Our first Halloween- Ganesh, Dali Lama, Kali

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 New Year’s Day 2006, our Japanese neighbor encouraged us to do a ritual, letting the gods know of our desire to welcome a child into our lives. He said it must be performed by January 2nd. The next day we gathered everything that could possibly be useful and headed for the “portal”, a gazebo perched over a bend in the Kaaterskill Creek. We lit incense, rang bells, offered oranges, burned a fertility book and a diaper, poured expired formula in the snow, chanted “healthy baby”.

The next day we got a call to come pick up our baby boy, born January 2nd. We took off for NYC, spending the night at a hotel in midtown, watching our last movie in a theater (for a long time) and spent the morning handing over a wad of money to the adoption agency. We drove to Long Island where Milo was perched in the corner of Tim Jaccard’s couch listening to Andean flute music. Six pounds and some change, he seemed unimaginably small to us with a wad of dark hair and limitlessly dark eyes. We changed a diaper and held him while he took in the pan pipes and our faces.

Tim Jaccard is the founder of the Safehaven Alliance, a rescue organization for babies whose parents have not made a birth plan. Tim was a policeman, assigned to the infanticide beat. His heart broke at the number of abandonded babies found in dumpsters. His experience inspired him to write the legislation making it legal for mothers to give birth at a hospital and leave the baby there, or at a police station or a firehouse. Check out www.nationalsafehavenalliance.org for more info on this amazing program.

The Central Park Quilters made a quilt for Milo and we bundled him up and drove home to the lullaby CDs we had collected over the past months. We called friends and family from the car to share the news. Our friends, Portia, Zur and Freida met us in our driveway, Free clapping with excitement. She had made welcome cards months ago for the baby girl we thought was on the way.

Milo wakes up happy every day, smiling his big infectious smile. For a year he called us both DaDa. Now we’re both MaMa for a while. He flings food, tries to get his shoes on by himself, wants to make his own scrambled eggs. He loves to wear his sunglasses, a diaper and some shiney black pennyloafers he picked out. He dances to some 70’s funk music and says, “all right!”.