depression, often related to high doses of hormones and fertility drugs. I wrestled self-doubt, weight gain, poor self-esteem, mood swings, and bitterness toward pregnant people. To battle the hormone and depression-induced bulge, I exercised almost daily. I would drop Houston off at school and head to Lakeshore Park, near our house. The park contains flag football and the previously mentioned youth baseball fields, as well as a two-mile walking trail. Ironically, the park surrounds Lakeshore Mental Health Institute. I felt pretty “mental” as I paced around that track each morning. For a long time, I took heavy doses of Clomid and progesterone. I never felt suicidal, but I was down. Because I took such strong doses of medicine, I understand the mind-altering power of drugs. I remember walking across roadways during my exercise routine, leering at oncoming cars, and not really caring if they hit my bloated blubber butt. My melancholic attitude only worsened as I plodded past skinny, fit, young mothers jogging behind their babies’ strollers.






~ ~ ~  

  Readers, please send this post to anyone you know who is touched by infertility, adoption, or crisis pregnancy. You can copy and paste the URL into an email or you can Google+, Tweet, or share on Facebook.

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See you next Friday with Chapter 5! Until then, think outside the barn.

Blueprints for Footprints

Readers, lots of folks have enjoyed Chatpers 1-2 of The Eye of Adoption! Thank you for spreading the message! Today, I add Chapter 3, "Blueprints for Footprints."  (Remember, I’ll be back to my humor theories December 6.) I can't wait! I thought I'd enjoy the break from creative writing, but I miss it. Until December, my writing efforts are focused on promoting adoption as a modern, healthy option for creating families and helping men and women facing crisis pregnancies.


Each Friday in November, I'll post an additional chapter. I’ve also teamed up with other adoption authors to give our books away throughout the month. Be sure to check the links at the end of each post for information on how to receive other authors' download dates.

This weekend (November 15-17), you can download The Eye of Adoption FREE on Kindle or with the Kindle App.  Authors earn no royalties on free download days. Adoption authors particularly love to give their work away!
So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7 (NKJV)
Friends, I am the same everywhere I go, and that includes my writing style. I promise you will laugh and I know you will learn, so I hope you will read and share these chapters and my message of hope and humor, faith and family.  Besides, doesn’t everyone love a good adoption story?


  
 
Do you see the baby in the clouds? An ethereal ultrasound?  ~ ~ ~ 



THE EYE OF ADOPTION



the true story of my turbulent wait


for a baby


  


 


Jody Cantrell Dyer   ~ ~ ~
This book is protected under the copyright laws of theUnited States of America.  Any reproduction or unauthorizeduse is prohibited without express permission of the author,except brief quotes for use in interviews,newspaper or magazine articles, or reviews.For information, contact author.email: jdyer415@yahoo.com ISBN-10: 1481040138ISBN-13: 978-1481040136 
Bible verses quoted within are from the following versions:THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.The King James Version is public domain in the United States of America.Front cover photograph obtained from fotolia.comBack cover artwork by Houston DyerCover design by Sherri B. McCall




 ~ ~ ~  
Chapter 1 No One “Just Adopts” 


Hope deferred maketh the heart sick:but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.—Proverbs 13:12 



When I was a toddler, I entertained relatives by singing this little song:
 Special, special, I am very special            God made me this way!
 
I would draw out the word “way” as “waaaaaaaaaaay” like an operatic trill, a crowd-pleasing ending to my parlor trick performance. That song rings true for every child. My children are no more special than your children or the child for which you pray and wait. However, adoption is special. It was divinely designed and serves as a living example of God’s graceful, abundant love for humankind.  I have two friends who, years ago, placed babies for adoption. Each was in college when she was surprised by a crisis pregnancy. One friend told me her experience when she found out my husband Jeff and I were trying to adopt. She gave me crucial advice regarding the birthparents’ extended family. Her help later proved vital. The other friend is unaware that I know she placed a baby for adoption. When she sees us, she asks to hold my child. I think holding my baby gives her assurance and peace about the decision she made so many years ago. My initial purpose in writing this book was to chronicle the sweet and sour elements of our adoption story for my children. I am a public school teacher, not a writer, but I wanted my children to understand the extremes to which their father and I suffered and succeeded to create our family. Our children will have a colorful, descriptive, documented account of a story that tested love, endurance, commitment, and faith, a story they can learn from and someday pass on to their families. As I revisited my journal entries, mined through letters and emails from friends and relatives, and studied countless pieces of medical documents and adoption paperwork, I realized that my story could benefit people outside my little family. For that reason, I expanded the book to reveal details regarding every step my husband Jeff and I took toward our second child. In these pages I will candidly present information to intimately describe how Jeff and I clumsily but successfully battled through the uncontrolled currents of infertility and adoption.  To protect my adopted child’s most personal history, I kept much of the birth family’s biological and social background information private. My intention in writing this book is not to expose my child, but to expose the raw and rewarding aspects of adoption.Throughout each section of this book, I divulge friends’, relatives’, and strangers’ commentary, support, criticism, and reaction. I share the effects of all of the above on my marriage. I also try my best to illuminate God’s concern and involvement in every moment of our trek toward a baby.I hope my story will benefit people who wish to become adoptive parents, regardless of where they are in the process. Whether you decide to adopt after failed fertility treatments, lost pregnancies, a lost child, no chance of conceiving, have a dozen children already, or feel “called” to adopt, I respect you. No matter the circumstances, adoptive parents share a special bond. I hope “waiting parents” will relate to my emotions, experiences, tribulations, and triumphs. I hope by doing so, you find camaraderie, relief, and optimism. Because adoption is a spiritual transaction conducted within a commercial industry, success in adoption requires involvement from what seems like everyone connected to the adoptive parents. Thus, adoptive parents’ friends, relatives, co-workers, and even pets will find themselves here, too. I urge anyone connected to waiting parents to read my story to empathize with the adoptive family and perhaps alleviate, not complicate, the inevitable burdens. Do not underestimate the depths of suffering and lengths of endurance required of adoptive parents. Do not underestimate the difficult choice to find a child through adoption. No one “just adopts.”My mother thought of the book’s title, The Eye of Adoption. She has a particular gift for naming pets; my aunts, uncles, and cousins often contract her to name their animals, so I asked her to name this book. After reading the book, her critter-naming gift prevailed once more. Adoption is a storm of faith, fear, paperwork, people, hurt, healing, words, work, devotion, divinity, rawness, revelation, days, and, hopefully, a delivery. I was not strong on my own. I relied on my husband, my mother, my friends, my family, and my faith to prop me up during my doubtful and weak moments. I hope my story is a clear window through which you can visualize your potential adoption experience. I hope my story comforts you as you live in the eye of adoption. The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ MenGang aft agley,An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,For promis’d joy!—Robert Burns, “To A Mouse”   ~ ~ ~

Chapter 2

The Master Plan
 Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.
—Benjamin Franklin
  Though I am a “lonely only” child, I have nine first cousins who enjoy close relationships with their siblings. As a child I did not particularly want a brother or sister. I relished the one-on-one attention and communication I had with both of my parents. They talked with me and included me: we enjoyed a tight bond. When I was nineteen, my father died. It was June 1993. He was forty-four. I had just finished my freshman year of college. My father’s death altered my way of thinking. I suddenly grasped the quantitative nature of my and my mother’s existence, life’s fragility, and death’s finality. I, erroneously, felt responsible for my mother’s well being. From then on, I longed for a sibling. I desperately needed a brother or sister, someone who knew exactly how I felt, someone with whom I could commiserate. Also, already known for my smart mouth (a high school teacher nicknamed me “tongue-lasher”) my sarcasm and cynicism sharpened. A week after my father’s death, I applied for a summer job at IHOP in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. My cousin Toby, a return summer worker, championed my cause and implored the restaurant manager to grant me a coveted breakfast shift so I could be home at night with my mother. I did my best to model southern hospitality as I teased customers who ordered the Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity pancake platter, but grief and anxiety accumulated like the plates precariously stacked up my left arm. Often, when I was exhausted from my trancelike trudge through a day of waitressing, I fibbed to customers when they ordered desserts, “We are out of that.” I just wanted the giddy tourons (my father’s term: half tourist, half moron) to pay and go back to their hotels so I could go home and be miserable with my mother. The fry cooks felt sorry for me and routinely treated me to rich chocolate chip pancakes with hot syrup, Cool Whip, and vanilla ice cream. In August, I took my plumped up rear and sour attitude back to The University of Tennessee’s Humes Hall filled with carefree co-eds. College and the future took on new meaning for me. I became an impatient control freak, worrier, and planner. I wrote papers the same day professors assigned them. If my mother did not answer her home phone, I freaked out, figuring she had died of a heart attack like my father, had a freak accident (she did almost run over herself once), choked on peanuts…. My mind went into orbit with any hint of mystery as to her well-being. I set my sights on graduating early to save my mother, a high school English teacher, money. I majored in finance to secure a lucrative job; if I became a young widow like my schoolteacher mother, I would be better able support my family. I mapped out my entire future: graduate early, earn a high income, take care of my mother, find a husband, have a big family, and hit all my goals in case I was going to die in my early forties. At nineteen, I had already made the decision to have three children when I got married.  ~~~



Chapter 3



Blueprints for Footprints
 In dreams begins responsibility. —William Butler Yeats, Responsibilities
  Jeff and I married on April 15, 2000. What a deadline. I was twenty-six, and he was thirty-six. We were not naïve. As an only child whose mother suffered two miscarriages, I did not take pregnancy for granted. I sincerely hoped to become pregnant as soon as possible. I even promised my mother-in-law! I wanted those three children. Jeff and I lived in a one-level, three bedroom ranch home with a flat backyard and a big kitchen. It was in the perfect proximity to hospitals, libraries, and parks. I saw no reason to move until we had a school-aged child. But Jeff wanted to. That was one of our first lengthy arguments. Jeff put a For Sale by Owner sign in the front yard. Daily, after Jeff backed out of the driveway and turned out of sight, I jerked the sign up from the grass and threw it in my backseat. When I got home from work, I pushed it back into place so he would never know. Weeks later, overcome with guilt, I admitted my crime. My forgiving husband hired a realtor to find us a house, so I stuck the For Sale by Owner sign in the grass and left it. Not long after that, I negotiated the sale to a co-worker. So, just four months after Jeff and I married we began looking for a new home in Knoxville. Jeff wanted to move closer to his friends and be in the “right” school zone. My parents raised me in Sevier County in East Tennessee on seventy-two acres of Appalachian hills, hollers, and creeks. I could see Mount LeConte from my Gatlinburg-Pittman High School parking lot. My mother (who taught at my high school) and I drove through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park every day on the way to and from school. Sevier County has grown tremendously, but when I was growing up, trips to the grocery store, school, hospital, or church were long and tiresome. As a new wife and habitual worrier planning a three-child family, I desired a safer, more convenient location in which to raise my family. My must-haves were much more specific than Jeff’s: in my search, I combined my future children’s needs and my desire to re-create my best childhood memories. I thought through the details and played out all kinds of scenarios. My children needed to grow up close to a hospital. All the bedrooms had to be together so, in case of fire, I could grab my bra (The Red Cross does not usually get my size over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders in their donation bags) and my children and “head for the pines” for safety. I wanted to be able to wash dishes and watch my children shoot basketball. My cousin Claire says you know you are in East Tennessee when someone misses a rebound and the ball rolls fifty feet downhill and then a fight ensues about who is responsible for its retrieval: the shooter or the rebounder. We also needed a spot for spinning Big Wheels. I grew up in a one hundred year-old cold farmhouse, so I was low maintenance. I was not picky, just specific. Our realtor found several pretty houses near Jeff’s friends, but the homes either had split bedrooms or no basketball goal within kitchen view. No deal. My in-laws lived in Knoxville at that time, so our plan was to stay with them during the old house sale and new house purchase gap. One Sunday, I had had it. Married only four months and not too eager to live with my in-laws, I decided to rush the process. Jeff was playing at least eighteen holes of golf that morning, so I took off on my own to find a house. I started at Kingston Pike, the main thoroughfare that juts through Knoxville, and took roads left and right until I happened upon a realtor open house in Glen Cove subdivision. Lyons Bend, the road just before Glen Cove, reminded me of Gatlinburg’s steep, snaking, sun-dappled roads. I was still unfamiliar with that area of Knox County. Having driven in all directions all morning, and being naturally “spatially challenged,” I thought I was out in the boonies but went in anyway. I was surprised when the realtor informed me that youth baseball fields and Lake Loudon were only a half-mile away. She further explained that Glen Cove was zoned for Jeff’s sibling’s old elementary school, and was only a few miles from our church. The house was ten minutes from the UT campus, ten minutes from Children’s Hospital, and two miles from Food City. The 1956 basement rancher contained three bedrooms all on the northern edge of the house and a large guest room with its own bathroom and sunroom on the southern edge of the house. I could store my children on one end and my mother on the other! The basement–just a huge playroom–was a bonus. The Poplar and pine-shaded backyard offered a safe place for children to explore. The sunny, sloped, grass-covered front yard was ideal for a Slip-n-Slide. The back patio, my favorite spot, was the perfect place to spin figure eights on a Big Wheel. Best of all, when I stood at the kitchen sink, I looked out the window to see a basketball goal, slap in the middle of the backyard. I called Jeff and exclaimed, “I found our house! You need to come over here right now.” I stood guard at the open house until it was over, making small talk with the listing agent and shooing away any other lookers. When Jeff arrived, I used every ounce of my newlywed allure, wit, and equity and took advantage of his eighteen-hole beer buzz to sell him on the house. He agreed to make an offer. I called our realtor. He came and we drew up a full offer contract. When Jeff and I got home, we talked about our new house. He asked, “How big was that garage?” I told him there was not one. I had whisked him through that house and completely manipulated the deal but it was too late then. I was determined to have that house; the location and the important things—to me—were there. Within days, our full-price offer secured for us a wonderful place to raise our three children. We stayed with Mr. Dyer (Mrs. Dyer was visiting Jeff’s brother, who was working in Africa at the time) for three weeks. Each afternoon, Jeff and I would leave work, go to his parents’ house and change clothes, and then go to Glen Cove to pull up filthy, decades-old carpet, score and strip cigarette-smoke stained wallpaper, and paint. Jeff’s daddy (also named Jeff) brought us supper almost every night. When Mrs. Dyer returned from Africa, she bragged on our remodeling work but admonished us for our combined fifteen-pound weight gain. Jeff and I moved to Glen Cove. In May 2001, when we had been married a year, Jeff’s sister Jenny came to Knoxville to visit for Mother’s Day and Jeff’s birthday. Coincidentally, Jeff’s birthday fell on Mother’s Day that Sunday, May 13th. The Friday night before, Jenny announced to all of us that she was pregnant with her first child. Thrilled for her, I was sad for me. I had been trying to become pregnant since my wedding day, and I was getting worried. I happened to be a few days late in my cycle and had actually stopped at CVS to buy a pregnancy test. After hearing Jenny’s big news, I over-celebrated slash self-medicated with a few vodka tonics, forgetting until just before I went to bed that I had a pregnancy test in my purse. With liquid courage, I went into the bathroom, took the test, and waited the three minutes. I was shocked to see two pink lines appear. I looked at that little stick, expecting that second pink line to fade away, but it remained. I was pregnant! I stared at the test for a moment, then walked into our bedroom and told the always-calm Jeff I was pregnant. He responded, “Are you sure? Take another one in the morning.” He was hesitant. I was elated. Saturday morning, I tested positive again. Jeff and I smiled and savored the momentous revelation all day. Sunday morning, we attended church with Jeff’s family and celebrated Mother’s Day and Jeff’s birthday with brunch on the Dyer’s back porch. Jenny was happily babbling about her big news. Jeff and I, still in shock, mentioned nothing about ours. Women’s intuition never fails. Halfway through the meal, Mrs. Dyer looked at me and asked, “Jody, how long have you been pregnant?” I delighted in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “About three weeks.” Screams of delight filled the patio; we sounded like the bird exhibit at the Knoxville Zoo. I visited my gynecologist the next morning. He tested my hormones. My progesterone levels were quite low so he prescribed vaginal suppositories. I had to insert the progesterone “tubes” at 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. each day and lie still for thirty minutes after each insertion. I was a bank branch manager in downtown Knoxville at the time. We had these ridiculous weekly “call nights” each Thursday. From 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. we phoned customers and tried to set appointments to sell bank products. To accurately maintain my 7:00 p.m. suppository schedule on those nights, I sneaked to the ladies room two floors beneath my office, near the hefty main vault filled with hundreds of safe deposit boxes.  I inserted the medicine and laid flat and still (there are no pillows in bank basements) for thirty minutes, just as the doctor instructed, praying my male boss did not ask where I was. God was looking out for me because, for the six weeks in a row I did drugs in the vault, my boss never caught on. Other than that, my pregnancy was healthy and surprisingly easy; I never threw up, and I had no issues that I knew of other than low progesterone. Just days before Christmas, Jenny gave birth to my precious niece Ellie.  On January 7, a week before my due date, I visited my obstetrician. I begged her to induce me the next day. She agreed. I was so keyed up, I mistakenly took the wrong Interstate 40 ramp and drove miles out of my way before I realized I was headed to Nashville. I went home, called the bank human resources department and my boss to tell them I was beginning my maternity leave. I called my mother who squealed in delight. She planned to stay with us the first week after I gave birth. My matchless mother, a hyper-thinker, has mastered the art of anticipation. She loves to make lists and pack coolers (a throwback to her University of Georgia days of partying) and suitcases. She had packed her bags, made a list of suppers and treats she would cook for Jeff and me, and purchased birth announcements, stamps, and envelopes. She was ready to be a grandmama! On the phone, she told me she had cleaned and ironed a particular bold-colored shirt so her infant grandson would “immediately notice” her. She hung up the phone and carried her suitcases to the driveway. She carefully draped the outfit over her suitcase and went to make sure the stove was off and to lock the front door. Then, in a typical fit of excitement, she cranked up the car and backed over her own suitcase. When my frenzied mother got to my house, she showed me her black shirt, embellished with large, bright puppy faces and muddy brown tire tracks. The next afternoon, family and friends eagerly waited at Fort Sanders Hospital on The University of Tennessee campus for the arrival of Jefferson Houston Dyer III. At 5:21 p.m., January 8, 2002, Houston was born. Jeff walked into the waiting room to a crowd of Houston fans and proudly announced, “He looks just like me.”    ~ ~ ~
  Readers, please send this post to anyone you know who is touched by infertility, adoption, or crisis pregnancy. You can copy and paste the URL into an email or you can Google+, Tweet, or share on Facebook.

If you’d like read reviews, visit www.jodydyer.com or go directly to Amazon.com. To be notified of my and other authors’ free Kindle download dates, “like” The Eye of Adoption on Facebook.

If you’d like to subscribe to Theories: Size 12, scroll to the bottom of your screen and type in your email address. Thanks!

See you next Friday with Chapter 3! Until then, think outside the barn.

The Master Plan

Readers, lots of folks enjoyed Chapter 1 of The Eye of Adoption this week! Thank you for spreading the message! Today, I offer up Chapters 1-2.  (Remember, I’ll be back to my humor theories December 6.) I can't wait! Until then, help me encourage others throughout November, National Adoption Awareness Month, by sharing this blog by email, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and Google Plus each week.

The first chapters of The Eye of Adoption indicate the book's overall tone: my honest, raw, down-to-earth, sometimes flat-out funny, yet fascinating and still-evolving journey in adoption.  Last Friday, Gnome's birthmother and I were featured speakers at Bethany Christian Services' Annual Fellowship Dinner. What a privilege it was to share the stage with my "soul sister" and hero. She made Sharky a brother when I couldn't, and now she helps so many others by speaking out about open adoption. 
 
Remember, each Friday in November, I'll post an additional chapter. I’ve also teamed up with other adoption authors to give our books away throughout the month. This weekend, you can download the eBook 7 Steps to Domestic Infant Adoption by adoptive father Tim Elder (founder of InfantAdoptionGuide.com).  Be sure to check the links at the end of each post for information on how to receive other authors, download dates, including mine.


~~~Friends, I am the same everywhere I go, and that includes my writing style. I promise you will laugh and I know you will learn, so I hope you will read these chapters each week. Besides, doesn’t everyone love a good adoption story?

Happy Reading! 
 
Do you see the baby in the clouds? An ethereal ultrasound?  ~ ~ ~ 


THE EYE OF ADOPTION


the true story of my turbulent wait

for a baby

  

 

Jody Cantrell Dyer   ~ ~ ~
This book is protected under the copyright laws of theUnited States of America.  Any reproduction or unauthorizeduse is prohibited without express permission of the author,except brief quotes for use in interviews,newspaper or magazine articles, or reviews.For information, contact author.email: jdyer415@yahoo.com ISBN-10: 1481040138ISBN-13: 978-1481040136 
Bible verses quoted within are from the following versions:THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.The King James Version is public domain in the United States of America.Front cover photograph obtained from fotolia.comBack cover artwork by Houston DyerCover design by Sherri B. McCall



 ~ ~ ~  
Chapter 1 No One “Just Adopts” 

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick:but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.—Proverbs 13:12 


When I was a toddler, I entertained relatives by singing this little song:
 Special, special, I am very special            God made me this way!
 I would draw out the word “way” as “waaaaaaaaaaay” like an operatic trill, a crowd-pleasing ending to my parlor trick performance. That song rings true for every child. My children are no more special than your children or the child for which you pray and wait. However, adoption is special. It was divinely designed and serves as a living example of God’s graceful, abundant love for humankind.  I have two friends who, years ago, placed babies for adoption. Each was in college when she was surprised by a crisis pregnancy. One friend told me her experience when she found out my husband Jeff and I were trying to adopt. She gave me crucial advice regarding the birthparents’ extended family. Her help later proved vital. The other friend is unaware that I know she placed a baby for adoption. When she sees us, she asks to hold my child. I think holding my baby gives her assurance and peace about the decision she made so many years ago. My initial purpose in writing this book was to chronicle the sweet and sour elements of our adoption story for my children. I am a public school teacher, not a writer, but I wanted my children to understand the extremes to which their father and I suffered and succeeded to create our family. Our children will have a colorful, descriptive, documented account of a story that tested love, endurance, commitment, and faith, a story they can learn from and someday pass on to their families. As I revisited my journal entries, mined through letters and emails from friends and relatives, and studied countless pieces of medical documents and adoption paperwork, I realized that my story could benefit people outside my little family. For that reason, I expanded the book to reveal details regarding every step my husband Jeff and I took toward our second child. In these pages I will candidly present information to intimately describe how Jeff and I clumsily but successfully battled through the uncontrolled currents of infertility and adoption.  To protect my adopted child’s most personal history, I kept much of the birth family’s biological and social background information private. My intention in writing this book is not to expose my child, but to expose the raw and rewarding aspects of adoption.Throughout each section of this book, I divulge friends’, relatives’, and strangers’ commentary, support, criticism, and reaction. I share the effects of all of the above on my marriage. I also try my best to illuminate God’s concern and involvement in every moment of our trek toward a baby.I hope my story will benefit people who wish to become adoptive parents, regardless of where they are in the process. Whether you decide to adopt after failed fertility treatments, lost pregnancies, a lost child, no chance of conceiving, have a dozen children already, or feel “called” to adopt, I respect you. No matter the circumstances, adoptive parents share a special bond. I hope “waiting parents” will relate to my emotions, experiences, tribulations, and triumphs. I hope by doing so, you find camaraderie, relief, and optimism. Because adoption is a spiritual transaction conducted within a commercial industry, success in adoption requires involvement from what seems like everyone connected to the adoptive parents. Thus, adoptive parents’ friends, relatives, co-workers, and even pets will find themselves here, too. I urge anyone connected to waiting parents to read my story to empathize with the adoptive family and perhaps alleviate, not complicate, the inevitable burdens. Do not underestimate the depths of suffering and lengths of endurance required of adoptive parents. Do not underestimate the difficult choice to find a child through adoption. No one “just adopts.”My mother thought of the book’s title, The Eye of Adoption. She has a particular gift for naming pets; my aunts, uncles, and cousins often contract her to name their animals, so I asked her to name this book. After reading the book, her critter-naming gift prevailed once more. Adoption is a storm of faith, fear, paperwork, people, hurt, healing, words, work, devotion, divinity, rawness, revelation, days, and, hopefully, a delivery. I was not strong on my own. I relied on my husband, my mother, my friends, my family, and my faith to prop me up during my doubtful and weak moments. I hope my story is a clear window through which you can visualize your potential adoption experience. I hope my story comforts you as you live in the eye of adoption. 
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ MenGang aft agley,An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,For promis’d joy!—Robert Burns, “To A Mouse”   ~ ~ ~

Chapter 2

The Master Plan
 Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.
—Benjamin Franklin
  Though I am a “lonely only” child, I have nine first cousins who enjoy close relationships with their siblings. As a child I did not particularly want a brother or sister. I relished the one-on-one attention and communication I had with both of my parents. They talked with me and included me: we enjoyed a tight bond. When I was nineteen, my father died. It was June 1993. He was forty-four. I had just finished my freshman year of college. My father’s death altered my way of thinking. I suddenly grasped the quantitative nature of my and my mother’s existence, life’s fragility, and death’s finality. I, erroneously, felt responsible for my mother’s well being. From then on, I longed for a sibling. I desperately needed a brother or sister, someone who knew exactly how I felt, someone with whom I could commiserate. Also, already known for my smart mouth (a high school teacher nicknamed me “tongue-lasher”) my sarcasm and cynicism sharpened. A week after my father’s death, I applied for a summer job at IHOP in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. My cousin Toby, a return summer worker, championed my cause and implored the restaurant manager to grant me a coveted breakfast shift so I could be home at night with my mother. I did my best to model southern hospitality as I teased customers who ordered the Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity pancake platter, but grief and anxiety accumulated like the plates precariously stacked up my left arm. Often, when I was exhausted from my trancelike trudge through a day of waitressing, I fibbed to customers when they ordered desserts, “We are out of that.” I just wanted the giddy tourons (my father’s term: half tourist, half moron) to pay and go back to their hotels so I could go home and be miserable with my mother. The fry cooks felt sorry for me and routinely treated me to rich chocolate chip pancakes with hot syrup, Cool Whip, and vanilla ice cream. In August, I took my plumped up rear and sour attitude back to The University of Tennessee’s Humes Hall filled with carefree co-eds. College and the future took on new meaning for me. I became an impatient control freak, worrier, and planner. I wrote papers the same day professors assigned them. If my mother did not answer her home phone, I freaked out, figuring she had died of a heart attack like my father, had a freak accident (she did almost run over herself once), choked on peanuts…. My mind went into orbit with any hint of mystery as to her well-being. I set my sights on graduating early to save my mother, a high school English teacher, money. I majored in finance to secure a lucrative job; if I became a young widow like my schoolteacher mother, I would be better able support my family. I mapped out my entire future: graduate early, earn a high income, take care of my mother, find a husband, have a big family, and hit all my goals in case I was going to die in my early forties. At nineteen, I had already made the decision to have three children when I got married.  ~~~   Readers, please send this post to anyone you know who is touched by infertility, adoption, or crisis pregnancy. You can copy and paste the URL into an email or you can Google+, Tweet, or share on Facebook.
If you’d like read reviews, visit www.jodydyer.com or go directly to Amazon.com. To be notified of my and other authors’ free Kindle download dates, “like” The Eye of Adoption on Facebook.
If you’d like to subscribe to Theories: Size 12, scroll to the bottom of your screen and type in your email address. Thanks!
See you next Friday with Chapter 3! Until then, think outside the barn.

No one "just adopts."

Readers, I know I promised Theory 24: Teachers are money hustlers, ya’ll, so I hope you’ll forgive my literary detour. I promise I’ll be back to Theories December 6.
 
Why am I doing this?
Friday, November 1, 2013, Gnome’s birthmother and I are featured speakers at an important annual fundraiser for Bethany Christian Services, the agency that introduced us. I’ll call the Gnome’s birthmother “Tinkerbell” because she is bright, full of light, and small like a sprite! I adore her and we love to share our adoption experience with others.  Yesterday I met with our social worker to discuss the Bethany event and he said, “People just love your story.”
Tinkerbell and I each lived through difficult, emotional, compelling, modern, and—at times—humorous birth and adoption stories.
Tall Child was adopted in 1963. I suffer from secondary infertility.  I started trying to conceive a second child in 2002. I met Tinkerbell in 2010. Our complex journeys toward and with one another still astound me. For me, adoption was grief in reverse. For Tinkerbell, adoption was the supremedemonstration of selfless love. I gained the education of a lifetime in my eight-year wait for Gnome; I learned so much that I felt compelled to help others affected by infertility and/or adoption. So, I wrote a book titled The Eye of Adoption: The True Story of My Turbulent Wait for a Baby.
As I contemplated what I would say to an audience of hundreds of people at the Bethany fundraiser, I thought:
November is National Adoption Awareness Month!
I love to share my story!
I have a blog!
I think outside the barn!
I should share my story with my blog readers !
 
Thus, to celebrate adoption and enlighten, encourage, and entertain, I'll post one chapter of The Eye of Adoption each Friday in November. I’ve also teamed up with other adoption authors to give our books away throughout the month. Be sure to check the links at the end of each post for information on how to receive our free Kindle download dates.

Friends, I am the same everywhere I go, and that includes my writing style. I promise you will laugh and I know you will learn, so I hope you will read these chapters each week. Besides, doesn’t everyone love a good adoption story? Please share these posts and the free download dates with friends and family.
Happy Reading!
   
Do you see the baby in the clouds? An ethereal ultrasound?
  ~ ~ ~ 

THE EYE OF ADOPTION

the true story of my turbulent wait
for a baby
  
 
Jody Cantrell Dyer   ~ ~ ~
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America.  Any reproduction or unauthorized use is prohibited without express permission of the author, except brief quotes for use in interviews, newspaper or magazine articles, or reviews. For information, contact author. email: jdyer415@yahoo.com  ISBN-10: 1481040138 ISBN-13: 978-1481040136   Bible verses quoted within are from the following versions: THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. The King James Version is public domain in the United States of America. Front cover photograph obtained from fotolia.com Back cover artwork by Houston Dyer Cover design by Sherri B. McCall


 ~ ~ ~
 
 
 

No One “Just Adopts”
 
Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. —Proverbs 13:12  

When I was a toddler, I entertained relatives by singing this little song:
Special, special, I am very special            God made me this way!
 
I would draw out the word “way” as “waaaaaaaaaaay” like an operatic trill, a crowd-pleasing ending to my parlor trick performance. That song rings true for every child. My children are no more special than your children or the child for which you pray and wait. However, adoption is special. It was divinely designed and serves as a living example of God’s graceful, abundant love for humankind. 
I have two friends who, years ago, placed babies for adoption. Each was in college when she was surprised by a crisis pregnancy. One friend told me her experience when she found out my husband Jeff and I were trying to adopt. She gave me crucial advice regarding the birthparents’ extended family. Her help later proved vital. The other friend is unaware that I know she placed a baby for adoption. When she sees us, she asks to hold my child. I think holding my baby gives her assurance and peace about the decision she made so many years ago.
My initial purpose in writing this book was to chronicle the sweet and sour elements of our adoption story for my children. I am a public school teacher, not a writer, but I wanted my children to understand the extremes to which their father and I suffered and succeeded to create our family. Our children will have a colorful, descriptive, documented account of a story that tested love, endurance, commitment, and faith, a story they can learn from and someday pass on to their families.
As I revisited my journal entries, mined through letters and emails from friends and relatives, and studied countless pieces of medical documents and adoption paperwork, I realized that my story could benefit people outside my little family. For that reason, I expanded the book to reveal details regarding every step my husband Jeff and I took toward our second child. In these pages I will candidly present information to intimately describe how Jeff and I clumsily but successfully battled through the uncontrolled currents of infertility and adoption.  To protect my adopted child’s most personal history, I kept much of the birth family’s biological and social background information private. My intention in writing this book is not to expose my child, but to expose the raw and rewarding aspects of adoption.
Throughout each section of this book, I divulge friends’, relatives’, and strangers’ commentary, support, criticism, and reaction. I share the effects of all of the above on my marriage. I also try my best to illuminate God’s concern and involvement in every moment of our trek toward a baby.
I hope my story will benefit people who wish to become adoptive parents, regardless of where they are in the process. Whether you decide to adopt after failed fertility treatments, lost pregnancies, a lost child, no chance of conceiving, have a dozen children already, or feel “called” to adopt, I respect you. No matter the circumstances, adoptive parents share a special bond. I hope “waiting parents” will relate to my emotions, experiences, tribulations, and triumphs. I hope by doing so, you find camaraderie, relief, and optimism.
Because adoption is a spiritual transaction conducted within a commercial industry, success in adoption requires involvement from what seems like everyone connected to the adoptive parents. Thus, adoptive parents’ friends, relatives, co-workers, and even pets will find themselves here, too. I urge anyone connected to waiting parents to read my story to empathize with the adoptive family and perhaps alleviate, not complicate, the inevitable burdens. Do not underestimate the depths of suffering and lengths of endurance required of adoptive parents. Do not underestimate the difficult choice to find a child through adoption. No one “just adopts.”
My mother thought of the book’s title, The Eye of Adoption. She has a particular gift for naming pets; my aunts, uncles, and cousins often contract her to name their animals, so I asked her to name this book. After reading the book, her critter-naming gift prevailed once more.
Adoption is a storm of faith, fear, paperwork, people, hurt, healing, words, work, devotion, divinity, rawness, revelation, days, and, hopefully, a delivery.
I was not strong on my own. I relied on my husband, my mother, my friends, my family, and my faith to prop me up during my doubtful and weak moments.
I hope my story is a clear window through which you can visualize your potential adoption experience. I hope my story comforts you as you live in the eye of adoption.
 
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy! —Robert Burns, “To A Mouse”   ~ ~ ~ 
 
Readers, please send this post to anyone you know who is touched by infertility, adoption, or crisis pregnancy. You can copy and paste the URL into an email or you can Google+, Tweet, or share on Facebook.
If you’d like to purchase The Eye of Adoption (in paperback or eBook formats) or read reviews, visit www.jodydyer.comor go directly to Amazon.com. To be notified of my and other authors’ free Kindle download dates, “like” The Eye of Adoption on Facebook.
If you’d like to subscribe to Theories: Size 12, scroll to the bottom of your screen and type in your email address. Thanks!
 
See you next Friday with Chapter 2! Until then, think outside the barn.

Theory 23: God and prayer are most definitely in schools.

I saw a photo on Facebook that read, “Now that the government is shut down, can we pray in schools?”

The picture obviously pokes fun of congressional issues and references the controversial topic of prayer in schools. In last week’s post, I told you that in 1983, my 3rd grade teacher started each day with a Bible story. Teachers can’t help but communicate ideas they think students should grasp, including lessons in morality, behavior, and etiquette.
A friend of mine once said, “I want teach in a private Christian school so I can invoke the name of God when I discipline students. Instead of saying, ‘You are going to time-out,’ I can say, ‘You know, God sees what you are doing right now.”
I really don’t know how atheist teachers can survive this job. I deal with the frailties of the human teenage condition on a daily basis. I need divine intervention whenever I can get it — to effectively collaborate with all types of personalities, to meet the individual needs of 212 freshmen (heck, to remember their names), and often to save my own rear end!
What if I started my junior high school days with a nice little Bible story? Given the exponential reach of social media and emotionality of national mainstream media, how much time would I have to diet and dye my hair before I appeared on Fox or CNN to defend my actions? I am a rule follower – to some extent – and would never want to offend students and parents or cause trouble for my administrators and coworkers. But, shhhhh, God and prayer are most definitely in schools. Most of us recite the Pledge of Allegiance (under God, indivisible…) and then observe a moment of silence. Often, administrators ask students to keep staff members or students in our “thoughts and prayers.” I suppose “thoughts” are for the non-praying? I wonder what God thinks of “thoughts.” I often ask to God to interpret my “thoughts” as “prayers” because they are for more frequent and less eloquent. Well, actually, I ask God to interpret my good“thoughts” as prayers. I ask him to forgive my “bad thoughts” entirely. Sometimes all this thinking is confusing in a school.
Take my first year of teaching. Oh, Lord have mercy! I’m telling you: my first year of service  should really count for five in the Tennessee retirement plan. The school was rough. Administrators were tough. I’d had enough. After one week. It had nothing to do with poverty or race or ethnicity. Those demographics were similar to many American schools and I loved teaching a diverse student population. No, that school is a special place with fascinating stories, colorful faculty, and, honestly, an undercurrent (among students) that cannot be explained. One of my favorite students said to me, “I couldn’t be a teacher. I’d hit somebody.”
Did I want to hit somebody? YES!
Did I pray? YES!
Oooh, I need one of these! Every day, in my car, I read the Serenity Prayer off a little laminated card wedged over my speedometer.  That got me inside. Once “on the inside” I repeated (silently, of course) a prayer I wrote for myself:
Dear God,Help me not to cuss, cry, or quit.
Amen.

I asked a colleague how he coped and he said, “I just look at a picture of my little girl on the beach and go to the Zen place in my head.”
I never cried. I didn’t quit. I came really close to cussing, but God saved me with cross-curricular planning. I taught pre-algebra, which brings out the worst in many people and is a high stakes content area for mandated testing. Frustrated at students lack of commitment, I blurted out, “How in the Hel….k can you not understand this?” My bad. Rookie mistake. My 8th graders went nuts, saying “Mrs. D, you just said hell! We’re gonna tell the principal and our parents! Girl, you lost your cool. Whoa, Mrs. D, you said a bad word!” Luckily, I knew that English teachers were teaching foreign phrases (alma mater, du jour, e pluribus Unum) so I thought fast and saved my derrière by saying, “Oh, no I didn’t! Helk is a foreign phrase! It’s Norwegian (yeah, sure, Norwegian) for ‘I don’t know what I is going on.”
They bought it. My faux pas went unnoticed by administrators and parents, but I my students employed the word “helk” ad nauseum.
~ ~ ~
Since I know so many teachers, I asked them for examples of prayer they’ve seen in school. Teachers can’t afford lawsuits, so I left their names out and paraphrased for their protection.
Students like prompts. I like prompts. Prayers often start with prompts.
Here’s a sweet little list of prompted prayers you may hear a teacher whisper: 

Heavenly Father, …
·         I’m sorry I let those senior boys get something out of my car and they   found Budweiser cans and brought them back into the building.
·         Don’t let my principal find out I cashed a check using the school newspaper money deposit bag as a bank.
·         Please get my bill collectors to stop calling me at school.
·         Forgive me for throwing a stack of math workbooks across the room. I didn’t hit a student. Amen.
·         I apologize for wanting to trip that mean 8th grader who called me a “b” and watch her fall headfirst down the stairs.
·         Keep me from backfiring in class. If I do, and it’s an SBD, pleeeeaaassseee don’t let a student pick up the scent.        
·         Get me through the day so I don’t say something I’ll regret later that will make me lose my job.
·         Please get those athletes and coaches who pray before games to be that pious during the week.
·         Thank you for sending the drug dogs to protect our students. Extra thank you for not letting the drug dogs find the dip in my desk drawer.
·         Let someone call in a bomb threat so we can sit in the sunshine in the football stadium for two hours
·         Get that other teacher to shut up so we can end this faculty meeting
·         Thank you for not gifting that child hand-eye coordination. If the desk he threw at me had hit me I’d be in some real pain right now.
·         Please don’t let those toga party pictures get out on social media
·         It’s my evaluation day. I don’t want [student] to be sick, but can you make sure it’s time for him to have his braces tightened
·         Let that tingling feeling be too much Aquanet and not head lice.
·         Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
 
Parents, you may be wondering, “If teachers are praying such things, what on earth are teenagers thinking during the moment of silence?” I wondered, too. So, I asked my students, and I felt immense shame afterwards. Here are some of their responses to my question, “What do you pray at school?”
·         God, help me make good grades
·         Jesus, will you please give me the answer to the questions?
·         Help me treat others like I want to be treated
·         Make all my answers be right
·         Get me through the day
·         Don’t let my locker get awkwardly shut so I can’t open it
·         For my school lunch to nourish my body
·         At lunch, we all hold hands (sometimes we even intertwine hands) and pray.          If you steal food during the prayer it’s the ultimate sin.
·         Help my teacher forget to check for homework.
·         That there’s no work in English because I always forget my pen.
·         I just say The Lord’s Prayer
·         For the military and that they are okay
·         My cat and my family
·         For all my friends to have a good successful day
·         Thanks for providing me an education
·         That God will lead me down the right path
·         Just to get through the day. Fifth period biology gets me.
 Readers, don’t be disillusioned by the cynical nature of the teachers’ prayers. Be encouraged by the soulful and positive attitudes of today’s youth! And please know that teachers pray sweet things, too! Yes, teachers get grouchy. Our attitudes sometimes buckle under the immense No Child Left Behind/Common Core pressure, but we are still passionate, nurturing professionals. We worry about our students. We counsel them. We love our students. We absolutely pray for them, without ceasing!
  Little Greenbrier Schoolhouse: What a setting in which to learn and pray  Two of my colleagues, Scotty and Rob, wrote a fantastic book for teachers. The title, The Ultimate Survival Guide for Teachers: An inspirational and hilarious handbook for the world’s most misunderstood wilderness* , says it all. Throughout the book, Scotty and Rob illustrate thoughtful, playful, and soulful interactions between teachers and students. Their goal with the book is to empower teachers to create healthy, dynamic careers for themselves and successful classrooms for their students.  Maybe we could collaborate on a devotional, guys. I’d love a chance to make a little extra money. Which brings me to Theory 24: Teachers are money hustlers, ya’ll.
See you next post! Until then, think outside the barn. Oh!, Speaking of hustling, if you'd like to subscribe to Theories: Size 12 to enjoy a little humor each Friday, scroll to the very very VERY bottom of your computer screen and enter your email address. Thanks!

* For more information on The Ultimate Survival Guide for Teachers, visit HowToSurviveTeaching.com

Theory 22: Dreams are necessary. Plans are pointless.

Ten years ago, when I was a branch manager for AmSouth Bank, I worked with a mortgage originator that I adored. I’ll call him “Peanut Butter” because every day around 2:00, I’d sneak out of my ground floor office to take the elevator up to the mortgage office break room, where we’d dip plastic spoons into a huge jar of peanut butter and commiserate about work.
One day, he announced, “Well, I resigned. I’m moving back to Indiana to be a farmer.”
I was disappointed because he was one of my best friends at work. He was successful, too, so I asked him why he was making this huge leap from the financial industry in Tennessee to farm life in Indiana. He explained, “When I was growing up, I had a dream. I wanted to work for my uncle on his huge Indiana farm right after I graduated from high school. I begged my parents to understand, but they wanted me to get a college degree. So, I did. Now, ten years later, I’m a successful college graduate and businessman. But, I’m not happy. I am going home to do what I always wanted to do. It’s taken me ten years to have the guts to try.”
One morning, many months later, I sat at my austere desk in the lobby of AmSouth, anticipating a long day of retail problem solving in pantyhose and high heels. I called Peanut Butter on his cell phone. He answered. I said, “Hey! It’s Bug! I am sitting here dreading the work day and thought of you. How are ya?”
He said, “Great!”
I asked, “What are you doing right now, this moment?”
He told me, “Actually, I am sitting on my tractor, just starting my work day.”
I laughingly said, “Well, I am looking at some grouchy tellers. What are you looking at?”
He answered, “Bug, I am watching the sun come up over a huge cornfield and it is spectacular.”
We talked about his new (old) dream life in Indiana. Before we hung up, I asked, “So, are you glad you made the move?”
He said, “Hell, yes. I am happy.”

I said, “I am jealous.”
Every time I hear Jason Aldean’s “Fly Over States” I think of my friend Peanut Butter.
Plans—like the ones his parents had for him—are a great idea but, to some degree, pointless because they are altered by human error, the free will of others, bad luck, accidents, and too often people (including me) don’t seek God’s will as they plan for the future. Plus, such plans often involve money, which comes and goes for most people, and is—to me—a carnal concept that can limit or liberate you if you let it, or depend on where you are unlucky/lucky enough to be born (as in The Sudan vs. The USA).
At Pigeon Forge Elementary School (PF), I was fortunate to have public, YES, public school teachers who openly discussed religion and encouraged me to dream. Heck, my third grade teacher read us a Bible story every morning and my 8th grade English teacher was also my Sunday school leader.  Shout out to Mrs. Trotter – new inductee to the Pigeon Forge Hall of Fame! I love you! Anyway, dreams need foundations and Mrs. Trotter, Mrs. Harrell, other lovingly Christian teachers, and my parents Delicious and Pooh inspired me in two ways:
They lived Biblical principles of compassion, faith, forgiveness, and strength.They sparked my love of learning, writing, teaching, and taking risks.I had a secret desire back then to become a writer like Judy Blume, Mark Twain, and Francine Pascal. I also had a more realistic plan: to make money. I told Delicious, “I want to wear a fancy suit, carry a briefcase, and meet my handsome husband for lunch.”
So, as I realistically planned to become a business woman, I secretly dreamed the impossible dream of becoming a published author.
~~~
In the fourth grade, I witnessed an impossible dream come true. It was fall, 1983. I was nine years old. Delicious, Pooh, and I were cruising back roads in Sevier County when Delicious spotted a sign at the corner of Douglas Dam Road and Rural Route 137 reading “Farm for Sale.”
She shouted, “Pooh! Go down that road. I want to see what’s for sale.”
Now, Delicious was a school teacher earning around $25,000 a year and Pooh was a Gatlinburg hotel desk clerk earning even less, but they shared a dream: to own a farm. That was a ridiculous dream because farm land near the Great Smoky Mountains is not cheap. Long story short, Pooh turned right and our lives changed forever. They had to “rent to own” for a bit, which meant they couldn’t sell our Pigeon Forge house, which meant we had to move into the 100-year-old farm house which was in ROUGH shape on a budget of pretty much zero dollars. HUD required some fixing up to secure the mortgage, so Pooh and Delicious did the best they could by putting down (no joke) indoor/outdoor carpet, hanging curtain “cabinet doors”, and installing a window unit air conditioner. We went old school with the décor. The washer and dryer shook the kitchen and a queen size bed filled the dining room. On moving day, Pooh and I were in heaven to have a house with such character surrounded by 72 acres to explore. Delicious was in a frigid state of shock. Literally. It was January and 7 degrees in that holler. My grandmama gave Delicious a tranquilizer. Mama lay on the sofa all day, moaning “What have we done?” while Big Booty J and the rest of us moved us into The Crippled Beagle Farm. Delicious doesn’t handle change very well.
The Crippled Beagle Farm was paradise for my unique daddy. He was an intellectual, Bohemian, spiritual, individualistic, inventive, emotional, resourceful, witty, fly-fishing, farming, and overall exceptional human being. He taught himself how to farm, fix stuff, do carpentry, and fly fish via Time Life books and the Sevier County Library. He barb wired the entire farm by hand and raised prize-winning tomatoes, pumpkins, and gourds. He wrote me sweet letters and in his wallet kept a love note some boy gave me that just cracked him up. He was uniquely masculine yet emotional and he worshipped Delicious and me. One day, he planted a hundred-foot row of flowers from the house all the way to the barn and penned a note to mama reading, “I planted these bulbs as a symbol of our love.”
 The Crippled Beagle Farm He often reminded us to recognize that an unlikely dream had indeed come true. Whenever Delicious expressed financial worries, he responded, “We’ll figure something out. I bet you never thought you’d live on a 72 acre farm in Sevier County, but you do.”
Pooh passed away in 1993, but in the 9 years he lived and loved on The Crippled Beagle Farm, he cultivated tangible testimony to faith in dreams and devoted love through now 30-year-old trees and flower beds he planted, the bridge he built for mama to cross to their garden, the back porch roof that keeps her dry as she carries in groceries, the swing that hangs in the barn, and even the sweet, hand-made grave signs that honor our beloved pets.  He lived his dream in our Appalachian home and our close bond as a family. On a dream, my parents built a foundation from which I could dream!
Pooh's bridge and flowers - for Delicious
So, I did. I dreamed of becoming a writer as I planned to become a business woman – the plan gave me relief, but the dream gave me happiness. I honored my secret desire by entering little essay contests through school and taking a creative writing course at UT. I secured a business degree and financially sound future. I helped my mother. I had my briefcase and my business lunches with a handsome husband. We started a family with little Sharky in 2002 and life was okay. But I had a plan—to have three children—so we started trying to conceive a second child. That second child morphed from simple plan to impossible dream. For two years, we endured miserable and unsuccessful infertility treatments.
Another farm dream intervened. The conversation with Peanut Butter.
The conversation with Peanut Butter in 2003 was a catalyst for me to reach out to Tall Child to discuss my becoming a housewife. Sharky was almost three years old by then and I was sad, frustrated, and depressed.  I thought shedding work stress could heal me/help me conceive. We both knew it was a big risk, financially, but I was up for it. I’d witnessed big risks and dreams come true before. And, I had faith and ridiculously detailed and humanly erred plans. So, I quit my job in 2004.
For the next four years, we exhausted our savings, our emotions, and my body as we worked our plan toward a second child. Then, finally, we converted the humanly limited action plan to a leap of faith. We abandoned modern medicine and fumbled our way through the domestic adoption process. Yes, there are deliberate steps in adoption, but only up to a point. Once you are “approved and waiting” you have little control and no idea of how the future will finally play out.
Some of you may ask, “What about Sharky all those years? Wasn’t he enough?” Oh, he was plenty. And, he was at the center of this dream. I wanted a sibling for him as much as I wanted a baby for me. I worship every freckle, every word, every breath of his existence. Go ahead and think I’m crazy when I tell you this, but one of my favorite things to do is put my ear to Sharky’s cheek as he crunches away on Apple Jacks. Try it, mamas.
So, with Sharky in tow, Tall Child and I gambled time, energy, and finances toward a sometimes seemingly impossible dream: to be chosen by complete strangers to raise their raise their child. Special strangers did choose to trust us with something priceless. On May 13, 2010, Tall Child’s 47th birthday, our Gnome was born and Sharky became a brother. 


Brothers for life Last year, compelled to help other women touched by crisis pregnancy, infertility, and adoption, I gave figurative birth to my other sometimes seemingly impossible dream: a published book. The book, titled The Eye of Adoption: The True Story of My Turbulent Wait for a Baby was made possible by the foundation that teachers, friends, my parents, and later social workers laid for me—a foundation made not of plans, but of education, faith, and dreams. Most of all, I was inspired by the love, risk, and sacrifice of two people I will appreciate beyond measure as long as I live—my Gnome’s birth parents.
Readers, I know my last few posts have leaned toward sentiment and emotion, but November is National Adoption Awareness Month and on November 21 Gnome’s birth mother turns 25. As we anticipate a month colored by change and Thanksgiving, I can’t help but be reflective and grateful.  So, readers and friends, thank you for expressing your faith in me as a writer, even when I’m not funny! Mama, students, former and fellow teachers, thank you for encouraging me and forgiving my eccentricities. I love learning from all of you! I promise next week I'll be funny. So be sure to find me on Friday for Theory 23: God and prayer are most definitely in schools.

See you next post! Until then, think (and dream) outside the barn.
 The Crippled Beagle Farm barn

Theory 21: In wedding ceremonies, vows need to be translated.

When we girls get engaged, it seems as though everyone we know feels compelled to toss out tidbits of unsolicited advice. Many brides-to-be happily float in a fog of  relief (let's be honest) and romance, and often buck when they hear any negative comments about marriage. We become moody, obsessed with detail, or, in my case, nervous wrecks. Perhaps this is why some of us morph into "bridezillas" or show up to the ceremony tottering three sheets to the wind. Perhaps some brides obsess over colors of tablecloths, candle heights, monogrammed paper napkins, chair covers, party favors, rice vs. bird seed, etc. because they tie the success of the wedding to the success of the marriage. As in, "No problems now = no problems later."

Depending on your age and marital status, you have either been exposed to or are now generating cringe-inducing sentences that begin with:

"Well, when I got married..."
"If I were you..."
"If I could do it all over again..."
"Whatever you do, don't..."
"Make sure you..."
"You'd better..."

The possibilities and comments are as endless as the sea.

The bride may feel like a Ritz cracker on the beach, surrounded by sea gulls who are harping out personal need for comfort and attention. The comments flare through the fog, warning of inevitable hardships to come. Hey, marriage is wonderful. I love being married to Tall Child.  Of all the advice I endured/heard/read, two pieces stand out and stay true to this day. The first came from Bop, Tall Child's mother. She warned, "If you don't want to do something the rest of your life, don't ever do it for the first time. For example, if you don't want to take the garbage down to the bottom of the driveway every Monday, don't EVER do it. Ever."

Why? Why did I cut those shrubs back 12 years ago? WHY???????

The other sentence that has probably best defined my marriage and saved my and Tall Child's unity sanity is from The Holy Bible. In the book of Matthew, Peter asks Jesus, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" Jesus said, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven." Tall Child, again, I am so sorry I backed your car into a palm tree in Panama City Beach. Oh, and for all my Tupperware throwing and door slamming temper tantrums. Good think you're an athlete. Just think, all those years of high school and college basketball were preparing you for marriage to me!

I'm no relationship expert but I do know this after being together 16 years. Marriage is a trip. And when you stand at the altar, you may think you have it all figured out, but you are beginning a journey that has no itinerary, no guarantees, and no real predictability.

Traditional wedding vows are beautiful and certainly a poetic way to hop on the love boat. But the pretty words aren't direct or descriptive. We sacrifice reality for pretty. Why can't we have both? All we need is a translator up there by the preacher.

So, here I translate the ceremony and vows East Tennessee style.

CEREMONY
Preacher: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the presence of God to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony.

Translator: Audience member, you may want to be here or you may be mad because it's a football Saturday and you have already spent an entire paycheck on this couple, but they love you, or at least they felt obligated to include you, so suck it up. There's an open bar at the reception. This is a church so behave and understand that God is here and you need to sit there and think about your own marriage and pray like heck for this one that's about to start. And, if your spouse glares at you, smile and squeeze her hand. If she looks at you lovingly, do the same, and pat yourself on the back.

Preacher: Marriage is ordained by God, regulated by God's commandments, blessed by our Lord Jesus Christ, and to be held in honor among all people.

Translator: Bride and groom, if you want a successful marriage, don't listen to what your friends and family say. There is a rule book. It's called The Holy Bible. Happy hour is singular, just like you'll be if you stay more than one happy hour. If the waitress says, "Do you want another round?" You need to think, "What would Jesus do?" He would go home and drink wine with his wife, boy. So get in your truck and high-tail it home. EVERYONE you know should honor your marriage. Audience, if you think she's a "b" it doesn't matter. Maybe you think he is a control freak. It doesn't matter. A husband or wife should never have to compete with in-laws, friends, or co-workers, within reason, for attention or money or time. So, audience, respect the couple. Bride, if your mama is obnoxious, handle it. Groom, if your mama is laying on the guilt trip, deal. Blood gives bad news to blood.

Preacher: Groom/Bride, will you have this person to be your wife/husband? Will you pledge your loyalty, love, and honor, duty, and service, in all faith and tenderness, to live with her/him and cherish her/him according to the ordinances of God?

Translator:  I don't know why I'm asking this because you proposed/accepted, but here goes: Groom/Bride, are you absolutely sure this is the one you want? As in "The only one I want" like Danny and Sandy? Are you that sure? Forever? This is your last chance and, though it will be humiliating to run like hell now, you'll avoid a bunch of legal stuff and your mamas will forgive you. Oh, but here's some good advice to consider if you are wavering at this point: you really don't know someone until you are married to him for a while. Living together is not the same thing. Marriage is legally binding. So, good luck! Let's do the vows now!

VOWS
Bride and Groom: I take you to be my [spouse], to love and cherish, for richer or for poorer, in joy and sorrow, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live.

Translator: I am marrying you, but please know that sometimes you may hate my guts. No one can make you madder than your spouse (me)! Hopefully, we'll get rich but keep in mind, honey, that we may get rich and lose it all or we may never have a dime. God says you have to love me anyway. I will love you anyway. Right now we are happy but bad things will happen so hang in there with me. Actually, some of the bad things may be my fault. If I get sick, for the love of God, please don't be a jerk. Clean up the house (or me) and go get me a combo meal at Chick Fil A on your way back from Walgreens. I will make sure you don't have hair in the wrong places if you become incapacitated and I will take good care of you and keep you looking dignified. Please do the same for me.

EXCHANGE OF RINGS
Preacher: In the giving and receiving of rings, the man and woman give to each other an outward sign of an inward commitment. Let the rings be a sign of your love.

Translator: Let the circle be unbroken. Don't. Take. The ring. Off. or it'll be replaced with one around your neck.

Delicious just chimed in from across the room as I typed this, "With these rings, I do dread, all the [expletive] that lies ahead." 

I don't normally write with anyone else in the room, if I can help it, but I've had to exercise my marital/familial skills of tolerance and patience as we are wrapping up a cozy week together in a condo on Hilton Head Island.  Tall Child, Sharky, Gnome, Delicious and I make for pretty good roommates. The best behavior award goes to Tall Child; the worst behavior award probably goes to his neurotic wife. But, I kept all my vows this week. I was loving-ish and patient when Tall Child let the car battery die, adding another $200 bucks to our vacation expenses. I was cool with sickness and even spoon-fed (no joke) ALL my boys some cough and cold medicine. I was patient when Gnome pole danced with a hat rack at Hudson's Seafood Restaurant.  I protected my husband's sanity by giving him a five hour break from all of us. I prayed for safety as we giggled through a Dolphin-watching cruise in Calibogue Sound. We were not rich on Monday, but we are definitely poorer this Friday.

Tall Child and I have flaws and we have certainly made hurtful, stupid mistakes. Honesty, we've experience the good and band end of every vow. But, this week AND the last sixteen years as a whole have been an eventful, educational, sweet trip. I'm thankful he asked, and I'm thankful I said "yes."

Imperfect and beautiful.

So, if you are embarking on your marriage journey, here's my obnoxious advice:

Love, forgive, and have as much fun as possible. Don't try to predict or control your future. Which reminds me of Theory 22: Dreams are necessary. Plans are pointless.