The Indigestible

So this is where it gets personal.

I got my fingerprint card from the state last month — it means there’s no legal barrier now between me and whatever might happen. I mean, my understanding is that now, if the adoption I want doesn’t go forward, it’ll be because I failed. I didn’t follow up or I did something wrong, didn’t cross the right eye or dot the proper tee.

I’m still in a kind of fog; I got the fingerprint clearance on February 14th, a sort of Valentine’s card that I didn’t expect.

I think I’m just beginning to realize how much and how deeply everything can change, how fast, how soon. I’ve done a hell of a lot — but I still have so much more to do.

I’m adding a category to TI: Yoshi. I’m not referring to the turtle; yoshi means, in Japanese, adopted son. As I learn more and things move forward, I’ll be posting stuff in this category. I won’t be using names because I’m on the fost/adopt track now, which means that until the adoption is official Yoshi (whomever he might be) will be my foster son and will have to have anonymity; afterward, it’ll be up to him if he wants to have his face and name splattered all over the blogosphere.

Christ. If I do this right, I’m gonna be a dad.

There’s work involved. Here’s what my bedroom looks like:

Here’s the other bedroom in the apartment now, what will be Yoshi’s room:

Yeesh. That’s got to change. It has to lose its clutter, lose all the boxes of crap, become more organized and be turned into something like a picture-perfect catalog image, something more like this:

I know. It won’t be like that. It can’t be; I don’t want to fill my house with Ikea’s idealism. I’m thinking some fairly straightforward stuff, a bunk bed, a dresser, a beanbag. (Some of that is already there, actually, just buried under mounds of shi’ite.)

Here’s what I actually have in mind for the room, paintwise anyway. The ceiling is going to be sky blue I think, but the wall paint scheme will be more or less symbolically the same, east, north, west and south.

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I want my kid to have the coolest. room. ever.

Enuff re the paint. The bunk bed because he’ll have friends and sometimes he’ll want to have them over for the night, to hang out and BS and just be what good friends are together. A bedroll on the floor isn’t enough for that. On the desk a computer, sure, probably my retired and venerable iBook G3; maybe a TV and phone too, when he’s old enough.

But whatever we start with, it won’t be the end; he’s going to make his space his own, put up posters, pick different furniture, move things around, clutter the floor with toys and games. Of course the books and magazines will still be there; he’ll be reading Mad Kids or Mad soon enough, or something else, whatever works, whatever he wants.

Jesus, is this really going to happen? Am I really ready for it?

Probably yes, and probably no, in that order, I think.