by Erin Knowles
Getting the (Unexpected) Call: Where I truly believed our attorney had the wrong number, or had momentarily lost her mind.
It was a typical December morn, a Friday, four days before Christmas, 2007. I was fumbling with my bags and coffee and keys and gloves and hat, trying to get through the door of my office where my co-worker, and friend, Laura, was already diligently pounding away at her keyboard. At the same time, the cell in my pocket began to ring, and as I walked around our two, huge 1970s metal desks that faced each other, and heaved and dropped the load in my hands onto my desk, I saw the name “Ellyn Bullock” on the screen of my flip phone right before the text changed to “Missed Call”. I thought, “Why on earth is she calling me? She must have the wrong number.” With a chuckle, and saying something of the sort to Laura, I began organizing myself to begin the day.
A few moments later, the beep on my phone told me that there was a message waiting. I looked up at Laura, and said “For some reason, the adoption attorney we met with nine months ago just phoned me” and without skipping a beat I continued, “She must have heard my name in my greeting and figured she had dialed the wrong number. Why else would she have called?”
But perhaps I should back up a bit and fill you in on why I thought it was odd to be receiving this call in the first place, and why I thought she must have temporarily lost her mind.
In 2007, my wife and I had been together for 12 years. We had lived in four different cities, and figured with this move we would be around for a while (just didn’t know how long that “while” might last). We had been talking more and more about expanding our family, and well, in our case, there’s a helluva lot more planning that needs to go on than usual. A big part of this planning included figuring out what rights we had to protect our family, regardless of how it was created. At the time we were assuming that one of us would experience pregnancy first hand, and we wondered what legal protections we as individuals, but also as a same-sex family, possessed.
So, on the cloudy morning of March 26, Cari and I walked into Ellyn’s law office to learn about and discuss our options. Sitting across the round table from her, I found myself at times thinking how odd this conversation was that we were having. We were in the beginning phases of starting a family, and at the age of 31, I wondered if that was wise? I mean, was I really ready? Do we really need to consider all of this? It was enough to make my head spin.
After we discussed the law, our rights, and what would need to happen, the conversation turned to learning a little more about each other. And then, she asked the question “Would you ever consider adoption?” Cari and I looked at one another, and said “Yeah, of course”, but explained that we wanted to try ourselves before we pursued that path. And with that, we thanked her for her time, and left with a plan to call her when we reached a certain point in our journey, and that was that.
Seven months passed, and just for kicks, we attended a lecture Ellyn gave at the University Y about International adoption. Our journey was NOT going at all how we planned (do they ever?), and we were in the middle of a break, trying to decide what our next move would be. We were still not in the mindset of adopting, we just wanted to find a way to occupy our minds on a windy, rainy, dreary November day. We grabbed some lunch, listened to her tell her stories, waved hi, and without speaking to her, walked back out into the rain and to our frazzled, confused, fragile world.
A month later, on that fateful Friday morning, I called into my voicemail and listened to the message: “Hi, Erin, this is adoption attorney Ellyn Bullock, and I need you to call me right away about an adoption situation that has just arisen right this minute, and I need to talk to you right away. Give me a call…”
I started shaking my head and laughing uncontrollably, in that kind of way that is not at all funny, and is trying in every possible way to pretend that what just happened isn’t really real, and even if it was, it’s “ok” because it isn’t a very big deal. Because, you know, she had the WRONG NUMBER, even though she used my name in her message. “Of course she used my name, she heard it in my greeting and got momentarily confused” is what I told myself, and managed to truly believe.
I immediately called Cari with this strange (to me) news, and before I could even finish my sentence, she told me: “CALL HER BACK. I had this feeling this morning that something was going to happen.” I was stunned into silence. My rational, scientist of a wife was leaning in on a premonition? WHAT ON EARTH IS HAPPENING!?!? In my mind I was thinking that my wife was just as crazy as Ellyn, because I mean really, WTF?
So with trembling hands, I began pushing the numbers on my phone that would bring me to hear Ellyn’s voice on the other end, letting me know that she wasn’t losing her mind or temporarily insane. She did, in fact, have an adoption situation that had just arisen, and given the urgent nature (at the time we thought we had right around two weeks, turns out we had a “grab a few more breaths and put your feet up” 3.5 weeks!), if we were at all interested, we needed to set up a meeting with her for that afternoon.
The following hours were a manic blur. Phone calls were made, tears were shed, fears were brought abruptly and loudly to the surface. We met two dear friends for lunch to lay out everything we had learned in my 10-minute earlier conversation with Ellyn, and to gain some clarity in our emotionally-clogged minds. As the day was beginning to wind down for everyone else in the community, Cari and I arrived at Ellyn’s office, introduced ourselves to her assistant, Molly, and walked through the double glass-paned doors to her office, and with the sound of the door latching behind us, we discovered that our story of how we were to become a family was just beginning.