Welcome Back

This is a new edition of my blog, which will hopefully be updated once a week with recipes, poems, deep thoughts, parenting moments, book recommendations, comics, photos, breaking news, and updates on my foray into another adoption. If you're reading this post, you have been invited to be part of it all.

It has been a year since Mareshet came home. I wish I could say that I have met all of her challenging moments with grace, but I can say that I met them head-on, with good intentions, and mostly did a good job. There are a few moments that I wish I could erase. I have also become expert in "just try me" threats. "Keep it up Mareshet, and just see whether I drop what I'm doing later to take you to that birthday party." However, most of the time, I aspire to the coolheadedness in Love and Logic and if I can't drum it up, my sense of humor usually leaves me in good stead. I have no problem throwing myself under the wagon if that's what it takes, and usually both of my kids end up laughing when I can recall something stupid I did or said as a kid their age, or something stupid I did today. One of our favorite books is by Judith Voight. It is called ... Sometimes Even Mamas Make Mistakes. That is now our credo. If I meet that woman, I am going to kiss her, because no manner of parenting expertise can ever be as reassuring to a child as a parent admitting that, "maybe you had a hand in this, but so did I... and sometimes even Mama makes mistakes." The other standing joke in our house is that I am Queen of this household, under God only in terms of power in our universe. Mareshet asked, wouldn't the President fit between God and I (picture innocent face and mocking tone). I cleared up her confusion right away. The President would be asked to take off his shoes when coming over, just like anyone else. It goes God, Mom, Grandma, the President, your Teacher, other people's parents, babysitters, and eventually down to you. Kids are the bosses of precious little, but they are the boss of their rooms and their toys and our rabbits. The rabbits boss the chickens, and the chickens boss the bugs. That is the Natural Order and for the most part, it is respected when I can rehearse it rapidly in a very convincing tone of voice.

Looking back, it feels good to have banked a year in the life of a kid who needed a family. Frankly, she couldn't have scored better in terms of moms, which I say now because there are plenty of times that is not the first thought running through my head. It is only after some contemplation that I realize this is a fact. For whatever reason, we are in a place where it is papatable to consider trying this adoption thing again. The girls and I took a vote: it was unanimous. We have enough to go around and anyone would be lucky to have us. So, wherever you are kid, welcome to Family Movie Night with popcorn and hot cocoa. Welcome to camping. Welcome to Your Turn to Fold the Laundry. Welcome to our awesome elementary school and to riding bikes and to digging for potatoes. Welcome to Grandma coming over with cupcakes and Waffle Saturday. We're expecting you!

It is hard to believe that I met Mareshet over a month ago. Time has really flown by, and yet at times it feels like we are still in the early stages of making an introduction. Tomorrow we will have been home three weeks, and I am delighted to say that she is taking more bites of new foods at my urging. Most of these are summarily rejected with a look of total disgust on her face. Sometimes she even adds a dramatic retching, which is most pleasant to observe at the dinner table. Her feelings about American food notwithstanding, Mareshet is sleeping well and can recite our daily routine like a song. She is doing great in kindergarten and comes home every day brimming with news that is most creatively expressed with a combination of her English words and pantomime. This is how I learned that she has been getting into the lunch line on occasion and eating pizza and ice cream. Note to self: talk to the office about lunch bill in arrears. I also hear snippets of the school pride song, and a version of Zippadee Doo Dah which sounds like Dippity ooh Ah. I went to Parent Teacher night last night, which was notable to Mareshet for two reasons. One: I sat in her chair in the classroom! How funny a thought. And Two, the girls were left at home with a bona fide teenage babysitter, which is the ultimate in cool. Thanks to Julie Hehn, I was set up with a fabulous Amharic speaking, experienced babysitter. She was willing to share one of her seventeen year old daughters adopted from Ethiopia, no small favor since Amelework is a big helper in this family of 29.

I think the kids had a great time but even so, I had two big hugs waiting for me when I came home. I think Mareshet is really deepening in her attachment, slowly but surely. Usually, it comes out in frustrating behavior like stalling as we're trying to get out the door for school. But upon later reflection, I recognize separation anxiety in the mix. For instance today, she tearfully refused to walk into the school with "that coat." Granted it is a sunny day, but I reminded her that Mrs P. asks students to bring their coats every day and hang them on the hook. Mareshet shot me a look that was pure rebellion, and I ultimately had to carry her into the school. As I tried again to give her the coat to put away, she took the rag doll approach: "I have no arms and cannot hold anything." Finally, the damn tardy bell ringing, I just tossed the jacket into the room over her head, gave her a hug and kiss and took off. But just before I left, I heard her whine, "Don't go mommy." Sigh. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to finesse the drop off in a nobler way. Much as she loves school I'm beginning to think she loves me more. And until she has a better way of showing it, I'm going to have a lot of these mornings yet.

To Addis and Back

Dear Friends, I am back home now after a two week trip to Ethiopia. I didn't have much chance to update this blog before leaving, as I was constantly re-packing and getting all the medical supplies to fit into the bags. My friend Z. accompanied me on the flight so it passed quickly enough. As a native Ethiopian, she served as my interpreter, guide, optimist, and bargain hunter. I loved getting to know her better on this voyage! As we flew, I just could not believe that I would be meeting my daughter the next day. I felt nervous, more nervous that I have ever felt. What would she think of me?? We arrived in Addis and were told that no one had expected my arrival so soon at AHOPE. I am not sure why this is the case since I'm pretty sure that our social worker had alerted them. However, I wanted to get over and see Mareshet right away, not wait the weekend as was suggested to me. All the children were excited to see us arrive, asking for photos to be taken of them and calling for Mareshet. Eventually she emerged from the crowd, hair wet, trembling. One of the caregivers asked her to give me a hug and before I knew it, her little dripping self was tentatively around my waist. I recognized her immediately, and as she ran back in to have her hair pulled back, I just stood there stuck by the enormity of the moment. She came back to the guest house with me on a trial basis, and ended up wanting to spend the night. The staff were surprised that she would want to stay with me in the first day. But she seems to be a child who is ready for a mother. She spent the night mastering the use of the iPod, bouncy, with her nervous system juiced up. I felt exactly like I had a newborn baby all over again. I didn't sleep much that first night. But Mareshet eventually threw her arm over my shoulder and slept like a rock. She never did go back to sleep at AHOPE, prompting questions from staff. I think their feelings were a bit hurt that she didn't want to be there more. However, we started the work of bonding with meals taken together, playing cards (she is a card shark), coloring, taking pictures of one another, kicking the soccer ball. When Z was not around, she tested limits like any intelligent kid. However, it was not long before I realized that she will find attachment without too much difficulty, and she is very bright. She can read and write in Amharic and English, and do sums. She constantly studies people and reads expressions. And she has a wry sense of humor, and loves to tease and be teased. I did get to meet her birth family, and take video and photos. Her auntie who helped raise her told me, tearfully, that she was passing along the responsibility, just as her mother did to her. I could see how much she loved Mareshet, like her only child. We both cried and it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. I struggled with feelings of guilt over my privilege in this world, and the awfulness of the idea of having to give up my child for a better future elsewhere. I do think her aunt's words helped give Mareshet permission to bond with me, because she seemed to be more at peace and to hug and snuggle more. Honestly, I was surprised that she would want to be so physical in the first weeks, but she seems to follow her desire for nurturing, rather than try and suppress it. The plane ride was challenging and I was never more happy to arrive safely in Seattle after the ordeal. We left behind many loved ones new and old, and I really feel like we have family in Ethiopia.

Sayonara Subaru

The mechanic's grim face said it all. My Subaru Forester, my companion in fieldwork, high adventure, and Seattle traffic, is not long for this world. Not without an engine transplant at least, and I am too cheap for this. My feelings ranged from disbelief ("is this a con?") disillusionment ("after all that we've been through!"), dismay ("what more financially can go wrong during this adoption"), and disgust ("one of the most reliable cars my ___"). Looking back, I had had warning signs (the belch of black smoke when I started it up in the mornings, for example) but I had been in denial. After all this was a car built to last. Heck, I figured I had five to ten more years left in that baby--what's a little smoke? But in the end, destiny found me and it was a silver blue Toyota Sienna with a stereo worthy of my Stevie Wonder anthology. I had contemplated that one day, perhaps in another half decade, I would look into a minivan. But I'm taking it as a sign that the new car, which seats eight, was destined to be part of my more immediate future. All along I felt that the Forester, while great for carting around a seventy pound dog and then an equally messy baby, didn't offer enough space for sundry friends, groceries, school bags etc. I would glance covetously at passing minivans thinking that somehow the people driving them were more prepared for all of life's adventures with kids. They had more airbags, more cup-holders... more distance between the driver and fussing passengers. Now I feel ready, like a ball player with a newer, better mitt that means the difference between glory and riding the bench. I dare to wonder whether another babe might be out on the horizon, circling, needing to land in a safe place-- like my plush third row seats. I imagine God lobbing a child, a pop fly, way up into right field and I'm there with my mitt, with my eye on the ball as it gets larger and larger, realizing all I need to do is get under it and I can make the catch. Some of you may scoff, some of you may shake your head in doubt or wonder. But in years to come, you will know the answer before the question. Yes, my dream of another child does come out of right field.

What Mama Has it Together, Really?

Here is a photo of the elementary school hallway, with banners that say "welcome to our school" in many languages, including Amharic!  I can't wait to show it to Mareshet.  I have been putting off writing a new post because I keep thinking I'll hear some news from Ethiopia, to no end.  Since the adoption was finalized, I have been given a tentative Embassy date for the end of July, only to hear later that the TB testing had not been started.  Now I'll be lucky for the Embassy appointment to happen in August.  The testing, a requirement for all immigrants to the US, is done by culturing out sputum samples for eight weeks.  We are now in week 2.  So, while I'm sure other things happen in that time (from an agency perspective), I am really doing nothing but twiddling my thumbs.  That and trying to reconcile my hopes for time to work on attachment and acculturation with Mareshet with the reality that I won't have the summer months for this as planned.  She will likely be free to enter the US at the end of August, without even enough time for dentist appointments, physicals, English Language testing, and grade placement before the school year starts.  So, I suppose I will shift my leave of absence to the fall and just hope that this kid can adjust quickly.  Maybe on an alternative school schedule initially.  I'm trying to process my disappointment that Mareshet's introduction to Seattle will be during the rainy season, and that she and Najma and I can't spend some weekends hiking or camping as a way to get to know one another.  

For the most part, I'm doing okay with the additional wait, though I have moments of wondering whether Mareshet is ever coming home.  In the lowest of these moments, I have a tendency to feel that having a family is something everyone else seems to do with relative ease.  I know this is not accurate;  everyone puts effort into their life decisions, and they often suffer setbacks or regrets.  I do have my regrets, and they tend to foster this illusion that if I do not have a more traditional family, it is because I am somehow "messing it up."  I know this isn't true--if there is a happy ending to be had, it is because I will learn to recognize the blessings of the moment and ask for nothing more.  What I know in my head usually wins out over what remorse and delusions I feel in my heart.  Though truth be told, those regretful feelings never evaporate.   I work on myself through the better part of one day to accept my faults, and then start all over again the next!  

Since Najma is abroad with her father for two weeks, I have had even more time "in my head."  I am missing her, missing my role as a mom.  I miss Najma on a very visceral, perhaps cellular level.  Molecular, even-- I need the scent of her scalp to lower my cortisol levels, I need to smell her breath in the bed beside me to get my REM sleep.  I wish I had not agreed to let her go but at the same time, knowing what it is like to be distanced from a family member (in my case Mareshet) by an artificial border led me to sympathize with her father.  He had not traveled home in some fifteen years, and N. has never met her other grandparents.  I could not, in the end, deny them this experience even if I knew it meant suffering on my end.  I find myself, strangely enough, the mother of two girls, in two different countries, on the other side of the earth.  I have lots of time to myself, yet have no motivation to do anything.  I have a long project list, but I just sit on the couch in the dark and eat ice cream.  I just hope I don't do something stupid to fill the vacuum before they come home, like get a puppy.  Erma Bombeck, where are you when I need you?  

Announcing my Daughter...

We passed!  We passed!  God is great, Mareshet is ours, and we are hers!  Joy!  Relief!  Welcome!

N's dad came to take her out for dinner, and I must say... though it may seem contradictory... I am both immensely gratified to hear that I am a mother again, and delighted to have an empty house for the evening.  I am celebrating with leftover takeout food and a chocolate cupcake, to be followed by doing a load of laundry, and then going to bed (if my luck holds) having read a few pages of a book.     

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

My friends, I have had little energy to write.  Let me sum up the past couple of weeks.  On April 28th, our case was heard but Mareshet's Auntie (whose permission is required to proceed with the adoption) did not bring her ID with her.  The judge asked her to come back the next day with the ID, and bless her heart, she did so.  Some day, I'll give that woman a big, grateful hug that just lifts her off the ground...  However, a paper that had previously been in the file was missing.  The judge could not pass the case without it.  The case was rescheduled for May 7th.  The days fortunately passed with the help of friends.  However, on the 7th, the ministry paper was still not completed.  I and about 30 other families were all waiting for the same small detail to be met.  Now I am told that my case will be heard again on the 13th.  I am not sure what to think or believe.  I keep preparing myself for the worst, naively thinking each time that I'll be fine if we don't pass court that particular day.  But each time I am heartbroken--astounded at the core.  I cannot help it if I have the soul of an optimist!  I am getting close to my scheduled leave of absence from work, and need this case to pass soon.  I have decided that I'll travel over to Ethiopia as soon as my leave begins, if only to be with Mareshet and get to know her, and volunteer at the orphanage.  I know that it might be weeks yet before we have clearance to travel.  But I am prepared to go.  Like so many millions of hearts, separated by a border, I ache to know my daughter and bring her home.