I know this is painful...

After seeing The Blind Side last night, I had a lot of tears. Tears for the beauty of the story, tears for our own journey, tears just for the sake of tears. I woke up this morning feeling strong in my belief that adoption was my journey... our journey. I felt that strength in the Mr., too. Sitting on the couch, he started searching for books on adoption and we found a good one on Amazon. But rather than purchase from a faceless website, I thought we should go to a good ole brick-and-mortar store. Talk to someone in person who could help us.

The plan was to go to the gym and stop by Barnes & Noble to see if they had the book we wanted, and also to see what other books on adoption they might have. When we got to B & N, I immediately went to the Family Care section, assuming that the books on adoption would be with all the other family planning, pregnancy, etc books. At first glance, we found nothing.

Still feeling upbeat, I went to the information desk and asked the nice man behind the counter to look up the particular book we were searching for. They didn't have it. So then he did a general adoption search. The first books to come up were about adopting a dog. Hmmm. Not a good start. He narrowed the search to child adoption and a couple of books came up, so he took us back over to Family Care to find them. And there on the second to the bottom shelf we found a label for Divorce/Adoption. You're reading that correctly. Divorce/Adoption. On one shelf. Like they go together. Mixed in with books on how to survive a divorce and how to parent a stepchild, we found one book, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Adoption." Okay... so what exactly is the universe telling us here?

Still feeling upbeat, I headed back to the nice man behind the information desk and asked if there was a comment card or something I could fill out with some feedback about expanding their adoption section. He said, "Well actually, let me introduce you to Laurel." (Laurel happened to be walking by. Lucky me.) "Laurel," he said, "this young lady would like to talk to you about a stocking issue."

Well, I should have known by her body language that Laurel really wasn't into getting feedback. She stayed a full 4 feet away and only half turned her body towards me. If you've ever taken kick-boxing, she sort of had that stance about her, you know the one where a sidekick is surely followed by an undercut punch. But, still feeling upbeat, I said, "Hi Laurel! I just wanted to give some feedback about the lack of adoption books and the fact that the one book you have is filed with divorce." To which Laurel said, "I know that it's really painful, but that's just how it is."

I know it's really painful...
I know it's really painful...
I know it's really painful...

Laurel, honey, you don't know shit. Not only is this NOT painful, but quite frankly, I find it incredibly peaceful and wonderful to embrace where we are and to know that we are going to give a child a home. And in turn, that child is going to give us the chance to be parents. It's not painful, Laurel. It's exactly the opposite in fact, and if it wasn't, then we sure as heck shouldn't be adopting.

The Mr. ended up finding 3 more books on adoption, bringing the grand total to 4 on a shelf with 30-plus books dealing with divorce. I'm just guessing here, but there was also a stack of about 5 shelves, 30-plus books deep, covering fertility and pregnancy. That's around 150 books, and I'm being conservative. And yet, there were four about adoption. And one of them was The Complete Idiot's Guide.

Needless to say, we left B & N without a book. Amazon. Here we come.