Mama Barge

This weekend, I had my first night away from my daughter since she was born in September of 2008.   My girlfriends and I rented a hotel room downtown.  I had planned chocolate-covered strawberries accompanied by sparkling wine and even-more-sparkling conversation effervescing into a night capped by us moving and grooving like carefree, crazy girls on some dance floor.

After extended breastfeeding, the night-out was a celebration of my body being my own again.  I even bought a couple of new bras, one in tiger print and the other in chili pepper red, to replace what has become a sad collection of brave but exhausted brassieres that finally succumbed after surviving both pregnancy and breastfeeding.  I needed something sexier and more whimsical to remind me that I’m more than just a nose and bottom-wiping machine.

I think what I wanted most that night was to remember and bring alive again a different side of myself.  Something about being entirely responsible for another human being….it’s a wonderful gift, but also a sobering reality.  In general, life is weightier with children.  I am anchored by words like  Responsibility.  Consequences.  Schedules.  Routine. Commitment.  They rope around me and hold me firmly so that I can provide a stable and safe environment for a beautiful little creature to harbor.

by Jukka Vuokko

But I do miss taking flight myself.  I miss a life defined by words like Spontaneous. Freedom. Impulse.  Fanciful.  For one evening, I hoped to become acquainted with these words again.

All the right ingredients were there: We danced and sang and laughed a lot.  We made memories.  But I didn’t exactly capture the feeling I was hoping to embrace.  I felt bigger in body and age than almost every other woman we encountered that night.  I resisted being motherly towards my younger sister and cousins, three of whom wear sizes 0-4, and therefore could’ve easily been trampled on the dance floor.  I overheard some twenty-somethings assuring another woman in the bathroom that she looked “amazing!” and that they couldn’t believe she was (gasp) almost 32 years old!  I felt a bit out-of-place waiting in a line outside a dance club while people ten years younger than me strutted past like peacocks showing off their prettiest feathers.  And, after it was all over, I actually got in trouble with one of my best friend’s mom because she didn’t approve of the photos on Facebook (none of which showed me doing anything I wouldn’t want my own daughter to do when she’s of age), which sort of tarnished my memories of the evening because I felt guilty— and I wasn’t even quite sure why.

The truth is that this feeling of being unencumbered is hard to manufacture.  It’s not an outfit (0r a fun tiger-print bra) that one can put on and take off to fit the occasion.  It either comes upon you in an unplanned and fleeting instance like ever-changing light on the shifting waves OR it exists in your life because you’ve trained yourself to continually slough off the burdens of worry and unnecessary obligations so they don’t accumulate like barnacles on a boat.  The latter is something I need to begin practicing because I’m realizing that unless I make an effort, I’m going to spend my life feeling like an old, weathered and barnacled barge which serves a practical purpose but no longer thinks of itself as being fit to skip over cerulean seas towards the sunset and an evening full of romantic adventures.  So I’m going to do what I can to keep that wave-skimming vessel fit for sea.  I don’t exactly know how I’m going to do it, but at 31 I’m too young to be a barge.  Any ideas?

By "Storm Crypt" on flickr

Worms vs. Sun

A few weeks ago I first posted about our adoption journey.  I told the story of how we heard about a little girl who needed a family and had a surprising thing in common with our daughter.  This little girl still isn’t officially available for adoption, so last week, in the middle of all the hubbub surrounding our family reunion, when we were asked to consider pursuing adoption of a brother and sister who needed a home, we excitedly agreed.  And then, it became so real.

Photo owned by D Sharon Pruitt

I belong to an online group of parents and hopeful parents of children from the particular country from which we are adopting.  As soon as I shared the good news about our referral, one of the other women replied with a very detailed account of all of the horrible things she had witnessed at the orphanage in which these children live.  I believe her intent was to raise awareness so that people would feel motivated to help.  I will admit, my initial reaction was fear.

She wrote about a litany of conditions that invariably result where poverty rules–a shortage of staffing, a lack of sanitation, suspected corruption, the survival behavior of children who must fight for the food and attention they need to grow…. I won’t describe the exact details, just in case this blog ever becomes un-anonymous.  I don’t want our future children to ever feel like they have to be ashamed of where they came from or think they are compelled to take on the identify of a victim.

I became fearful of the effect these exposures would have on those children:  The diseases they could contract, the hunger and malnutrition they could suffer, the mental state that could result from not receiving the love and attention a child needs to thrive, the “normal” they’d adjust to, the behaviors they’d learn…..What kind of hope do they have?  How will this horrible beginning affect who they become and what they can do in the future?  How could a parent ever give them enough love and attention to overcome these odds?

What is most difficult for me to admit, though, is that I became (selfishly) fearful of the effect this adoption could have on our family.  As a parent who struggles with perfectionism, I’ve been pretty conscious of what exposures our daughter has.  I’m a bit of a germophobe.  I cringe (hopefully only internally) when another child at the playground or in a playgroup exhibits a naughty behavior my daughter might pick-up.  I try my best to surround her with healthy food choices and non-toxic toys.  When we welcome new children into our home, our hearts and our family, in a way, we will be welcoming everything they bring with them.  Other adoptive parents have told me of stomach and skin bugs, food hording, violent behavior….  I know we will love these children exactly as our own, but I think it will be hard to love the baggage they’ll carry.  Are we strong enough to carry it with them?  Where will we find the wisdom we need to know what to discard and what to embrace?

So where does this leave me?  I’ve been hesitant to share these thoughts with my family and friends because I didn’t want them to question the decision we are making to adopt.  I hope none of you who may read these words would be deterred from adopting.  For all the pain, heartache and trouble that might accompany children (whether they come to us from our wombs or through adoption), they’re always worth it.  The blessings are always greater than the hardships.  But I will share my thoughts here because I need to write my way through them.  I’m bringing them to the light, where it will become clear that fears are only weak, ugly and slimy worms that can squirm their way into my thoughts, but that die when they spend too much time in the Sun.  My mind is fertile soil for Fear Worms, but the light of truth zaps them of their power.

So here they are, my Fear Worms, laying on the public sidewalk– disgustingly writhing and wiggling, trying to make their way out of the Light before it kills them.  I admit it, as this adoption became more real last week, so did my fear.   My mind tends to automatically jump to the worst case scenario and then whirl and spin until I’m thoroughly exhausted. But  I have enough experience with fear to know that I can’t let it control me.  No good comes from succumbing to it.   No right decisions are based on it.

Most important of all, I know the perfect Love that casts out all fear.  It is this Love that reminds me that I was once an orphan who didn’t belong to a family and was covered in filth and disease, weak and vulnerable and unable to save myself.  This Love picked me out of the murky mire, set me on solid ground, bathed me in love and made me clean. Without any fear of the disgusting filth that I carried with me and with which I might contaminate His other sons and daughters or tarnish His kingdom, this Love accepted me exactly as I was into His family and adopted me as His own beloved daughter.  He allows me to share in the inheritance of His own Son, imparts to me His strength and wisdom and instructs me in the ways of His family.

So ultimately, this is the response to my every fear:  Because of what He has done for me, I have what I need to love and care for two children, halfway around the world, that have experienced a hell of their own.

Fire and Ice

I am afraid my little blog has been horribly neglected these last weeks since a family reunion has been the recipient of most of the energy and motivation I would  normally set aside for this hobby.  This leaves me in a classic Catch 22:  Exactly at the time I need most to be writing to sort through the frenzy of family dynamics, I have the least time to do it.  But here (below) are some hasty thoughts sketched together during a break from the action while the uncles (pictured below with Grandma and Grandpa) craft homemade Italian sausage and my daughter naps.

Family lore tells us that my grandparents met when Grandpa was serving in the military in Italy and the troops threw a Christmas party for the orphans of the city.  Since none of the soldiers spoke Italian, they asked a few pretty Italian girls to translate.  My Grandmother was among them and apparently Grandpa asked her back to his place to “look at his Christmas tree.”  (I’m afraid to ask if this is a euphemism.  Knowing my lively and sensual Italian Grandma, she would give me an honest answer whether I liked it or not).

The first half of the story is usually recounted with smiles and winks in convivial moments as a family.  It was a romance worthy of the storybooks.  But the next half of the story is delivered with less pride.  It is told in hushed tones over late-night tables with a bottle of wine and a sense that regrets confessed and pain shared have a better chance at redemption.  The windswept plains of South Dakota and the sultry warmth of the Italian coast would not meet without some earth shaking.  When my grandpa brought grandma home to South Dakota, his stoic Midwestern family coldly rejected her.  I could explain their behavior by setting it in it’s historic context:  Post WWII, Italian-Americans faced considerable bigotry due to Italy’s wartime alliances.  Additionally, grandpa’s family was Protestant and Grandma was Catholic, irreconcilable differences in that era. Historical explanation aside, in reality their behavior just seems cruel and mean-spirited to me.  Still, despite the wars,  (both WWII and the family cultural war) they both made it through the early years and raised three lively sons who married and raised 11 grandchildren.

This brief backstory is important because the coupling of my grandparents and their family histories and culture, one side emotionally reserved and cool-on-the-surface  and the other side expressive and hot-to-the-core, has been repeated in various combinations and degrees by all of their offspring:  my father, uncles, siblings, cousins and myself.  Cold and hot.  Passive and aggressive.  Desiring to have control and desiring to throw caution to the wind.  Toss these ingredients like dice into a shaker and see how many amalgamations you come up with: these are the minerals and nutrients that feed the soil that roots our family tree.

This week, as we reveal our lives over espresso and wine to these relatives that we barely know yet with whom we feel an undeniable kinship,  our family relational similarities become glaringly evident.  Perhaps our “mating patterns” were passed down like other family customs and traditions but somehow it seems like a more deeply intrinsic characteristic.   For all of us, the descendants of this fire and ice marriage, the pull into these types of pairings has been so strong and so universal that I cannot help but wonder if there’s something even more innate and instinctual–almost unescapable— underpinning our relationship choices.  It truly does seem to be in our blood.

There’s so much that swirls and grows out of this fundamental family truth, leaving  a complex and continuing legacy that vines and twines throughout our lives.  Cousins, uncles, aunts, siblings…. we each live out this dynamic that is both raw and composed, ungainly and beautiful, dangerous and comforting all at once.  Is it something to celebrate, laugh at and embrace?  Or is it something we need to analyze and understand and make mellow by taming it?  Whatever our approach, before we have a chance to really even identify it, I can already predict it’s mark will be evident on the next generation.  For good or for bad, it’s clear that family dynamics don’t easily die.