A Weekend Dilemma
And the strange things couples do in the middle of the night
Friday, three years ago
I didn’t mind the humidity on the terrace that evening. I had whatever I needed. With my journal and some book and all the time in the world, my brain sunk into its next self-improvement adventure. That’s when I received a forward from Tara.
Anyone interested to switch to siblings 2-4? Twins girls in the system.
- Who sent this?
Someone on the adoption group. It’s on the Facebook group also.
- Should we think about it?
Can you check the portal properly once?
I did not want to be disturbed, and usually when I was focussing on how to become my best self, I treated all messages like spam, even from loved ones. I thought then that it would be a short disruption but I guess your kids can find a way to break your chain of thought even before they arrive.
We had been waiting for our referral somewhat impatiently for two and a half years, and were only a few months away from getting an email with our siblings babies’ profiles in the 0-2 age bracket.
New referrals were sent out on Monday morning and if we wanted to consider a switch, it had to be done over the weekend. Before the adoption authorities started work on Monday.
That evening I was keen to switch and Tara wanted to stay put.
“Anisha called today saying she wants to come back to work. She’s easily the best full-time help we’ve had. It’ll sort our lives out. Namrata has also landed TODAY. Your full family is here. Just think about it. Something strange is going on. I feel like it’s a sign or something.”
Tara rolled her eyes. “Ya, but why are we trying to game the system. The only reason we’re even talking about this is because the referral will come quickly. On Monday probably. I don’t want to be so desperate and do all this manoeuvring.”
“You want to wait and let things happen on their own. As they were going to?”
“I guess.”
And that was that. Back to the good life.
Saturday
The next morning, we woke up on opposite sides of the bed. We were repeating each other’s lines from the night before, like it was a play and the director wanted us to swap roles.
I was doing my thing all day and Tara went from Court to physio to something else. The conversation continued over text, between other things.
- Where can we buy good spicy Punjabi pickles. Smita’s mom wants to take some back.
Can’t get through. Have you gone for squash?
- Is your matter done? Wasn’t the judge on leave?
Breakfast plans confirmed for tomorrow morning. They’re making dosa.
-Yum.
I’m back in about 20. Can we talk about it again?
We kept it short. We were sticking to the original decision. I wanted us to agree on one more thing though. “Let’s not open this up again? We’ve been through it enough times now. What’s the point?” - “Cool.”
This felt right. We would wait for things to play out as they would without our interference. Take no action.
Except that once you’ve been in that position – knowing you can either switch or stay – once you’ve considered it even briefly, anything you do is a decision. Every decision, a choice. Even the passive act of doing nothing ceases to be a passive act.
Tara and I are both staunch in our absence of belief. We secretly judge numerology, astrology, mysticism, signs, whatever those are, and keep the door tightly shut on all manner of woo-woo. But there was a weird force acting on us all weekend. Something that refused to leave us alone.
Sunday
Smita slipped on the stairs and tore a ligament. Breakfast was cancelled. Maybe we would go see her in the evening when things had settled down. Tara and I had a regular Sunday at home. On the surface there was nothing different about it. For most of the day she kept her word and did not bring it up again, although of course she wanted to. I had to keep my doubts to myself because surely I could not raise it. Not after I had shut her down.
In the evening, before we left to see Smita, she brought it up once more, and I told her how confusing it was getting for me, to go over the exact same thing over and over again, and was she very keen to switch, because if she was not very keen, could we please just let it be? No, she guessed she was not very keen, if that was the standard, and we put it to bed once and for all.
We drove back from Smita’s, the car filled with an air of post-dosa satisfaction and built up weekend tension, waiting to get home. As we were turning into the lane of our house, Tara received a Facebook message. It was from a woman who had switched her age preference for siblings from 0-2 to 2-4 a few months ago, and gotten her referral a few days later. She had been quietly watching the weekend drama unfold on Facebook and when she saw Tara’s message earlier that day, saying that we were sticking with 0-2, she had decided to reach out. Sorry but I just had to message you, she wrote, can I call?
“I’m going to tell her to call,” Tara said, inviting no response from me.
“You speak to her if you want to. But it’s Sunday night. We’re not going to change our preferences now anyway right?”
“Yes, but I want to hear what she has to say.”
She called when we were upstairs in our room and Tara got up to leave.
I gestured for her to stay. “It’s too warm outside.”
“Hi, how are you? No no, it’s not too late for us.”
“Can you put it on speaker please”, I whispered.
Tara lay down. I stayed at the far end of the bed, listening carefully.
The woman did not tell us all that much. Just her and her husband’s reasons to switch to 2-4, their disagreements and apprehensions, the things they were afraid of, all the back and forth, and of course, the troubles they had experienced once their two-and-a-half-year-old twins came home. But above all else, she had called to say this - people waiting for their kids think there’s a big difference between 0-2 and 2-4, but there really isn’t. One-year-olds and three-year-olds are both very, very small. All that kids that age need is love, lots and lots of love. And all the trouble they were continuing to deal with on a daily basis was also the most fun they had ever had.
Tara must have cut the call around 10, and that’s when the longest night of our lives began.
It started with me ranting to the walls about the damn woman who had called. Oh, she just had to call, did she? Who was she and why was she so intrusive? Did we ask for her help? I certainly didn’t.
Tara patiently ignored me until I had gotten it all out of my system. Then, once more, we went over the things – the reasons, factors, fears. Unsurprisingly, that old set of important considerations provided no fresh insight.
The problem with making life-changing decisions in a marriage like ours - between someone like me and someone like her - is that we often don’t speak the same language.
I rely too much on my brain and my self-proclaimed ability to break things down into their neat logical components. But in that situation, I didn’t know what to do with the list of pros and cons after I had made it. The brain sorted through the data like a good analyst and handed it over to the boss to take a call. And when the boss - my instinct, gut, heart, whatever you call it - was asked to decide, it had to accept that it had no experience with this kind of thing.
Tara, on the other hand, is more in touch with her emotional instincts, and by the early hours of Monday, had a vague sense of what she wanted but no way of translating this for my benefit. I was looking for reasons and she offered me a feeling. I offered reasons and she was looking for a feeling. And we were both completely terrified. So we just stood there, confused, unsure of what to do next.
To be fair to us, this was no regular decision. One way or the other, we were going to do something that would decide the fate of our family: it’s make-up, it’s identity, it’s unique brand of collective crazy and naughty. With no useful information to help us. A simple forward on a Friday evening had snowballed in monumental fashion, and we had…what…a few hours to decide?
Through the night, we fought and fought, about things that had to do with raising children and things that didn’t. Insecurities and trust, mental load and division of household stuff, resentments about work and personal time, our physical and mental health, finances and managing everything and what if they’re almost 4 and we have to jump into the school admissions circus as soon as they get here, and how will we do anything ever again.
Looking back, it is clear to me that there was no way to work this out without an express marriage therapy bootcamp.
“Okay. If we switch and get the referral tomorrow, and they’re very close to 4, then can we say no? And if they’re younger, like closer to 2, we say yes?” My trusty brain had come up with an intelligent compromise.
“No. If we switch we have to accept the referral. Doesn’t matter if they’re 2 or 4.”
Good to be clear about our constraints, I suppose.
At some point we called my mother, who all through my life had made the right noises but on that night made the wrong ones. We called her mother, who I often find unreasonable and difficult but on that night said just the right thing, “Do it. It’ll be fine. Don’t think so much.”
We lost our minds a few times during the night. We took breaks from the fighting to, order pizza, do a coin toss - best of 3, cast not-so-secret ballots. We poured large whiskies with big blocks of ice and forgot about them till they were too watery, and then knocked them back, giving us the kind of jittery clarity a drink sometimes can. One of us would get up mid-fight and walk to the door, the other would follow, knowing it was time for a smoke.
Around 2, after we had finished our third packet of blue Lays and the yelling was behind us, we slipped into the sleepy delirium one finds at the end of a six-hour breakup, when the aggression has faded and everything is slightly funny. It was time to go to bed.
“So, are we done?” I asked.
“Yes. I’m exhausted. I think I have to skip court tomorrow.”
We logged into our profile and made the switch. And then slept anxiously through the last few hours of the life we were leaving behind.1
Thank you, intrusive woman. Thank you so very much.
The sweetest teary-eyed 2 am read I have ever read. Lots of love to the best '2-4 year old switcheroos' and their mum and dad. Lives of many insomniacs across the world is better for it and the stories they brought to them. :)
Now change that up and make it one person having this entire conversation/conflict/reasoning/emotioning with oneself. That was me as a single adoptive parent. This was both, a great read and a poignant reminder of the time I was taking my decision. I wasn't switching but I agonised over every parameter when taking the decision. And yes, bless those Mondays!