Juno

Gregory and I watched the film Juno last week. Directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody, Juno is a product of the United States, released in 2007. It's about a sixteen year-old girl who gets pregnant with her best friend/boyfriend and decides to place the baby for adoption. She chooses an adoptive couple from an ad in the local Penny Saver newspaper. She chooses them by their photo and it's only later, after meeting them, that she finds out she and the husband share similar tastes in music and film.

The character of Juno says she wants a closed adoption. The attorney who is facilitating the adoption offers an open adoption where the couple would send photos and letters, but Juno says no. She thinks she wants it to be over and done with, that it was important to choose the couple, to know they were rich, beautiful and loving.

Only, in practice, she behaves differently. She comes to their house to show them the ultrasound pictures. She comes when she is lonely, or upset. And although the film ends shortly after the baby is born, I would guess that there is an ongoing relationship between Juno and the adoptive family.

I enjoyed seeing a new film about adoption, and I liked the film despite painful memories of what it is like to be on the "waiting" end of adoption. How vulnerable one feels when one is hoping to be an adoptive parent. There's a great moment when the husband reacts: "the Penny Saver?!" and you can really feel his embarrassment. Likewise, the film depicts the pain of giving birth to a baby and then letting it go. There is another great moment when Juno's father tells her, "You will be back here someday (in the hospital), but on your own terms."

Seeing Juno made me re-live the months leading up to our adoptions, and made me remember how tense those months can be, and how emotional. It made me want to become an adoption counselor even more. It's going to take a while, though. My new projected goal is to enter the MSW program at PSU in fall of 2009.