Mother and Daughter Day

Today is the one year anniversary of the day I first met my girl, my Emmy.  One year since my hand first brushed against her soft baby cheek, one year since she first sat on my lap, one year since my heart swelled with the joy of a daughter. 
One year later, we are going on a picnic.  One year later I know this girl by heart.  I know what each look means, I often know what she wants before the thought has even formed in her own head.  And she knows that she is loved beyond measure, here and on the other side of the world. 

If The Eighties Return She Will Be Ready

 



Fine hair can go BIG, just so you know.  Ems had double french braids all day, and when we took them out her hair went poof! 
We've been spending our days in the sunshine, and sunblock has become the new official smell of childhood for me.  I love breathing in the faint scent of it on my babies' necks as I tuck them into bed, as if the sunshine is still there on their skin even in the dark of evening.  We spent this morning at Gavin Park (with our friends the Wests), where parents of small children flock during the weekdays when the weather is nice.  Harrison loves it there, and he is more of a blur than a boy as he runs from swings to slides or dashes from rock climbing walls to tunnels.  His athleticism continues to amaze me; he just never stops moving while we are at the park.  Emma is working on building both her strength and her bravery.  She longs to keep up with the bigger kids, but her keen sense of caution keeps her hanging back a bit.  With a little prompting she will go down a slide on her own, and by the end of our time there today she was climbing to the tops of the towers all by herself.  I spend my time holding my breath, running after little ones, gasping, counting heads, and praying that no one falls headfirst to the ground.  The more seasoned moms sit at a table in the sun; dressed in dark blue jeans and black shirts, they drink their takeout designer coffees and chat about the latest preschool foibles, but I am not there yet.  I just might be one of those dreaded helicopter parents the rest of the moms whisper about.  Ah well, it's a little late in life to try to identify with the cool crowd, anyway.
I'm off to enjoy more backyard sunshine.  I just can't sit still when the weather is good!

Presents from Korea

Emma received Christmas presents from her foster family a couple of weeks ago.  The headband with curly pigtails is adorable, and she knew just what to do with her new purse: hang it off her arm and parade through the house.  She has been carrying it everywhere, but lest you think she is becoming too much of a girly girl, she usually has her handbag filled with matchbox cars, tow trucks, and her steamroller. 

Small Framed Portrait

A long time ago, when I was young and naive and determined more than educated, I thought I would change the world.  I thought I would do something that would be hugely meaningful to humanity as a whole, or something that would rescue us from our own obvious destruction of the planet we call home.  I was idealistic and outraged (and maybe had a bit of a super-hero complex?) and wanted nothing more than to storm out the front door of my house and get started.  I was also 14. 
That is not to say a 14 year old cannot change the world, it is just to say that particular 14 year old did not change the world.  Somehow love and life and children and houses and dogs and jobs and other goals and aspirations nudged their way into the space between myself and my outrage, and suddenly I was 3o and had not changed the world. 
I am ok with that because life took me in different, beautiful directions. 
But I sit here in my middle class life, with my warm safe house around me, my healthy children tucked soundly in their beds, my husband due home from his good job soon, and my two well-fed dogs asleep at my feet, and I feel...not guilt, exactly, but a renewal of an internal pull in the direction of change.  I find myself wanting to to DO something.
What does a middle class stay at home mom do to change the world?  She looks to the need most close to her heart: children.  This SAHM, also an adoptive mom, looked in the direction of the world's orphans.
Written a few weeks ago (details changed for privacy):

It came in the mail today, a thick envelope with many stamps that had traveled across the country from Seattle to reach my mailbox. I knew what would be inside the moment I saw it. Half of me wanted to rip it open and read the papers within to absorb the information and feel good about what we had done, and the other half of me wanted to set it aside unopened, suspecting that unimaginable sadness was enclosed within it's white paper pages.
I opened the envelope carefully, and as I withdrew the folded paperwork a photograph fell out of it and landed softly on the kitchen counter. I picked it up and examined the face looking back at me. A boy. He has short, dark hair. He is thin and looks tall; he has the most beautiful skin, and eyes that bear the sadness and early wisdom of incredible, unfathomable loss. His cheeks look as though they would have wonderful dimples if he smiled, but he is not smiling.
I unfolded the stack of papers and held his photograph with my thumb at the top of the page as I read so that I would be able to look at him as I learned the hard facts of his life, the details that brought bits of his file, his life's story, to my mailbox on the other side of the world. He lost both of his parents to AIDS. Then his extended family, stretched too far with their own troubles (perhaps poverty and HIV/AIDS?) could no longer care for him and his younger sibling. They were brought to an orphanage, and then the boy in the photograph fell ill, too. He was tested. Then he was moved to an orphanage for HIV+ children where he is able to get treatment, but is separated from the last bit of family he has left, his younger sibling.  All of this happened to a ten year old boy within the last six months.
And here is what I know: the boy in this photograph in one of the lucky ones.  He is in a place where he will receive the miracle drugs that will turn his HIV+ status from a death sentence into a chronic disease.  He will be educated.  He is not begging on the street, and there is some hope that he and his sibling will find an adoptive family.  His odds are good. 
I put the papers back in the white envelope, but I tuck the picture into a small silver frame that had been kicking around our loft for some time.  I put the small framed portrait of a boy I will likely never meet on the sideboard in our dining area.  I can see his face when we eat dinner.  I see him when I sit and have my morning tea, and he is still there when my children are raucously eating their lunch.  I think about him, and I cannot help but be outraged that there are 5  million orphans in Ethiopia alone, a country 2/3 the size of Alaska, a country where generations of doctors, teachers, clergy, leaders, and parents are being wiped out by AIDS, and children line the city streets begging, being sold into prostitution, and dying alone.  It is unfathomable.  The sheer magnitude of the math goes beyond what my brain can comprehend.  But this is math that I can do: for $180 (or three nice dinners out, one night in an ok hotel, one day of Christmas shopping, one trip to the vet with one of my dogs, two weeks worth of groceries for a household of four...) we were able to help provide food, clothing, school materials, and anti-retroviral drugs for one orphaned boy in Ethiopia for six months.  SIX MONTHS.  That math seems simple, really.

Right before I turned 31 this year, we sent in our donation to AHOPE for Children, an organization I first read about in Melissa Fay Greene's book There Is No Me Without You.  Since then I have been in contact with people who volunteer at the AHOPE orphanages in Ethiopia and I know that our money, our expendable $180, is being well spent. 
And so I didn't turn out to be a super-hero; I didn't save the world.  But maybe we have made a big difference in the life of one child, and maybe when his updated picture and bio arrive, the boy in the small framed portrait will be smiling  and I will get to see the dimples I know are there beneath layers of heartache and loss. 
Maybe he will save the world one day. 

Shared With Permission

This is today's post from a blog I love to read.  E, the author is Mom to eleven great kids and I find her story (and their combined stories) to be very inspiring.  I can't share the link to her personal blog because it is password protected, but she agreed to allow her readers to share today's post because we all thought it was so moving. 

March 27, 2008

Kids and Moms (and Dads)

I have been thinking a lot about kids lately... kids who don't have moms (and dads)... kids waiting for moms, and what life is like for kids who do not have parents. I have been thinking about the transformation that occurs when a child realizes he has a mom, a dad, a family...security, love and somewhere to belong.
With some of our kids, that "realization" that they have a Mom and a family, that they have someone to belong to, someone to watch over them, someone to care for them and someone to love them, has been gradual. With some of our kids, there has been this "a ha!" moment, where you could just see that they "got it".
There was baby Maggie... almost four months old... laying on the bed in our hotel in Vietnam on our first full day together (I had been visiting her for days at the hospital before this point). Before her hospitalization she had lived in a government orphanage where the babies had their names written on their legs in black magic marker so they could be told apart, and got very very little personal attention. She didn't cry when she was hungry or when she wanted something. She was quiet and tiny, but I could tell she loved being held and loved the attention I was giving her.
I walked away from the bed where she was laying to get a bottle for her, and she made this teeny tiny pitiful (feeble attempt at a) cry, and I rushed over and picked her up and offered her the bottle. She got this look of amazement on her face with a little smile that seemed to say, "Holy cow! You mean that crying thing WORKS with you??" and after that she did not want anyone but me and always wanted me close. She got it. I was there for her. I was her mom.
With Mercy, she was nine years old. She had had a mom before, who did not value or respect her role as a mom. Mercy knew neglect and abuse and loss. Despite that, she came to us with an open heart and a surprising amount of trust. At one point during our first week, Des needed her hair washed (and Mercy had been the one to care for Des up until that point, even though she was only three years older). Mercy told Des to go into the bathroom so she could wash her hair, and I gently told Mercy that I could wash Des's hair, and reminded her that that was the kind of thing a Mom should do. The social worker had warned us that "letting go" of being the caregiver of Des might be hard for Mercy and we might have some power struggles over it... but Mercy looked at me and looked at Des and looked back at me and said, "You wash all the other little kids... You  would wash Des's hair too?" and I said, "Yes". And she said, "And then what would I do?" and I said, "Well, you could go play." And she looked at Des again and then back at me, and then she got this huge smile on her face, and you could almost SEE her letting go of the responsibility of caring for her little sister. She ran over and gave me a hug, and then took off to play. She got it. I was there for her and for her sister. I was their mom.
With Solomon, that moment came when we left AHOPE for the second time together. We had spent  two days together, and then we had gone back to AHOPE to visit. As we walked through the gate and the kids called out his name and came running to say hi to him, he sat in my arms with huge, silent tears running down his cheeks. He would not make eye contact with anyone (including me, the kids and the nannies) and just stared ahead with this heartbreaking acceptance of the fact that he thought he was being left. Again. It hurt me so much that he had come to accept this from life... that nice people came and went, but he did not truly belong to any of them. I couldn't imagine how his little heart felt and how he had endured all that he had already. I comforted him and held him close and told him over and over again in his ear that I would never, never, never leave him.
He started to relax a little the longer we were there and I stayed with him, but he was not his usual self. And then it happened. I put him in the sling, we waved good-bye, went back out through the gate and headed back up the road towards the hotel for some lunch. He got this HUGE grin on his face, and was bouncing up and down in the sling laughing, and then grabbing my face and kissing it over and over as we walked. He was so happy and joyful. He got it. He was not going to be left again. I was HIS. He was mine. I was his Mom.
Since then I have watched him blossom with love. I have watched him learn how to expect and look forward to being held often, comforted when he cries, rocked to sleep, having his needs met,  getting individual attention and being smothered in hugs and kisses often. As I crawled into bed last night, a few hours after I had put him down to sleep, his little body turned towards me, and without waking up, he put his arm on me, snuggled in close and let out a content sigh.
All kids deserve that knowledge, that peace and that comfort. All kids deserve to know that they are loved and that they belong to someone.
I believe with all my heart that our Heavenly Father did not send us down here to go at life alone, to worry about ourselves and to focus our lives on material and trivial things. I believe with all my heart that we are meant to live in families... mothers, fathers and children together, focusing our lives on loving, enjoying and serving each other.
We have several reasons to believe that Solomon most likely spent very little (if any) time with his first mother. And yet even after multiple changes in caregivers and "homes", multiple losses and lots of suffering without a mom to comfort him, he KNEW what a Mom was for from our very first days together. His heart and soul reached out to mine and grabbed on firmly. He knew that he wanted a mom. He knew that hugs, kisses and rock-a-byes were something he wanted, deserved and needed. The other kids we met in Ethiopia knew it too. They knew that they belonged with parents. They knew that something big was missing from their lives.
My heart rejoices for my kids and others that have had their lives changed so drastically...who were once alone, and now live with love, security and family. Watching Solomon over the past few weeks has reminded me of what an incredible miracle adoption is.
And at the same time, my heart aches for the so very many kids who are living life alone right now. . Even the very best orphanage is no comparison to a home and family. It is wrong that these kids must wait and yearn for a family. They deserve, as all children do, the peace and security that comes with the knowledge of knowing that they belong to someone, that they are being cared for and that they are loved.
This is why I support adoption...because I have seen the sadness in the eyes of the children who wait for moms, I have seen the amazing transformation in children once they have been "claimed" and loved, and because I believe, with all my heart, that that love and belonging is what our lives on this Earth are supposed to be about.

Boring Rainy Days Call For Impromptu Photo Shoots

First, there's me with my new haircut:


Then with Ems, as Harry calls her:



And then with Mr. Harry:


At this point Miss Ems was crumbling under the pressure of sleepiness and too much camera, so we sent her to bed and got out a big white blanket to take some studio style pictures of Harrison:







It's only 12:45.  What are we going to do with the rest of the day?

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.