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. 

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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

Fire

We used to joke, back in my art school days, about the day you go home and tell your parents that you want to be an art major.  That instead of  more lucrative degrees like accounting and engineering you are going to spend four years learning how to paint portraits, how to manipulate clay, how to make a block print.  We used to joke about it because it was a way to fight off the internal panic that set in whenever we thought about actually having that conversation in real life.  And once a semester the professors in our art department actually put on a special lecture entitled “How to survive telling your parents you are going to be an artist”. 
Somehow I survived those conversations (which proved less scary in real life than they were in my imagination, but did end in the sad shaking of heads by the four adults that are my parents), graduated with honors, and left college to make a life in the art field…and fell flat on my face.  I never wanted to be a teacher of public education, the obvious choice for artists who need to pay their bills with something else.  I wasn’t particularly interested in marketing.  Truthfully, I wasn’t exactly sure what I would do with my degree, I just knew that what I was good at, what I enjoyed and felt passionate about, was working with my hands.  Taking raw materials and forming them into something functional, useful, beautiful, thought provoking, or at least intentional – this was what I was good at, this was where I felt at home.  This was my fire.
Simply knowing what your fire is or feeling at home in your own skin does not pay the rent or buy a new car or help pay for the paint that you just know will transform your house, and so like many people who identify as artists, I got a real job…or several.  And when people asked me what my profession was I told them “I am an assistant preschool teacher, but I went to art school” or “I am a craft store manager, but I went to art school” or “I am a transaction coordinator for a mortgage broker (and later, a real estate agent), but I went to art school”.  I stopped identifying as an artist and started justifying my current, non-glamorous positions with the fact that I had made a mistake and gone to school to learn about art.  Away from the college setting there was no studio space, no group of fellow artists to support and critique my work, there was no more fire.
Fast forward many years.  We live in a house with studio space, an entire third floor that can be whatever I need it to be.  My hands are kept busy with textiles…knitting and sewing replace paints and pencils.  I feel good.  And then my mom convinces me to take a felt making class at the Troy Shirt Factory Building.  I walk in the door of the Luckystone Studio and I can feel it, that long lost sensation of being at home.  I almost don’t recognize it at first, but I find myself grinning, overly cheerful, my adrenaline pumping at a much higher rate than normal.
Do other people feel this way about the thing they love to do?  Does it make them feel as though they are burning from the inside out?  Does it light them on fire?
It didn’t seem to matter that I had never tried felting before.  The colors, textures, surroundings, and process were so familiar, deep in my bones.  Working side by side with other like-minded people, our work different but our goals the same, brings me such immense joy.  I love the easy camaraderie and chatter of people working at their own pace, trading ideas, offering up suggestions, and just that comfortable silence that comes with mutual artistic concentration. 
The felting process is harder than it looks, takes more patience than I am used to directing at my projects these days, but it was entirely invigorating.  For the first time in a long time I feel like an artist – I think I could even say it out loud with a straight face, without even a hint of apology in my voice.  I came home today with a scarf that is on fire with color…reds, fuscias, and oranges.  I also brought home a huge bag of wool roving, silk, and mohair fibers; my head is swimming with ideas, things to try, places to take color and form and concept. 
My fire, I think, has been rekindled.
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It’s Madhouse Wednesday again.  These are the others who participate…check them out!
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

Sorry

As any parent does, I spend what seems like a lot of time trying to instill in my children the kind of manners and etiquette that will allow them to go through life with social grace.  I want them to be strong and able to speak up for themselves, but I also want them to consider how their actions and words affect those around them.  We even bought a cute card game, Polite Pigs, at Sterling & Co. that lays down the rules of manners:  If you want to use something that belongs to someone else, say please.  If you need someone to step aside so you can pass through, say excuse me.  If you hurt someone, say I’m sorry.

What is harder to teach and harder to learn is what to say when we did not cause the harm or get in the way, but someone else’s life starts going horribly awry before our eyes.  In the last year I have found myself wishing for a set of rules, or even a cute card game, to teach me how to react when I learn that someone’s husband has left or they can’t seem to make a baby or they find out they have a disease that is going to change the way they live for the rest of their lives.  I find myself repeating I’m sorry at these times, finding the words lacking, their sentiment not quite reaching out to say what I really feel.  Social boundaries keep me from saying a lot of what comes to mind in these situations; unless the person in question is one of my best friends I can’t stamp my feet and cry with them and declare the universe an unfair and unjust place.  I can’t scream and wail in anguish over the fact that the path they worked so hard to be on has just been ripped out from beneath them and replaced with a new one that is not so shiny and pretty, but filled with potholes and despair.  Social grace allows us to only go so far: I am sorry for your loss.  I am sorry for your diagnosis.  I am sorry that you are going through this.  I am sorry that there is nothing I can do, no real change I can make to better your situation. 

But I am here for you and I am so, so sorry. 

I wonder how we teach our children that which we do not know ourselves. 

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Eight weeks and one day behind for the Madhouse – I have some serious catching up to do. 

Holiday bonus

It started a few years ago.  We were all used to rushing around and trying to find something meaningful yet within budget to give one another: something pretty for Mom, something outdoorsy for Mike, something cool and interesting for my brother and his girlfriend  (now wife), something useful for Grandma Ann, as well as a little something here and there for everyone else who happened to join in our celebration that given year.  As it turns out, it is not so easy to churn out meaningful, useful, yet budget-able gifts year after year for the same people.  As it does for so many families, Christmas had become about the gifts, not about spending time with one another, or appreciating the season, or even lending a nod to the actual event which we were supposed to be celebrating.

Finally, someone said stop.

It might have been my Mom, or me, or someone else…I can’t remember.  But what followed the stop was something that brought a little meaning back to our holiday.  We decided, as a family, to nix the gifts.  The little kids (so far only my own two) still get a little something special, but the rest of us bring only our checkbooks or a handful of cash and our Christmas spirit.  Some people donate more than others and we don’t keep track of who brought what; we each donate what we can and that is enough.  We throw all of the money into a jar and as our holiday gathering gets underway, we each take a few moments to write down the name of a charity on a slip of paper.  We don’t limit the selection to local organizations, just whatever charity we each hold dear to our hearts.  We have had charities ranging from local soup kitchens and crisis pregnancy centers to homes for AIDS orphans in Ethiopia.  It’s a mixed bag of organizations that try to do good in the world, and we always find it interesting to see what everyone else has written down.

The names go in a basket, and before we part ways for other celebrations, gatherings, or quiet reflection, one of the littlest among us will choose a name from the slips of paper and all of the money we’ve collected goes to that charity.  The check is usually substantial, a Holiday bonus for an organization that has probably never heard of any of us.  A Holiday bonus that buys diapers or baby cribs or anti-retroviral medication or the simplest gift of all: food for the hungry.

And it is a Holiday bonus for all of us, too.  We don’t spend as much time at the mall, which means we can spend more time with those we love.  We have less stress, less panic over finding just the right thing.  Instead of ripping through a mountain of paper and ribbons and trying to feign excitement for something that we truly don’t want or need, we talk and laugh and tell stories and make memories.  And you know what?  It feels good.  It feels good to know that instead of another sweater or pair of earrings, someone who actually has need is going to be helped.  That is the very best Holiday bonus I can think of.


It’s Madhouse Wednesday…er, Thursday? I am always so late.   Here are the others who play along…some every week, others when they can (and some habitually late, but I won’t mention any names…ahem).  You can join in the fun, too!  Let me know if you want in and we’ll get your blog added to the list.
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
Heather – She Flies With Her Own Wings
Jennifer – Ask Poops, Please
JMLC – Daydreams and Ruminations
Kate – One More Thing
LC – LC in Sunny So Cal
Louise – Child of Grace
Marcy – Mittentime
Melanie – usually, things happen
Nikki – Land of the Free, Home of the Depressed
Sara – yoyu mama

No Strings

How many of you just added the word “attached” to the end of that title?  I know my mind wants to, but for today’s Madhouse post I am going to take this in a different direction.  What if we all imagine, for a second, the literal ramifications of No Strings?
For me this thought almost immediately incites panic.  No Strings!?!  What will I do with my hands?  You see, I spend a considerable amount of time each week knitting and sewing.  Keeping my hands busy is what I do to keep myself sane…it’s not that I don’t love staying home with my children, it’s just that sometimes it doesn’t feel as though I am accomplishing anything.  I run them around to school and activities, try to keep the house on the honest side of the clean/disgusting boundary, and cook three or more times per day.  Sometimes it feels like treading water, rather than swiftly cutting through it.  On the days when it all feels like stagnation, the act of taking thread, yarn, and fabric (all of which are forms of string, no?) and making something new and useful from them helps me feel accomplished.  If there were no strings there would be no sewing, no knitting, no inner peace in my days. 
From there my thoughts head to my husband, my brother, and many of our friends friends – a musical bunch of people that we know and love.  No Strings has huge ramifications for that crew as well.  No Strings means no piano, no guitar, no bass, no orchestra, no music.  Where would all of us be without music?  How many times per day do you reach for your ipod, CDs, or car radio, looking for something to move you, to make your day shine brighter or just to sing at the top of your lungs because it feels good? 
And what about the smaller odds and ends? 
No rope for rock climbing and clotheslines, for tying your boat to the dock.  No string for kite flying or tying up a good roast.  No twine for mending, no fabric to clothe ourselves, nothing with which to make an area rug or carpet.  No curtains, pillows, or blankets.  Nothing to tie the Christmas tree to the roof of your car, nothing to tie your shoes.  No primitive fishing line.  No rigging for sails, nothing to hang our wind chimes. 
No Strings would be catastrophic.
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When I was a little kid my friend, Sarah, lived around the corner from my Grandparents’ house.  We spent much of our childhood climbing trees and scraping knees and trying to learn how to skateboard and playing in the playhouse her dad built in their backyard.  We also liked to build things, and our two favorite tools for building were duct tape and string.  We joke, to this day, about how with duct tape and a ball of twine we could build just about anything, and after taking a closer look at the idea of No Strings, I think we were on to something. 
So much of what we consider civilized and comfortable has a relationship to string, something that few of us probably think about.  And that is Madhouse Wednesday.

Thanks

Kate is hosting a blog carnival called The Madhouse each Wednesday and I am playing along.  On the internet, as in real life, I am late to the party…because if you are paying attention today is Saturday, not Wednesday.  What can I say?  Life often gets in the way of my best intentions, but I don’t think it is ever too late to show up. 
If I were to create a bulleted list of all the things I am thankful for in my life, the length of it would surely stretch all the way around the world and then some.  Because really: living here, in this town that I love, with these people that fill my life with goodness, with a warm house and plenty of food and no war directly outside of my door – there is nothing to not be thankful for in my life.  There are things I pine for, there are things that would make my days easier and my life more fulfilled, but I have enough.  There are surely many things that I worry about, but all of my needs are met daily, and that is enough.  And I am thankful.  Oh, so thankful. 
But this week in particular there are a few things for which I feel I ought to say an extra special thanks:
1. It started with my cough, then my ears filled with fluid, then my throat hurt like hell.  Then Emma didn’t seem to hear anything we said.  Then Brendan had a high fever for many, many days…his rattling chest and whole body shivers were scary, to say the least.  We cancelled Thanksgiving plans, we hunkered down.  We all visited the doctor: three ear infections, possible strep throat, and pneumonia.  Today, the three of us (sans Harry, a.k.a. The Last Man Standing, who has been shipped to Pie’s house for a grandma date/wearing out session) are snuggled together in the family room, sipping tea, enjoying the restful, quiet house, and taking our various doses of healing meds.  And so today, I am grateful and thankful for the invention of antibiotics.  I am thankful for easy breathing, in and out, in and out.  I am thankful for ears that can (almost) hear clearly and throats that can swallow without making us cringe. 
2.  We’ve all heard that tensions in Asia are rising.  The country where my children were born has come under attack and we all sit on pins and needles waiting to see what will happen next.  We pray for peace, for a solution between North and South that does not include war.  Whatever political feelings we have over the situation at hand, our kids have family in South Korea and we hope, more than anything, that they will be safe.  As selfish as this may sound, today I am thankful that my children are home, that I am not waiting for a travel call.  I am thankful for their laughter across the room, for the fact that they are safe within these walls, here.  And my heart goes out to all of those people who are not yet so lucky. 
3.  And lastly, as we head into the school-age years with our children, I am thankful for community.  I have come to realize that we cannot do this alone.  We need the lessons of those who came before us and the camaraderie of those who are walking beside us now to make this work.  Parenting is hard enough, but when you add the additional elements of transracial-international adoption into the mix there are many more things to consider, many more ways to fail.  So thank you to those who guide us, who share their stories so that we may learn.  This community, both online and in “real life”, gives me strength and hope and real working knowledge, all of which are necessary and priceless.
And so there it is: my personal shout out to antibiotics, having my children home, and the adoptive community at large.  Perhaps a little disjointed and random, but those are the things that make the top of my list today. 

Just So I Remember Later

She's gripping a fat pink Crayola crayon in her little fist, and she draws it back and forth through Harrison's hair.  She loves the idea of coloring but doesn't yet grasp that crayons are best suited for paper, or maybe she does but likes the idea of pestering her brother better.  When she does touch crayon to paper it is in the form of dots.  She is into pointillism, it seems, and her page of the coloring book is freckled with pink, white, and blue.  Harry is patient with her and allows her crayon to graze his scalp for a moment, then shakes his head and tells her to color on the paper, and only on the paper.  It's a direction he's heard a lot of in his almost three years.  When she finally concedes and begins to polka dot the paper he pleads with her to make lines instead of dots, but she laughs off his request and continues with her masterpiece.
He is learning to write.  He holds his crayon like a pencil and makes studious, focused lines across the page.  He demands that I make 'dots' for him, which I know means he'd like to play connect-the-dots, the game we've used to try to teach him to write his letters.  He loves making his lines into something, and he is delighted every time a recognizable image appears where only polka dots lived before.  He brings me his "school work" to hang on the fridge, and I happily comply.  The pages he chooses to work on in his coloring book are not the pictures to be filled in with crayons, but the pages that show numbers and letters, word searches, and matching games.  He wants to know what the words say, what they mean, and how to make the letters into them.  He demands the reading of words everywhere, from receipts to newspapers to cereal boxes.  He loves the written word already, before he can even cipher the meaning on his own, and I find myself filled with joy at the thought of the books we will (re)discover together.
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Brendan straps the orange snowshoes to his feet while I struggle with my own buckles.  The freshly fallen snow whirls around our heads in the late-morning wind, and we're off.  We start on the driveway, where Harrison quickly finds his rhythm is thrilled to watch his dad use the snow blower, but even that soon gets old for a boy of such energy.  We cut a path across the front yard and then around the back and into the trees.  He asks me if he can go first and I let him take the lead, his little snowshoes making a meandering trail through the untouched powder.  He stops to admire the ice on tree branches, and shows concern for smaller pines that have buckled under the weight of heavy snow and ice.  He insists on dusting the snow off of them and correcting their posture.  We discover "tree huts" under a few tall, old hemlocks at the very back of the lot, and I remember being a child myself and playing in the caverns formed by snow-laden branches of evergreens.  We duck under the snowy branches and Harrison smiles and laughs out loud at the luck of finding such a perfect hiding hole.  As we head back toward the house his cheeks have taken on a rosy glow, and he stumbles over a log that was hidden beneath a drift.  Rather than allow frustration to seep into his outing, he laughs and reaches his hands out to me, and I scoop him up and set him right again.  He leads me along the fence and into the front yard, and we watch his dad circle back with the snow blower.  He doesn't want to take off his snowshoes; he doesn't want to go back inside.  It was only fifteen or twenty minutes but it made his weekend, and watching his adventure through the woods made mine.
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She hates to be told "no".  She doesn't hear the word very often because she is eager to please by nature and follows directions more than she bucks them, but every once in awhile Emma is told "no".  She turns her eyes to mine, and the sadness that peers out of those big brown spheres at that one simple word is enough to break my heart.  And then she sticks her little bottom lip out, her cheeks quiver, and enormous tears literally splash down her face.  Her face crumples into devastation, and I am between giggling and tears myself.  It hurts my heart to see the physical expressions of her sadness, but on the other hand I know the reason behind my use of the word "no" and really it wasn't anything to cry about.  I hold her and whisper "shhhh" in her ear and her tiny little sobs quiet.  She looks questioningly into my eyes and I assure her that I love her, but that she still  cannot drink my hot cup of tea.  Satisfied with the exchange she smiles and wiggles her way to the ground, off to new adventures.  Her cheeks are still shiny with tears, but her heart has been restored to sunshine.