by Erin Knowles
Part two of the story of Erin and Cari’s adoption.
We Interrupt Our Regularly (?) Scheduled Programming: Where fate decides it’s as good a time as any to start a kitchen remodel.
The next few days we spent telling our families and friends of our intentions to adopt, while navigating both personal (introducing ourselves to our birthmother) and legal hoops, and juggling constantly emerging pieces to the puzzle, while trying to sound calm, cool, and collected. The following days were a blur, and somewhere in the middle we managed to eek out celebrating Christmas with our families with a phone attached at our hips at ALL times.
Lacking the loads of information we were seeking, no NEEDING, we did anything and everything we could to occupy our time. After almost a week away, we returned to our home from our holiday travels, unpacked, and tried to find a good night’s slumber. Little did we know what was waiting for us the next morning.
“Um sweetie, can you come here a second?” I said to my wife as I was standing over the threshold between our vinyl-covered kitchen floor and hardwood dining room floor. “What is THIS?” She gave me that perplexed look as her eyes focused down towards a large patch of soaking wet hardwood floor. Confused, we lifted the threshold to reveal a mess of mud and muck and grime. Pulling now on the vinyl floor, a picture of what was happening started to come together. We had no clue as to the source of this wet mess, but it was apparent that a “quicker-picker-upper” was not going to fix it.
It turns out the connection between our dishwasher and sink pipes had slowly loosened and had been dripping long enough to cause massive damage to our kitchen floor underneath the vinyl flooring. As soon as contractors began pulling up (multiple) layers of vinyl, they discovered 9×9 asbestos-laden tiles about three layers down. Another crew was called in to handle that hazardous stuff.
In the meantime, while still waiting for ANY information we could get our hands on regarding our adoption, we began our expedited background and home inspection checks as required by Illinois law to become adoptive parents. We drove up to Chicago to get fingerprinted. The first day our social worker visited our home (to conduct the first of many home visits), our interview was temporarily suspended, as we unexpectedly had to empty out ALL the contents of our cabinets and refrigerator. The leak had gone on for so long, our cabinets had been soaking up water, and the bottoms of them were rotting out. I was certain we were going to be deemed unfit from the start. Luckily, our social worker saw beyond our disastrous surroundings, and after a couple of hours talking, answering questions, sharing our histories, we scheduled our second interview.
One week post-THE CALL, we felt like we had lived a hundred lives, and yet time seemed to stand still. Was the birthmom ok? Was the baby ok? Was this all really happening, and would we be parents in the near future or not? Everything seemed so fragile, especially our emotions, and we didn’t have control over any of it.
Erin Knowles made the leap from full-time employment to work-at-home entrepreneur. While her business is lifestyle photography, she is an artist who holds a camera. Erin is also active in the community, serving on the Orpheum Children’s Science Museum Board of Directors as well as being involved in the UP Center of Champaign County. Erin and her partner of 18 years, Cari, are parents to Henry (5) and Millie (3), who never cease to make life interesting. Her favorite quote from the week comes from her son to Cari: “Mommy, even if there was a better mom out there I wouldn’t want her because you cook the BEST food!”