And Then One Day, You Can't

"Mama? Did you know I can see the air?" Eden said.
"Uummmm.." I said.
Her eyebrows were high and her eyes wide. She nodded enthusiastically.
"Yeah, I can. I know I can. I really can."
"Really?" I said.
"I know I can. I can see it all the time. Even inside. Even at night. It's like little circles all across, everywhere."
My first thought was, is she on drugs? My second thought was, does she need another $500 eye exam?
Then I remembered something. Kids are weird. Quirky, beautiful weirdos. And this--I'm pretty sure I can remember seeing the air too. Maybe it's a superpower only given to girls who are ladybug magnets. Maybe you grow out of it. Who am I to say the girl can't see the air?
So I said, "That's cool, babe. Really cool."

Because we all know, someday, she'll realize she can't see it anymore.

Son

I used to imagine that after we received our referral, I would immediately blog about it, write out every juicy detail, every emotion I was feeling. And even now as I sit down to post for the first time since The Call, I'm still unsure how to convey the depth of the experience in a meaningful way. I decided I would sit with the loveliness of it, the joy, the worry, the sadness, (after all, he comes to us as his second family and fourth set of caregivers)---sit with all of it for awhile until I found a way to say it all with the weight it deserves. But I don't think I can. And that's okay.

I could talk about the poignancy of receiving the referral a year to the date of our official wait. I could talk about all the bumps in the road, the delays, the years of planning, the tiniest of details, a checked box here, a bureaucratic mistake there, which brings Yonas to us. Us, of all the many families waiting. I could write about how excited his sisters are, how I cried in the aisles of the second-hand store when I was buying clothes for him. I could talk about how just staring at a picture can make you fall in love. But it wouldn't be enough. I don't know what would be.

But I know I have a son. I don't know what he looks like when he smiles. I don't know what his feet look like. I know he doesn't have much hair. I know he has beautiful hands. I know he has a birthmark on his belly, but I haven't seen it or his belly button. I know he has fat baby thighs and juicy baby lips that I want to kiss. I know someday he will laugh when I put my mouth to his neck and nibble there. I know his eyes are soulful and tired-but-still-trying. I know he has ears with fleshy earlobes and I will whisper things he won't understand on the day we meet.

I know I am ready.

The Big Picture

I'd been having a hard time deciding what to write about. Tomorrow marks a year of official waiting for a referral. I decided I would write about that. About how I'm not impatient right now. About how mainly what a feel is excitement to see the next face that I will spend the rest of my life loving. I'm also feeling a deep sadness for what our childs' first family is experiencing right now.

I was going to write about those things. But I'm not going to. I'm going to tell this story instead:

This afternoon, I spent some time organizing Ava's chapter books. The girl likes to read. She likes a good series. So I gathered all the Magic Treehouse books and put them in order, 1-30. Yes. And all the Rainbow Magic books. I did the Flat Stanley's, the Cobble Street Cousins, and The Catwings series. You get the idea. The chick has a lot of books. I did them all.

So while I was making dinner, Ava asks me to play a game she and Eden have made up. I tell her I just need to finish making dinner then I will come play. At first she says the game doesn't have a name, but when she comes back, she tells me the game is called "Take a Book". That's right. But I'm not seeing the big picture. I don't think a thing about it. So, I finish dinner---brown rice with gouda cheese, pumpkin pudding (think pumpkin pie but without crust and good for you, tons of Vitamin A), baby carrots, and oranges---and put it on the table, and go back to Ava's and Eden's room to play a rousing game of "Take a Book". But I don't think to put the DAMN DOG into his crate. That's right. The one who, let's just be honest here, has an eating disorder. But, again, I'm missing the big picture.


When Ava opens the door, I see EVERY SINGLE gallderg chapter book on the floor. They are arranged beautifully with five stacks in the middle and five branches coming off the center to make a sort of large chapter book mandala that takes up the entire room. And I will confess to you now, that I did not express delight in my child's creativity, nor did I even try to hide my dismay. Instead I dragged my hands across my face slowly and said matter-of-factly, "OOOH....I spent a long time earlier today arranging those...But you didn't know. I forgot to tell you. I'm just frustrated...." and I kept talking, more to myself than to Ava, who by this point had begun to weep. So I just reiterated that she didn't know, but I was still kind of a bitch about the whole thing in a quiet, calm, it's-no-big-deal sort of way. Then I said, "Let me go put Miles in his crate before he eats dinner, then I'll be back to play."


When I get to the end of the hall I hear him. He comes bolting out of the dining room because he hears me and I discover he has eaten half of Eden's and Safa's dinners. He has licked the pumpkin pudding from Eden's bowl and spilled it all over the white rug that is under the table. (I'm not responsible for putting a white rug under a dining room table. This was the choice made by the former owners of our house who did not have three young children, nor a dog with an eating disorder.) It spilled in great plops, that even after scrubbing look like someone just held out a diaperless newborn baby and walked around for awhile. If you look closely at the picture above, you will see pumpkin pudding just below his nose. I shamed him by putting him in his crate, then taking his picture a few times. I think it worked.


Here's what struck me most of all: Over the years I've been writing here, I've had some shitty days. Days when I thought if all I did was keep everyone alive until the end of the day, I'd be happy. Days when I thought I wouldn't be able to stop the crying, either my own or someone else's. Days when I felt so sick and tired I didn't see how I would be alive when Erik walked through the door at the end of day. But over time, I've come to recognize all of this as fodder for writing. It softens the blows, that tiny voice that says, "Put it on the blog". Then I grab the camera, or start thinking what a great story it will make tomorrow. It just takes the edge off a little, shifts my thinking, pulls me out of my self-absorption long enough to see it's all fleeting, the anger and sadness. Even the joy. I needn't worry about not having something to write about here. If I wait long enough, life is bound to provide.

Toilets and the Dalai Lama

I have always had a cinematic dreamlife. It is simultaneously one of my most and least favorite things about being me. Flying, interplanetary travel, meeting a friendly, dreadlocked Jesus that was rockin' out to "Rock 'n' Roll Hochie Coo" ----some of my favorites. I also dream about tornadoes, intruders, and bad, bad things happening to my children. My dreams have changed since I've become a mother. They've become, well...domestic. When my children were infants, and I a sleep deprived wreck, I would fall into bed to escape the mountains of laundry, the endless diapers, and crying, only to dream about folding laundry or trying to calm a colicky baby.

My dreams of Erik go something like this----he holds my face, kisses me, a candle flickers somewhere, then a child enters asking for juice. Or we laugh, embrace, kiss, then a child calls loudly needing her butt wiped.

But last night, I reached a new low. Last night, I dreamt of scrubing toilets. Filthy, stinking toilets. And not just one short little dream either. I think I cleaned toilets for hours. It may stem from the fact that the girls' bathroom might as well be a truck stop bathroom somewhere just outside of Texarkana even though I clean it EVERY DAY. I'm considering installing a toilet seat cover dispenser and one of those automatic air freshners that delivers a cloying strawberry scent every 15 minutes. Remember back in the day when you had to deposit money on the door of some public bathrooms to get it to open? Maybe I should look into that....My fear is that this dumbing-down of my dreamlife is indicative of something much deeper, more important. That my brain is shrinking, that motherhood is sucking the creativity, the desire for growth, right out of me.

The flipside of toilet dreaming is this: On Saturday night I dreamt that my mom I and were sitting backwards in a shopping cart with our legs hanging over the backend in some public, mall-like place, and I suddenly thought of the Dalai Lama and a moment later he began walking toward us. He put his hands on the tops of my mom's bare feet for a moment, then walked over to me, with his supremely kind face and goofy, lady glasses, and rested his big hand on the top of my head. He smiled, looked deeply into my eyes for awhile, then walked on.

Dreams like this give me hope that my brain isn't just turning in on itself, doomed to forever dream of wiping butts and cleaning toilets. That someday I will stop accidentally telling Erik I'm going potty and I'll be right back. That maybe someday I will finish a crossword puzzle. Or want to. Maybe tonight I will dream of traveling in India, or I will become a bee. Maybe I'll even finish that kiss with Erik. I just hope the Dalai Lama doesn't walk in with my children and they all need their butts wiped.

What One Person Can Do

On Tuesday morning I checked my agency's forum and learned that Haregewoin Teferra died. This name will mean nothing to most of you that will read this post. Mrs. Teferra was the embodiment of the idea that one person can indeed change the world. She dedicated the last decade of her life to the children of Ethiopia. When I read the news, I was so overwhelmed I didn't react. I quickly moved away from the computer and began cleaning. It was Spring Break, my children were sick. It felt like too much to process the loss of a hero. But now I am.

I think this happens often, that we shake our heads, then put something aside because it feels too big to manage. The hunger crisis can feel that way. The AIDS pandemic. It's easy to feel like some problems are so big you can't begin to fathom a solution. Sometimes, many small steps can add up to something large and meaningful.

The following is a letter written by Melissa Fay Green, author of There is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Africa's Children, a book about Mrs. Teferra and her children.

"Dear Friends,
By now you may have learned the shocking news that Mrs. Haregewoin Teferra has died suddenly after a short illness. We don't know what caused her death; she felt sick for a couple of days, went to the doctor, came home without a diagnosis, felt sick again, laid down, and that was the end.
Soon I will post a blog containing beautiful, loving, compassionate messages pouring in in tribute.
Many of you kindly are asking what you could do in her memory.
Let me tell you what I will do, and each of you can follow your hearts.
A few weeks ago, Worldwide Orphans--the New York-based organization that has provided pediatric care to Haregewoin's children for many years--assumed responsibility and custody of her 42 HIV-positive kids. To cover food, healthcare and medicine, education, clothing, and caregivers will cost an estimated $4600/year per child. I plan to do what I can to support these children; they are precious, bright, full of fun and hope. With continued state-of-the-art medical care and excellent nutrition and nurturing, they can have bright futures. They can grow up healthy, go to college, have careers. If you'd like to join me in that campagin,
online contributions can be made at
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2669/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=2749
Checks may be sent to:
WWO
511 Valley Street
Maplewood, New Jersey 07040
Other HIV-negative children, many of them babies and toddlers, remain at Atetegeb, Haregewoin's foster home; their caregivers have stayed on; and the Atetegeb board is looking to their well-being. As soon as I know how help can be offered to these little ones, I will post that here.
Haregewoin lived with these children seven days a week, 24 hours a day, for ten years. She is irreplaceable. The youngest children, of course, have no idea what has just happened. Please let us work together to act as foster parents in absentia for them and to provide financial sustenance to the adults on the ground in Addis during this transitional time.
Thank you in advance for any amount you can give.
Sincerely,
Melissa "

Quotes of the Week

"I drank all my darn smoothie." ---Safa


"A belly button is a good place to keep a tiny bit of water." ---Eden

Eden, Safa, and I were at the park while Ava was in dance class. We sat on a bench to have some water in front of a field where loud boys played soccer.
"Mama?" said Eden. "You know what sound I like to hear?"
"What's that, babe?" I said.
"Quiet." she said.
"Me too." I said.


And the Quote of the Week goes to Alice, my mother-in-law, who came to me in the kitchen after a morning with the girls:
"Knock, knock?"
"Who's there?"
"Amsterdam."
"Amsterdam who?"
"Amsterdam tired of these knock-knock jokes."



I

The Great Roly-Poly Exodus of 2009

Ava left her shoe outside. Many, many roly-polys (what IS the plural of roly-poly?) decided to make a home there in the night. They chose it because it was so stinky it felt like home. Ava found them in the morning. She shared the good news with Eden, Lover of All Things Living. Eden decided to bring them inside and then let them go. Result: Many, many dead roly-polys in all corners of the house. Roly-polys, they travel far. May they rest in peace.

Safa is Three

(and has been for awhile). Here are Safa's birthday dress pictures. I looked in the archives at her first birthday pics, with her sweet little face and sad torticollis head tilt. I can't believe she is three. My gals are growin' fast...

Nothing Says Birthday Like Eating Your Favorite Train's Face

There was a train to go with the face, but she wanted the face.

The girl has a serious Thomas the Tank Engine fetish. Some might call it "a problem".