hair ribbons

When I was pregnant, the adoption agency told me when I found a profile of a couple I liked, I could interview them. And yes, I cringed at the word too – thinking of some people showing up with $15 pens, portfolios and blazers. This is a child, not a job you can quit if you don’t like it. I was not going to prepare a list of questions, but just go with my instincts.

I have great instincts. Well, I do now. Obviously having great instincts didn’t get me pregnant, so maybe it’s something I learned. I met Matt and Nona at a delicious and tacky Mexican restaurant where I ravenously chomped down bowl after bowl of chips. You think I eat a lot now? You should have seen me when I was pregnant. I expected the worst from the interview: you know, that they would be diplomatic, poised, stuffy even.

So you can imagine how refreshed I felt when Matt told me he was glad to see I was not ugly, a concern of his prior to our meeting. I smiled in spite of myself, because that’s one of those thoughts I would have had, too. And I might have said it, myself. We chatted between bites, and both Matt and Nona seemed genuine to me.

Nona is exactly the kind of woman that is cut out to be the best mother ever: positive, nurturing, caring. I’m sure she passed Home Ec with flying colors to my “F.” Matt is the kind of person you can be friends with even when you’re no longer a kid. He probably gets too rowdy when playing around – luckily Nona is there to calm him down and balance the couple out.

I wasn’t quite sold, but getting there. That’s when Matt told me how much he wanted a daughter. To be honest with you, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear. But you can’t ask, “why do you want a girl over a boy?” because everyone else in the world seems to want a boy, and I didn’t want them to storm out and leave me with the tab when they found out I was carrying a female. OK, let me backtrack. Everyone else in the world says, “we just want a healthy baby,” but what that really means is a boy.

Matt told me that when he was an 8-year old boy, he found some hair ribbons at a church garage sale and wanted to buy them for his future daughter to wear one day. And the other day, Matt posted this picture on his Facebook and I smiled. I smiled because there’s a reason that girls usually pick out accessories. But mostly, I smiled because although my instincts were wrong at first, the choice that came later, my instincts were dead-on.