Inherent Risks

It is 9:10 pm.

The foster cat is in heat. Her incessant yowls are bouncing off the walls, like an echo in the Grand Canyon.

It’s a school night.

Faven just went upstairs with a bottle of hair dye…blonde. (Don’t ask.)

Laurèn is in the bathroom filling up water balloons—to throw at the neighbors. (Yup!)

Yohannes just sat down to eat supper. (Gulp.)

I can’t really explain why I failed to make supper. But, let me try. At suppertime, a whole bunch of kids were riding their bikes over to Mac’s, and my kids were among them. Why go to the trouble of cooking, when:

A) No one was around,

B) their stomachs were going to be filled when they came back, and

C) the shining sun was so soothing.

My kids were thriving in the chaos of our community—all on our front lawn, and I did not want to interrupt what felt like the first day of summer. I too, was thriving, sitting on the front deck, with a tumbler of white wine sangria, sunshine on my face, surrounded by pages of hand-written and typed notes that may one day turn into a manuscript.

Ward is in Vancouver. When he is away, the crazies seem to climb out of the crevices of our body—and fling themselves about as if our skin is their trampoline.

This weekend, when Ward was in Red Deer, the wheels wobbled and then fell off. (He misses all the fun!)

Yohannes asked me if he could go to the park with one of his friends. I said yes, and went to my room to get dressed. Moments later, I heard a hacking, gagging kind of cough on the main floor. I leaned my head out the bedroom door, “Hey guys, who is coughing?” One of the girls answered, “It is Yohannes.” That's weird, I thought, he hasn't been sick. As I was putting my shirt on, he banged on my door. "Mom, mom,  mom..." he called, and coughed and sputtered like an old smoker. I quickly came out. 

“Buddy, what’s going on?” I said.

“ Well…” (cough, cough, cough) “You know the tennis rackets?”

“Yeah.” I answered and immediately started coughing myself. 

“Well,” he started and then his voice broke and croaked out. My alarm center immediately got flooded. “WHAT happened?”

“Umm… well…” (cough, hack, cough)

“Whatever, it was…” (cough, wheeze)  “…it is okay… (cough)  I just need to know what happened.”

“Well, the tennis rackets…”

“Yeah.”

“There was a black spray thing by the rackets, and I …ummm….pressed down…ummm, the trigger.”
Black spray thing? “Okay… And?”

“It was horrible—you can’t even breathe in the garage.”

I noticed that the girls, who were down the hallway, were now coughing. And I was particularly bothered, due to my asthma. I went to get my inhaler, opening windows along the way, and it suddenly dawned on me what had happened. I yelled back to Yohannes, “Oh no! The bear spray!”

I ran back to look at him and stared intently. He looked as he always looked, hair slightly disheveled, sheepish grin, dancing brown eyes. “Where did it spray?” I asked, gripping his shoulders.

“All over the place,” he answered.

He struggled to speak—coughing and gagging uncontrollably. Panic was setting in, and not really knowing what to do, I set up my inhaler for him to take a puff. I quickly explained that I would release the medicine into a clear spacer, and then he would take a slow breath and hold. He tried. Then, I told him to change all of his clothes. While he did that, I ran to the car and got the canister of Wet Wipes. My own irritated airways continued to wheeze, and I took another puff of ventolin. I carried the wipes upstairs and gave him two, and told him to wipe down all of his skin. I gave him another puff of ventolin, with a Benadryl chaser. 

Then, I left him standing in the bathroom with the wipes and ran downstairs to the computer. “My eye hurts,” he croaked. Worry sent me into hyper-speed. I quickly typed the following words into my search engine: I got sprayed with pepper spray, (624,000 matches, clearly we were not the first!). I immediately had a list of first aid options. I chose one randomly, and began to yell commands to him upstairs.  “Yohannes, do not touch the area that feels like it is burning….it can make it worse.”

“Okay,” he mumbled.

I scanned the rest of the document and ran back upstairs. I filled the sink with cold water, and put in some dish detergent. I got a cloth and told him to wipe down all of his skin with the cold dish soap water. Of course, he refused, because he had just wiped everything down with wet wipes. With gritted teeth, I told him he had to do it again. Ever curious, he wanted to know why we were using dish soap. “Because that is what the computer said to do to get the oil off your skin.”

“I didn’t put oil on my skin Mom,” he said.

“There is oil in the pepper spray.”

“Oh.” He started washing. “It feels like my skin is falling off.”

“Let me see… I don’t see anything. Where?”

“Right above my eye. It feels like it is burning.”

“Oh. I guess that is the pepper,” I said, “Did you get it in your eyes?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, that is good.”

“Why?”

“Well, I think if it was in your eyes, we would have to go to the hospital and get your eyes flushed out  with saline.”

“What’s that?”

“Just salt and water.”

“Oh”… “Mom, what is wrong with my voice?”

“Well, it has gone into spasm.”

“What is that?”

“It just means that the muscles around your voice box are contracting…squeezing, and that makes it hard to talk.”

“Will it go away?”

“Yes it will.”

“What should I do now?”

“How about you just go sit outside in the front, and get some fresh air?”

He went outside and Faven came in and asked, “Is he going to die?”

“No, he is not going to die.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“Yes, he is.”

As I cleaned up the bathroom, I tried to imagine how this had happened. Yohannes has insatiable curiosity, and a need to know NOW, kind of manner. When he was three years old, he had finished changing from his indoor shoes to his outdoor shoes in the coatroom at preschool. He started to follow me out the door and then at the last moment, he spied a bright red square on the wall, adjacent to the door. Right in the middle of that red square was a white handle that said, “Pull Down”. He couldn’t yet read, so at the same moment that he pulled he said, “Mom, what’s th…”

RINGGGG!!

He ran over to me, scared by the loud sound, as everyone in the area stared at us.

I kneeled down in front of him, the noise unbearably loud, and said, “That is the fire alarm. You only pull that when there is a fire. Come on.” I grabbed his hand as we headed down the hallway to the office to let them know that this was a false alarm. At the office they told us that the fire trucks were already on their way. As we were ushered outside, we could hear the high-pitched siren making it’s way toward us. Yohannes began to cry. I scooped him up, “It’s okay buddy; it was just a mistake.”

He sobbed, “Am I going to go to jail?”

“No, you are not going to go to jail." (Smile) "I think the fireman will just come and talk to you about what happened.”

Well, now he had discharged the pepper spray, which incidentally is a lot harder than the fire alarm. There is pepper spray from one end of our garage cupboard to the other—covering everything in its path with red-streaked oil. (It looks like a failed art project.) It is a waste of time for me to even ponder why he would have done it. My time would be much better spent pondering the parental decision to put it anywhere near to our sports gear. Sigh….

Curiosity did kill the cat, but I am very curious. Brittany Murphy

Faith follows futility follows faith

Leaping

If you knew me “back then”, you might know that my (original) desire to adopt a child from Ethiopia felt like a calling. I was driven toward it without question; there was a force that was both within and outside of me. 
I am no longer able to tap into that feeling. 
Now, when people ask me why we adopted children from Ethiopia, I stare blankly at them, lips parted slightly—waiting for an answer to come—and then I start to cry. That usually prevents any more questions.

Faith, is believing in that which cannot be seen. Stepping forward, with eyes closed, not knowing whether there will be solid ground to catch your foot as it descends. And then, when there is no ground beneath you, faith is knowing you can falter and fail, and then learn to fly.

I had a deep bucket of faith “back then”.

A leap of faith is certainly what it felt like from the moment that we stepped into the Calgary International Airport bound for Toronto-Frankfurt-Khartoum-Addis Ababa. That first adoption was eight years ago. Adoption is behind us, and yet still in front of us.

That baby is one of my favorite people in the whole world. He is energetic and dynamic. He is fascinated and curious in a way that cannot go unnoticed. He sees what most of us miss, and it is a privilege to share our lives, as we do. But, you know, it was not always so. Blessings …and burdens.

Plummeting

One of the problems with taking a leap is that there is that moment—after you leap, and before you land—when you are suspended in mid-air, wondering if you are going to make it. For the briefest moment, your faith hangs back, and you face uncertainty, alone.

For someone like me, uncertainty is hard to bear. I like to—no, need to—know the outcomes of a “prescribed” action. But with parenting, certainty is elusive. My expectation for some rote behavior is often met with disappointment. I am initially indignant: What? I have done all of this, and you are behaving like that?! You MUST be kidding me!

According to psychologist, Gordon Neufeld, “The answer lies not in the battle against behavior but in the softening of hearts”.  (Sigh.) These days, my husband and I slide effortlessly into our invisible armour to prepare for the daily “battle against behavior”, and to repel the verbal jabs. The trouble is, the armour never protects us—or really even assists us—and it is too stiff for cuddles.

Letting go, is one of the hardest things we face. My desire to do good for the sake of my children is high. My desire to be what they need—each of them—moment-to-moment is unachievable…exhausting. My desire for them to love me and treat me well simply because I love and care for them, is way outside of my realm of control—especially with Faven. And that sucks.

The thing is, when it comes to Faven, I keep leaping, and despite hours of training, my best effort, and a long approach, I leap, and fall. It hurts. Remember the Coyote and the Roadrunner? Wile E. Coyote tried time and time again to best the Road Runner. He never did. He always got up though, whether flattened or crushed, and tried again. It was futile.

I too am repeatedly leaping. My techniques to love and connect are as varied as the Coyote’s ploys to trap and capture. Whatever I try does not result in what I ultimately want—a child who will love and be loved—and YES, a child who will be kind, most of the time. So, even though my motives are very different from the Coyote’s, I am experiencing frustration over and over again. Frustration leads to anger and resentment. It is a tough way to live. To continue to try seems futile. And it is!

At first, futility feels like giving up, and giving up feels completely justifiable. But giving up only momentarily justifies my next move (withdrawal); eventually I feel shitty, and get up and try again. It is an exhausting cycle—maybe this time it will work; maybe if I just try a bit harder; maybe I am not giving enough; maybe I don’t yet have the right skills—I should study harder, read more, and go for more counseling. The effort feeds the desire; the desire is an unrealistic impossibility, which results in self-blame, self-pity, frustration, and anger.

Futility, instead, is acknowledging that the current mode is incapable of producing the desired result; the situation is not going to change. Futility cannot be forced. But, when we truly get that the desire cannot be fulfilled, futility allows us to feel disappointment and sadness, and only then can we move on. Futility is a form of acceptance and with acceptance comes compassion and hope.

I wish that I could say that this is a one-time lesson, but it is not...faith follows futility follows faith follows futility, and sometimes creates hope.

Im-possible Endearment

To endear oneself to another seems to be a necessary ingredient of a loving relationship. We are, quite naturally, drawn to those who endear themselves to us.

• The small child, who falls down, snuggles into us when we scoop them up and wipe away their tears—and then asks us to call the ambulance because the hurt is so big.
• The young boy, whose eyes shine upon us and ask, “Like this, right Mom?

• The friend who leans in when you tell her your shit-storm of shame, and says, “I hear you pal.”

• The loved one who holds your hand, when there are no soothing words.

If one were bent on logic, like me, then one would ascertain that we are not drawn to those who do not endear themselves to us. True.

“Leave me alone! You’re not my parents.”

(Sigh) “Yes, honey, we are your parents.”

“No you’re not. I hate you.”

Having a child who does not endear herself to me—who is routinely oppositional; who runs swear words together, like a shopping list, because there are no other words strong enough; who is mean-spirited towards those that I love; and who responds “No you don’t!” when I say, “I love you”—is nearly impossible to parent. But only “nearly” impossible because it can’t be impossible—can it?

I have to find a solid path when I have no idea what to do. I have to be compassionate when I feel indignant. I have to be safe and secure, even when I am angry and hurt. I have to put away my reasoning brain that says, If I do this, she will do that. And I have to find the right kind of support, so that I don’t give up, or go crazy—or both!

A child who has suffered immeasurable trauma and emotional loss is not wired for endearment. Not because they don’t want a loving relationship, but because they can’t trust that such a thing even exists. My child, my beautiful, honey-brown child—the one with the smile that can stop me in my tracks, the one that will cook alongside of me and abandon her internal turmoil, the one who runs free on the soccer field, like a wild horse—she has deep wounds that are covered in bands of scar tissue that may never loosen.

In the midst of a garden of flowers, she may not see the blooms. Surrounded by softness and comfort, she cannot sink in. Even when she is given the substance and fiber of her dreams, she cannot knit together a peaceful shawl. Not by herself.