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May 3, 2004
Mixing things up a bit and starting with my book review, since it is related to the rest of the entry….
Bonnie’s Book Reviews—This month I had to read A Theory of Relativity by Jacquelyn Mitchard for my book club. I have read it before but decided to go through it again since it was a while ago. I have to say, I didn’t like it the first time and didn’t like it much the second time either. It’s a book basically about a custody battle over a little girl after both her parents die, and some of the issues around the fact that the girl’s mother had been adopted. I didn’t like it for a few reasons. The first one was that I didn’t find a single character in the book really likeable. There was no one to root for (aside from the girl but, at two years old, it’s not much of a stretch to make her likable). I also thought it was kind of unrealistic in that, in the book, the main parties vying for the girl is the mother’s brother and the father’s second cousin. Both sets of grandparents take a back seat so that ‘the kids’ can fight it out. It also focused a lot on the adoption issue and, maybe I’m naïve here, but I thought that they made much more of a deal about it then was realistic these days. Again, I might be wrong but the attitudes and feelings in this book regarding adoption seemed like nothing I had ever encountered before.
The book has made me naturally spend some time thinking about what would happen to Ella should anything happen to Jamie and I.. One of the reasons that I found this book so unrealistic is that there is just no way that I could ever imagine my brother wanting to or being capable even of raising my daughter. To me the natural choice has always been my mom and we have told her as much, to which she kind of quickly said “of course, of course” and that has been the extent of the conversation. But to tell you the truth, I am actually fairly comfortable with this level of casualness about the whole thing. Of course there is always the secret feeling (hopefully accurate, knock on wood) that this will never be an issue but I also feel that my mom knows me and Jamie and Ella well enough, and did a good enough job with me, that she would do what was right by all of us. She is only in her mid 50’s right now so, while no spring chicken, she should be in good health through Ella’s schooling years anyway.
I hope I’m not being too optimistic about this. If anything happened to my mom before us, or we had younger kids that my mom was too old to raise, then I’m not 100% sure where we would go. Not that we don’t have candidates. Jamie’s brother and sister in law live one town over from us. We see them fairly often, they have an eleven year old, and they are good parents. Also, though, my Aunt (ten years younger then my mom) and her family who live in California are GREAT parents and there is definitely some jealous little part of me that would want Ella raised within my family. Not that there is ANYTHING wrong with Jamie’s family, I think it’s just part of my possessive and overly controlling personality.
Also, here’s another thing that I should probably be more worried about then I am. Neither Jamie nor I have anything in the form of wills set up. I know this is bad but in the back of my mind I also think, so what? If anything happened to me then all my stuff would go to Jamie and vice-versa, right? Well, that’s all I would want to happen anyway. And if something happened to both of us then everything would go to Ella, right? And while she is a minor her guardian would handle it. If people out there have more experience then this obviously very naïve, trusting view, I would love to hear it. The practical side of me knows this is something I should do but the procrastinator/ rationalizer says, why now? What’s the worse that could happen? (Knocking on wood as I type this morbid entry). I would be interested to hear, also, on my TTM board if I am ahead or behind the game here in terms of estate planning and the like. How much talking have people done concerning “What if”? Is all the legalese taken care of, and if so was it hard/expensive/time consuming? Are my general assumptions about what would happen way off base and if so what am I missing...
Yuck! Let’s stop talking about all this morbidity. The biggest thing going on around here is definitely the house. We have been working trying to pull it into open house shape. Boxes and boxes and extra furniture and baby stuff have all gone into storage but I tell you, I look around and the place still seems cluttered to me. I knew this would happen but where did all this crap come from? I am planning on holding a yard sale this weekend so hopefully we can make a little housewarming fund out of some of this crap! I knew things were getting serious the other day when Ella was playing with her toys. She was hard at work stuffing things into her back pack, not really talking to us but more to herself, when I heard her muttering “I’m going to go put this stuff into storage” before lumbering off for the dining room. Too funny, Jamie and I almost fell off our chairs. Boy, she doesn’t miss a trick!
I have also been wondering how this move should affect my time table for getting Ella once and for all out of these diapers. I was planning on mid-May for the big day but we are going to be fully into either keeping the house letter perfect or packing up every bit of familiarity and putting it into big boxes. Not exactly the routine she is used to. Of course, after that comes the actual move, about the biggest change you can throw at a kid. But if we wait until after the move and things have settled down, then we are only a week or so from our summer family trip, a cruise to Bermuda, and I DON’T want to be in transition then. But then the summer is over! Where did my summer go!?!?!?? So I really don’t know what I am going to do, since if it’s not done this summer I will be seriously at a loss. She is getting better though. Almost every morning she wants to try and is often successful in both regards. Similarly, she is getting better and better at producing throughout the day when she asks to go. YES! These are some of the signs of progress I have been waiting for (It’s probably be the chocolate bribes, but I don’t care!). I am NOT going to let this get away from me!
As always, thanks for reading.
Bonnie
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