Just started re-reading one of the greatest books ever written, To Kill a Mockingbird (like Stephen Colbert says, when you write one this good, you don't need to write another) this summer and realized something I had forgotten. Let me take you back.
I "borrowed" the first edition printing of the book from my parents somewhere in the late eighties. I know it was theirs cause Dad put a sticker in it telling us so and, apparently, according to the sticker, they also wanted to allow epileptics in public schools back in 1960. I mean, who doesn't?
Flash forward to the nineties when I got my first apartment with my girlfriend freshly graduated from college--her not me. Well, at any rate, I was there and worked full time and loved my job and read that book. That book made me sad when I was done. It made me sad to think I'd never get to spend anymore time with Scout (most of all) or any of them as Harper Lee hadn't written anything else.
However, it planted in me a seed that didn't really start to germinate until we had moved out of the apartment, got married, moved out of our tiny yellow rental house, slid down the road and bought our first little white house. Then it hit me: I want a daughter. I want my own Scout.
Well, I think it hit us both, but Lisa couldn't help herself because she's a chick. I wanted a daughter and we tried real hard for a few years. But, there was trouble. And Lisa went to doctors and had surgery while I just kept doing my thing. In fact, one time I had to do my thing in a cup and take it to a doctor to make sure my thing wasn't wasting every one's time, but I would've done anything for the cause at that point--even boxers.
So. It all goes back to college when I boasted to my girlfriend (Lisa) as we lay around on some mattresses tossed on the floor, that since I was adopted, then I was sure to adopt a child when I got married and never fool with "baby weight" and post-partum depression etc etc. And that was the answer now. When the doctor boasted, "You'll never get pregnant without my help," and , "Treatments are 20,000 dollars a month," it dawned on her as well, that adoption might be the way to go.
Well, TKAM rears its head again. I read that China is throwing little girls at Americans and all we need is money and all we hafta do is get to the YMCA and sign up after a discussion about it with Carolina Adoption Agency. I tell Lisa, "Let's go, it won't hurt to see." And we went, sat through the whole thing and heard, "You must be at least 31 years of age to participate."
I think I was 30 and Lisa was 29 (for real at this point). On the way out, I look at a table of pictures of children from other countries other than China, and see one set of pictures that looks vaguely familiar. The children are gorgeous, and some of them, believe it of not, look just like my baby pictures. "Well how old do you hafta be for Guatemala here?"
Lisa did more paperwork and running to the courthouse than I ever had fighting my countless traffic tickets and getting building permits. She got it done in about a year, maybe less. I won't tell you the trials and tribulations of all that, just to say that we were told we'd get what we'd get (just like knocking someone up) and I prayed for a Scout.
We got, the BOY! or rather his picture days after he was born. We paraded this picture they had sent with carefully placed post-it notes over his genitals to anyone who would look. They don't care a hoot about American Sensibilities down there when babies are concerned I reckon, but strangely, most everyone we showed the picture would peek under the post-it note! He was the child that was meant for us.
In four months I was a Dad! In four months Lisa was a Mom. In four months, Jaime was miserable and in a foreign world surrounded by strangers...anyway, he got better. And from an apartment, as we'd sold the house, to a rental on the lake we moved with the baby...and then I got the call, "I'm pregnant," about five months after we'd just gone south for our little organ donor.
Well, it was shocking, and I was shocked. I had just kept doing my thing, and somewhere deep down inside, Lisa had done hers; a year after we were told it'd never happen without help. Well, one belly sonar later, and "it" was going to become a Girl, my Scout. I don't remember when or how I asked if we could name her Scout, I just remember now, looking back, that it wasn't going to be.
Cruel fate it was. However, everything was fine...I had my Scout. I was gonna call her that ever if her name was Emily Rebecca Mothershead! But, she was tiny, and smelly, and...bald. She wasn't a Scout, she was a baby, then a crawler, then a toddler who apparently couldn't walk through a room without getting juice on the ceiling. And she was constantly sticky.
And I've mentioned before that Jaime, who was quick to label things in the house, had labeled her Loo-Doo so, it wasn't a stretch that she'd end up Sticky-Loo, and has been called thus for ten or so years. Yeah, she's no scout, but she's better, because she's real, and she's here and I can see her anytime I want. But best of all, she too is chock full of organs that Lisa or I can use as needed with less risk of rejection.
I have become a full blown dad now, and have learned many things about little people. I learned more from Atticus I think than I ever thought and have repeated his advice many times to people without even knowing I was parroting him. "Don't talk down to children, if he asks something, answer him," I like to say, and do. I don't do euphemisms.
Worse, however, is the realization that if I actually had a child like Jean-Louise, or Jem, or a house guest like Dill, I might have to kill them all to save my own sanity. I also see that the book, though loved indeed, is in fact, a work of fiction. Sure, some contents are perhaps loosely based on some of Harper Lee's experiences and childhood friends, but it is a vision of how it was, and not a historical document. And Scout, though lovable, could never be a Mothershead now, now that we have a Jaime and an Emily.
Maybe a dog then.
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