Cut & Paste

For someone who would much rather spend her time actually cutting and pasting - spreading a big sheet of paper out on a table and physically manipulating things to fit into the space, trying them here, trying them there, cutting them apart with scissors and then pasting them back together with glue - all the time I've had to spend on Photoshop working on our Dear Birthparent Letter has, let's face it, not been the highlight of the adoption process for me. I get it: technically, what I'm doing on Photoshop is the same thing. Technically. But sliding a mouse around and striking keys to manipulate the pieces is just not as satisfying to my brain somehow.

And that's not even getting into the real difficulty of it all. Distilling our lives, our relationship, our love for one another, the love that we have to share, into four pages. That's, of course, the real kicker. How do we pick the 12-15 photos that perfectly embody everything we want to convey? (And who documents their life that faithfully, anyway? I mean, I'm a photographer and we don't seem to have enough photos of us engaging in our favorite activities, hanging out casually with our friends, visiting with our families.) How do we find the words that tell everything we want to about ourselves?

The real answer, I guess, is that we don't. I mean, really, how can we? It's impossible. So, we do the best we can. We give a good enough summary that a potential BP wants to learn more. Like the blurb on the back of a book jacket, the teaser for a news story, a movie trailer. And then, I guess, we hope it's enough.

Two words

If you start to follow this blog, you will quickly realize I'm a bit of a word nerd. I can get caught up in the meanings and implications and connotations of words, but I'm slowly learning that this is not always a wise tactic. Sometimes there is not an underlying meaning, sometimes people are just grappling to communicate with the vocabulary available to them. And that's okay.

That said, I do want to explore the definitions of two words that are significant to this blog and significant to the journey upon which my partner and I are embarking - the path to parenthood through domestic open adoption. I'm writing this entry before we are actually completely done with all of our paperwork and "in circulation" - though we are really, really close. (The mix of stress, anxiety, and excitement we are feeling is another entry for another day). I probably won't actually publish this post until we are approved and up and running, so to speak, at which point I'll introduce myself a little better. But for now, permit me to geek out...

o*pen [oh-puh n]

-adjective

1. accessible, as to apeals, ideas, or offers

2. unreserved, candid, or frank

-verb

1. to set in action, begin, start, or commence

2. to uncover, lay bare, or expose to view

There are many other definitions for the word open, but to me, these are the ones that best convey what open adoption is about, what it is we are trying to do with this blog, and how we try to live our lives in general.

The next word is one of my favorites. It is what we named this blog and what we really feel our life together is. And if I understand at all the intensity that is to come both in the act of building our family and then in raising a kid, I think it is just about the only word that could do the whole thing justice.

ad*ven*ture [ad-ven-cher]

-noun

1. a bold, usually risky undertaking; hazardous action of uncertain outcome

2. an exciting or unusual experience

-verb

1. to risk; to take the chance of; dare

Hazardous action of uncertain outcome? That's pretty much the definition of life, isn't it? So here we go...