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.
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Today’s pictures from the Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail. 

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

Pinki

The same week that we got the joyous news about our new son, we got the terrible news that my Aunt Pinki (Patricia) had passed away.  The youngest of five daughters, she was the one who pushed the envelope, who loved and lived bigger than most.  The stories about her life are epic and entertaining; her sense of adventure was not to be outdone.  Her loss hits me in waves; it is terrible and too soon and very, very sad.
Sitting with the picture of my future son and the picture of the loved one we have just lost, I know this to be true:

Joy and sorrow grow in the same garden; we would not know one without the other. 

I’ll always miss you, Pink. 

Desmond!

He is gorgeous!   We have been studying his tiny fingers and toes, admiring his hairline (so similar to Harrison’s at the same age), and trying to imagine how soft those sweet cheeks are.  Our revised timeline gives us hope for a December or January arrival, sooner if things speed up, slower if they become more backed up.  We will wait with all of the patience we have in our souls for this little one and we will be overjoyed whenever he makes his arrival in our lives.  Until then, we know that he is in very good hands (his foster mother has been taking care of babies since 1980!), being loved and spoiled and delighted in on the other side of the world.  There is an amazing peace in my soul with this knowledge, a well-being that sits in my heart while at the same time my head plays with dates and timelines and what-ifs.  Oh, the Wait…the hardest part, but the part that teaches us so much about ourselves.

In this first picture he is probably 2 months old.

At five months old (above and below).

Sitting with his Foster Mom, whom I have cropped out for her privacy.
So many people have told me they couldn’t do it…they couldn’t wait ten more months for the arrival of a baby that is already ten months old.  And maybe they couldn’t, but I know that we can.  I know that all of us are stronger than we know, more patient than we seem, more able to endure hardships and challenges than we think we are.  I know that all babies come when they are good and ready or when all of the proper stars or paperwork or contractions come together at the right time. 
We know that all children, however they make it home, are well worth the wait.  But I would certainly not complain if he somehow made his way home this summer!

Joon Song

In the hall closet, on top of a suitcase and behind my black pea coat, I found the bag I was looking for.  It is just a plain white garbage bag, a little tattered and torn in spots, something I packed a long time ago for a friend but never actually got around to delivering.  I dragged it out of the closet and brought it to the couch, reached inside, and found them: the softest, most well-worn and beloved pair of tiny overalls.  They were the first thing I bought when we were waiting for Harrison to come home from Korea; I found them at a yard sale for a dollar, perfect and soft and just the right size.  They looked brand-new back then; now they have worn little knees from the crawling babies that Harrison and Emma once were and the straps are beginning to fray just slightly.  They hold so many memories for me: crawling, first steps, little adventures around our old yard, and even the earliest memories of when they hung on a hanger in an otherwise empty closet, a symbol not just of hope but of promise.  We would be parents.
And next fall, they will crawl (or walk?) again!
In what can only be described as a whirlwind, we decided for sure to adopt again 12 days ago.  We called and asked for an application packet 11 days ago.  We got the packet 9 days ago.  We emailed with our social worker 8 days ago, who came and updated our home study 6 days ago.  We filled out mad amounts of paperwork and made endless photocopies and finally sent it all off with a kiss from big sister Emma 4 days ago.  It arrived at our agency 3 days ago, and we were called that very night with the news that we had been matched with a gorgeous baby boy in Korea. 
I haven’t seen his picture, I know only a little more than his name, but my heart knows that he is beautiful.  I know that he is perfect, the perfect fit for our family.  I know we’ll have growing pains and fits and starts until finally our lives are intertwined, woven into a new and different fabric that will be ever the more richer for having known each other. 
Those soft, tiny pants are getting washed today and hung in the closet that our Joon Song will share with his big brother Harrison and once again they will be my token not only of hope, but of promise.  We are all so very excited!
A few details:

• Korean Name:  Joon Song  (Joon means “superb”)
• American name:  we’ve got it narrowed down to three options, but need to see his pictures before making the final call.  Once we know we’ll share!
• Born May 2010
• Will come home in the fall…October, perhaps?
• We had been thinking of adopting again for a LONG time before making this decision.  Options were weighed, lots of programs were looked at, lots of research went into it.  We are not rash people, at all.  In the end, we followed our hearts while making sure the logistics would all work out.
• Yes, we will gladly accept hand-me-downs!  He will be roughly 18 mos. at arrival.
• We pick up our referral packet on Monday the 14th…pictures after that!

VIP (very important papers)

At our house, this is what “baby-making” looks like. 
More details soon!

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.
_______________________________
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