Open Adoption: Slicing Through the Concept of Family

I have been thinking about open adoption and what it is at its most basic element. It has been suggested that open adoption is about sharing of information at its core. I tend to agree that sharing of information is a significant part of open adoption. For instance, I love calling Maya’s mother (biological /first) and sharing information: telling her about all of the new events in Maya’s life -- that her teacher is crazy impressed with her ability to speak in front of the class and that the music teacher is floored with her singing abilities. I love sharing these events with Nikki because I know that she is as proud of her Maya as I am. I also love when Nikki’s grandmother shares with me the names of the Native Americans in the family going back many generations. I have gathered much ancestral information on Nikki and Maya’s genealogical tree from the information I have received. I don’t want Maya to lose that part of her history as a result of being adopted. I want her to be a proud Native, Japanese, Cuban, African, German American raised by her Catholic Italian mother and her Mayflower descended/Swiss Mennonite father. I know how crucial my ethnic and religious upbringing has been towards the making of my identity. I want Maya to have an understanding of her ethnic and racial background in order to develop a fully formed view of who she is.

Still, information sharing is, for me, not the most essential aspect of our open relationship. It’s nice to have access to all of Maya’s medical information and familial history. And to share her accomplishments. But more importantly, our open relationship has thrived as a result of us all – my family and Maya’s first family – opening our hearts to each other. We have used this wonderful tool of adoption to expand our family and to bring more people into our family that we might not previously have had. We have used the tool of open adoption so that Maya can have more people in her life that love her to the bone. Our belief has been that having more people love a child cannot possibly be bad. So, we open our hearts and homes to one another. My heart and home is open to Nikki and her family. They have opened their heart and homes to us.

It takes a certain capacity to love new family members unconditionally, merely because the circumstances dictate that such unconditional love is best for all. But, somehow, so far, we have managed this. If Nikki’s family wanted to look closely and find something we have done with Maya that they disapprove of, it wouldn’t be hard. Surely our methods of raising a child are different from their methods. Nikki’s family has not done this. They have been nothing but supportive of the way in which Maya is being raised. Likewise, when we go visit there, we are confronted with ways of handling children that we might consider less than ideal. Still, we respect the rights of Maya’s family to interact with her as they interact with others in their extended family.

Maybe that’s what is at the core of open adoption. It is not merely sharing information. It is not merely opening your heart and home. Open adoption requires people to open their minds and expand their understanding of what constitutes a family. It requires being open to a new kind of family and being open to seeing that family as valid as the traditional family. Open adoption requires people to slice open the entire concept of family, redefining it to include both a child’s birth family and a child’s adoptive family. Blasting open the concept of family mandates that people involved in open adoptions remain open to experiencing the uncharted adventures that lie ahead of them. Indeed, families in open adoptions need not only remain open to the adventures, they need to embrace them. And they need to shine their lights outward so as to open the minds of others who are not so lucky.


For other views on open adoption, see

http://www.adoption.com/uni/frame.php?url=http://www.productionnotreproduction.com/2010/09/open-adoption-roundtable-19.html

Moon Shadows

I don’t know how it happened. I mean, I know. But I can’t believe I let it happen. It just happened so slowly. Over time. It wasn’t one thing I did or didn’t do. Rather, it was like the tide eroding at the dune’s edge. Little by little, stealing away form and shape. Who would have ever thought it would come to this?

My husband has been encouraging me to exercise for years. For years I have had any number of excuses. I had to work. I wanted to join a gym to work out. I was healthy enough.

Until recently.

A few weeks ago was my 48th birthday. I had to face the truth. I have a three year old and I want to live a long healthy life so I can be there to watch her into her forties. To do that, I would need to be in good physical shape. I don’t need to win races anymore. It’s not like in the old days. I just need to be out there. So, for two weeks my husband and I have been going to the Roosevelt Highschool track to work out in the evenings. (Who am I kidding? What I have been doing looks nothing like a work out.)

It has been unbelievably hot this summer. I can’t remember summer heat that has affected me like the heat this summer. I haven’t been able to accomplish very much, including cleaning the house. It has been too damn hot. That’s my excuse anyway. So, instead of running during daylight hours, we have been going to the track after dark – when we hoped it would be cooler.

If I hadn’t been there and seen it for myself, I would never have believed it. We weren’t the only crazy ones running by the light of the moon. There is a veritable cadre of people who clandestinely appear at the track after dark at 9:00 p.m. The young black sprinter with his long tight sinewy legs, practicing his sprints and stretching. The dark-skinned hurdler, gliding over hurdles like a gazelle. The thin white woman with her long blonde hair and skinny legs, ipod connected to her ear, running up and down the stadium stairs. And the father, maybe a decade younger than Tim and me, yelling to his boys interchangeably in English and Arabic. Or was it Hebrew? It was hard to tell. The actual words just disintegrated in the air before they reached me across the field. (Seeing his children play in the dark at the edge of the track brought to mind children I had once read about who had some condition where their skin couldn’t be in sunlight; their mother took them behind their house to play at night. Under the moon.) The father had good form and was covering his miles at a fast clip, checking in on his children with each quarter mile.

Then there were Tim and I. Tim had been running one mile three times a week for years. Last year, he stepped it up to three miles and began to swim on the off days. Many a night he could be seen running around our block which makes a circle – six laps to a mile. With Trent and Michela, when they were young, and lately with Maya, we often waited for him to round the bend and yelled “Go Daddy Go!” from the front lawn.

I hated running around the block. The street banked from the high center of the street to the lower side by the curb. It always hurt my knees to try to run there – on the few other occasions that I tried to exercise. So it was I who told Tim that if he would run with me at the track, I would exercise with him. He agreed and has come to enjoy the track as much as I once did. His form is not the best; he lopes and his arms swing from side to side somewhat, instead of efficiently going back and forth. But he makes pretty good time around the track. Three laps for every two that I run. And two laps for each one that I walk.

The very first day I approached the track I was excited. I had run many a race in high school on various tracks. I had made good friends and learned many life’s lessons from my coach on the track. Just walking on, I thought about striding around and feeling good, like I always had. (Some dust-covered trophies in the attic and newspaper clippings would testify to my former ability to run a 2:18 half mile and a 5:15 mile at my best. I had been our high school’s scholar athlete the year I graduated. Previously this had been awarded to the best football player who could maintain a C average. I was the first girl to receive it and the only graduate to attend Harvard.)

That first day is when I realized what had happened to me. I may have felt like I could just hop on the track and run a mile. But my 48 year old body would protest otherwise. With each slow small step that I took, portions of my body began to hurt. My upper thighs. My calves. And my knees. Oh, my knees! All the extra weight I have carried for 30 years have taken a toll on my knees. I was reminded of Coach, who used to faithfully run, if a bit wobbly, around the track and on the streets with ace bandages or braces around his knees. I had reached *that* age.

The first night, after jogging/walking a mile and a half, my aching legs wouldn’t let me sleep. I had to take Ibuprofen to ease the pain. A couple of nights I jogged/walked two miles. So far, that is the farthest I have made it. All the while, I am reminded of the days in high school that we ran twice a day to train. Early in the morning, my friend Eileen would come knock on my bedroom window to wake me so that we could go run around a field 20 times or the equivalent of five miles. In the evening, we would have practice around a track at a neighboring school, where we had to jump the fence, because our school was too poor to have a track. Or during cross country, we would run out in small packs, grouped according to how fast we could run, and run for 7 miles or more.

I still need someone like Eileen and am grateful to have Tim, who nudges me each evening to come with him to the track, even when I have excuses: “I have to cook. I want to go to Shanikqua’s house and watch my new favorite TV show.” Tim is gently persistent.

So many memories flood back into my mind and keep me going on the track. My coach would say that every mile is like putting money in the bank. Each one makes you stronger, no matter how slow you go. So I push on. In two weeks, I think I have saved about 12 dollars! Me, with my wobbly knees and ace bandage.

And I am reminded of a wonderfully inspirational speech I recently heard by Jay Hewitt about his iron man competitions. In his speech, he describes pain and depletion of a magnitude that I can only imagine. He describes thinking that he can’t make it any further. And then asking himself, “How bad do you want it?” He concludes by advising children with diabetes (he, himself, has Type 1 diabetes), “You may not win, but you will do better than those who never tried.”

As I run around the track, I think of my children, and my coach, and Jay Hewitt. And I hear the melody of my earrings. “Clink clink, clink clink!" The harmony with each step I take. “Shuffle, shuffle." And my breaths keeping time. “Huufff, huufff, huufff.” The sprinter runs by. “Pitter patter pitter patter!” The hurdler glides. “Whoosh!” The young girl runs up and down the steps. "Tap tap tap tap.” The father passes me on the outer lane and my husband laps me again. My knees go “clickety clack.” Under the dark sky, as I chase my moon shadow around the track, I am determined. I may never win anything again, but I will do better than if I had never tried.

Wish me luck.

Some Random Musings on My 48th Birthday

1. I’m not baking my own birthday cake. Instead, I am doing what our foster child, Livie (wonder how she is), suggested last year: I took one of those shrunken half gallons of ice cream (mint chocolate chip because you can’t get peppermint in the summer) and let it melt a little. (Not difficult in today’s heat and humidity.) Then I spooned it into a store-bought oreo cookie crust and placed the plastic cover of the crust on top upside down. Put the whole thing in the freezer to re-freeze for dinner. Better than Carvel at a fraction of the price.

2. I am also not cooking my birthday dinner. Trent has promised to cook. I know he makes a mean tilapia, so that will be good. I only hope he cleans up after himself because I’m not cleaning either.

3. Last year at this time, we had a foster daughter Livie because her biological mother wouldn’t let her travel to Canada with her foster family for vacation. She had type 1 diabetes. Each night I got up and went from her bedroom to Trent’s to test blood sugars in the middle of the night. It was tiring for eight days. I can’t imagine how people with two kids with Type 1 do it. (Maya doesn’t need testing in the middle of the night. She has a rare kind of diabetes and is very unlikely to go low – and never seriously low.) I wonder how Livie is doing. Last time I heard, her foster parents decided it was too much work and wanted to give her back to the state. (Pisses me off. Don’t we all want to do that with our kids? But we don’t!) Mental note to check up on her.

I think I’ll keep my three kids this week. Trent is starting to be very useful at 14. He’s strong and can carry heavy loads. And he’s interested in cooking. Michela is always funny. Just as her friend Angela once commented, “This family is no fun without Michela.” And Maya is funny and endearing. Besides, she has actually slept in her own bed for three nights in a row. That’s almost a pattern.

I think I’ll keep Tim too. He’s good for a lot of things. But that’s fodder for another time.

4. It's been a good day. A man in the supermarket gave me a coupon for paper towels on sale because I helped him locate the right size. Don’t you hate when you get to the counter and the check out lady says, “That’s not the size that’s on sale!.” Almost as bad as when she yells out, “I need a key. Food stamps!.” That’s never happened to me, but I’ve seen it. My pharmacist did yell out once, “Ms. Rago? Ms. Rago? I’m sorry we don’t have any more of your ______ medicine in stock.” Um, what? Why don’t you tell all of CVS what meds I am taking?


5. Another reason why it's been a good day is that it started with a telephone conversation with one of my dearest friends. (Even if the conversation was about bacteria she picked up from eating chicken in Paris last week.) I also received a phone call from an old flame. Not bad after more than 25 years, I figure. And no client has called to yell at me and demand that I be more accountable. That, in itself, makes for a good day.

6. I’m 48. Almost half way through with my life. I hope I can make the second half better than the first. And I hope I can get in better shape. The supermarket tabloid declared that Zack Ephron, at age 50, has an amazing body. Well, no one’s gonna declare my body good enough for The Star. But I hope it’s good enough to pass a stress test by the time I turn 50. Mental note to start exercising.

After the ice cream cake tonight. . . .


(P.S. The cake above is the one I baked for Trent last week.)

Maya-isms

Maya always says things that make us take a deep breath and look at each other in shock. Sometimes we laugh. Sometimes we are amazed. Like when she hid under the dining room table and announced, "Oh, no! Daddy is coming. He's going to recognize me." She is three years old. Going on forty. "Recognize?" Really? And then there was the time she told me, "I absolutely do want to go to Starbucks, once I finish what I am doing." You "absolutely do want to go?"

Of course, those times were better than when she turned to me and told me she was going to "kick my ass." I pretended I didn't hear her because I didn't want her to think I was as shocked as I was! She has never said that again.

Well, this week, we have had a few more amazing statements by Maya:

As she was putting on her sandals, to wear under her princess costume, she announced, "I have to put my sandals on so that I can look FABULOUS." Fabulous? Um, OK.

Then, today, she saw my brother Tony, her Uncle Tony, for the first time in a long time. He picked her up and kissed and hugged her. She said, "I remember you. You weren't nice the last time I saw you. But now you are nice." My brother Tony can be gruff, so we all laughed.

Lastly, our house is under a bit of construction. With a new roof and gutters being put on. And walls ripped out to put in french doors to the deck and to build new closets. So, when we went to my sister Marissa's house today, and Maya saw Marissa's kitchen ceiling ripped out, she looked at it carefully. (Marissa's air conditioner had leaked so she was none too happy about the gash in the ceiling.) Maya turned to Marissa and said, "Oh! I didn't know your house was banged up like ours is!" Banged up? That's actually very close to how I feel about how the house looks.

We continue to be amazed by Maya's skilled grasp of the English language and her use of intonation to get across her meaning. When she starts counting spoons in Spanish, we are blown away. But that's a whole 'nuther story. . . .

When Maya Looks Back

In the shower today alone (without Maya) for the first time in a long time, I enjoyed having the entire showerhead to myself. I imagined a day when I would be able to take a shower without Maya asking to get in with me. Then I thought, “Don’t hurry up these years by wishing them away. Savor the moments. Most people don’t get to do babyhood and toddler-hood a second time with the benefit of hindsight and having experienced it once before. You know how fast the years go.” And I thought about all the things I will miss when Maya gets older. I will miss how she plays at my feet and chatters to herself, singing songs she has recently heard and, sometimes, even practicing curse words she has heard. (Ooops!) I will miss how I hear her feet paddling along the wooden floors coming to my bed in the middle of the night and how, when she arrives eye level at my bedside she quietly, and in her best voice, asks if she can sleep next to me, “for just a little while.” I may even miss how she wears my Tupperware on her feet and skates around the kitchen floor or spreads every block and toy on the living room carpet.

Sometimes I am saddened for the mother who gave her life, her Mommy Nikki, because she misses a lot of these little milestones: Being able to open the refrigerator all by herself. Being able to identify all the vegetables on her plate – and liking them! Being able to pour a cup of juice. Being able to climb up onto the toilet to reach the sink and brush her teeth. Being able to take off her own clothes or put on her own seatbelt. Every day, Maya learns something new. I try to keep Nikki apprised and to let her enjoy in the small miracles of our life when she is here or when we go visit her. I have her brush Maya’s hair (Nikki is much better at that than I am). Or test her blood sugar or choose her clothes or read Maya’s favorite books or snuggle in bed with Maya during the night.

People ask if this isn’t confusing to Maya. I don’t think it is. It’s her normal. She will happily announce to people, “I have two mommies!” Most of the people we are with understand what she means. Sometimes people look at me wondering if I am a lesbian. I laugh and let them wonder. Lately Maya has been re-telling the story of her birth and that of her siblings, Trent and Michela., checking with me in a questioning tone to see if she has it right ‘”Mommy, Trent and Michela were taken from your stomach by the doctors and then brought to you to take care of them?” I answer, “Yes, Maya.” “I was taken by the doctors from my Mommy Nikki’s stomach and then brought to you?” Even though this is a pretty shorthand version of the truth, I agree with her because this is how she seems happy envisioning things at the moment. Little by little she will understand the full details.

How will she come to view the circumstances of her life when she is older? I don’t think we can really know. Open adoption is still very much an “experiment” in some sense. (Although in another sense, it is a very tried and true tradition for family to raise another family member’s child, when the biological mother is unable. In our case, the only difference is that we became family with Nikki through Maya; we weren’t family prior to Maya’s birth.) Indeed, raising children in and of itself is as much an experiment. Before becoming a parent, no one has had experience in raising their children. And no one knows what the outcome of his or her efforts will be. That is the definition of what an experiment is, in my book. Trying something you’ve never done before and having faith that it will work out for the best.

Towards the middle or end of this "experiment" we call our lives, when Maya looks back, I hope that she sees that her mother and I worked at making the best choices for her life that we could. I hope she remembers the fondness that Nikki and I share for one another. I hope that Maya does not view my role as a person who has taken away another person's baby, but rather loved her enough to want to bring her and her family into my life. I hope that she sees that Nikki had little choice once the state got involved, but made the best choice for her under the circumstances. I hope that she sees how both her families worked hard to become one family for her sake -- because we all love her. And that both families compromised in order to make the situation work.

I hope that Maya will look back fondly on the times we took her to visit her brother and cousin and aunts and uncles and grandparents and mother and sisters -- on holidays, on their birthdays. I hope she sees how I always thoughtfully pick presents for her family and make sure that I don't forget them. And that I share the best photographs, pieces of artwork, and life stories with them, so they can be as proud of her as I am. I hope she will look fondly on the times her mother and other family members came to see her in her home, with her adopted family. That she enjoyed showing them her latest milestone: riding her tricycle; moving into a big girl bed; painting pictures and hanging them on "her" door in the kitchen.

I hope that she is proud of her birth family as much as her adoptive family. I hope she gains a skill for dealing with people from all walks of life, having walked between the two worlds of her two families. I hope she views the situation as lucky: to have two families even before she marries, when she will have three. (Unless by crazy coincidence, she marries a man from an open adoption who will also have two families! In which case she will have four families in her life!) Not to mention the family that she may one day create. I pray in my heart that she will not find any of us a burden. And that she will know that I did not find the openness of her adoption a burden. I hope she knows I enjoyed it -- I get to brag about her to the only other people in the world who love her as much as I do. I hope she knows that the openness was as much for me, as for her and her mother. I couldn't live with her adoption any other way. Maybe under some other circumstances, I would not have chosen this. But in this instance, for our entire extended family, the openness of the adoption is ideal.

***For other thoughts on how parents hope their children will view their open adoption, see here:

http://www.productionnotreproduction.com/2010/02/open-adoption-roundtable-16.html

The Fake Birth Certificate

When a child is adopted, the local government issues a new birth certificate to the family. The new birth certificate essentially obliterates evidence of the child’s past, as though it never happened. Instead of showing that a child was born to the parents who actually gave birth to her -- and then indicating that the child is adopted into her new family and has a new name – the new birth certificate is issued as though the adoptive parents gave birth to the child on her birthday. In our case, Maya’s newly issued birth certificate asserts to the world that Tim and I gave birth to her in Pennsylvania in the exact hospital and at the exact moment that she actually was born. Her mother’s name – the person that actually did give birth to her – is nowhere to be seen on the newly issued birth certificate. Nor is her biological father’s name there. Instantly wiped out and erased by the government. Kind of like being in the witness protection program. The government creates a new identity for an adopted child and issues official government documents to perpetuate the lie. The only difference? Adopted children generally don’t need protection from anyone, particularly not from their original families. In the instances where children might need protection from abusive original families, perhaps this fiction is warranted. But, for the most part, adopted people WANT their original birth certificates and the only people they need protection from are the government bureaucrats that continue to deny them this fundamentally important information.

We have what is known in adoption circles as an “open” adoption. We have essentially extended our family to include Maya’s family, so that hopefully Maya will feel that she has not been ripped from her roots, but merely replanted in another part of her family garden. So, for Maya, she will always have access to her original birth certificate. She can ask her mother to see it when she is with her because we have a very good relationship with Maya's original family. But the original birth certificate no longer has any legal effect. It is null and void, essentially. As though her birth to her mother never really occurred the way that it did. It is as though the original birth certificate created a marriage and the second birth certificate represents a divorce decree. But instead of creating a new type of paperwork to represent reality – that Maya was born to a first set of parents and adopted to a second set – the government has taken the documentation that already exists and tries to make it seem as though the reality were different. The government tries to make it look as though Maya were born to Tim and me. Like forcing a square peg into a round hole.

I am completely comfortable with the fact that I am Maya’s mother. I don’t need her birth certificate to erase the existence of her original mother in order to make me feel like I am her mother. I know I am her mother. I feel like the birth certificate I have is a total fake. I would prefer if it said that Nevaeh Nikol, born to Nikki and Y.A. on her birth date at the hospital in Pennsylvania, will now be known as Maya Nevaeh Nikol, with her new parents Tim and Michelle, of New York. Why can’t the government create some new documentation to evidence the reality that we know to be true instead of insisting that it’s version of reality is the only one that it will document? Tim and I had never even heard of the town where Maya was born until we got involved with adopting her. We had surely never set foot there. It feels like such a sham to have government issued documents, with raised seal and all, claiming that we gave birth to her in a town we had never set foot in. I can’t begin to imagine what that feels like to a child or even grown adopted person. I imagine it gives one an instinctive sense of the irony of life and government authority.

I have asked my girlfriend who is adopted how she felt. She is an adopted person who has no interest in the mother who gave birth to her. She says she would just tell her "Thanks for doing the right thing. I have had a great life." I find this to be a little bit of denial. But what do I know? I am not an adopted person. I just can’t imagine not wanting to know my biological and personal history. I am like that. To her, her history is that of her adoptive parents, period. The history with her biological parents is irrelevant. Anyway, she doesn't feel the birth certificate is fake and says she sees it as necessary to show that she is the legal child of her parents.

I feel as though there must be another way -- particularly in an open adoption. In the days of closed adoptions, when parents tried to hide that their children were adopted, I can see the necessity of the fake birth certificate. It looks just like a real one. Unless one conducted a C.S.I.-like fiber test to determine whether the fibers are consistent with documents on the date of birth, it would be impossible for anyone to tell that the fake birth certificate is a government-issued forgery. I guess if you want your child to live a lie, the fake birth certificate serves you well. But when a child is always told that they are adopted and there are no secrets, I would think that the government could create a new kind of document to commemorate the new family relationships. I’ve heard of “born again” but even when one is “born again,” a new birth certificate is not issued. I don’t think a new birth certificate is appropriate for adoptions either.

I am fully behind the movement to open all original birth certificates to adopted people. I believe that the government has no right to be in collusion with the original parents in denying a person access to their original history. I don't understand why the parents’ rights are given more weight than the child's rights. Why does a parent have a greater right to erase history with the government’s blessing and complicity (and perhaps live in denial of ever having given birth)? What about a child’s right to know his or her own personal history? Who decided that the parents' wishes were more valuable than the child's right? The child had no say in the entire situation. The parents had some control over their choices. It is a screwed up system where the government surreptitiously works with parents to erase the evidence of having given birth to a child, in total defiance of what the child’s wishes might be.

With my daughter, when she gets old enough to understand, she will be able to see her original birth certificate at her mother’s house. Even if it is null and void. I may just explain to her that “your mother has your original birth certificate. I have the fake one they created because the government is too stupid to understand that I don't need to have my name on your birth certificate to know that I am your mother."

I guess that's part of what pisses me off. Why does the government think that I have to be on her birth certificate to be considered her mother? There are mothers that give birth and mothers that don't. Why does the government continue to insist that there is only one type of mother? Why does the government only recognize one type of mother? If they recognized adoptive mothers as legitimate mothers, they would give us an amended birth certificate or some document that represented our reality. Instead, if you're not the parent that gave birth, they will create a whole new fiction to make it look like you did. As though I need their documentation to tell me that I am my daughter’s mother. As though I need for them to obliterate Maya’s mother who gave birth to her and who loves her, for me to be a mother to Maya. Typical government: if the reality doesn't fit their story, they make the paperwork thick enough to cover the reality and make it look like the story they want to present.

Maya is lucky. In some ways. She will always have access to her personal history and original birth certificate. But she still must grow up knowing that the government sought to obliterate all evidence of her relationship with the mother that gave her life. Others are not so lucky. And they won’t know their history until we stop allowing the government to perpetuate the fiction that a child can only have one type of mother: the mother that gives birth. We must stop allowing the government to force our reality to fit their fiction.

Stepping down from my soapbox.

Tearing Down the House

We are in the midst of renovations. Anyone who has been through renovations will understand how this all unfolded after losing several shingles in a storm. Anyone who has been through renovations with a spouse will also understand how renovations bring to the forefront marital and familial conflicts -- and accords -- over what a home should look like.

Tim and I bought our house 17 years ago – at which time the home inspector told us we had 10 more years left on the roof. So we knew we were on borrowed time. Then, a few shingles began to break away with each storm. They were brittle to the touch and broke easily when retrieved from the front lawn, or worse, the neighbor’s front lawn. Our roof problem was becoming hard to hide or ignore.

Then came the severe spring storms that struck hard in Westchester County generally – and on our roof in particular -- recently. We could no longer delay getting a new roof. Why had we waited so long? There are several answers. Fear may have been one of the main reasons. Fear of the mess and upheaval that a new roof would entail. Fear of how much it would cost. Fear that there would be conflict over how best to do it. (Tim and I both have very strong design opinions.) There were other related reasons: the house had three layers of roof: the first cedar shake roof from 1921 (the underside of which one could see in the un-insulated attic), the second dark green asphalt roof; and the last speckled green and gray asphalt roof, probably dating from the late 60s. This meant that we had to shovel off all three layers and start over again according to the City Building Code. (Indeed, I believe the new code only allows two layers of roofing before it has to be ripped off – good for roofers; not so good for homeowners.) Tim has always wanted a very light colored roof – like those seen in Florida – to deflect the heat. I always thought they were inappropriate in the Northeast. I have always wanted a slate roof -- but I knew that would be out of our budget.

Another reason we waited so long is that we had always hoped to raise the dormer to the attic, along with insulating, so that we might use all of that untapped real estate – used now only for storing projects we had hoped to complete but long since abandoned; college and high school memorabilia; and “valuable” things set aside for prosperity. (Having spent time up there recently, I realize that my idea of “value” has changed over the years. I also realize that I don’t have as much time for “projects” as I once thought I did.) So, re-roofing meant not only putting on a new roof, but making other improvements at the same time.

And, once we have the carpenters coming. . . .

Closets are so scarce in our home. People just didn’t own many things, it seems, in the 1920s. As a family in the third millennium A.D., we have always needed more closet space. Or, at least I have. My clothes have been spread throughout all three bedrooms in the house: dresses in Trent's room; suits in Michela's room; and casual clothes in our room. I dreamed of a large walk-in closet where I could keep all my clothes together. I thought one would fit nicely where our upstairs terrace stood. I rationalized: we rarely use the terrace. (The terrace is accessed from Michela and Maya’s room and Michela has never been keen on my plan to “steal” her terrace.) We had also talked about taking Trent’s closet, which backed our room, in order to have another large closet along one wall of the master bedroom. (We are equal opportunity thiefs; Trent is equally unhappy about our stealing his closet and making his room smaller by building one in the corner.)

And, we need to knock a hole in the wall and put in French doors to the deck that Tim has been building for years now. Why not do that at the same time we put on the new roof as well?

And so, here we are. Thick in the middle of renovations. No room has been spared. To start, we had to go all through the house and take down the paintings so that plaster and saw dust didn’t wind up coating the surfaces. In our house, that was a day’s work in and of itself. Maybe because my mother didn’t like us to hang things on her walls because she wanted to keep the plaster intact. Or maybe because I can’t stand the idea of empty space. Or maybe we just enjoy a lot of artwork on our walls. For whatever the reason, in our house, we have numerous paintings on every horizontal surface. Bedrooms, hallways, living room, dining room, office, bathrooms, staircases. They all had paintings that had to be removed and bagged for protection during renovations. Then they all had to be placed somewhere where the contractors wouldn’t put a hammer through the canvasses and where Maya wouldn’t ride her toy train. After that, contractors’ paper had to be taped down on the floors to protect the wooden floors from damage. (The guys Tim works with are VERY careful. But still, damage to floors is hard to avoid during construction.) Lastly, plastic had to be draped over everything to protect it from plaster and saw dust. In fact, we never did put plastic over our bed and I swear that I have woken with plaster dust between my teeth and on my tongue many mornings now.

Choosing and purchasing materials is one aspect of renovations that I hope not to go through again for a long time. Tim and I finally did settle on a 50 year architectural roofing tile that reflects the sun to keep heating costs down. (I didn’t know why we chose 50 year shingles when we will be dead by then. Maybe Tim is optimistic about our longevity? I figured we could get the 30 year shingles and leave the kids with the problem.) I chose the color from among the colors that Tim approved: a light gray with green specks. It has turned out very nicely, even if some portions remain to be completed.

There were architectural materials we did agree needed to date to the 1920s in order to be in keeping with the rest of the house. We had purchased vintage French exterior doors at auction many years ago to put in the dining room, so they waited in the garage to be installed. We agreed that the walk-in closet needed a vintage French door to allow the light to come into the bedroom from the closet. Accordingly, I drove to Harlem to Demolition Depot and paid $325 (bargained down) for a used French door from the 1920s to fit the space. (I’m sure I had seen many on street corners being thrown out in the past years that I never picked up because I never knew I would need one.) We used the tall, vintage, double cabinet doors that I had scavenged from my friend’s apartment renovations for Trent’s closet doors. And we took the windows from the dining room to put in the raised dormer. We would use the vintage outdoor light fixtures from Fort Dix that we purchased at a tag sale to light the terrace and the deck. The terrace would get terra cotta tiles, like my grandmother’s terrace in Italy. And the old copper gutters would be replaced with new copper ones, which would age to a nice green patina over time. We agreed to hire a man to skim plaster over the sheetrock inside so that the new walls would match the old plaster ones and wouldn’t look so straight and naked. And we would have men skim stucco on the new outside walls to match the original tudor stucco.

Suffice to say, we have survived most of the decisions and much of the destruction. I now know more about construction and renovating than any woman should. (I won’t even get into the finer details of insulation: fiber glass versus shredded jeans?) I will just be glad when this is all over.

And we finally have the new roof that we have needed for so long. . . .