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Because Thanksgiving is drawing near, I would love to be able to give you a list of all of the things for which I am truly thankful. Unfortunately, my head is too full of the real reason we gather around the table together each November: Food. Ruminating on what I’m going to create for Turkey Day and, more importantly, what I’m going to eat, makes my toes curl in slavering anticipation.
When contemplating all of the possible delectable edibles, I tend to reach back to my childhood for inspiration. My family never had a lot of money. Not that we were living out of flimsy cardboard boxes on the street, but expenses like vacations and new clothes were not common purchases in my household. (Although I do remember touring Gettysburg, Pa., at one point. My dad made us stop and read every single historical marker. I wasn’t too broken up about skipping the whole vacation experience after that.) However, food was one of the many areas in which my mother knew how to stretch a dollar. She grew her own vegetables and made almost everything from scratch. There was no way she was going to pay hard-earned cash for something she could grow in her own backyard or produce with her own two hands. I didn’t even have those pricey little jars of pureed baby food—that’s what a blender was for! It wasn’t unusual for Mom to make a giant pot of soup or chili and serve it every night for a week. Leftovers were never, ever, thrown away—they were either eaten or turned into a “new” dish.
But on special occasions, my mother’s cooking turned from simple sustenance to fabulous foodstuffs. Recently, a friend strongly “suggested” that I make banana bread. While I love the subtle sweetness of this dessert-like nosh, I don’t seem to bake it very often. As the fragrant aroma of the banana/sugar/vanilla trifecta wafted out of my oven, I was transported back to my mother’s kitchen, waiting for the buzzer on our 1950s pink hand-me-down monstrosity to alarm so I could be first in line to receive a hot-out-of-the-oven slice of mellow, melt-in-your-mouth scrumptiousness. In that instant, I realized banana bread rarely makes my baking repertoire because that particular provision is, quite simply, my mother’s. I tend to want tweak recipes as I develop my concoctions, but it’s rather hard to improve on Mom’s perfection.
I have come to the conclusion that 90 percent of my positive childhood memories somehow revolve around food. I remember spending hours sitting on an old-fashioned hand-crank ice-cream maker so the lid wouldn’t come off while the adults pumped the handle, hoping-hoping-hoping I’d be the first to get a taste whenever the mixture inside was deemed frozen. I remember picking red-ripe strawberries on hot summer afternoons, putting only the very smallest in my bucket because I knew they were the sweetest. I remember being just the tiniest bit happy when I was sick enough to stay home from school because my mother would make cinnamon toast for breakfast and chicken and biscuits for lunch, just to coax me to eat. My birthday was my favorite holiday, not because of the gifts, but for the sheer fact that I got to choose the menu for the entire day! If I wanted pancakes for breakfast, homemade mac and cheese for lunch, and pizza for dinner, all I had to do was say so, and no one (aka my big brother) was allowed to influence my decision. Now that was a big deal.
To this day, much of my life is spent thinking about food. I plan a dinner menu for the week, saving my baking for the weekends. I like to get up early on Saturdays to shop at a local open-air market, even if that means I’ll have to make a separate trip to the grocery store later. I look forward to social occasions because they give me an excuse to get out all of my pots and pans and make a giant mess.
With such a focus on gastric pleasure, I sometimes wonder if my future adopted child will love the kitchen as much as I do. Will he/she pick up a spatula or shun the stove? Will I be creating my child’s memories with the help of a food processor? Will my grown-up child stand in his/her own kitchen some day, smiling over recollections of food experiences gone past?
I hope so.
I am an undercover nerd. If you have been following my blog since its inception, you may have stumbled across a few clues to my incognito geekdom (see my previous post, “It’s Not Easy Being Green“). I am not obvious about it: I do not wear a Steve Urkel pocket protector and regulation highwaters or play D&D while drinking Faygo in my basement, but I will admit to a near-OCD need for correct spelling and proficient organization.
My obligation to order, however, does not seem to infect every area of my life. For example, if you saw the uncontrollable chaos that is my guest room, you might wonder if a pack of wild gnomes devised a midnight home invasion simply to empty the contents of my closet onto the bed, desk, and floor. (Those little guys may look cute in their pointy red hats, but they’re sneaky.) On the other hand, my book collection is arranged alphabetically by author, and I can put my hands on my copy of “The Count of Monte Cristo” in approximately 2.4 seconds. I think the source of this segregation comes from my personal perception of worth. In all honesty, if those wiley gnomes ate a hole through my knee-high black leather boots, I could find substitutes if I was willing to shell out the dough. But, although almost none of my books are expensive or rare, each has sentimental value that cannot be replaced with a simple trip to Barnes & Nobles.
The original member of my collection.
While my basement bookshelves hold the usual mix of modern fiction, biographies, and classics, the top two hold the best part of my collection: my children’s books. The original member of this medley is “The F-U-N Book” by Mabel Guinnip LaRue. With such riveting short stories as “Goose-Goose and Pig-Pig” and “Woody Woodchuck,” I’m sure you’ve never heard of it. Set in electrotype in the ’20s, it was my grandmother’s first reader. She gave it to me when I was six years old, and while I didn’t appreciate it then, now I’m quite happy I was able to hang on to it for a couple of decades.
My favorite piece of this varied assortment is a picture book by Berkeley Breathed (illustrator of the “Bloom County” comics) titled “Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big.” The book is about Edwurd, a boy who plays baseball in his house, breaks his mother’s ceramic pig, and tells a ginormous whopper to cover up his crime. Just when Edwurd is about to get in terrible trouble, his sister, Fannie, fibs and says she broke the pig. (She’d learned to lie from the best, of course.) Edwurd won’t let his little sister take the rap by herself and, so, confesses.
My favorite collection piece.
“…But we sat in Time Out to pay for our crimes.
Then Ed looked at me with a smile that was new
And said, ‘It is nice to have one like you.’
Two former fibsters, that Edwurd and me
But brother and sister we finally be.”
My big brother gave me this very special book for Christmas several years ago, and if those pesky gnomes so much as scratch the dust jacket, they will find themselves utilized as statues in my weed-riddled flower beds.
After visiting Borders (again) this weekend, I have added another component to the assemblage: “Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born.” By Jamie Lee Curtis (who adopted two children of her own), this picture book is about a little girl who begs her mother to tell her the story of her birth:
My latest addition.
“Tell me again about the night I was born.
Tell me again how you and Daddy were curled up like spoons and Daddy was snoring.
Tell me again how the phone rang in the middle of the night and they told you I was born.
Tell me again how you screamed.”
Because stories about adoption seem like a pretty niche market for the under-5 crowd, I was slightly (although pleasantly) surprised when I came across this gem. Intrigued, I began searching the children’s section of the store. An hour later, I was a bit more astonished when I figured out that “Tell Me Again” was the only adoption-centric kids’ book I was going to find. (Online outlets, such as Tapestry Books, are your best bet.) I was not at all amazed, however, when I returned home and unwrapped my purchase, only to realize that this book is the first possession I have bought for my future child. No annoying rattles or designer baby booties for my kid! I sure hope the love of reading is one of those nurture vs. nature things, because I apparently have been unwittingly amassing my little one’s book collection for years.
Looks like I might have to teach my munchkin how keep his/her nerd status classified, too. It’s all right, kid, Mom has had a lot of practice.
Kids ain’t cheap. If you already have ‘em, you probably are beginning to wonder if your local grocery chain and shoe store have started accepting Monopoly money. If you are trying to fund an adoption plan or invitro-fertilization (IVF) cycle, you may be a little more desperate. But before you take a second mortgage out on your home (risky) or ask Grandpa if you can, um, perhaps have some of that inheritance money a little early (tacky), do your research. Several charitable organizations fund grants and loans to help prospective parents afford their future bundles of joy.
After my husband and I shelled out approximately $13,000 for our first failed IVF cycle, I knew we would be hard-pressed to come up with that kind of cash again any time soon. (And when I say cash, I mean cash. Most fertility clinics don’t exactly accept American Express.) We had borrowed part of the funds from our parents, and I was reluctant to drain anyone’s retirement for another round of medical procedures that already had proved to be as big a gamble as a day at the track. As I began searching for alternative ways to scrape together enough money to start a second cycle, I realized I didn’t have to look very far: The doctors at my fertility clinic recently had set up a philanthropic organization that endowed their services to childless couples that had attempted at least one unsuccessful IVF cycle. With nothing to lose, I applied for and, a few months later, received $11,000 worth of clinical visits, medications, tests, and procedures. When my second IVF cycle failed as well, I was particularly glad I never made that drive out to Little Italy to pay Vinny the Shark a visit.
Now that we are getting closer to writing some hefty checks to our adoption agency, I once again am hunting for the proverbial money tree. Because of the effects the recessive economy has had on my income (my company has decreased employee salaries by 10 percent), it’s becoming harder and harder to pad our savings account. Making small concessions, such as utilizing our local public-transportation system, can only get us so far. Don’t get me wrong, every little bit counts and slow and steady wins the race, but fast and speedy pleases the needy and a nice fat check in my pocket surely would help me sleep at night.
To that end, I’ve applied for a grant to (hopefully) subsidize our $14,000 adoption plan. I would love to say that I flexed my journalistic muscle, reached out to a couple of contacts, and called in a few favors to find a bunch of underground, super-duper-secret organizations that hand out the dough like fun-size Milky Ways on Halloween, but the truth is I simply availed myself of the gift of Google and various reading materials to amass a collection of adoption-specific funding programs. And while the application process is not what I would describe as a wicked good time (be prepared to—at minimum—write a “personal statement,” find your W2s, and squeeze a copy of your completed home study out of your social worker), some of these organizations have the capacity to set you up with big bucks if you’re lucky enough to be awarded a piece of the pie. The following list is just a small sample of some of the better-known adoption-funding institutions; I whole-heartedly encourage you to check these out and then do a little research of your own. While you may not meet the requirements of every grant you discover, applying for just one could keep you from paying your adoption agency with couch-cushion change. Even the tiniest bit of effort can help you reap substantial rewards.
Gift of Adoption Fund. With an average award of $3,500, Gift of Adoption will consider any U.S. citizen who has an approved and current home study from a licensed and accredited adoption agency. The grants support domestic adoptions as well as those from Hague-member countries. A one-time fee of $40 is required to process an application.
HelpUsAdopt.org. Available to U.S. citizens living in the United States, HelpUsAdopt.org provides qualified couples and individuals (regardless of race, religion, marital status, or sexual preference) with grants of up to $15,000. Applicants must not be undergoing infertility treatments while pursuing adoption.
National Adoption Foundation. The National Adoption Foundation’s grant program is open to all legal adoptions, including public- or private-agency, international, special-needs, or attorney-facilitated adoptions. Grant amounts range from $500 to $2,500.
Show Hope. A Christian organization founded by Stephen Curtis Chapman, Show Hope’s eligibility requirements include a reference letter from the applicants’ minister. Grants from $2,000 to $7,000 are awarded for domestic and international adoptions.
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