I am MOM

I am MOM
If I knew then what I know now . . .
"I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: 'Checkout Time is 18 years.'"
Erma Bombeck

Thursday, January 31, 2013

In the Shadow of an Angel


I first felt the shadow while rocking quietly with my son, just weeks after his delivery into our family.  The stork brought us to him, in the hardened courtyard of an Ethiopian foster home.  He was slight in stature, playful by nature and very curious.  We were enamored.  Our journey together began.
Within our first month together, as we snuggled in the rocking chair one night before bed, I was overcome by feelings of sadness and uncertainty.  How could he come through such big losses?  How could I truly become a mother to this complete stranger? Is it okay to change the backdrop of a child’s life so vastly?  I could feel his losses as if they were my own; my heart ached.  As the tears freely flowed down my cheeks, I wondered if I was actually ‘up’ to becoming his mom. On paper, and in pictures it seemed doable, but more than that, the process felt like a joining with the divine, that some might call fate. But now, with the weight of his two-year-old body in my lap, I wasn’t so sure. 
In that moment of weeping and wondering, I felt something else in the room.  My skin prickled and my breath simply hung, expectantly.  It was a presence without form; a being without breath. It was as subtle as a morning breeze, sweeping in, almost unnoticed.  I felt awe. I was sure that it was his birth mom.  Her presence created a fleeting moment of kinship.  She was gone, but not absent.  There was a moment of shared desire; I felt the glory of grace.
Through the years that I have parented my adopted children, first our son and then (later) his ten-year-old birth sister, I have felt the shadow of their mother many times.  Whenever my children ask me a question that I cannot possibly know the answer to, such as – What was it like on the day I was born? – I pause and pray.  Then with calm confidence, the words and descriptions appear to me, and I am able to honor that truly special moment in my child’s life even though I was not there.
Our son was almost three when he joined our family; he did not appear to have any conscious memory of his birth mother.  However, since we did not initially share a language, it was difficult to tell.  He so quickly became ‘one of us’ that it was alarming.  Prior to his adoption, my husband and I had discussed the importance of keeping him connected to his Ethiopian-ness, but he was resistant to it, and eager to fit in to Canadian life.  However, when he returned to Ethiopia with us, to bring his older sister into our family, he was completely at home.  He embraced his ethnicity in a way that we could not have orchestrated for him – he simply breathed it in and lived it every day that we were there.
We were remarkably blessed on that trip when we were serendipitously connected to their remaining birth family, who were hundreds of miles away.  On our brief visit to the area of their birth, the indistinct shadow of their birth mother gradually took shape.  First we saw, what could have been her eyes in the weathered face of her mother (my children's maternal grandmother). Then we heard the possible pitch of her voice, in the melodic musings of her younger sister (my children's aunt). Eventually, a photo album appeared.  It seemed an unlikely object in this dusty courtyard, filled with manicured mud huts, clotheslines airing out the day’s laundry, and a fire pit surrounded by pots and utensils, which served as the community kitchen. 


This was a place without running water, or electricity; this was a place where the chickens and goats wandered freely in the courtyard; this was a place where working hard did not guarantee access to basic necessities. And yet, there was, at some point, a camera, and pictures.  We gathered eagerly around the album like birds to a feeder, wondering who had taken the pictures and how they could have been developed.  But there, before us, appeared baby pictures of our son, and also pictures of their birth mother, in Ethiopian dress, staring back at us – as if she too were interested in how it was that we came to be there.
Returning back to Canada after that trip, with our new 10-year-old daughter was difficult.  It felt more uncomfortable standing in the shadow of their birth mother now.  Before, she was an apparition; now, she had a face and a distinct shape.  Though I felt immense gratitude for having met the family, and filling in some of the blank spaces in my children’s family tree, now there was no denying her existence or the vast differences between her and I.  And for our daughter, the memories were so close, and the grief and injustice of such a loss was painfully present.  I felt an intense need to honor that initial relationship while simultaneously building my own bond to a daughter I didn’t know.  At times I felt crowded by her presence. 
I bumped into her shadow, when my daughter (in a moment of disharmony) painfully pointed out that I was not her mother – that she already had a mother.  I tripped on her shadow when I tried to soothe this child who was longing for something else.  I stepped on her shadow when I inadequately tried to describe the circumstances precipitating the (need for) adoption.  And occasionally I gracelessly shoved her shadow out of my way as I tried to get to know this child who had already had ten years of life, without me in it. 
Awhile back, my then twelve-year-old daughter asked me, “Mom, do you think an adoption mom can be the same as a birth mom?”
“No, not the same”, I logically answered, “No two people can be the same.”
“Well, do you think that an adoption mom can love the same as a birth mom?” she continued.
“Yes, I think so” I responded, “not in exactly the same way, but in how much they love you – I think that can be the same.”
She sat quietly, and then asked – “Well, do you love me as much as you love [your birth child]?”
“Yes, I love all of you very much, more than my arms can stretch” I answered.
She paused and sighed deeply, “I don’t think it is the same.”
I too paused; I took a deep breath before responding.  “Each child is made special.  And because you are all special, you are all different.  So my love might look different because I want to love each of you in the way that you need to be loved.”
“So, do you love me?” she finally asked.
“Yes, I love you very much.” I replied.
I still feel the shadow of an angel frequently as I parent these children that God called to me, and at times it provides comfort, support and direction while at others, it is a tremendous source of sadness, loss and anxiety.  Ultimately, nature has been interrupted, and the result is that we have children to parent that were not born to us.  We were not there when their lives began, or when their lives were so suddenly changed by loss.  We joined them part way on their journey, and vastly changed the path that ran before them.  But they continue to be supported by their birth parents, through us and through their own memories and visions.  I am deeply aware that there are things at play that I cannot see or control.  There are angels; they do have a role in our lives.  And what I have come to realize is that two mothers, one living, one not, can stand within the confines of the same shadow, and neither one has lost any part of themselves.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Humor in the Howlway…




One of the most rewarding things about having kids is the amount of game playing that goes on.  Good plain fun, any time of day.  In the last week, we have been playing a version of charades that we learned watching Ellen, called Guesstures.  The hard part for us, as parents, is that we are never given any warning as to when we are playing. Our oldest daughter simply stops talking to us and begins her animated discourse.  
She throws her hands up in the air, and we eagerly call out, “Two words.”  
Her eyebrows lift, her nose wrinkles and she starts mouthing words silently.  
With enthusiasm we shout out, “Sounds like… Idiot.  Hmmm… bidiot, didiot, fidiot, gidiot, … No?”  
Then she starts kicking the debris on the floor, a sock goes flying across the room, followed by a dog toy.  
Now we are really getting into it – “Soccer… kicking… sports …” 
This is followed by a loud EEEEYYYYAAAG as she punches the air, runs down the hall and stomps loudly up the stairs. 
“OH, I get it,” I yell out, “Boot camp.”

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I have been thinking about trying Hot Yoga for some time.  Some of my friends have tried it, and swear by it.  Personally, I have been a bit skeptical.  I am more than a little nervous about the high heat and humidity (39-41 degrees with 40% humidity), as I am more sensitive than the average person, and am prone to dizziness and nausea.  But, not one to let my fears take over; I decided to try a bit of hot yoga at home.  The only room that I could control the environment in, was my bathroom.  So, I got everything set up, and then stripped naked (it’s hot!).  I entered the precisely controlled and sweltering environment. I stretched out one leg, and then the other and then settled into dead man’s pose.  This is good, I thought.  I rested my head back on the bath pillow, picked up a book and managed to hold that position for 35 minutes.  It’s going to take some practice to work up to the required 90 minutes!
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On Wednesday I got a haircut.  I came out of the salon looking like I had been tumbled dried with Rod Stewart and Phyllis Diller.  I hadn’t had a hairstyle this bad since the bowl-cuts of the ‘70’s!  It was so bad, I had to put a hat on while driving home, and wear dark glasses to hide the tears.  By Friday not one person had commented on my dramatically changed hair.  By Saturday I worried that it was so bad people were afraid to say anything.  By Sunday, I realized no one cared about my hair.  (And they say children are egocentric!)
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You can learn so much through marriage.  For instance, this week I found out that our home insurance policy covers stupidity.  No kidding; I guess it is implicit in the “Perils Insured Against” section.  Months ago, my husband decided to hand install a new security system in our home.  (Most people hire companies to do this, but… not us!)  Next, he downloaded an App so that we could control the security system from our phones.  (Why not?) And then, last week he decided to install light switches throughout the house that could be turned on and off using our security system (and phones).  During the installation he had to turn the power off to whichever area he was working in.  Because he had no light, he had to use his ‘trouble-light’ (a bright light with a cage around it, and a REALLY long cord so you can plug it into the neighbors outdoor outlets if needed).  After finishing the lights in the basement, he came upstairs.  However, he left the trouble light turned on, laying on the carpet.  (NOW, I see why it is called a trouble light.)  It burnt several holes in our carpet – thank goodness we had the fire-resistant carpet installed! With unabashed resolve, my husband called our insurance company and admitted his folly – and now we will be getting new carpets installed in our basement. 
“Stupid is as stupid does.” (Forrest Gump)


Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Love is a verb


We grow up, and live with many sayings about love: Love conquers allLove is a many splendored thingLove the one you’re with Love makes the world go round... to name a few.  While growing up, I didn’t mean to take these as ‘gospel truths’, but persistent messaging somehow got inside and created a form of expectation.  I believed that people who loved each other would be naturally drawn to treat each other well - always. This one thing has been the greatest disappointment of my life.  Not only in others, but also in myself.

I have expected a certain kind of ‘love-enhanced’ treatment from all of the people who love me: my mom, my siblings, my dad, my husband and my friends.  When it hasn’t turned out; I believed that there was something wrong with me and that I was fundamentally unworthy of (true) love.  If that wasn’t hard enough to bear, I also learned that I am not capable of treating my loved one’s well, all the time either. 

Humbling.

Parenting has been a bigger struggle for me than I had anticipated. Despite my best efforts to chart my own course towards marriage and parenthood, I simply did not have the control that I imagined, and could not have known my destiny.  We are dealing with unique parenting challenges due to the circumstances of forming our family.  We are the quintessential ‘nuclear’ family, with children born during my husband’s first marriage, a child born to us, and children born to us through adoption.  Moreover, our adopted children have each lived a portion of their lives without us, which means that they have experiences that we have not shared in and have no knowledge of, but that they are affected by, all the same.

The past several months have been extremely emotionally intense due to a hundred different reasons.  We have been called upon to parent through situations that we had, quite literally, never experienced in our short lifetimes.  We have ‘lost our sea legs’ and at times feel quite adrift.  Nonetheless, with grace and debauchery we've had to forge ahead.

During the holiday season, I had an epiphany.  I had a flash of thought – love is a verb. It was from years past, when I had begun to read Stephen Covey’s book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.  He writes, “Love is a verb. Love – the feeling – is the fruit of love the verb or our loving actions. So love her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her.”  My awareness about the relationship between behavior and love grew.

Often we expect that love should happen naturally and bring out the best of us in any situation.  What I realized over the holidays is that in choosing love as a verb it is actually an intention, or an action instead of a reaction.  Love and behavior do not implicate one another.  Behavior might result from feeling loved, but it may also come from any number of other feelings – surprised, afraid, confident, anxious, ashamed, lonely, jealous, grateful, and so on.

What this has manifested in me is the wherewithal to pause when I am facing my child's irrational behavior, intense emotional outbursts and verbal attacks, so that I can ask myself – Is there one loving thing that I can do?  I realize that I can act in a loving way even if (and especially when) I don’t feel loving (or loved).  This is huge, as I can put my – I don’t deserve this – card away and pull out my – treat others the way you want to be treated – card.  It really shifts my perspective about relationships and it also increases my capacity to attune, in the midst of confusion and chaos.



This is my daughter, Lauren and my Grama.  Circa 2006.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Post Holiday Do's




The holidays are over.  The kids have gone back to school.  My husband has gone back to work.  Extended family has returned to whence they came (with sighs of relief, I think).  I am left here amidst the wreckage that once was our home.  Knowing that it may take hours to return the house to its previous splendor, I began the ritual of post-holiday cleaning with vigour. 

First, I polished off all of the left over christmas chocolate. 

After that was complete, I cleaned out the cookie jar and then washed those cookies down with a glass of eggnog (and Bacardi).

With the tree down, and the vacuuming complete, any presents left unattended were re-wrapped and hidden for next year!

Once the counters gleamed, the floors shone and the dishes were all put away, there was one last task to do.  I drained the left over wine bottles.

Now I fink I go van the clean.  (hiccup) 

The Happy Cook

If you have not read the blog from January 4th, have a look at that. Here is the follow up...

A picture is worth a thousand words.


Friday, January 4, 2013

Portobello Dessert Surprise




Through the holiday season, Faven has had a homework assignment to complete for her Foods class.  It has been difficult to figure out exactly what the assignment is.  Faven did not bring home any printed details for the assignment (to complement her vague memory). What we have gathered from her is, that she is supposed to plan, prepare, serve and clean up a full meal.  This seems grandiose, for two reasons.  First of all, this is her first Foods class EVER, and so far they have managed to make Whipped Cream, Biscuits, Cookies, and Pudding – all with supervision and support!  And secondly, when we ask her to clear the table, or load the dishwasher, she behaves as if we just asked her to disassemble a tile floor with her bare hands!

We have done our best to support her efforts thus far; it has not been easy.  She is adamant that she cannot have any help from us! Her project began weeks ago, with online research, whereby she was going to look up recipes and create a meal plan.  She printed off several pages of really tiny pictures and then showed them to me.
“Here it is,” she said proudly.
“What is this?” I asked.
“This is what I am making,” she assuredly answered. 
I stared at the pictures, I looked at her, I stared at the pictures again, I looked at her and I opened my mouth and then I just froze - stumped.
“What?” she asked, with an exasperated tone.
I asked her where her recipes were, and she stared at me as if I had gone momentarily mad, she threw her hands in the air and stated, “We have to do everything ‘from scratch’”.

I looked at the pictures again… Chocolate dessert with whipped cream? Is she going to milk the cow herself? WHAT IS SHE TALKING ABOUT???

Allow me to pause for a moment and bring you into our world momentarily.  Faven has remarkable spoken language, given that three years ago when she joined our family through adoption, she was ten years old and spoke no English.  However, her capacity to understand all the complexities and nuances of the English language is still a ‘work in progress’.  Moreover, if you complicate things by bringing in the language of cooking and layering it with the language of math, Faven can appear almost illiterate.  As with most subjects, cooking comes with it’s own completely distinct vocabulary, rife with abbreviations and colloquialisms.  Imagine for a moment, that English is not your first language AND you haven’t learned fractions yet – then try and figure out what to do with these recipe directions.  Read every line.

1 pork butt
Grey salt
Freshly ground black pepper
½ cup olive oil
1 carrot, grated on the large holes of a box grater
1 stalk celery chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 Tbsp minced fresh rosemary leaves
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 ½  glasses Chianti
1 small can tomato paste
4 (28-ounce) cans chopped tomatoes

In a large bowl, mix together the meat, egg, cheese, parsley, oregano, basil, onion, breadcrumbs, and garlic, and season with salt and pepper. Add 1 cup of the water. Knead the water into the meat mixture with your hands. Knead and roll meat into about 1 ½ -inch balls. Place them in shallow saucepan on stove, add another ½ cup of water over them, and cover. Turn heat to medium, and steam for 35 minutes.
Drain the juice out of the bottom of the pan. Cover with Red Sauce, and toss with a pasta of your choice before serving, or serve as is.
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There are so many problems with this recipe I don’t know where to begin.  However, it is unlikely that Faven would get past the first ingredient because . . .  well . . . it has the word ‘butt’ in it – and Faven would have broken out into incredulous laughter, and that would have been the end of it.  But there is also no chance that she could comprehend: chopped, minced, or grated, let alone knead with your hands or toss with pasta (we would have had pasta and meatballs across the whole kitchen).  I suppose then that is what the 1 ½  glasses of Chianti were for - the parent supervisor.

When you have not yet conquered basic sentence structure, how can you be expected to decipher a recipe, which breaks every rule of proper English anyway?

After painstaking hours of planning, we have arrived at the big day.  Today, Faven is making supper for our family.  I, for one, had to leave the house.  Don’t worry; I left my capable (and equally strong willed) mother in charge!  As I was getting set to leave, the tension was rising like rapid yeast pizza dough.  Faven wanted to make the garlic bread first (at noon), and my mom was telling her that it is better to have the garlic bread fresh out of the oven.  My mom may as well have spoken in Pig Latin, because ‘fresh out of the oven’ only has meaning to someone who has made garlic bread (or any bread, for that matter) before.  Faven stood eye to eye with my mom and said, “Can you just let me do it my way!?” 

Sandwiched in the middle between these two generations, I attempted to coach Faven – as I had coached my mom yesterday.  In the end, I think I made the better choice to leave.  But as I was leaving, Faven produced a picture of the dessert that she was hoping to make.  Again, this was a very confusing journey to figure out what exactly she wanted to make.  First she called it fudge, but when I showed her a picture of fudge, she said no.  Then she described more of a sauce (with butter, marshmallows and chocolate), so I showed her a picture of ice cream with chocolate fudge on it.  Her eyes lit up, and I was convinced that this was what she was hoping for, so I dug up a recipe for her and my mom.  Seemingly out of the blue then, she produced a picture of a chocolate dessert in a parfait dessert bowl, with a sprig of (?) mint perched on top.  So, my mom looked at the picture, and lo-and-behold there was a recipe directly underneath the picture!
My mom began to read it:
1 cup butter
4 Portobello Mushrooms
3 Shallots
1 tsp sage
"Uhhhh......" she paused, with the picture in her hand, and looked at Faven.
"What's wrong Grama?" Faven innocently asked.

Clearly this was not the recipe that went with the picture.  I grabbed my purse, wished them luck and slunk out the back door.