Well, you know what they say. A picture is worth a thousand words. Well, here’s a picture that could generate 10s of thousands of words: the poster for the annual Gladney Center for Adoption birthmother doo on May 15.
I like the idea of a birthmother tea. I imagine proper women in white gloves and pill box hats perched at well-appointed card tables sipping Lady Earl Gray from finely painted china cups, delicately munching scones with strawberry jam while they discuss Downton Abbey.
I am particularly heartened to learn that the “redesigned” Gladney dorm, part of this year’s celebration, is a “home away from home.” A cozy fireplace, fitness center, pool, shopping trips, museums, restaurants, If I were a bit younger I might consider getting knocked up if I could vacation there for a few months. The Gladney experience certainly sounds more relaxing than my real-life job as wage slave inventory counter, not to mention nerve wracking never-ending debates with deformers, trying to kill their rotten bills, and blogging the Daily Bastardette. Can we have over-nights with boyfriends?`
Back in 2002, on a lark, Texas Bastard and freelance film and video producer Marlena Villers decided to document the “topping out (aka media event) at the then new Gladney Center in Fort Worth. She wrote about her experience in the Bastard Quarterly. After identifying herself as a Bastard National and journalist to various Gladney PR flacks, Maralena says
One videographer is up on the hill getting a wide shot of the unfinished building and grounds. I don’t know where the other one is. Still, I am not allowed to even walk through the parking lot unescorted now that they know my affiliation. PR woman is constantly at my side. Even when Official-Looking Man in Suit interrupts our conversation to ask her something important and I can tell he wants her to be inside with the group, she stays me with me. I FEEL SO SPECIAL.
I get in my car and leave. I regret not looking back to see if she was still in the parking lot, watching to make sure I was off their property.
Now, was my special treatment due to the fact that I was a Journalist or a Bastard? I’d like to think it was both. I was Bastard with a Camera. The Illegitimate Woodward or Bernstein. Personally, I love the fact that the name Bastard Nation made them wary of me. I felt powerful and giddy that I was making them sweat. Professionally, saying the B-word cost me the “tour” and so I lost whatever story might have come out of that. But I did get this story. And I can always schedule a private tour at later date, if only to feel special and powerful again.
It really takes a lot of chutzpah to pull off this “birthmother” event every year. Gladney “loves” its “birthmothers. It loves them so much that it founded the National Council for Adoption, whose sole purpose back then was to keep adoption records sealed from Class Bastard and anonomize their client “birthmotohers” and children permanently. What the poster calls, ” The Legacy of Love of our Birthmother Clients.” I suppose Gladney, though does “love” its birthmother clients, like a farmer loves his herd of cows, since without them the agency couldn’t exist and a bevy of social workers and “humanitarian” bureaucrats would be forced to go on the government dole.
I’d really love to hear from anyone who attends this year’s tea party. . Be sure to dress dress in style.
Dame Edna Gladney all dressed up to sip and see
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