Living in Paradox/Reverie

One more reason why Nicole is fantastic. Read it first, please. Then:

If someone else were to tease apart relinquishment and adoption, it would be really easy to break it down like this:

relinquishment: bad, loss
adoption: good, gain

And it would be satisfying as an aparent to say, yes, that's exactly it. My daughter's loss of her first mother had nothing to do with our adoption, so while her loss is sad our gain is tremendously happy and move on.

But that's not what Nicole is saying. It's far too complicated for that, she's far too honest. (Sorry -- I know we could all use an easy solution). What she says, instead, is that we've all got to learn to live with paradox, with the copresence of seemingly antithetical thoughts, emotions, truths at the same time. Some possible paradoxes: I love my aparents and am glad they raised me and I wish I had never lost my first family. I love my daughter's aparents and can acknowledge their capabilities as parents but I hate that I am not raising my child and believe that n.families are best suited to raising their children. Or my own: I love that I have my daughter in my life and I hate that she lost her first family. Or another of mine: We hope for another child and we hate the conditions that would make that possible. Notice that the operator is "and," conjoining the A and B of each sentence. It is not as if the bad is displaced by the good, or that the moments are divisible as we'd wish. They are always interpenetrating.

Joy's response does not contradict Nicole, but seeks to make clear that that too easy dichotomy at the top of my post is untenable. Joy's adoption analogy, presented less gracefully: She could live abroad, she could love living abroad, but she'd always be an expat -- forever. Her life with her son shows her the difference.

I see what she is saying, too, and yet I think we're all in some ways always in exile from one another's innermost being and that biological relationships only seem to offer a way to bridge that divide. What I mean is this: I think it's too easy to believe that I have a natural way with my son, some magical access to his emotional life, that we have understandings that are rooted in biology -- that I will never have with my daughter. In some ways this might be true: I "get" his obsessiveness immediately, without even having to speak about it (or do I map my childhood anxieties onto his unique ones?) I get that sparkle in his eye just before he makes trouble because it "runs in our family" (but my daughter "glimmers" too!) After a dangerous pregnancy and near-disasterous delivery, his history is marked in and on my body, and mine runs through his. My daughter's body is marked by a different history, its tracings in her inherited beauty and her round belly, now full with toddlerhood but still bearing the marks of early hunger. She is uprooted and also cultivated. Both/and, her being not alien but hybrid.

In the end, both my son and my daughter are beyond my comprehension, though I have infinite empathy for both. Their possibilities extend beyond what I can behold, what I can even imagine. That's both the sadness and supreme beauty of loving someone else, in particular of parenting, in afamilies or nfamilies. Just families. But I'm starting to wonder if I'm one of few who thinks like that, which I had thought was a given, who loves the mystery and enjoys the unfolding.

Sweetness (the small things)

As we played in the backyard tonight, Miss I decided to play more independently than usual. She wanted to play in the sandbox alone (which would be fine if she didn't scoop sand into her hair), allowing me time to weed around my incoming tulips. But every once in awhile, she'd get up, dust off, and come find me for "Huds, Momma. Huds." Then back to the sandbox she went.
I live for "huds."

Bedtime Brawl

Miss I will not go to sleep. For three hours she's tried everything she can think of to stay awake, including comedy, violence, and comic violence.
We're trying to teach her to "use her words," to say "I'm angry," or "I'm sad," rather than tantruming. This effort has met with some success, so when I felt like tantrumming I used my words, and said "Miss I., I am angry and I am tired and I am sad."
She paused before responding.
"High Five!" she yelled cheerfully, her hand held in the air.
I didn't reciprocate, so she high-fived my forehead.

Smarty

Me: Miss I., how did you get so smart?
Miss I.: Elmo.

Six months

Today is the six month anniversary of Miss I.'s arrival to the United States.

Today is the anniversary of the day a man I hadn't seen in a week (but who had experienced a lifetime in that week) met me at the gate wearing a little girl I'd loved from afar. The day she had practiced "Hi Momma" as she waited in customs and fell asleep before she could share it. The day her Adadda had to leave her with a woman she wasn't too sure about as he got the fastest (but most needed) shower ever, and in her panic she pooped and then in greater panic pooped again mid-diaper change and then panicked that she'd done the wrong thing to someone she'd only just met. The day she decided to cling to me with everything she had in her.

Also the day I first heard her laugh.

Happy six month anniversary, Miss I-of-mine.
It feels like just yesterday we met, but like I've loved you my whole life.

Thanks giving

Dh and his darling daughter are raking leaves in our backyard and I'm struck by their amazing and everyday beauty.
I'm so very thankful.

Name calling

By her own account (through the influence of her brother) Miss I. is (laughingly) a "Bad Baby, Bad Baby, Bad Baby" and the dog is a "Dood Dirl." Of course, she calls me "Natty" and "Awnawshus," (as in, "Shhhh, Natty Momma") neither of which are good things. All of which speaks volumes about my parenting (of the first one, her idol).

And Your Name Is?

So I have lots of more important things to blog about, but this one has really been bothering me, and it'll just take a second:
You all know I am the queen of "Why do you ask?" both in terms of using it and recommending it for use to transracial/multiracial/adoptive/open/nontraditional in anyway families. It works for most questions, and it helps guide our answers (or stops more questions from being asked). But here's one I can't figure out:
"What's her name?"
Rarely did people ask my son's name when he was a baby or toddler. "Hey, buddy." "Hi, little guy." "Hey there, handsome."

But everyone wants to know Miss I's name. Sometimes it's an attempt at a subtle way of acknowledging their acceptance of a family of our construction, a question in which one can casually use "your daughter," both to test it out and validate it: "What's your daughter's name?" (See, I get it, and I'm okay with you -- and if it's a mistake, it's a mistake in the enlightened direction). Or it might be a way of asking a question that is personal but not TOO personal, trying to get me to offer more than is asked, as if I'll blurt out "HernameisIandshewasadoptedfromEthiopiaandhereareallthepersonaldetailsofherrelinquishment." Or maybe it's a way to feel admitted into our inner circle, because we emit such a warm glow. Maybe they're taking a survey -- I like to hear about, and complain about, baby names too.

The problem is that I always feel compelled to answer, and they never forget. Add this to her incredible beauty and electric personality, and you have an intensification of our fame/infamy. I go to the grocery store a week later: "Hi, Miss I!" The clerk turns to another clerk. "This is Miss I. Check out those lashes!" (which, by the way, really are to die for). In another store, "Miss I! It's you!"

I'm not totally comfortable with strangers calling her by her first name, as if she knows them and they know her. I know that most people are harmless, but for the same reason that I don't sew ds's name on his backpack, I'm not comfortable with the world knowing Miss I.

But I can't exactly say, "Why do you ask?" to that, without seeming like a paranoid freak. (You'll probably all chastise me for ever having answered in the first place. Or maybe now I'm being the paranoid freak).

Happy Anniversary

Dear Miss I.,
Tomorrow you will have been home three months. The changes in you in these three months are astonishing -- how tall you've grown, how full your cheeks, how secure you seem (most of the time). You are a bright, brave, beautiful babe, ready to take on the world. In some ways, you already have.

You don't say much, though you have a deep belly laugh, and I love to hear you say "Momma aye-yuh," especially now that I know that it is a possessive: Mommamine, you say. Miss I-aye-yuh, daughtermine.

But this anniversary, like all I suppose, is a bit melancholy, too. I remember so well the pain of your absence -- why do they tell us the pain is gone as soon as you come home, just as they tell women who've delivered that they'll forget the pain of delivery? I forget neither, can still feel both physically. I think each day, but especially intensely at these moments, that I while I was longing, someone was losing.

This week, we'll prepare an update, complete with pictures, destined for Ethiopia. We're required to provide this update, and an update each year for eighteen years. I have so much to say that it feels like silence. What can I say that can translate simply? You are well, and you are cherished, I-aye-yuh.

I have to run. You've woken, and you're calling me. You do this many nights, only tonight, I feel its sweetness.

Two Things

Dear I.,
Apart from all the ways I'm trying really hard to be a good Momma to you (even when it feels impossible for me to do) I am working extra hard at two seemingly inconsequential things. These things seem to make the least sense to you, with the exception of my cutting off the Nilla Wafers, so I thought I'd explain them now (and again when you are really listening):
1. I do not want to raise you to be an insomniac like your momma. It may already be too late for Thing One, who doesn't fall asleep easily and sleeps lightly (your screaming is not helping). Please, help me help you develop healthy sleep habits now! Or someday you'll be thirty years old and lying wide awake while your kids sleep just because you know they're about to wake up and you'd rather not be woken (after all, they have been waking you up once an hour, so you're in the habit . . .) Learn from Daddy, who can fall asleep in an instant to capitalize on rare quiet. Or from our friends children, who fall asleep at 8 and know not to get out of bed until 7 am (at 2. years old).
2. I refuse to raise you to be "the tender-headed daughter of a white woman," something I have been warned against and can't get out of my own head. So I'm taking longer than I need to in order to condition your hair and scalp. You might hate it, but you have to learn to sit still-ish now. One grandma and grandpa told your Daddy that they stay up all night to do their grandaughter's hair while she sleeps. Which leads me back to point one, and my exhaustion. Though hey, I'm already up, so . . .
I love you. Now go to sleep - after I condition your scalp.
Love,
Momma

Meeting Miss I.

Sster's post on boomerific includes loving thoughts about the Bloom family (and praise for me, which makes me feel shy), and poses a kind of question (and Kohana's comment poses it more directly): How are meeting your child via adoption and meeting your child by birth alike, and how different? I only have the very personal and specific responses of myself and my husband to offer, but that's all anyone ever has . . .

When I was pregnant with ds, I didn't feel like there was a moment I really met him. (I've heard this isn't common - my sister's first babe was always a mystery) DS just grew into my awareness. At eight weeks, I had an exam for spotting. I "knew" a little bit about him then if I was to believe the very traditional Jamaican nurse, who insisted that the hyperemesis that had accounted for my prior hospital admission made it clear that he was "a very strong, robust boy." She confirmed what I had suspected, so I started talking to my son, whom I'd already been speaking to (and in those terms) with much more confidence. (Once, in my journal, I wrote, "Maybe you're a girl!" and used the name we had chosen in case. In every other entry, he's ds, by name).

I learned about him as he moved, as he grew, and I learned too much about him as my very intensely medically scrutinized pregnancy progressed. And when he was finally born (see entry May 4) my overwhelming feelings were relief and gratitude. But I was not surprised. Since then, I have been surprised by him so many times - by his intelligence, his intuitiveness, his spiritedness, his warmth, his temper, his humor.

I asked dh what it was like meeting I. for the first time. Their meeting, anticipated for two months (two years, really) was delayed a couple more hours by a mishap, which may have been a bit deflating. His first thought, he says, was "That's who you are." Her first thought was panic, and she cried and refused to look at him. Later, she threw shoes and a banana (skills she employs every couple hours). He gave her space, knowing we had the rest of our lives. And thankfully, we do.

My first feelings, when I saw dh, our dear friend, and my daughter come through the doors from customs were relief and gratitude. I cried, and I didn't know whether to run to them or wait for them to come beyond the gates. I was overwhelmingly thankful that they were safe and home. I loved my husband more than I'd ever loved him before. And I loved the little mystery he held asleep in his arms.

He says those are the feelings he had when he first met ds.

Like dh, I knew that we have forever to figure each other out, this mystery and me, but I am not blessed with his unending patience, so for me it's work to watch our lives unfold.

My son said "I'm so happy I feel sad" and he cried.

I had imagined what meeting them at the airport would be like. And in some ways, it was just like that. I knew I would be speechless, knew I would cry.

Miss I. herself missed her opportunity to say "Hi, Momma," as she had hoped (and as she had already done on the phone) but she's making up for it by chanting A-Momma, a-momma, a-momma in my ear, just as she sings Abbat A-dadda, Abbat A-dadda (Father-Daddy) quietly when dh is not in the room or when she needs him to help her fall asleep (a task for which the much-awaited Momma just will not suffice). I'm suprised by her beauty, her charm, her temper, her humor, her strength, her intense need to be held by me, to be told she is mine (however much adoption books had said this would be so).

I guess that's all to say that while the meetings are important parts of our stories, I'm learning that it's less about meetings than it is about being.

and we've only just begun to be.