The Price of a Tender Heart

On Sunday morning I got up with Safa and Eden while Erik and Ava slept. It was early, maybe 7:00 AM. Eden promptly found the biggest click bug I've ever seen on the kitchen floor. I'm sure you know these insects. I'm sure they have proper name. They are the unfortunate, seemingly ill-conceived creatures that simultaneously "click" with a quick bend of their bodies and then pop up into the air much to the delight of children. I've always found them odd and once remember hunting one particularly "clicky" one in the middle of the night because it was keeping me awake.

The click bug Eden found was not doing so well. And because she loves all things living, all things nature, she watched and held it for awhile. I made coffee, got Safa some milk, checked my email and then about 20 minutes later came to ask her if she wanted some milk. She turned her head away from me and nodded a small "yes" and I could see she was about to break.

"Did it die honey?"
A face was red, her eyes were full of tears, and she nodded.
"Oh, sweetheart, I know." And then she fell apart. I gathered her up in my lap. "Oh, Eden you have such a big heart. I love your big heart. I know how much it hurts because that's how I am too."
I was quiet for awhile and just let her cry. I cried with her for the pain of knowing that she will go through life with her tender heart exposed to the world. I know what it's like.

I said, "I believe that because that click bug was a living thing that it matters that you were with it when it died." I wasn't placating her. I do believe this.

"Eden, I know what it's like to go through the world with such a sensitive heart. And I will tell you it makes life harder, but it makes life so beautiful and I wouldn't want to change the way I am. " This is almost always true.

Once on a visit to see my parents we saw "Gladiator" in the theater. I don't remember very much about the movie, only that it knocked me to my knees. I was so broken by that movie I could barely walk. I wept afterwards as we walked as a family through Sam's amazed at all the ways people could find to hurt each other. It can be embarrassing to be the only sobbing mess at a movie like "Gladiator". It can be embarrassing to be known as the one who swerved the car to miss the butterfly. I have learned to see this as a gift most of the time, but it can prove very difficult when you are, say, waiting to go get your son in Ethiopia.

I brought Eden the dried petals from the orchid that my sister brought to me on the day we were matched with Yonas to hold with the click bug. I'm not sure why. They were pale purple and beautiful and I knew that holding something beautiful would help. So I held my big hearted girl while she held a dead bug and dried flower petals and we waited for the pain to pass enough to get up from the kitchen floor and face the world.

The Hundred Acre Wood Personality Theory

I love personality theories. Love them. The Enneagram, Myers-Briggs---I'll take them all. A while back I wrote a post (here) about how exploring the ways that personality affects parenting can be incredibly helpful in seeing one's strengths as a parent and can relieve some of the relentless mama-guilt that plagues so many of us.

On our way back from berry-picking a few weeks ago, the girls were watching a Winnie-the-Pooh movie on the portable dvd player that we allow during car trips that last longer than an hour. And I heard Rabbit bitching about something and said to Erik, "Ava is Rabbit." We declared Eden Pooh, and I looked at Erik for a moment and said, "Who are you?...Oh my gosh! You are totally Owl!!" (He didn't think it was nearly as funny as I did.) And thus, the Hundred Acre Wood Personality Theory was born.

I have refined the Theory and have come to the conclusion that it gives a more complete picture of the person to combine two characters when determining personality type.

Our family is made up of the following types:

Ashley- Kanga/Rabbit
Erik- Owl/Kanga
Ava- Rabbit/Piglet
Eden- Pooh/Tigger
Safa- Roo/Tigger

It is simple. It is powerful.

Okay, so it's not powerful, but it is funny. What's your Hundred Acre Wood Type?

May 18th

On May 18th we celebrated Yonas' birthday without him. We had cake, we sang him "Happy Birthday" then at Ava's suggestion, "Melkam Lidet" to the tune of the only birthday song we know. I cried. We bought him presents. A wooden woodpecker walker, a bright orange Ugly doll, and of course, a soccer ball. When we first got our referral pictures of him, I cropped his sweet face, printed it out, cut closely around his head, taped it to a paint stir stick, and stuck it on a chair. So he's been at our table for awhile, and for a short few weeks his head made the rounds in different carseats in the car. He ended up crumpled and on the floorboard which just seemed wrong and uncool, so I took that one out.

We put a piece of cake it front of him, lit a candle, and sang. Or rather everyone sang while I swallowed hard and tried to mouth the words. We videoed the entire thing and then I took the recorder back to the room that will be his and blubbered a birthday message to him. I'm not sure exactly what I said. It will be a long time before I feel the need to watch it. There is a sweet, and maybe a little creepy, picture of his floating head with a piece birthday cake in front of him. Next May 18th will be better.

Introducing: The Sisters Romberg!!!!

We're strongly considering taking the act on the road this summer to make a little cash...

Uncle Yonas

It took me days to write what follows and it is random, and I apologize. I've been uninterested in life aside from learning about bulk cooking and reading David Sedaris. I can't seem to answer my phone or bring myself to be social. But I'm trying. Here goes:

It's been awhile since I've posted. It's been at least two months since I've written anything at all. I'm hermit-crabbing. And my shell its getting a little tight these days. I'm not sure what I need to say here, but today has been harder than the past week. So here I am.

Last night in central Texas there was bad weather. Like tornado bad. When the news tells me there's a tornado a few miles away and to get in a closet, I wake up my kids and get in a closet. Ava was terrified. She 7 years old. Sometimes age brings just enough understanding to scare the shit out of you. Eden didn't start crying until many minutes into the ordeal. Safa was like that drunk girl from high school---confused, and a little pissed that someone woke her up. The tears and snot flowed freely as we sat sweating in Safa's closet. I kept reaching for the panties in her drawer to wipe Eden's running nose. Erik and I kept telling them that we would be fine. I asked them to take deep breaths, I delivered Rescue Remedy under all our tongues as we huddled up and listened to the news waiting to be released from the closet.

As we waited I told the girls this: "When you're a grown-up, you're going to tell your kids about the time you had to get in the closet because there was a tornado so close to our house. Your going to say, "That night, and then, whatever your children call us, say Nana and Poppy, came and woke us up and we had get in the closet and we were so scared and we cried so hard and Aunt Safa slept almost the whole time. And Aunt Eden had to keep blowing her nose into Aunt Safa's panties."

And then Ava stopped me and said, "What do you want to be called?"

And something tender and deep in my heart broke open. I've never given real thought to what I might like to be called as a grandmother, but it was so huge, that moment for me. I said, "I'm not sure."
And then Ava said, "So Eden will be Aunt Eden, and Safa will be Aunt Safa?"
"Uh-huh. Isn't that funny to think about?"
"And Yonas will be Uncle Yonas?"
"That's right."

And we continued to talk about how they would tell the story of that night. And then the news freed us. So we moved the mattress that was covering us all, and we put the girls back to bed.

Here's the thing:

We need a court date. We need one soon if we have any chance of getting Yonas home before Christmas. Someone commented that it must be like being perpetually pregnant, yet no one knows. And it is a little like that. But today I thought, when you're pregnant, the baby isn't 8,500 miles away. I have a friend known to me only through the magic of the internet. She and her husband are waiting on their letter too. They have three children (THREE!) that are in the same orphanage as Yonas. I like to imagine them altogether. And I like to imagine the day I get to meet their family.

Here's something else I imagine everyday with closed eyes. I imagine a new building. I see workers sitting down to paperwork about a baby boy that has a family waiting in Texas. A baby boy that has been in care for a long time. A boy that will one day grow up to be Uncle Yonas. I see them writing a letter for him. Then I see them writing the same letter for three siblings that need to get home to their mama and papa that have been waiting and planning for them for years. I see them mailing those letters to whomever they need to be mailed to, to get us our court dates so we can hold our children. My friend and her husband decided they would join me and Erik in this visualization. She suggested maybe readers of her blog could join us. Maybe you could too...

Eden is Five

past birthday dress pics here
And here

The Cheese Stands Alone

Old Pyjamas, New Brother: A Toddler's Tale of Woe

Is it just me or is Safa a little.....needy lately? The girl is struggling right now. She is a regressing, clingy, angry, hitting, whiny mess. She's in disequilibrium---she's feeling left out of Ava and Eden's current love affair with each other, she's too little to keep up, understand the jokes, and do the things they do sometimes. She wants to be big. AND she has a sense that Yonas will usurp her position as baby, will read her old books, play with her old toys, and (GASP!), even wear her old pyjamas!! It's just too much. She wants to be big and little. Bigger and Littler. And it's making her miserable. And also some of us who are around her all day.

Experience has shown me time and time again that whenever kids are really going through something, they are about to make some kind of leap. Cognitively, emotionally, etc. It's like they back up to get a running start to leap over whatever is coming next.

We humans are tricky aren't we? It's precisely those times when we are the most unlovable, that we need the most love. I keep trying to remind myself of that. Those times in my life when people have forgiven me my ugliness, or looked past my unlovable behavior to the person they know I am.

So today I held Safa like a baby. I "found" her, wrapped her up in a blanket, called her "Tiny Baby", carried her in a sling for too long, rocked her, and let her be my baby.

And my heart broke even though I was gritting my teeth some of the time. Because I totally understand. I want her to be Bigger and Littler too.

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.