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.

The Summer List

“We write things we want to do over the summer.” says Harrison of
The Summer List.  Oh, but it is so much more than that!  The summer list is my saving grace in an otherwise uncharted, weeks long stretch of time that, admittedly, sometimes scares me.  The Summer List has plans to make, ideas to toss around when the inevitable I’m bored! starts to rear its ugly head, and lofty goals that might never be met but are fun and interesting to talk about.  For the past four summers we have brainstormed as a family all of the things we wanted to do over the summer, both grown-up and child friendly ideas fill out the page and we cross off our achievements as we go.  At the end of the summer, we have proof of our escapades and our kids are armed with plenty of ventures with which to answer that classic first day of school query, What did you do all summer?  This is the best sort of to-do list, with only fun things!
Here, the beginnings of the 2011 version, to be updated as we go along:

• go to Crandall Library
• go swimming in our pool
• go to camp (our family’s camp)
• go to the Great Escape (Six Flags)
• another tour of the beaches at different Lakes
• go out for ice cream
• go fishing
• go to the drive-in
• try making hypertufa troughs
• go to the movies
• start a cutting garden for flowers
• dig in Pie and Mike’s compost pile for worms
• learn to ride bikes without training wheels
• go to concerts in the park (Shepard’s Park, City Park, Crandall Park, etc.)
• go to Crandall Park and play
• go kayaking
• go for lengthy after dinner strolls
• Farmer’s Market!
• go to a baseball game
• play tug of war with Ginger (this from Miss Emma)
• go to the ocean…Cape Cod!
• tie dye t-shirts
• make our own hula hoops
• make a worm bin for compost purposes (and little boy worm digging purposes)

Early Birds

We have a new rule this summer: no television before 5p.m.  It’s a good rule, one made because we had slipped into some very bad habits around these parts.  There are days when I’d like to abolish the screen entirely, but then I remember that I, too, really enjoy watching movies and hypocrisy in parenthood is not a good thing.  So anyway, a new rule.  When we arise each morning without slipping into a comatose hour of cartoons, our day is longer and our possibilities are greater.  Today we snuggled down in bed for a few extra moments, getting a head start on our summer list* and making grand plans for our free time.  Once we were fully awake (such a time can be marked by the amount of giggles and general wiggly-ness of small children) we quickly dressed and headed out the door.  Where to?
We hadn’t been to Hovey Pond in awhile.  It’s close enough to home that we sometimes overlook it, but this morning it was the perfect choice.  We were there before the dew evaporated:

We spent some time identifying wildflowers, spotting turtles, and counting birds (turtles are shy and fast!):

We stopped to ‘say cheese’:


We made it home before 10a.m., with the rest of the day’s adventures still waiting for us and some of those wicked wiggles out of our systems. 

It’s going to be a good summer...

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.

A Few (Woeful) Things

• We celebrated Joon’s birthday last week.  Without him.  That was hard, but I only cried a little.  You’ve heard of Flat Stanley?  We have Flat Desmond, a picture of our littlest boy that I cut out.  We propped him next to the cake and then we blew out his candle for him.  It was fun in the most bittersweet sort of way.
• Brendan worked nights last week, 6:30pm to 6:30am.  Please, let’s not do that again anytime soon. 
• We all got some horrible fever/head cold/chest congestion thing that has made us miserable.  Or maybe it just made me miserable, working in conjunction with Brendan’s night shift and Joon not being here for his birthday.  I guess I’m just saying that I have been miserable.  And then this happened:
• We found out that our adoption agency’s partner agency in Korea, ESWS, will hit their quota and run out of Emigration Permits (EP) soon, as in any referrals made after December 1, 2010 will not travel until 2012.  This is very bad news.  Long story short, babies must have EP to leave the country.  As So. Korea winds down its international adoption program, they are decreasing by ten percent the amount of EP they give out each year, creating a backlog of babies waiting to go home to the parents they have already been matched with.  The implications of this are kind of huge for us.  When ESWS starts submitting babies for EP early in 2012, the babies from the end of 2010 are all in line before our child (as it should be).  This means ESWS is a full year behind in EP.  Agencies are rumored to be preparing their families for a minimum 15 month wait from referral to travel…if this is true Desmond will be home in July….of next year.  And he will be two. 
• There is a dark side to all of this, which is the possibility that ESWS could run out of EP even earlier next year, in which case our “baby” could possibly not be home until 2013.  (Did you all just feel the miserable meter’s needle screech forward ten thousand notches?)
• I am trying to remain calm.  Keep calm and carry on.  Plant an herb garden, make summer plans, paint a few more rooms.  And update my resume, because I might as well start making a dent in the adoption expenses while both of my big kids are at school all day next year. 
• I’m not really miserable all of the time.  Just when I am alone, or when I think too much, or when I see all of the beautiful babies our friends and acquaintances are pushing around town in their strollers…you know the type, those small babies, the kind that need diapers and aren’t walking and speaking in sentences. 
• At least it stopped raining. 

Walk With Me

We could sit inside during this cold wet spring break.  I could alternate tea and coffee, constantly sitting with a steaming cup between my paws for warmth, and read book after book beneath an afghan wide enough for three.  We could watch movies and have popcorn for lunch and it would be fine, perhaps even lovely. 
Or, we could choose to thumb our noses at Mother Nature’s joke of a spring break and we could get out there.  We could take that trail that I’ve driven past one hundred times and never stopped to walk.  We could wander beneath the trees and in between the tall grasses, listening to the red-winged blackbirds’ and chickadees’ calls against the lilt of the brook and the swish of the wind.
Guess which we chose this chilly morning?

It was grand!  We walked slowly, absorbing the textures and variety, allowing the wind to brighten our cheeks, and stopping not only to breathe deeply the rich scent of the awakening earth, but also to feel the bark, lichens, and soft, soft mosses. 


We explored; none of us had ever been there before and so we were travellers together and it was a relief not to be the adult in charge, just a companion out for a stroll.


We got chased by a pair of nesting Canadian Geese, got rained on just a little, and found a random teapot in the woods. 

We stood on stumps,


and stopped to wonder what kinds of creatures populate the tiniest of worlds:


Despite weather that was dubious at best, we discovered a few signs of spring:


And so I challenge you: do not let spring - no matter how chilly or wet or disappointing it is - do not let spring pass you by.  Bundle them up, put on their rain boots and yours, and get out there. 



 


Delight in the bizarre:



Wonder at the destinations of unknown paths:

Feast your eyes on the small things, the ones we drive past and speed beyond without seeing.  Stop and look when your little ones call to you with their discoveries; see things from their perspective.  Have an adventure!

And when you arrive home, do not forget to perform the obligatory tick check; we found one after our adventure.
___________ 
Today’s pictures from the Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail. 

Heavy Hearts

“Mrs. Sullivan, are you sitting down?”

This was how she started the phone call, the cadence of her words forever seared into my memory.  I rushed for a pencil and paper and she began to tell me about the little boy who would be my son. 

“He has apple cheeks, just like you.” she said. 

And just like that we were no longer two, but three.  We were a family.  Our son was on the other side of the world but now he was real, no longer an idea, or a hope or dream, but a real baby with apple cheeks waiting for us in Korea.  It was bliss, a moment of the purest sort of joy.

I don’t know what it is like when you conceive a child, whether you remember the person who gave you your first ultrasound, whether their face and their words are forever etched in your memory.  I don’t know if you remember the person who holds your baby up in the delivery room and shows him to you for the first time.  I do know that when you adopt you remember those words, the tone of voice, where you were and what you were doing and who gave you the news. 

“I have the most beautiful baby boy in the world for you.”

Cecelia K. Park, director of  Love the Children adoption agency, was the woman who made us parents on that chilly evening when we were on our way out the  door, when we almost didn’t stop to go back and answer the phone.  She was the woman whose phone call less than two years later started in the same way, “Mrs. Sullivan, are you sitting down?” when she called to tell us about our daughter.  I will never forget her words or the way her voice smiled, as if she had the very best secret in the world and she was about to share it with us.  I will never forget her kindness when she met our children later on, or the way she held them as if they were her own grandbabies.  I will never forget the phone call she had us make to her when our babies were newly arrived, during which she took the time to teach us how to tell them I love you and You’re a beautiful baby, and how she told them not to be scared because we were their new omma and appah.  I will never forget how she made each of us feel that we were getting the best kid in the world;  she knew that we were because she knew and believed that each baby placed was special and perfect.  She knew, too, that we were lucky, lucky parents and we are, all of us.

Ms. Park died in her sleep last night, a profound loss for all of the families she created, all of the people she touched with her kindness and her smiling voice.  The news weighs heavily on our hearts and we cannot quite imagine a world without Cecelia’s presence in it.  We will surely miss her beautiful soul.

Cecelia, he really is the most beautiful boy in the world, and she is the most beautiful girl.  Thank you for letting me be their mom.  We will never forget you.

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”.)

They Found The Webcam

And now whenever I open the computer four little hands start reaching and pushing and edging in to the center of the screen for the best angle of silly face. 

It is only a teensy bit annoying.  Mostly I love seeing the  funny pictures they take when I least expect it.

Love, from the other side of the world

Emma had a surprise in the mail this week!  A package arrived from her foster family in South Korea, including a small purse, barrettes and hair ties, a Hello Kitty ring (some things are so universal, aren’t they?) and the very very cute jumper she is wearing in these photos!  There was a also a book with a cd-rom and she really enjoyed listening to the story told in Korean, even if we did have to make up what we thought the story was really about. 
Thank you, Mrs. Koo and family, for your continued love and support of our very favorite girl.  She loves you so much and asks about you all of the time.