One thing any Pittsburgher knows is this: the weather is unpredictable. We had 85 degree days back in March, and now that we're nearing May, the forecast for tomorrow shows a high of 48 and rainy. We've been planning for months to have a multi-family yard sale tomorrow and I was really looking forward to having some of my body butter and salt scrubs for sale, with Mother's Day coming up and all. Now, I'm suspecting it's going to be a bust because of the weather. At least we get to see some out-of-town family who are coming in to help out, so it's not a total loss.
The lousy weather does force my hand on another issue I'd back-burnered due to sunny weather, though: the baby blanket I'd been cross stitching. Back in July when we started our home study, I started cross stitching again, for the first time in years. My grandma loved to cross stitch, and taught me how to do it when I was a little girl. She passed away about 8 months before we started our adoption journey, and I knew that if she had been alive and healthy, she would have done something like this for us, to commemorate our experience. So I picked it back up as a sort of tribute to her, as well as a way to pass the time while we waited.
I found an old pattern book of baby animals that I just loved, and began stitching the squares, with the intent to quilt them all together in the end, patchwork-style. I had finished 5 of them by early March, when we found out the second matching call had gone to another family. And all of a sudden, I lost my momentum. I blamed it on the pretty weather, and the sad state of our yard, and wanting to garden, or run and enjoy the sunshine on my lunch breaks instead of sitting at my desk doing needlework. I blamed it on not having the perfect pattern for the last and final square (I badly want a giraffe, but the artist didn't make that design).
The truth is, I just needed a break. When you're waiting, the phone is your lifeline even when you haven't had a potential matching call. But when you know your profile is in a birthparent's hands, the stress is infinitely more intense. The agency has Doug as their primary contact, so each time he called while we were waiting over that month-long period, for first one, then the other set of birthparents to make their decisions, my heart would stop. It was especially stressful because both were newborn placements, not expectant matches, so we had to tell our employers there was a chance we would be taking emergency leave. I'm the only person at my company who performs my job, so I also had to train a co-worker, just in case. Because of that, several of our co-workers knew our dream was a phone call away, so our not being chosen was obvious. It would have been nice to nurse the rejection discreetly, but we didn't have the luxury of putting space between our personal and professional lives.
But today, I'm bringing my cross stitch bag out of the closet where it's been hidden away. I'm creating a giraffe pattern from a drawing, and finally committing to finish this project. I shouldn't hide the symbol of my hope away in the dark.
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