The Edge

I made Brendan drive us all out to Wellfleet last week during our vacation in Cape Cod.  It was out of the way and took awhile to get there, but I insisted and he relented and even agreed that perhaps it was a good idea.  I just felt this strange need to be there, in a place where I had once stood decades before; I felt as though my soul needed to breathe in that particular air and gaze upon on that particular stretch of sand. 
While standing at the edge of the water, at the point where ocean meets land, I was reminded of some things that seem important and noteworthy.  Before me the sea spread out, wide and expansive, reaching as far as nowhere and more powerful than anything.  The sand dunes, like mountains, plunge down steeply to meet it and in between the two I realized this: we are nothing.  Insignificant.  A mere blip on the radar that is this time on this earth in this universe.  The feeling that came with this realization was one of immediate and overwhelming peace: no matter what I do in this life, the world is much, much bigger than my circumstances, choices, mistakes, or ideas at any moment in time.  It will all go on whether I am here or not, wave after wave will pound the shore and grains of sand will move in the water and wind and rain. 
Then I turned around and saw this:

and this:

Two shivering kids waiting for their mama to finish with her crazy picture taking so they could run on the open expanse in front of them; one husband, knowing his wife needed to see this for some reason that stretches back in time to another family trip that was clouded with grave sadness, waiting patiently for the time to be enough, for the ocean to soak into her pores and restore her.
Seeing them there, waiting for me, I realized that we are bigger than the sky, our actions are broader reaching than any ocean, more grand than any sand dune.  The connections we have with the people around us are the biggest thing I know; I remembered that as much as we are nothing we are also everything, entirely significant.  All I have to do is look in their eyes and I can see it:  we are bigger than we know.  Being at that edge, on that particular stretch of sand, refilled my soul and brought back to the forefront all that I know about life and family and friends and connection: slow down and be, give each other a little room and time when it’s needed, live with intention and listen with an open heart.  Allow them to grow and change, and bend like the dune grass in the wind when they need me to change and grow.  Enjoy this push and pull of life.  Dream bigger than the ocean, but remember my own insignificance in all of this. 
Perhaps this is why the ocean calls to me, why it calls to so many people across time and religion and state and country and continent: to realize that we are everything and nothing all at once.  Maybe we need this reminder as much as we need food and  water, air and shelter.    Maybe we just need to be able to stand on the edge of something and find an inner peace and a reserve within ourselves that fills whatever emptiness the rest of the world and life carves out.  Maybe we just need that reminder to be human again. 

Their Order

“I will always be the oldest around here!” he declares with a look of superiority sent in his sister’s direction.  She rolls her eyes a little, for this is nothing new, this place of second child that is hers to possess.  She possesses it well, striving, always, to be as good as her eldest brother at everything.  This drive makes her come in close behind him though she is a full 18 months younger, such that she reads better than he did at her age, she climbs higher than he did, swims deeper and further than he did when he was four.  She pushes herself, sometimes to the point of tears because she is, after all, quite a bit younger than her brother.  Hers is the advantage spot, a perch in life that allows her to see how to do something by watching someone else figure it out before her, perfecting her approach before she even begins.  She puts puzzles together in her head before her fingers even touch the pieces; she plans her next move before her turn comes around on the board game.  She, more than any of us, tends to plot.

The first arrived child has it harder, I think.  He has had to break us in, to survive us while we lurched, suddenly, from child to parent in the swift movement of a baby passed from one set of arms to another.  There was no labor and delivery to mark the momentousness of the occasion, no nurse there to show us how to hold him, comfort him, give him a bottle.  We had to learn through trial and error and he bravely endured our many gaffs on the way to knowledge.  His place of first in our family is worn well on his shoulders, but sometimes I worry that the pressure of being first will mark him somehow.  He is, right now, the child that we sit and talk about at night: How will we keep him busy enough but not too busy?  Is this the right school?  Is he getting a good balance of freedom and structure?  Do we know who his friends are, who their parents are?  What is our stance on video games?  Violence in media/movies/television?  How are we going to not screw this up?  It’s not that we don’t worry about Emma, it’s just that the first child somehow requires a different sort of worry, a more intense scrutiny of life and surroundings and influences and decisions.  Our first child knows how to buckle down, to put one foot in front of the other and make his way through whatever comes his way; our daughter follows quietly and keenly in his footsteps, perfecting his moves with her own brand of intuition and authority.

As we wait for our third child, I cannot help but wonder who he will be, how his piece of this life’s puzzle will fit into our family.  And how will we be with him?  With two children safely and successfully growing under our care, how will we approach the raising of our littlest?  I will not lie – this wait seems endless and insurmountable right now, and there are days when I wonder and despair about the possibility that the child in those pictures we so adore might not come home at all.  I find myself thinking a great deal about the past, about the adjustment periods that both of our children went through upon arrival.  The third time around, will these new circumstances in our adoption make a difference in how we, as a family, process each other?  Will Joon, the stoic, sad face in all of these pictures, join our family with, finally, a smile?

 

I wonder if he will be the happy-go-lucky ‘third child’ I see in the families that blossom around us, or if he will have the yearning to always catch up that his sister so acutely feels.  I grow weary of the wondering, and here we are five months in and possibly more than a year to go. 

The time burns by so very slowly.

childhood

Childhood does not come wrapped in plastic, with a million twist ties holding it perfectly in place within its cocoon of specially designed packaging.  It cannot be plucked off a shelf for purchase and it does not flourish in indoor lighting.  Childhood does not care about perfectly matched accessories or safety standards or how fashion forward something is.  Childhood does not adhere to a schedule. 
All of those things are grown up ideas.
Childhood is best found outdoors in the sunshine where the wind can lift its hair, or curled up beneath the sweetest of tiny tents made with the afghan from the back of the couch.  Childhood enjoys messes and mayhem, shouting and quiet whispers, wickedly good secrets told behind a cupped hand.  Childhood flourishes on imagination and wonder.   Childhood flourishes when left, for a little while, to its own devices.
These days, I think childhood is most often found in those moments in between the grown ups’ ideas of what a childhood should involve.  As we make our summer plans, we are striving to leave some time for childhood to flourish  for our little ones.  Remember what it was like to make mudpies?  To stomp in puddles until you were truly soaked through with laughter and muddy water?  Remember the first time you made a fort, or a tree house, or a tent beneath trees?  Remember laying in the grass and watching the clouds go by, with the good earthy smells invigorating your soul?  Remember sitting near a window and knowing that the rain was coming because you could smell it before you could see it? 
Letting time sit still without agenda is not an easy thing from the adult perspective.  We have a lot to do, endless lists of tasks and projects and a lot of the time it is difficult, if not impossible, to let go and go where the day takes us.  I am working so hard this summer, not at projects or task lists, but at letting our children have the kind of summer that I remember having.  I hope that when Emma and Harrison look back on these days later in life, they will recognize and appreciate that we let them have childhood in its most basic form.  I hope that they will not lament the lack of sports and dance and music lessons and endless rides in the backseat of the car while we shuffle them to and fro.  I hope, instead, that they will remember the perfect glass surface of our little lake before they cannonballed into it with a shriek of pure, childhood joy.

Just A Moment

I was having a moment tonight, a moment in which I just needed to stop the world for a second and be still. 
Two cases of strep throat, fevers so high that his little hand seared my leg through my jeans, sad little whimpers in the dead of night that jolted me from my bed.  One case of diverticulitis and an entirely different sort of pain and fear.  A week’s worth of nights without sleep, listening to him hurt beside me while I kept my other ear trained on the doors down the hall, torn.
One kitchen in a state of progress, but looking more like despair.  With everything out of place, piled in the corner: boards full of nails, half of a cupboard, a desk drawer, school papers everywhere.  We move the construction pile to the garage between his pains and there is still an enormous pile of whatnot.  This morning, a slight reprieve from the heat and humidity (can I even complain about this yet?) and I want to mow down the lawn that is now a good 12” deep.  The mower starts, then stalls.  Starts, then stalls.  I wanted to kick it, but turn and walk away instead.
In my email box, happy reports from a couple of families with our adoption agency: they received updated pictures and reports on their children in the mail today.  We did not.  Our pictures and information are now seven months old and our hearts ache just a little more.
This had been our week and tonight I just wanted to cook dinner.  I wanted them all to eat something, to take care of them in the most basic way, but with a fridge being emptied out and dietary needs changed due to new doctor’s orders, there just wasn’t much to work with.  The kitchen was too hot, the kids were overly hungry and tired, each wanted to sit next to the parent they were not next to, and I started to feel myself sink. 
When they all scattered off to various new activities, I grabbed a box fan, climbed over the mound of junk to the banquette, and lay down with the coolest of breezes blasting over me.  Amazing, how a fan can drown out all of the noises in your house, the fears in your head.  I lay there and looked up at the clouds like a little kid on a lazy summer afternoon and I swear to you, every cloud shape was a face, and every face was smiling.  Then a robin, harbinger of spring and late-winter beacon of hope, landed on the wire above my head and turned his plucky head this way and that.
Somehow in the space of what amounted to four minutes, peace was restored to my world; my moment was over.  Calm and patient, I went upstairs, read stories about kindergarten and sea turtles and  tucked my little strep-free sweethearts into their beds.  Tomorrow holds new appliances, an abdominal CT scan, and a lawn mower oil/sparkplug change but tonight, tonight I am ok.  And Brendan will be ok, too.  And someday our littlest boy will come home.

Eye Contact

“…a most useless place.  The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.  Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or  waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow.  Everyone is just waiting…

…Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying.  You’ll find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing.  With banner flip-flapping once more you’ll ride high!  Ready for anything under the sky!”                                                  -Dr. Seuss, from oh, the places you’ll go!

We’re one month into this Very Long Wait that might be ten months or twelve, or more if we are very unlucky, or less if the hands of fate are kind.  This is a familiar place; we’ve been here before but it all looks different now, like going home for the first time after being away at university and finding your hometown smaller and changed.  We know how to get through this, but knowledge of the road does not equal ease of passage.  Already I feel myself toeing the line of avoidance, trying not to think about him constantly while at the same time I can think of nothing else. 

Who are you, baby Joon?

With our previous adoptions I have found solace in action.  Keeping my hands busy keeps my heart from breaking and this third time is no different: sewing, knitting, painting, upholstery, and other projects are all underway at once and every corner I look to holds some sort of busy work waiting for me.  My quieter hours are filled with books…not the adoption books about attachment and bonding or memoirs of adoptees and adoptive parents that I was devouring at the beginning of the year, but stories that take me away for an hour or two, to someplace far away where lives are filled with other sorts of complications, not the waiting for a child sort.  I have them stashed all over the house and in the car, too.  Keep busy, keep busy, keep busy.  Just don’t think too much.

Have you learned to crawl yet, Joon-ah?

Harrison and Emma make the wait easier, except when they don’t.  When they ask about him or wonder when he is coming, or decry in outright frustration: “Mama, I just wish I knew exactly when he was coming home so I could get myself ready!” (Emma) or “If he doesn’t hurry up he’ll be bigger than me by the time he gets here!” (Harry), at these times my heart lurches because the waiting is hard for them, too.   While I love that they are old enough to understand this process, which in turn helps them understand how they each came to join our family, I struggle with having to witness their sadness and longing.  Waiting for someone as exciting as a new sibling, one who is already born and growing on the other side of the world, is tough.  Impatience gets the best of them, and me, at times.

Do your eyes crinkle when you laugh?  Do you squeal with delight?

I am so impatient to meet our new little guy, not only because I want to get started on all of those important attachment/bonding moments, but also because if there is one thing I know about adoption it is this:  You cannot bond with a baby in a photograph.  You can find him cute, adorable.  You can think to yourself: Yes, this is my child!  You can stare for hours at his chin and his hair and his tiny little fingers, and you can read his social history until you’ve memorized every word, but you cannot get to know that child, the person that child actually is in real life, until you make eye contact.  You cannot know his voice, his temperament, or the softness of his skin until he is in the same room, breathing the same air.  With half a world between Joon and us, my curiosity is killing me.  A million questions linger in the air and the answers can only come some far off day, early next year and most likely not sooner.  The other thing I know about adoption is this: it is entirely possible to miss, with complete heartache, a person you have never met and know next to nothing about.

It is nearly dawn in Korea.  Sleep on, little Joon.  We’re here, waiting for you.

Oh this Waiting Place is a tough place, but with one month down and perhaps (roughly estimating here) nine months to go, we do know how to get through it.  One foot in front of the other, one project following the next, crossing days and weeks and months off the calendar. 

And enjoying life in the meantime, of course, because there is so very much to enjoy, already. 

____________

I’m playing along with Madhouse this week, another way to keep busy!  See the others who are playing along:

Allison – Allimonster Speaks
Barb – Spencer Hill Spinning & Dyeing
Batty – Batty’s Adventures in Spooky Knitting
Dave – Notes from the Field
Eileen - Art Deco Diva Knits
Evil Twin’s Wife – The Glamorous Life of a Hausfrau
G – Not-A-Box
Haley - Aimless Tangents
Jennifer – Ask Poops, Please
JMLC – Daydreams and Ruminations
Kate – One More Thing
LC – LC in Sunny So Cal
LeeAnne - This is the life...
Lisa - As If You Care
Louise – Child of Grace
Marcy – Mittentime
Melanie – usually, things happen
Nikki – Land of the Free, Home of the Depressed
Peri - knitandnatter
Sara – yoyu mama

Three Things

• The children have decided and demanded that if they should ever have a little sister she shall be named Princess Lulu.  We have no idea why.
• When Emma’s class went to The Hyde Collection this week they studied portraiture.  In front of the entire class Emma did an upward salute, or Urdhva Hastasana, and then gave a deep, reverent bow with hands held palms together in front of Rembrandt’s Christ with Arms Folded.  I guess she’s getting a good mix of ideas.
• When I was writing to both of our foster mother’s today I asked each child if he or she had a special message they would like me to include in their letter.  Harrison asked me to to write: “I want you to know that I look handsome in my school uniform and I am nice to my sister.”  Emma wanted me to write “I love cat toys.”  (She meant toys in the shape of a cat and after much deliberation and explaining we decided on “I love Hello Kitty”.)

Morning Girl

She gets up so early. 
It is dark outside, the dogs are fast asleep, I am fast asleep, and her brother is still snoring away, but Emma is up and cheerful and ready to chat up her Dad before he heads off to work.  She likes having him all to herself for those precious moments in the morning.  I think she enjoys the quiet house at that hour, when the choice of where to sit is hers alone with no one to bargain or argue with her.  The choice of what to do belongs to her as well…she can watch NickJr without her brother constantly trying to convince her that a Star Wars movie would be a far better choice.  So much of her day is dictated by the whims of Harry, but the early morning belongs to her. 
When Brendan comes to kiss me goodbye at the early early hour of 6:10 he gives me the Emma Report:  Emma has already had breakfast and is watching cartoons or Emma is in the bathroom or Emma is reading in the living room or Emma is having oatmeal.  She is content to stick with whatever activity she has chosen for the little while it takes me to fully wake up and come downstairs, at which point she will call out a sunny, eager “Good morning, Mom!” as if she has been waiting around just to see me.  This girl knows how to make you feel special.
If we set out her clothes the night before, Emma will be up and dressed and ready for the day before I have had the first sip of my tea.  She tells me about her dreams the night before (often involving getting lost when following a stray cat, but being saved by Daddy and of course the cat comes home with her), about her ideas for the day ahead, and more often than not she will tell me, without any trace of laughter, “Mom, you look very beautiful today”.  This to my bed-headed, rumpled pajama, sheet marks still criss-crossing my face, half asleep self, but the seriousness in her delivery makes me believe it, too.  I love seeing myself through her eyes. 
Finally, an hour or so later, Sir Harrison will stumble down the stairs, groggy and cozy and still smelling of little boy sleep, and her wakefulness will be too much for him.  He will curl into me, trying to twist his lengthy leggy-ness into a pretzel that will still fit on my lap, and she will tell him all of the things she has already told me, and likely her Dad, too.  When he is ready he unwinds his long limbs and climbs down from my lap and they both try to convince me that Star Wars should absolutely be the movie choice of the day, that nothing else will do, and can we please have chocolate cake for breakfast?  And then they are off together, surely plotting against me, but so involved with each other that I cannot help but smile. 
And in the afternoon, our Morning Girl finds the consequence of rising before the dawn:

Sick Day

Harrison takes his sick days seriously.  He has big plans, big ideas, none of which include actually acting (or even being) sick.  Last night at dinner he was 102.9, flushed and glazed over and completely listless, so we decided to keep him home today.  Bath and early to bed and then he slept in an extra two hours this morning.  He woke with a bounce in his step today, as though he had been handed a get-out-of-jail-free card.  When asked about his health he proclaimed that he felt great and wondered what fun we could make of the day.  He thought perhaps we’d go to camp, or see a movie, or go for a run on the track.  Just a few suggestions, Mom. 
Instead of such fun things we kept it calm: drop Emma at school, ride in the cart through the grocery store, read a few books, pick Emma up from school, eat a quiet lunch, and play a few games of Pac Man.  Throughout the day’s activities he kept on a smile and kept up a constant stream of chatter, giving me anecdotes about his school days, letting me know his new favorite super heroes and ideas for Halloween costumes, and reading me the advertisements from each and every grocery display.  it was the first time we had each other all to ourselves in such a long, long time.  I’ve been missing you, he said.
When Emma was home the two went upstairs to play Pac Man, and the house filled with their laughter and squeals of delight.  They played for an hour, giving each other tips and hints for the best mode of play, and then compared notes from their respective new classes and schools.  From my perch beneath the stairs I got to hear all about the key players in their new school lives: who causes trouble and means it, who is accidentally always in the wrong place at the wrong time, who can kick the ball the furthest, and who the emerging best friends might be.  It was the best playtime they have shared in months.  Harrison, you are the very best brother, she said.  I know, he said right back.
The truth is, we all needed his day off.  Real school, Kindergarten, is no joke.  It is busy and stressful (good and bad stress) and there is so much for him to take in that by the time we get him back each afternoon he has nothing of himself left to give or share.  He is often grumpy and we are more than likely overwhelming, eager to have him back, so that an atmosphere of off-ness consumes the rest of our afternoons.  I have missed him so much, the sunshiny, well-rested, happy to go along with whatever I have planned version of himself.  So much for being sick, but I am so grateful for this day, for this chance to reconnect.

For the Love of John Deere

When you take my kids to the fair you can spend a few minutes looking at animals.  They will tolerate, for a short time, cute little bunnies and adorable, soft baby goats.  They will even ooh and ahh over brand-new ducklings.  But you will not be allowed to dawdle because my kids have an agenda.  They MUST get to the tractors. 

In the World According to Harry and Emma, the section on county fairs is devoted entirely to tractor infatuation.  We must Climb them!   We must watch them line up for an hour for the tractor pull!    We must try out the different colors!

We must have our pictures taken with them!
 
We must visit the old ones and the new ones and everything in between!
  
We must buy new toy tractors and introduce them to all of the full scale tractors at the fair!

We must measure their wheels!
And finally, if we’re going to spend that much time around tractors, we’re going to have to be patient with Mom while she takes pictures of  the neat gears and springy parts.
.


And maybe even a bunny or two!

Four

She isn’t a baby anymore.  She is smart and funny, capable already of collapsing into pre-teen giggles that leave her gasping for breath and turning bright red; a wickedly contagious brand of laughter that is hers alone. 

Don’t be fooled by photographs – this girl is nobody’s princess.  In their make-believe play she is the bad guy, or the hero, or the warrior, never the damsel in distress.  She is strong.

She knows who she is and what she is capable of, and she is not afraid to tell anyone that she can do something all by herself.  And boy, does she like a good challenge.  Just tell her she is too little to attempt something, just try convincing her that she can’t quite swim all the way around the pool yet and she will prove you wrong.  She looks fear in the face and carries on with determination and will.  She sees her older brother’s abilities as records to be beaten.  She can whoop all of us at quite a few board games.

But she is also soft.  She still needs those cuddly moments, still needs to know that she will always be our baby even when she is all grown up.  She is compassionate and empathetic, sweet at just the right times.  She knows her story and likes to hear it, to see the pictures that form a sketch of her beginnings.  And she knows where she is going: currently her life goals include being a mommy, an artist, and an animal trainer (because “I am am much better at teaching animals than you are, Mommy”).  And I have no doubt that she can do all of those things, and more, if she puts her mind to it.

Right now she is our Em, our sweet, funny, brilliant little-big girl.  She is, quite perfectly, four.

Perspective

Just when you think you might not make it, just when you think that one more day off might kill you, just when you feel that one more "idle" day of making tents and snacks and lunch and breakfast and messes and doing laundry and prying lost crayons from the puppy's mouth and calming down yet another tantrum and once again explaining the lack of favorite breakfast food despite rising protests and mopping up the muddy floor and catching another runny nose and hoping that one more cup of coffee might save you - just then, he says something like this:

"Mom, don't you just love this wonderful life we have together?"

His eyes gaze into yours and you know that you would gladly be the mother of a five year old and a three year old forever.  You understand in a flash that this is all too fleeting and you regret your loss of patience and you remember your joy.  You set down that worthless cup of coffee and you hug that boy, smarter at five than you are at 32, and you hug him with all of your might.

And later, when they run excitedly into their classrooms on the first day back after a week-long vacation, you miss them both like crazy and you can't wait for 11:20, when they will be back at your side with requests for tent making and crayon coloring and snacks and lunch.  The kitchen floor suddenly looks quite lovely with the patina left behind by muddy boots.  I would not trade this life for anything and it is, indeed, wonderful.

So Much To Say

After a year-long venture of house-hunting, house-selling, house-buying, house-moving, and finally settling in, there is much to say.  So much to say that there is no good place to start, not one finite point at which the story picks up and continues.  So instead of trying to play catch-up, I will dust off this keyboard and start with today.  Today I am sitting in my new-to-me kitchen in my 109 year old house, looking out the bank of windows that frame our kitchen's banquette, watching the snow come down in big, puffy flakes that blanket the yard, the swingset, and the pool beyond.

I am loving this new house.  It is old, and the wear shows in many places - 109 years builds up a good amount of wear!  There are dings in the trim and patches in the hardwood floors, and ancient windows that no longer open and shut.  But there is goodness, too, in the littlest of details here, there, and everywhere.  I appreciate the stamped door hinges, the rounded wall in the upstairs hall, the canning shelves in backmost basement room, the scrolled wood on the fireplace...so many things are good that I have gotten used to the things that aren't so good.  This kitchen is cold, both in temperature and aesthetics, but it has a good deal of space and we can make do until we have the money to make it our own - I know that one day it will be the coziest spot in our home.  Until then, I have gotten used to putting on a sweatshirt when I want to linger here and it seems fitting that the chilliest room in our house is also where the teakettle is put to good and frequent use.  This is my favorite place to sit in the late afternoons; while the sun splashes across the table I knit and watch Harry and Emma play outside with our dogs.

Speaking of dogs, while writing this I have had to get up at least ten times to rescue an odd shoe, slipper or glove from the jaws of the monster puppy, our newest addition to the family.  New because we lost our beloved Riley during the holidays to cancer, and our house just seemed wrong without two dogs.  So Ginger is here now and she is as spicy and naughty as the name suggests.  We adore her and find her impossible in equal turns; our plan is to weather this first year of her life as well as possible until she settles in and becomes the good dog we know she will be.  But Puppyhood!  Oh my, I had forgotten how tough you can be!

Emma has a static cling problem.  Winters here are dry, dry, dry, and her hair is constantly crackling.  It is a static mess that clings to her face but she refuses to tie it back.  It drives me a little crazy, the way it is constantly both stuck to her face and aflight in a perfect halo of wildness around her head and I find myself trying to tuck it behind her ears lately, which she hates, in the same way that I hated it as a child when my mother tried to tuck my own static-challenged locks behind my ears.  I guess some things never change.  She has had a growth spurt in the last month and the jeans I just bought are already looking short.  Pre-school has brought about so many changes in her demeanor, a bloom of girl child that amazes us and a blight of girl attitude that makes us inwardly cringe, knowing that the teenage years will make this seem pale in comparison.  She has definitive ideas about fashion, spends hours a day on artwork, and will be glad to dance it out in the kitchen with you as long as you agree to play some of her self-professed favorite band: Weezer.  She talks with her hands with big, expressive gestures that make us giggle.  She is funny, wildly funny, and we simply cannot imagine what life would be like without her.

I am recently the mother of a five year old, the fact of which nearly blows my mind.  I have moments when I can perfectly picture Harry as a young adult -  a certain glance, or the way he stands just so, makes me see him as he promises to be one day.  At other times he is very much the baby boy I met in an airport hallway, the one who sprung me, ready or not, into motherhood.  We registered him for kindergarten two weeks ago.  Kindergarten!  Holy cow, time flies by and they grow and suddenly we're faced with the impending doom of homework.  I feel, quite acutely, the passing of time with him and I wonder if he feels it, too.  He is reading, not just sounding out words but knowing them at first sight and getting ahead of me in books.  He reads the newspaper headlines while we eat breakfast, the words on billboards while we drive, and he has an insatiable appetite for books, even sleeping with them tucked beneath his pillow.  He plows through life, setting the standard and leading the way for his sister to follow, a task that is both a blessing and a burden on his little shoulders.  He is a great, great boy, still moving ahead with that force that has always been his.

Brendan is in the basement working out.  (Hours have passed since I first started this post...the kids are in bed, or should be, and night has fallen outside of my kitchen windows.  It is still snowing, but softly now; it is no longer in such a hurry to accumulate.)  We had to wedge his univeral weight set into the first room on the basement and it just barely fit at all.  The treadmill lives in the kitchen now, a severe lack of headroom in the basement making running at treadmill height impossible for him.  He has been such a good sport about this.  He gave up a lot in this move, man-room wise, but he has weathered it in good spirits and we are trying to find ways to accomodate the things that don't seem to fit.  People did not think about home gyms in 1901, I suppose.  When he is done working out we'll watch LOST in high definition on his new flat screen, and suddenly it won't seem so bad that he had to work out crammed into that basement.

I have to end this post and insist that a certain five year old go to sleep now, despite his seeming need to stand at the window and watch the snow come down.  He is beyond excited with tomorrow's potential for sledding in Crandall Park, but if he doesn't get some sleep he'll be too tired to climb back up the hill when his run is done.

Big Day

As I was tucking Harrison into his bed tonight I told him how happy I am to be his mom, how much happiness he brings to my life and how much joy he fills my heart with.  And I wished him a happy airplane day, because four years ago today was the day he flew to the US to join our family.  He smiled, looked into my eyes and said "Happy airplane day for you, too, Mom.  It was a big day.  A happy and sad day, wasn't it?"  And I said yes, it was both happy and sad.

My dear Harrison, so wise beyond your years, I love you.

We're Not Crazy

We're moving. Rather, we're hoping and dreaming of moving. We are under contract to buy a house in Glens Falls, a grand old Victorian lady with beautiful woodwork, huge old pocket doors, a kitchen with great workable potential, a deep front porch overlooking fruit trees, and a staircase with lovely carvings and a window seat. The house has solid bones, mostly updated bathrooms, and a finished attic room that can replace the space we'll lose by leaving our finished basement. The yard is big enough, with an in-ground pool and a Rainbow Systems playground set, plus enough extra room for some landscaping and a vegetable garden. The street has old trees, interesting architecture, and is within walking distance to the newly remodeled library, the post office, dozens of restaurants, a brewery, and Crandall Park.

We're moving, but the lovely house is not the reason we're moving.

We still have to sell our house, the one we finished building (it was an unfinished spec house) and then put in the landscaping, paved the driveway, put in the stamped concrete sidewalks, finished the basement, built a deck, cleared 40+ tress form the backyard, fenced 1/2 acre of our 1.85 acre lot, installed a swimming pool, and added an enameled woodstove to the living room. We have worked hard these last five years and we don't regret anyof it, not the money spent nor the time spent nor the elbow grease spent. We love this house. It is our home, the sacred place where our babies took their first steps. We love our neighborhood, a mixture of couples and singles, young and old. There are good people here, friends we've known a lifetime and friends we've known for only a season.

We're moving, but it is not because we're running away.

We could easily stay here, stay put in this house we know and enjoy surrounded by people we like. It would be easy for us to stay put, to watch our children board the school bus, go to the prom, and graduate in this safe community. It would be easy to stay here where our friends are mere houses away. But if we stay here, our children will likely be the only children of color in their class, perhaps in their entire school.

We're moving, not because of our children, but for our children.

When we bought this house diversity was not one of our major concerns. We didn't know then that our life path would lead us to building our family through adoption. We didn't know that the two people we love most in the world would look nothing like us, that they would not, in fact, share our race. And even once we started our adoption, we didn't always think about race as mattering very much. We knew it mattered, of course, but once we knew our children and fell in love with their personalities and the amazing little beings that they are we didn't always see their differences. To us they looked to us exactly the way our kids should look, and so it was easy to forget for a little while that race matters. It does matter. In fact, it matters a lot, especially to children who join their families through transracial adoption.

From what we have learned, when children join their families through transracial adoption and are raised in nearly entirely caucasian communities, they feel as though they are, themselves, caucasian. The problem is the world will not see our children as caucasian and they will not be treated as such once they leave our cozy little nest in this nice, white community. We, their caucasian parents, cannot teach them how to be people of color because we have no point of reference. We don't know what it feels like to be called a racial slur, to have someone pull slant eyes on us (hello, Miley Cyrus). Yes, we can educate ourselves and we can try to understand how awful it must feel, but we will never be able to commiserate with them on this. We can't offer any firsthand insight on how to deal with racism. While we don't believe our current community will hurt our children, and maybe they will never have a problem with racism here (although I doubt that very much), we also know that the real world is not 99.9% white. Once our children leave our cozy nest and nice community the world will not see them as Sara and Brendan's kids who were adopted as babies, they will see them as Asian men and women and many of them will assume racial stereotypes based solely on their looks.

In adoption, the child (along with the family of origin) is the one who gives things up and most often it is without their choice. Our children didn't choose to have an adoption plan made for themselves. They didn't ask to be taken away from their country and culture of birth, from their genetic background, from all of the people who look like them. It is a lot to ask a little kid to make all of the sacrifices in a relationship, to ask them to grow up in a place where they are The Asian Kids, easily spotted and easily targeted. Like I said, it would be easy, for us adults, to stay put and watch our children grow, enjoying our friends and our own feelings of safeness and comfort.

We are moving, not because we are running away, but because we are running toward Something Else.

Harrison is Four

We blink and it happens: our children change and grow and mature without us even realizing it is happening, until suddenly sitting before us is the school aged version of the baby we once knew.  Our baby has grown, and where he once babbled and cooed there now sits a tall and lean little boy, independent in all of the ways that matter at his age, able to engage adults with his good manners, wit, and charm.  When I look at him I see his inquisitive nature, his love of problem solving, his ability to nurture and care when the people he loves are hurt or sad.  I see his love of a good story, his sense of adventure, his admiration of nature and the world around him.  I see his glorious sense of humor and the mischievous twinkle in his eyes.  Oh, yes, there are impish little boy parts, too, but when I look at the big picture of our son I see the strength of his character, the line sketch of the man he will one day be.



















I see him and my heart smiles.

November’s Quiet

We’ve been sick.  I seriously had no idea how often we would be sick once our children began their school years, but the answer seems to be summed up neatly in one word: constantly.  Fortunately the illnesses are of the annoying variety rather than being incapacitating.  We sniffle and sneeze and whine and wheeze our way through each week and just when we begin to feel better, perhaps a day or weekend goes by before we succumb once again to an illness.  I am fairly certain the manufacturer’s of Puffs Plus will not need any help from the bailout; we are keeping them well profited.

There is a good side to all of this sickness in that it forces us to slow down.  Our non-school weekdays are spent on the sofa next to the cheerfully burning woodstove with stacks of books on the table before us and quilts tucked cozily around our legs.  My knitting is never far from my hands, and the tea kettle (its whistle broken, sadly) is nearly constantly making a fresh pot of boiled water for our tea and cocoa.  My fire building skills have vastly improved over the last few weeks and I am now proud to state that I can successfully begin a long lasting fire without filling the house with smoke…most days, anyway.

With the leaves now gone from the trees the bright light of winter has begun to fill our home on sunny days.  The patches of sunlight work their way around the house as the hours tick by and we shift our seating arrangements accordingly, with Charlotte (our beagle) being the member most concerned with catching this solar warmth.  The world outside of our windows is looking more wintry with each passing day, but in the tiny little garden beneath our chimney my clematis has one brave bud still basking in the late-autumn sun.  The rest of the plant’s leaves have been caught by the frost and the other blossoms have long since faded, but this one bloom refuses to die back.  Nature, even at the end of it’s season, contains the audacity and willfulness of life.  Our November days are are warm and quiet, and we savor them knowing that soon the holiday season will be upon us with all of its chill and cheer, followed by the deep freeze of the early year.  It will be a long time before new leaves and buds make their appearance on the clematis, so today I am thankful that just one blossom has held out its neck to reach for the sun. 

Dear Harrison,

You are tired.  You play harder than most kids I know, you go to school where learning new things requires an intensity of concentration that takes enormous amounts of energy to maintain, and your body and mind are growing up fast; all of these things together wear you out to the point that you are on the verge of tears nearly every day by the hour of five o'clock.  By the end of each day you have the tendency to become a puddle, to push boundaries and the limits of our patience until we, too, feel like puddles.  At those moments, the moments in which I want to throw up my hands and call uncle as I make a mad dash for the door, I find myself hoping that you will have a son of your own one day.  And you might think that is a hateful thing to write, but I don't wish a son upon you in vengeance, rather I wish a son upon you so that you, too, will know the depths of love that I know, the love that keeps me from running out the door.  The love that makes me hug you and hold you close rather than keeping you in a constant time out.  The love that makes me secretly giggle when you try, yet again, some thing that I have told you not to do no fewer than a million times. 
We've been doing better this week, you and I.  I had long since given up all hope of naps for you because as you got older you just seemed to grow out of them and I grew weary of returning you to your bed twenty times an afternoon.  It was exhausting and I will admit defeat; I simply gave up.  But then a funny thing happened.  I snuggled you close on the couch earlier this week, tucked a blanket around your shoulders to ward off any chill, and thought to myself that in the absence of a nap we could at least enjoy a quiet time together.  I turned on some boring show about politics and you laid your head on my arm until, quite suddenly and soundlessly, you were asleep.  Your little body sagged in relief as your slumber replenished the depleted stores of energy in your cells.  Your face relaxed, you started to snore, and I realized that in all of the time we spent arguing about naps I was getting it wrong.  Instead of putting you away in your room, alone, to sleep off your naughtiness and bad moods, I should have held you close for just a little while because what you needed, more than sleep, was me.  You needed to know that, in spite of all of the changes in your little life these days, I am going to remain a constant.  I failed you, in a way, when I didn't recognize what you needed and I am so sorry, my little man.  But now I know. 
We've kept up the couch cuddle time for a few days now and each afternoon as I tuck the blanket around your shoulders you look at me and smile; it is not the triumphant smile of one who has won a battle, but the contented smile of one who has finally gotten exactly what they needed.  And me?  I found out that I am getting exactly what I needed to: time with you to hold you close, to remember that you are still a very little boy.  Time to slow down and relax, to watch my son sleep.  I have also gotten the gift of a son who is not a puddle at five o'clock any longer; instead you are ready to help me make dinner, ready to clean up the mess of our day, and ready to play very kindly and patiently with Emma.  We are each changed by the stillness of one hour; we are replenished.
Maybe one day you will have a son, and that son will go to school for the first time and he won't take a nap afterward, and the busy days of young boyhood will wear him out to the point that you won't quite know what to do with him.  If that day comes I will let you read this so you'll know how clueless I was some days.  Hopefully you, too, will have the opportunity to learn that slowing down long enough to hold him and love him is the answer to a great many disputes and aggravations.  I do so hope you'll have a son someday.
Love, Mom

Eyes Wide Open

We laid side by side on his bed.  I was rubbing his belly and trying to coax his wound-up little body to sleep for a much needed nap and he was telling me snippets and tales from his day at preschool. 
I cherish these quiet moment when he tells me things that pop into his head from his day.  When asked directly about school he offers little, but if I try to lull him to sleep the details of his two and a half hour adventure trickle out of his mouth and into my waiting ears.  I happily absorb his words, hold them to myself, and wonder at the world he has entered that does not include us.  At times I think he likes having something apart from us, something that is entirely his, that we hold no ownership of.  His burgeoning independence is both beautiful and heartbreaking.  I want so badly at times to keep him small forever, but I also love, more than anything, watching him blossom and grow.
I am brushing my fingers through his hair now and I gently request that he close his eyes and go to sleep.  "I can't close them, Mom," he says, "I have to keep my eyes open wide so I can see everything."   
He has grown so suddenly these past months.  Gone are all traces of baby; they have been replaced by long limbs and strong muscles.  Fingers that were once chubby with baby fat now have the ability to button, zipper, and snap, and are close to being able to tie shoes.  He wants to know everything, to try everything, to see everything.  He is at the wonderful age where children are ready to explore the possibility of the world beyond their family and yard, yet they want so badly to know that we still have their backs, we will still scoop them up and carry them down the stairs, and kiss away their hurts, and tell them endless bedtime stories until the possibility of a monster lurking beneath the bed is game rather than a nightmare.   
Finally, his words are a murmur instead of a torrent and his fingers relax.  His eyes flutter closed and he breathes in the even rhythm of deep sleep.  I watch his face until I am sure that he is off in a land of dreams and then I can see it: the baby that lurks within the boy.  There are the long eyelashes that brush his round baby cheeks, and there is the pouting little mouth that has always smiled, ever-so-slightly, while he dreams.  I check his hands and there, too, I find the dimples that mark his knuckles.  I feel silly to be relieved that these marks are still there, for surely he is growing up well and I am absolutely proud of the person he is.  I just wish, sometimes, that life came equipped with a pause button.

Happy Johnny Appleseed Day!

I love that calendars remind us of all of those quirky honorable mention days, don't you? 
I would love to be able to tell you that my absence here is due to great works, vacations, dinners out, and wonderful books elsewhere, but the truth is we are mostly sitting around waiting for spring to finally arrive, for this blasted snow to leave, and for life to pick up it's vernal pace again.  The good news is that spring begins this week, and so even if there is still a blanket of white outside my window for a week or two more, I will find it within myself to be patient and calm with the knowledge that spring has, indeed, arrived and we are on our way to better weather.  I don't know why this winter in particular wore on me so, but if the blahs arrive again next year I think it will warrant the purchase of a light box.
If not for Harry and Emma I surely would have dried up and died waiting for Brendan to arrive home from work each day, such was my boredom with snow and ice and cold.  But my children, the little kicks that they are, heroically saved each day and kept me in stitches with their silly ways.  It's been awhile since I've shared Harry's funnies with you, so here are a few for you with which to beat down the very last of the winter blues:
In the car, on the highway. 
Harry: Mommy!  Daddy!  I have to go potty!
Brendan:  Can you hold it until we get to Grandma and Grandpa's house?
Harry: Ok.  Faster, Old Chap!  Hurry, Old Chap!
I am babysitting Isaac and Isabelle, and Isabelle stands by the door through which her dad has just exited, crying sad, forlorn little sobs.  My attempts at consolation have not worked, but Harry walks over to her, plants a kiss on her cheek, takes her hand and says: It's ok, Isabelle.  You come with me.  She smiles and they walk, hand in hand, to his bedroom.  Jeremy and Michele, I assure you I will not be so nonchalant about such things when they are older!
Emma is sitting on the toilet, working on her mad potty skillz, when her big brother barges into the room.  It is quiet for a moment, and then he shouts to me, although I stand mere inches away: Oh no, Mom!  Where did her penis go?  Did it fall off?
With many of our friends and neighbors happily expecting new bundles of joy, Harry has become fascinated with pregnancy.  When I am a big boy I am going to grow lots of babies in my belly, he tells us.  I honestly thought it would be awhile before we had these conversations, but alas, no.
Emma, Harry's ever-faithful sidekick, is more of the silent type.  She can yell and scream in pitches that could shatter glass, but when she talks her words are barely a whisper.  Rather than allow his sister to attempt speaking at audible decibels, Harry speaks for her.  She will whine and cry at my feet, I will be completely perplexed as to what she wants or needs, and Harry will look at me and say Mom, she wants a cracker in the exact tone of voice a bored seventeen year old uses.  Sometimes he even rolls his eyes.  I am doomed.
He just crawled into my lap and asked me to read the words on the screen to him.  I read, and when I get to the words Emma and Harry, he looks at me a says Me, Harry?  Those words are me?  And Ems?  It's a story about us?  When I explain that the story is indeed about them he starts to giggle, begs me to read more, and then laughs uproariously at the funnies I have just written, as if it's the best comedy he's heard in a long, long time.

My days are filled with the counterpoints of laughter and frustration.  Frustration because some days, like a beginning skier who doesn't yet know how to use the edge of her ski to cut the hill and turn, I feel myself flying full speed down a very big hill and I simply cannot find the edge I need. And then in the next moment, the laughter of my children buoys me and I am flying, not needing my skis, or the mountain, at all.  This family that Brendan and I have, it is the best.  Even on the days that I can't win for trying I find moments that take my breath away, that make my eyes well with grateful tears, and I find that I would not change a thing about any of it.  Parenting is precarious and wonderful and awful and exhausting and uplifting and worrisome and hysterically funny and I love it. 

Hello, 2008!

We have just come off eleven vacation days worth of tea drinking, holiday celebrating, lounging, movie watching, and merry visiting with friends and family.  While it was an enjoyable and much needed respite from work and a regular schedule, there is something so very comforting about returning to that schedule when the holidays are over.  Combined with a new year, that feeling morphs into motivation for me.

I am not prone to new year's resolutions, but we do have a lot of plans for the year ahead.  2008 will bring the finalization of Emma's adoption, a significant purge of our worldly belongings, a family vacation that may require boarding an airplane with two kids (I am sweating already), a new financial plan for our household, the beginning of preschool for Harry, and the exploration of the possibility of returning to work for me.  In between those larger elements there are a million smaller projects to tackle, ideas to work on, books to read, yarn to knit and crochet, and I am planning to put many, many miles on my sewing machine.  And yet again, we will try to grow a lawn in the backyard.  Ahem.  I think that one is three years in the running for yearly plans, but maybe the third time really is the charm?

Today I am off to the IRS in an attempt to get an ATIN number for Emma so we can file our taxes this year.  We were turned down at the social security office, even though we showed them every required document and even printed up the directions from their very own website which explained how and why to get a SSN for a non-finalized, non-citizen child who is in your custody for the purpose of adoption.  If the IRS turns me down, which they may very well do because the ATIN number is only for children who do not qualify for the SSN and Emma does qualify, I have to go back to the social security office and have someone else review our file.  The lady we dealt with was rude from the moment we approached the window and as the meeting progressed she yelled at us, told us she couldn't send a SS card to our daughter's birth parents in China, refused to even look at, no less actually read the documents of proof that we placed in her hands, and snarked with a co-worker over a Korean document, commenting that it could be a fake because it didn't look "foreign enough" and contained the English language.  Your tax dollars at work, my friends.  So you can see why I am going to try the IRS before placing myself in the midst of that particular brand of hell again, can't you?  Funny how the IRS suddenly seems like a beacon of hope in my life.

Coming up soon I have updates about both Harry and Emma (who are growing up so fast it makes my head spin some days), pictures of the living room arrangement I did not come up with but I love, and a few changes around my page, which I can hopefully figure out without Mr. WTD's help.  It's a brave new year.

Cheers to you and yours!