Crazy

I watched this TED talk on a friend’s recommendation the other day, and I felt an almost irresistible desire to check myself into a psychiatric care ward (almost).  Her description of intimate, unguarded camaraderie among small groups of women, working together to untangle and rework the complicated threads of identity, wisdom, and human connectedness warmed me clear through!  Immediately, I sifted through the grains of my compulsion, searching for some special explanation, some kernel of clarity about what makes a self-help collective so attractive.  After all, don’t I have friends?  Good friends, even?  Dear, close, intimate, best friends who share hurt and hope in a regular rhythm?  I do!  And yet…..  

On my way to visit one of those friends, which followed hard on the heels of Glennon’s inspiring intrusion into my day, the acreage between pee-your-pants-laughter-and-tears transparency and real, nitty-gritty mental ward transparency sprouted words, and a little bud of an idea began to uncurl.  In case you haven’t yet watched the video (and you really should!), let me sum up the section that gripped me with this brief description:  Glennon drug herself and her sadness and her multi-valanced addictions to the admission desk of a psychiatric hospital and asked for help (asking for help – already a courageous step well to the west of my tight, bumbling, self-sufficient comfort zone).  The help arrived in circles, close circles of women sharing themselves (and not just their stories) with jarring unguardedness, a shedding of what Glennon describes as layers upon layers of Superhero capes – veiled and misnamed addictions meant to shield us from slamming headlong into other hearts.  Glennon’s friends were all broken people clinging to other broken people.  That’s all.

How can I get there?  Did you know (and, of course, you didn’t) that my daughter has recently started to ask me why my face contorts in a rapid succession of unrelated expressions after we walk away from “bumping into” a friend?  I never realized, until I fumbled through my explanation to Olivia, that I silently recap conversations with other people in their entirety (gestures and expressions included), looking for moments when I may have hurt or offended another person….or, sometimes, just trying to get an aerial view of the impression I may have left, the trajectory change that bumping into me may have caused.  Because we do, always, change one another’s trajectories.  I’d like to point to some noble impetus here, like a longing to touch lives for eternity.  More accurately, though, I just think I want to be famous.  I want to be known about (but not necessarily known).  I want to be thought of in a particular way.  “She makes my days better with her (insert one of the following here: wisdom, humor, perspective on child-raising, honest approach to faith, love).”  Yuck!  My cape, my filthy Linus blanket of a self-swaddling shield, is tattooed all over with my impression of other people’s impressions of me!  I am addicted to the illusion of approval!

On the evening of my second miscarriage, I became the last person in the United States of America to sign up for an account on Facebook.  It turns out, I am Mark Zuckerberg’s target demographic!  People can virtually “friend” and “like” me, and I can regularly check in to find out whether or not they do!  It’s like a whole new monogram on my raggedy cape!  (P.S. Zuckerberg may or may not be related to the person who named shiny little jewels of chocolate KISSES, playing right into my conflation of food with affection!  Marketing genius.) 

And in the interest of full disclosure (which seems to be the theme here), after penning that paragraph, I slipped quietly over to see if anyone had commented on a pathetic little apology post I made in one of my half-dozen facebook groups.  One person did.  I “like”d her. 

Let me shift (all the way!) back to my little revelation.  It turns out the fundamental quality that distinguishes Glennon’s therapy groups from my own roundtable friendships may well hinge on the incisive, permeating power of the sign hanging above the front door of the institution.  See, if everyone in the room knows that everyone else knows that everyone’s already broken, then why bother with an impression?  If I know that you know that I do secret and shameful things to my body or my heart or my mind…that I have not only bought into lies, but have carefully crafted them to appeal to and exacerbate my own fear, pain, and self-loathing, then we start at a very different place than Starbuck’s cool….we start at naked and unashamed (like the garden before the fall?).  See, I’m already here.  I’ve already “admitted” myself.  I know that the word “crazy” comes loaded with all kinds of pejorative pain (and I want to hurt exactly no one), but since pain is the tenor of this post (and because I just issued a prophylactic apology anyway), and since a single phrase changed my whole way of thinking about conversation, I’m going to change it’s inflection here by changing its context:  The only thing that could free people to speak together naked as they came is the disarming, unspoken acknowledgement that “after all, we’re all crazy here.”  All of us.

What if the people I love, all of them, have secret shame and untidy hearts and sullied minds and broken souls?  And what if I don’t need to leave an impression….just make a little space in the world, in my world, for other people to seep out around the seams of their own capes?  And what if I walk in believing that other people arrive expecting to do the same?  What if we begin with the assumption that, after all, “we’re all crazy here,” and proceed from there?  (And, then when people screw up and say or do scandalous, hurtful, thoughtless things….well, that’s because they’re crazy.  Since I am, too, I have plenty of room under my cape for such things and such people.  After all…..).

On that afternoon, after Glennon metaphysically stripped me bare, I made an experiment of her insight.  In a socially cumbersome moment, I went ahead and made myself all the way apparent with an open heart for whatever my friends (old and new) brought to our little round table.  Over and over, in my head (disassociated facial expressions notwithstanding) I repeated, “After all, we’re all crazy here,” each time loosening the thin ribbons of a hundred capes cinched tight around my throat.  I think, for ineffable moments of lung-filling conversation, we were, together, naked and unashamed – capeless, messy women blundering through life and motherhood….pulled over together at a rest stop on the curb of this superhighway for superheroes.  It was a delicious little respite, before I unfortunately veered almost immediately back between the white lines of illusion and approval.

As my awkward little Facebook apology moment signals, I have been mostly careening down the fast lane of acceptance for the last couple of intervening days….and I (of course) managed to blunder (again)….leaving an impression that I’d like to change….an impression from a conversation evidenced by a follow-up replay of a ten or fifteen facial expressions and gestures indicating what I said and what I might otherwise have said and what I would like to have said, etc.  I’m a sorry little superhero. 

I forgot to remember the sign hanging above the entrance door.  I forgot that, after all, we’re all crazy here. 

And I know that God’s grace covers my crazy better than any cape of my own invention, covers it by washing the word well away.  And I’m beginning to believe in a deeper way that He has given me these circles of friends to share this journey and not merely bump into one another along the path. 

In my home, I don’t think I’ve yet created a space where my kids and husband feel fully comfortable capeless.  It’s fits and starts of hopeful shamelessness, and then I set about “parenting” everyone.  Tomorrow, I want to carve grace above every door frame, making every room in this house completely safe for a handful of crazy kids to grow up and out a little more alongside their openly crazy mama.  I want to give love room to breathe, unstrangled by the “Well-behaved” capes they tie on to serve impressions that I expect them to leave…on my behalf.  I want to lay it out like a mat beside my front door…under a rack of hooks where people can hang their capes when they walk in.  I long for messy grace to come in and disrupt this death march of perfection, where we stomp to a cadence of lies decked out in stories to shield our souls.  I want “home,” for my kids (and for everyone welcome here), to be a garden where they can romp naked and unashamed.  I’m ready to give it a try.  After all….we’re all crazy here. All of us. 

Learning the Mother Tongue

(This is the essay I shared at the Listen to Your Mother event last week. It feels even more vulnerable to post it here, without the podium to mediate! That said...)


Having nursed my two oldest children until they were practically able to write about the experience themselves, I was completely unprepared for the gauntlet of bottle-and-formula paraphernalia that adopting infant triplets would prompt me to run. In fact, when I first encountered a stiff-bristled nipple brush at Target, I involuntarily clutched my own breasts and gasped, “what woman would do that to herself!?” In time, I learned it was designed to scrub latex. This epiphany heralded the first in a long line of lessons that adoption would re-teach me about the language of motherhood.

When my first two cried out in colicky rage, I cried too, wondering why, at 3 a.m., they hated sleep so fiercely. At the same hour, six years later, I juggled three four-month-olds to silence a symphony of screams. This time, though, I half-smiled, awed by having been chosen to mother these miracles, grace deepened by my awareness that only tragedy and poverty could mobilize a love so deep, so radical, that I might be entrusted with these precious 3 a.m. tears.

During the mortal fatigue of one night-turned-morning with the triplets, it hit me how very chosen I had also been the first two times I’d walked this rut into the floorboards, and how very precious had been the tears. SHHH, shhhh, shhh, shhh, shhhh, I’d breathed out the mantra of maternity while I endlessly rocked and walked. Some nights, several minutes after I knew the trusting limpness of a baby asleep against my heart, I’d still softly shhhhh, shhhh, shhhhh. Maybe to quiet myself.

Did you know that every culture around the world makes some approximation of this sound to soothe a crying child? They say it’s an imitation of the sound of the mother’s heart as heard in utero. I love the thought that a mama’s heart is the elusive mother tongue of the world, the language that binds us all together. It was not my heart that first taught its cadence to three of my five babies, but shhhh, shhhh, shhhhh, my heart still lisps every time they get theirs broken. SHHHHH, shhhhh, shhhhh, I breath. There will be other games, other friends, other chances. My mama heart beats to siphon away their pain, to carry what I can, to quiet what I can’t.

When we initiated the process of adopting from Ethiopia, I wrote this unsendable letter to a mother whose love I will spend the rest of my life living up to, the mother whose heart would teach our babies the rhythm of peace.



Dear Mama,
I have been a pregnant woman, have caressed my swelling middle, humming private lullabies to a private baby growing quiet and secret inside of me. I have cherished the fluttery kicks that no one else could feel, and I have scrambled to share the forceful elbow rolls of a baby grown so cramped inside of me that every motion protrudes in tiny, visible waves. It is your face that I see, now, when I dream of my child, your pregnant laughing face. And I wonder. Do you imagine his future? Do you picture her face? Do you picture mine?
Your face beams out from a table of tangled statistics that explode in my heart. 
 Are you the one woman in 14 whose body will break in the final, heroic push to share life? Are you one of the millions whose hunger and pain have set your jaw with the hard hope that your baby (our baby?) must have more? Are you one of the uncountable many whose body will be wracked by malaria or HIV or diphtheria or typhoid or mumps (diseases I dreaded being vaccinated for in gradeschool)?
 Are you going to die? How can I dream of you, with your pregnant, laughing face, and pray for my baby to come home soon? What kind of person am I?

What kind of person are you? I wish I knew. I may not ever know. We are mothers, now, together. I wish I knew if you know that. Do you dream of me? Do you dream of the hope laid out before all of us? Or do you dream of nights watching your baby (our baby?) breathe? You are
my baby's mama. Love hovers just above all of my feelings about you and your pregnant, laughing face.
 My feelings ride lower, closer to the earth. We are mothers together, here on this complicated ground.
 You pay the price; I get the blessing. Is that what adoption is?
 I know that story. I learned it in Sunday school. But I have failed to honor God, again and again. I will not fail our baby. I will mother with all of my heart.

Love,
Amy
I finished that letter nine months to the day before Ayelech lay down her life loving our kids into this world. Over the past five years, I have sent it again and again, carried forward to heaven in every beat of my heart. Last year, God blessed me with two more babies, two babies that would only know my love as a heartbeat before flying home to heaven. The ache of my empty arms sometimes makes it hard even to hold the five impossibly beautiful children that still press in, close, for love. But in my sadness, I have imagined Ayelech, backlit by eternity, rocking my two little ones while I rock three of hers here, in this world where joy still wears barbs on its back and beauty still drags its rough belly through the mess we’ve made in our clumsy efforts at love. I imagine the day when I fly home to heaven; she and I will clutch each other’s hands and, laughing, share stories of children we both have learned to love. Or maybe, we will just fall into each other’s arms and whisper, in the language we both know best, shhh, shhhh, shhhh. Because, maybe the mother tongue is really the heartbeat of God, and we’re all still waiting to be born.

Listen to ME!

The Listen to Your Mother show directors asked me a few questions about motherhood to provide a little context for the approaching show. Here are a few of my answers along with the headshot that my husband took. He is the only person alive who can find and record my natural smile. I'll explain why that's Oprah's fault in another post. Why did you audition for Listen To Your Mother? My best friend sent a link to the audition that came through a school announcement, urging me to submit something. That’s the reason I applied in pragmatic terms; I love my friend, and I thought it sounded doable. More to the point, though, I think I applied because my failures are so glaringly visible (messy home, short tempers, fighting kids, etc.) and the parts of my life that shine never get noticed (wound dressing, couch cuddling, the dramatic interpretation of children’s classics, etc.). I wanted to shine. What does your day-to-day life look like? I’m trying to think of the elements of every day that are consistent, since our schedule at home whiplashes from frantic to freewheeling. Here are some constants. My youngest always wakes me with a whispered request to play the iPad for an hour before everyone else gets up. I send him off to a quiet room, while I drag myself to the coffee maker and start pulling together breakfast. What follows is either a mad dash to find enough reasonably matched shoes to cover all of our mismatched socks so that we can make it to a homeschool co-op on time OR an hour of reading to my four-year-olds while the big kids grudgingly tackle math. Then, the little guys watch Bill Nye (or something), while I sneak in a shower, and we head out for an afternoon adventure or hunker down with projects and a family book. The above elements are either peppered with music and laughter or crying and screaming, variables that color everything in between. What is the best mothering advice you’ve ever received? “Nobody’s walking around high school with her umbilical cord still attached.” That was my pediatrician’s response to my concern over three-week-old Olivia’s scabby stump, a response that eventually morphed into my mothering mantra. It turns out my diligent efforts to care for her first ever wound by bathing it daily in alcohol had actually prolonged its adhesion. I had pickled it. When our doctor announced her prognosis, I gained a perspective that I’ve resurrected again and again, reminding myself to step back, worry less, and stop interfering. When potty training hit, and poop was predictably everywhere it shouldn’t be and never where it should, I muttered, “Nobody walks around high school pooping her pants.” And when my two-year-old seemed light years away from spontaneously weaning, I chanted, “Nobody walks around high school sucking on her mama’s…” You get the idea. Stuff usually works out, and meddling just makes it take longer. What is the best mothering advice you’ve ever given? Play to your strengths. Too many of us beat ourselves up for not being someone else. I collapse under the weight of dishes and laundry precisely BECAUSE other mothers keep house so painlessly and organically. Crafts make me want to puke. I can’t stand watching my kids work a puzzle; it stresses me out! As long as I keep my eyes firmly focused on the gifts I lack, I run around failing at those things that make me great. And I am great! Great at reading aloud to my kids. Great at telling stories. Great at imagining and embarking on adventures. Great at laughing with my kids. Great at dining room dancing. I could go on and on! And so could every mother on the planet. Every mother is singularly magnificent, and so is every child. I believe that God chose me for my children (on purpose!) BECAUSE of who I am, not IN SPITE of who I am. When I try to become my friends, I fail at being exactly the mother that I was created to be. What is the greatest impact motherhood has had on your life so far? Nothing humbles like motherhood. Not even middle school. My strongest weaknesses peer back at me through the magnifying mirror of my kids’ faces. My deepest fears coalesce around their vulnerabilities. My heart, a fickle little organ I spent so many years training to be tough, stretches and snaps almost every time I stop hurrying long enough to stare at them. I am sunk! I’ve lived a few epic adventures, but only motherhood has taught me to cling, white-knuckled, to God’s grace, and only my kids have made me perfectly certain that nothing’s more powerful than LOVE. What songs are on your favorite Netflix cue? My Netflix queue looks like a theme-based unit study. It’s very homeschool-cool, situated around subject-specific biographies and documentaries. My kids will gripe to their therapists about Mama’s version of “movie night.” We do, at least, serve popcorn! Be sure to purchase tickets soon, if you're planning to attend. I'm told they're going fast!

Thoughts about our Free-schooled family

Hi, everyone.
My name is Amy.
I used to have a blog at this address:)
Perhaps you'll forgive my long absence if you know that I've taken to homeschooling my kids this year. And that's why I'm sitting here musing on my blog again after all of this time -- to parse out a few of my pedagogical ideas, and to share the parselings with the masses:)

Here are the parselings (garnish for an idea feast:):

First, I want to be clear (primarily with myself) that I am not called to homeschool. Actually, I'm not called by God to much of anything. I'm commanded to love, a command bolstered by careful instruction and the impeccable example of an incarnate Christ. I'm gifted with certain inclinations, like reading and singing and talking about ideas. Each time I offer those gifts to God, He uses them to His purposes and my delight. From time to time, He taps me -- in His grace -- to love specific people in specific ways as opportunities arise. Sometimes He taps, and I turn away (and He goes on loving me). Sometimes He taps, and I listen and act and find myself swallowed up by the Great Love passing through me. Sometimes, I'm absolutely sure, He taps, and I'm so mired in outside noise and internal narrative that I miss the tap altogether. Taps are not callings, though. They are just rare moments of wakefulness in my spiritually sluggish days. (I love them.) A calling seems more like a point-by-point job description, and I'm just so doubtful about the prospect of such particular guidance in a faith denoting so much freedom (by virtue of the Cross).

Don't misunderstand me -- the Command is BIG. And I long to live wide-eyed so that I don't pass by anyone without loving. I want to live His command, perpetually. Instead, I seem to sleepwalk from tap to tap, perceiving such a thin fragment of all that He shares with me of His Love.

So, that lets me off the hook. Sending my kids to public school would not be a sin, or a breach of my life's called purpose. In fact, as I wrote about once, it better resembles, in many ways, a visceral exemplification of the Command.

On the other hand, I missed the reading. And I guess, in many ways, it comes down to that. During breaks, we read around 4 hours every day -- together -- and the kids read amply on their own. During school months, our reading sessions were sparse and sporadic. Something about sitting alongside one another looking at life through a common lens helps us see better eye to eye. I'm not sure why, exactly. It's sort of like existential experimentation -- testing life choices through fictional characters, and evaluating outcomes without any threat of judgement. And I do voices:) [In fact, a couple of years ago, when I was deep into The Secret Garden -- rich with all manner of British accents, from classic to cockney -- my husband pulled me aside after breakfast one Saturday with a weird, worried expression on his face. "You did something really weird last night," he stammered, looking more than a little concerned. "What?!" I asked, wondering what could possibly be weird after 8 years of sharing a bed with my crazy, up all night, hijinx, unruffled. "You talked in your sleep," he said. "That's not so weird." After all, I talk in my sleep whenever I'm worried, scared, or medicated -- which accounts for a good portion of our married life:) "You talked in your sleep," he clarified, "In a British accent. It really freaked me out." Ahhh, the many unlookedfor applications of my theater major in action!]

So we're reading, again. I like that. And I'm finally working to memorize my (stinking) multiplication tables, along with my children. And it turns out we all love history and science, if you want to call them that. Mostly, we read....together.

[Last night, Olivia talked in her sleep. More specifically, when I went in to wake her up this morning, she was muttering and crying -- actual tears -- while sleeping. I woke her, and she gasped, "Oh, mama, I had the worst dream!" and curled into my arms. "Can I tell you about it?" she asked. "Of course," I replied (of course). "I dreamed I went back to public school." Okay, so at this point, I'm beginning to formulate my application to return to public school immediately, because this nightmare is sounding very Home School Weird -- see previous posts for clarification regarding HSW. "I went back to public school, " she continued, "And the kids were mean and the teacher was mean, and I handled all of that. But then, they started a history lesson that somehow came around to Archimedes, and I just really started missing homeschool." So that's a good reason to cry -- just missing our Archimedes reading, and our laughter at his bare-bottomed excitement over buouancy, and his crazy geometric tombstone. Archimedes is a good reason to cry. I said, "Well, as of right now, your dad and I have planned to work together again next year doing our school here at home, which means there's nothing here to miss, and everything's okay. It was only a dream." I THOUGHT.....seriously, Olivia. There's no reason to worry even if we decided otherwise. There's no way Archimedes would come up in a public school history lesson.....doesn't my thinking self sound self-righteous and cynical! Now you know why I miss so many taps! It's good that, nearing forty, I'm finally getting a handle on the gap between my thinking self and my speaking self! Apparently, I'm not yet sure where my blogging self fits:)]

I realize, in some ways, that I'm risking everything -- a fact that alternately encourages me (as a risk-lover) and strikes me with motherguilt like a parasite sucking on my soul. I know that Josiah would do well with the order in a public school classroom. It's only Olivia and I who love this learning like buckshot. But he's getting along, and we are reading. In fact, he's turned out to be the most voracious book hound among us, sniffing for biographies among his favorite fare.

As to the little three -- I plan/have planned to start a kind of formal preschool-at-home with them next fall. In the meantime, they're absorbing everything the six of us do together all day with the breathtaking speed at which three three-year-old minds absorb everything. They continue to homeschool me.

I doubt this site will become a repository of reading lists and curriculum reviews anytime soon. I'm still figuring out how to feed them and bathe them while teaching them. I'm not yet aiming to chronicle them. I am, however, enjoying this leg of the journey and the freedom it affords us. And that's really the crux of this uncalled tap-life. Grace, here, means freedom. [My dad once told me, on a day when I was particularly frozen in the post-graduation paralysis of early adulthood, that I was worrying around the edges of God's grace like it was a tent. Like I thought that if I stepped too far in any direction, I would move outside the shelter and into the torrents all around us. He was right (of course). "I tend to think God's will is more like an umbrella than a tent, because of the cross. You have to carry it and open it, but it travels where you do." Whether or not you agree with my dad (and it's always wise to agree with him -- knowing that 20 years ago would have made adolescence less volatile, wouldn't it?), clearly I come by my Uncalled, Always Tapped philosophy honestly!]

That's why I'm calling us free-schooled this year. Not because it's free. The homeschool situation has done nothing to ameliorate my book-thrifting addiction! Because I'm resting on the freedom of grace in making and carrying out this risky decision. I'm clutching my umbrella, and heading, white-knuckled, into the rain.

Do I have a Right To Homeschool my Children?

I love my children. Let's begin there. I don't always love them well (though I always want to), but I love them fully. For the past ten years, I have filtered all of my parenting choices thorugh the sieve of my ultimate goals: that I should contribute in every way possible to my children loving God and loving others. Because I love them, I steer them toward love -- love that costs. Love for enemies. Love for difficult people (and sometimes I know I am one of the difficult people).
Preschool seemed a natural choice. Olivia was reading some and writing pretty proficiently by the time she was 3, and gravitated toward learning new things in the ravenous, touching way that all three year olds do. I studied, visited, popped in on, and otherwise scoured all of the preschools in our community during the course of her second year until I found a montessori-based Christian preschool that didn't rock our financial world. I stood in line (in alternate shifts with my mother, who stood in my stead while I went home to nurse my baby Josiah) from 4 until 8 in the morning --- blizzard notwithstanding! -- to enroll her. She screamed every morning for 9 months, sometimes only leaving the car after the teacher peeled her arms from around my neck. She couldn't start a zipper. She wanted to peek in on other kids' projects during rug time. So many ways to fail. My beautiful, social, brilliant baby girl was a Montessori flop (and, by extension, so was her mama).
When I informed her teacher that I wasn't reenroling her for pre-k, she warned me of the social deficit she would face in coming years. She stayed home with me the following fall, and we preschooled at home three mornings a week, with field trips every Thursday. (When my big kids were still little kids, they told their dad that they knew mama loved them because of field trip Thursdays === we really had a blast). The spring before kindergarten, she was reading well, writing well, able to understand basic computation, and socially amazing. I chose one of the few half-day kindergarten programs in town because I thought I could continue with some homeschooling after she got out of school mid-morning, in case school didn't challenge her enough. It didn't, and I didn't. During the day, she often got assigned to struggling learners as a kind of peer tutor, and the teacher remained unaware of the extent of Olivia's abilities for most of the year. I, having outsourced my daughter's education and intimidated by the fact that I taught her to write using the wrong alphabet script (so many ways to fail!), left schooling to school and retained only field trip Thursdays.
After much prayer, I decided that public school (which was also the catalyst for Sunday night trauma during the entire year ---- tears, tears, tears) was out unless she was chosen to attend a magnet school that promised project-based learning and multi-leveled, technology-rich learning environments. We didn't get chosen, so I amassed a curriculum that seemed to suit us, and threw my hat into the homeschooling ring. Then her name was pulled from a waiting list -- we accepted. Then we were chosen to parent infant triplets. So it all seemed like a gift, this school, these five, this year of hanging on together with professionals educating Olivia, encouraging her to grow and learn. Our teacher was sick --- on and off for nearly six of the nine month school year. They never had enough notice to call in a certified teacher, and I have a hard time putting my finger on anything she learned during first grade --- apart from what we learned as a family as we were newly grown.
But Josiah. Josiah didn't hate preschool. He struggles with some schoolish skills, and his teacher was solid, encouraging, playful, and sweet. So we headed toward his Kindergarten year optimistically. The babies had grown enough that Grandma could watch them one morning each week while I volunteered in the kindergarten and second grade classrooms. Remember, my goal for my kids was never to be as smart as they could become. Homeschool would have seemed an easy answer then. My parenting goal was to support them as they learned to love God and others --- especially the people who were difficult to love. Where else can you find such a high concentration of difficult to love people upon whom we could exercise love skills besides public school?
But have I equipped them to love difficult people (and aren't I often difficult? and aren't they?)? Second grade was an academic wash, but Olivia led her class in a campaign to put a well in Africa, a successful effort for which she openly (and rightly) gives God all the credit. Kindergarten inspired my son to offer his "personal best" every time. (We, gratefully, enjoyed the best teacher in the district for his inaugural year of public school.) Helping my children see the pathway to love with bullies, clubs, inclusions, exclusions, angry friends, and bad choices sent us to the Word and to prayer (two excellent places to head with your children). We got to observe, first hand, prayers answered as ways to love the people who hurt us became more apparent. But....it....has.....been......hard. And this year, I have felt extremely nigh unto a breaking point! My daughter confesses, every day, her shortcomings for at least 20 minutes on the ride home from school. She loses sleep to worry. She has stumbled upon filth during online research, despite the school's copious filters. She and her friends traded thigh measurements to see where they "fit." Each day I feel like I spend the entire evening wiping crap from her face and her heart with a gentle cloth and filling her tiny bucket to send her into tomorrow's thirsty, blazing world.

But she isn't mine. And we have so much water here. And the world is so thirsty. SO thirsty. How can I justify a family water party when there are so many parched babies in public school classrooms.....with no water....anywhere. And the call of the kingdom is higher than the call of maternity (right?). Though they are not at odds, when the choice stands between serving His priorities for His family or my priorities for mine....well, there doesn't seem to be a choice. (That verse about hating mother, father, children, etc. as prerequisite fitness for Kingdom service comes to mind). Furthermore, they are not my children. They are His. And children drink fresh, clean water because my little ones share (literally and figuratively), every day. That's why they often come home so empty.....and so parched. (And perhaps the sacrifice to love people, face up -- not just far away, is their inheritance.)

But I want to bring them home, in my heart. To let them learn; learning and teaching alongside them.

How can I when Jochabed and Hannah go before me? Consider Moses and Samuel. First Moses: to protect her second son from the scourge of persecution, Jochabed places him in a river in a basket in God's hands. Miriam (his big sister) follows him until Pharaoh's daughter pulls him from the river, and at Miriam's suggestion, allows him to be nursed by Jochabed and returned to her upon his weaning (which, according to Hebrew custom would have been around 3 years old). Then comes, what I consider one of the most heart-rending faith leaps imaginable (made more tangible to me in the three children entrusted to my care by another): Jochabed returns him to the palace. Knowing that he will be raised to worship idols, to participate in sacrifices and oracles and palace privilege built on the broken bodies of slaves --- of her own family --- she turns him, again, over to the care of God. Surely, if the voice of God can make its way through the clamour of Pharaoh's palace, it can pierce the din of public education.

Right?

What about Hannah? Persecuted by her husband's other wife and by the whole of Jewish society for her childlessness, Hannah prays for a child whom she promises to give back to the Lord, in his service. Eli accuses her of drunkenness as she prays. When she confesses her heart, he prays for God's blessing., and so enters Samuel. When Samuel is weaned (again, presumably around three), she returns him to the temple for a lifetime of service, seeing him thereafter only once a year during a ritual visit and to bestow upon Samuel a coat into which she wove a twelve months of loving handiwork. But to whom did she entrust her toddler? Certainly not to Eli, whose prior forays into parenting yielded two of the most heinous exploiters of the priesthood in history. Hopni and Phinneas caroused with worshipers in the temple court, ate the fat off the sacrifices, and generally desecrated and mocked the holy things of God -- with no apparent reproof from Eli, whose only appearances in scripture paint him as mostly gluttonous, lazy, and short-tempered. She turned him over to the care of her God, who raised him into a prophet and lover of God and God's people. Surely, if God's voice can call out to Samuel over the cacophony of carousing and neglect, then He can handle public school.

And the gift to my kids of faith in a God that can stand and heal and fill and feed, again and again --- doesn't that outweigh my instruction and their insulation? Doesn't it?
But I long to bring them home. Just for a rest. To learn and drink and go strong. But when will it be enough? And how many will succumb to thirst in the meantime?

(The encouraging points in Hannah's and Jochabed's story, and they are many, bolster up my enjoyment of the early years I share at home with my kids. Apparently, the first years, the nursing years, lay a foundation. And maybe they teach a love upon which God can reach through years of mess to build. Hopefully I haven't screwed that one up too much!)

Do the wounds our children receive in loving have greater purpose? They did for Mary's son. When it looked like the brutality of the world stole Him away --- there were divine arrangements being made for LOVE and eternal HOPE. But my children aren't Jesus, right? (Right!) But they have been chosen. And so have the 27 others in their public school classrooms. They just may not know it yet. And what if no one ever shows them --- shows them that they have been chosen to be loved?

Can anyone (please!) come up with an argument for homeschooling that is more sound?

No, no, no! Scary Christmas!

This is the first year that the babies have been healthy enough to share in the glorious, much-coveted chance to sit on the lap of SANTA! Girum talked about the coming event with glee all day yesterday. He's crazy about "Sinta" and walks around in a Santa hat saying "Ho, ho, ho" and "Merry Christmas" a LOT (I should really post a video of that, shouldn't I?....Given my awesome gift from my little brother a few weeks ago, I ought to be able post one soon!). Tari and Taye were also excited, an excitement that only escalated when we came within view of Kris Kringle himself! Everything was fine, in fact, until the drop. Apparently, Santa's enchantment demands a three-foot viewing parameter...the magic turns to panic when that threshold is breached. So, for your holiday amusement, here's a photo and a little Christmas Quiz: Which of the people pictured below was most traumatized by Santa's Lap '09?



Here's a hint: We've had the same Santa -- a now retired Santa -- for 7 years running. This Santa is new. I believe this was his first foray into the world of jolly old St. Nick.

Did you guess Santa himself? If you did, you were correct! The minute Santa's helper whispered the word "triplets" in his jolly old ear, St. Nick began to look frightened and truly nauseous. As we approached, all semblance of character and mythology eroded, and a genuinely frightened old man told my children where to sit, whom to hold, and just how many pictures he was willing to try (2 shots). After we removed our screaming babies, Olivia's sweet letter (I wish we could have kept a copy...it was so sweet) and sparkling personality returned him to his moderately-Santabulous self (Josiah didn't stick around long to chat), but he kept muttering (seriously) for several minutes about the pitch of the screams and the number of children...and the volume..."the sheer volume." He was truly quivering...like the fabled bowl full of jelly. So if your house gets missed this Christmas, chalk it up to Post Traumatic Stress disorder and send your best wishes to the north pole for a quick recovery.

On an upside (and there are a lot of upsides here), all of my children were smiling and fully enamored with Santa Clause by the time we walked through the exit gate of his....lair. And this morning, we've had an absolutely wonderful Christmas. I hope you and yours enjoy the same this year.

Merry Christmas.

Where IS tall man?

Each morning, a nice Episcopalian minister I met in the park stops by our house with his three daughters to take Olivia to school (one of the zillion kindnesses strangers have shown us since the triplets came home). Generally, I juggle babies, breakfast, and books while we scramble to make it to the driveway on time. A few weeks ago, Olivia and I had a rare seven minutes of alone time before the minister was scheduled to arrive -- no babies or brothers awake -- just bagels, fruit, milk and time together...

"Yesterday, my friend said that your middle finger is dirty."

Pause.

"She did?"

"Why is it dirty, mom?"

Seriously, Olivia? Just seven minutes until the good reverend pulls up in his minivan, and you want to dig for the mother lode?

"Well, it's not...dirty...really. Not by itself, anyway"

"It's not?" Middle finger goes up. Further explanation NECESSARY. CLOCK TICKING.

"Let me think of how to explain this." P A U S E.

"Okay. The devil doesn't have any power to create...." Internal voice screams, You're bringing up the DEVIL?!? In all of Olivia's seven years, I cannot recall mentioning the devil.....ever.....until this moment....."And he's bent"...I forged forward...."on confusing people about right and wrong and good and bad....in fact...his whole job seems to be convincing people that bad is actually good and that good is actually bad. But, since he has no power to create, he"....apparently he's a 'he'...."accomplishes this confusion by mixing up the way people think about already created things. And since everything God created is good, he has a very big job. So, the best he can do is try to make the special, precious, and private things from God's creation seem....regular. For example, you know how it kind of annoys me when you go on and on about your 'butt'...and how we have always called it a 'bottom?' Bottoms are private and kind of special, and the word 'butt' seems so....regular....that it makes it seem rude."

"But we don't get in trouble for saying 'butt' at school."

I realize that I'm sounding very denim jumper at this point.....my kid just gave me the span of a commercial break to explain the denigration of physical love by a broken culture......which will INEVITABLY lead to the full blown TALK.....and THE CLOCK IS STILL TICKING.....

"Right. Because bottoms are just kind of special...in a way. So making them seem regular with a word like 'butt' doesn't really seem that dirty...just annoying. The more special and precious something is....the more dirty and bad it seems when a word or a symbol or a hand sign makes it regular. Okay, so the middle finger....which is not dirty by itself....is a sign...a kind of symbol....that stands for a word that makes something SUPER precious and special seem really regular.....and so people think of it as really.....REALLY dirty"

Then, I proceeded to tell her the story about when I first learned that the middle finger was dirty -- I was in first grade and an older kid on the bus told me to stick it up. I got called to the front by the bus driver, who, once he figured out how my vulgar gesture came about, snarled, "ask your parents," and let me off with a very confusing warning.

Two minutes to go.

Confusion on her face.....staring with wrinkled forehead at her upswung middle finger.

"Don't ever stick it up."

How's that for cutting to the chase?

Internal voice scoffs, there's no way that's going to work.

Internal voice is right.

"So what's the word?"

"What's that, Olivia?"

ONE MINUTE TO GO!!!

"What's the word that the middle finger stands for?"

Parent, woman, parent like the wind!

"I'll tell you when you get home from school." Nice. "Mr. Bob will be here any minute" I'm using a pseudonym for Olivia's ride because I'm not sure that an Episcopalian minister would be comfortable with the theological liberties I've taken. "Get your coat, and grab your backpack. And don't stick up your middle finger today. We'll talk about it more this evening."

She turns to wave on her way to the van with all fingers extended.....except her middle finger.

(I call Josh.....)

That night, she asks. "So what's the word?" She didn't forget.

"What word?" Neither did I.

"The word that the middle finger stands for! I thought all day about asking my friends, but then I decided to wait since you told me you'd tell me. So what is it?"

"Okay, Olivia....let's go to another room so that we can talk privately"

Deep breath. Look at my daughter. "Olivia, the word is >>>>"
Yep, I said it.

">>>>?"
And so did she.

"Yes....and never say it again."

"Really, I can never EVER say >>>>?"

"Never EVER"

"Can I say, 'Please don't ever say >>>> to me.' to someone else?"

"No, Olivia. You must never say it. No matter how you're using it, people will begin to think that you don't believe that the special and precious things are truly special and precious if you use that word."

"But can I at least say >>>> to Grandma? She KNOWS that I believe special and precious things are special and precious, and she would never think anything bad about me."

Which is true....but if Grandma heard this kid throwing around the BOMB like I was hearing it in this conversation....she might wonder (or at least laugh).

"No, Olivia. You cannot say it to anyone. Because it refers to something SO SUPER special and precious, people think of it as VERY VERY dirty. In fact, if you said it at school, you would get in a LOT of trouble."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Just for saying the word >>>>?" Now that one was purely gratuitous, Olivia.

"Yes, just for saying that word."

Big pause. Internal voice starts congratulating me on my golden moment of mothering.

"So what's so special and precious? What does >>>> stand for?"

Internal voice chokes.

"You know, Olivia, I will tell you. And I'll tell you right now, if you really want to know right now. But this thing is so special and precious that I've always wanted our conversation about it to be special as well. I have always thought that I could take you out to a special dinner and talk with you and answer all of your questions when you turned seven." This statement is mostly true. The "seven" age was chosen on the fly because we were only four days from Olivia's seventh birthday....making the occasion momentous but not remote. "If you want to know right this minute, though, I will tell you. But if you're willing to wait just a few days, I'd like to take you out for a special date, just the two of us, and tell you all about it."

Long pause, "I'll wait."

"Good. I'm glad. And I'll look forward to it." That statement was also mostly true....

(I talk to Josh, again. He thinks we will probably be getting a call from her school about her foul mouth within the week. He's glad I'm the one taking her on the date. He thinks she seems very young. She is, I concede, but I'd rather have school friends competing with MY version of the truth than run behind them trying to convince her of it after she has heard theirs. Besides, I assure him, she already really knows most of it....I'm just filling in the logistical blanks.

Which is true. Both of my kids have a good grasp of their own physiology, the growth, development, and exit path of a new baby, and a general idea of the exigencies that demand the involvement of both a man and a woman.....they just don't know....exactly....how it all......fits together.....

Until now.)

A week or so later, I sat in the backseat of our car outside of the Mexican restaurant Olivia had chosen (I hadn't really thought through the private nature of our conversation when I designed the "date"....which is why we ended up in the back seat......please, no jokes) and filled in the blanks.

And I was, as I am ever, astonished by her depth of understanding and maturity. After she had worked out the logistics of the process, she was most concerned with understanding how to go about choosing a husband.

We took that part of the conversation into the Mexican restaurant, where, I whipped out two containers of play-dough....blue and yellow, I think....and did this object lesson they talked about one week at Mops while we waited to eat. She mashed the colors together while we talked about why I chose to marry her Daddy, at which point I asked her to put the blue play-dough back in the blue container and the yellow back in the yellow. When she looked at me like I was nuts (a look I was surprised she forestalled until THIS point in our talk), I told her that the same thing happens when two people come together....which is why this special precious thing is so worth keeping special and precious...(I did not go into the disgusting, nondescript color of playdough that has been mashed with a lot of other colors....or the way it gets crusty and dry if it's left exposed.....I imagine I'll bust the playdough out again when she gets ready to date and we really get down to business with THE talk:)

This post is a whirlwind, isn't it? So is parenting Olivia! While I was standing in our basement, hurling the Mother of All Curse words back and forth with my daughter, I kept thinking back to her tiny little voice singing "Where is thumpkin" and to the innocence of tall man. I miss tall man.

Incidentally, Olivia now waves comfortably with her WHOLE hand...all fingers extended. We worked through all of that...on another day.

Match Point

Josiah loves to match the people he loves. He loves to love the same things they do, wear the same color, or share the same opinion as Josh, or I, or Olivia, or a friend. Like my husband (and my father), Josiah does all of his worrying on the front side of change, and during his delliberation about his new baby brothers and sister, still unknown, not "matching" bothered him...a lot. I first learned of his struggle after a free swim session at our public pool.

Josiah had played with a little baby sitting in a stroller near where I was changing. In vintage Josiah style, he had the little one cracking up at his ninja-warrior dance moves. When I took his hand to leave, I told him how proud I was that he was so gentle and fun for babies. He said, "I love babies." [Big pause.] "And I really like light-skinned babies best."

I said, "It's okay that you feel that way, Josiah. And I'm so glad you told me. Can you tell me why you like light-skinned babies better?"

"Well....they just seem more.....powerful."

Powerful? It took me a minute to reign myself in from the vortex of white privelege/white shame and race theory that "powerful" dragged me toward, but Josiah's reference point for power, of course, includes none of that language. Power, for him, involves the force, and web-slinging, and super-human strength. I quickly realized that, at four, he might well me that white babies can fly, so I asked: "What does powerful mean?"

"Powerful....you know.....like me. We match."

Matching, for Josiah, is so....powerful.

We had just received the pictures of the triplets, and (despite the fact that we had spent hours looking at pictures of people from Ethiopia together) I think the fact that our babies would have skin that was different from his hit him kind of suddernly.

"Are you worried, Josiah, that you might not love the new babies because you won't match them?"

"Yeah"

"I can totally understand that. You know, I used to worry about that, too."

"You did?"

"Yep. But I'll bet we'll find lots of ways that you match them once we're all together. One thing that will match right away is that you'll both be in our family.....you'll be brothers and sisters. And, after awhile, we'll probably find other ways that we match. Maybe they'll like Ninja Turtles."

"Do you think they'll like Ninja Turtles, Mom?"

"Maybe, or dinosaurs."

"I could share my dinosaurs with them!"

"Exactly, so it's okay that you feel the way that you feel about light-skinned babies. I think that you'll find lots of ways to match your new brothers and sister once we're together as a family. When I was a little girl, I wanted to bring a dark-skinned baby home from the hospital after my mom had our little sister. I just liked the way she looked. But you know how much I love Aunt Karen. She is my sister..."

"Do you still?"

"What's that Josiah?"

"Do you still like dark-skinned babies better?"

AHHHHHH, now we're at the heart of it.

"I love my children. I LOVE your light skin, Josiah, because it's on you, and I love you. And I LOVE our new babies' dark skin because it's on them, and they are my children. Your skin is absolutely perfect for you. You make your skin beautiful. And the new babies' dark skin is perfect for them, and they make their skin beautiful." ....on and on.....etc., etc..

So he was satisfied....for that day.

A few weeks after we were home, I overheard him run into the kitchen where Girum was playing in his exersaucer. (I was changing someone or feeding someone in the adjascent living room) whispering, "Girum, I prayed and prayed for God to make one of my new brothers look like me, and God gave me you" (people often comment on the fact that Girum and Josiah sort of resemble each other. I guess he sees it too)......I started to smile....matching solved, right? We've arrived. Josiah left the room and then scurried back in to add, "but I still like light-skinned babies better...." So, maybe a little more ground is left to cover....

I write ALL (ALLLL) of that as background information for a conversation that happened last week. Josiah bolted up the stairs (he bolts everywhere....I think that's part of being "powerful" :), ran over to where I was holding Girum, laid his cheek against Girum's so that both of their faces shown up at me, and said, "Look, Mama. Girum and I match perfectly. We both love you!" And then he scurried off.

I can't get that moment out of my mind.

Both Girum and Josiah are particularly attached to me, in their own ways. Both boys calm in my arms and look at me with a disarming adoration that NO ONE deserves. And now, Josiah thinks they match.....with a force stronger than superpowers.

Overwhelming.

And, now, I keep thinking of the ways that all of us match because of Whom we adore-- in various shades and flavors of adoration....we powerfully match.

What's in a name?

I'm too tired to plunge as deep as the Shakespeare passage that I pulled my title from tonight, but I keep talking to people (wonderful family people, mostly) who are interested in the origins and meanings of my kids' names. SO, I thought I'd share. Here they are, in the order of their birth:

Olivia Anne

Olivia -- We didn't name Olivia until two days after she was born, just before we left the hospital. After jostling around Zion, Elizabeth, and Olivia, we chose the name that seemed to suit our beautiful daughter. A name that, with its nod to the Olive tree and (by extension) branch, symbolizes peace, hope, and victory. Also, I was drawn to the name's "Ya" sounding suffix -- the same "from God" sound affixed to the names of the prophets. If my daughter's life was to embody prophesy, I wanted it laden with hope, peace, and victory -- messages, also, that still spill from Jesus's time on the Mount of Olives. So many layers to that one, no?

Anne -- Another biblical reference (Anne is a modification of Hannah -- Two great Hannah's came immediately to mind -- Samuel's mother, whose mother-prayer got answered, and Hannah the prophetess, who immediately recognized Jesus as the Messiah in the New Testament). More specific to Olivia, though, Anne draws upon the middle names of her grandmother (my awesome mom) and her magnificent Aunt Katie -- and later, though we didn't know it at the time, she would bear the middle name of her inimitable Aunt Valerie. THIS is profoundly good company to be among! We chose to spell it with an "E" because -- well -- because of Anne of Green Gables.

Josiah John

Josiah -- Josh actually picked this name. He liked its singularity and its consonance with his own first name. Josiah was also one of the few good kings recorded in Israel's Old Testament history -- taking the throne at the age of 8 and revolutionizing his failing people by turning everyone's eyes back toward the law. Not a bad heritage, eh? (Note, please, the "ya" suffix on this one, too -- an emergent pattern? perhaps.)

John -- John is my Dad's name. If you could only meet my father, then you would need no further explanation. If you know him, then you are wondering why I even needed to explain this much.

Girum Samuel

Girum -- Girum means "Amazing" and "Surprising" in Amharic (the national language of Ethiopia). Birhanu (the triplets' birth father) chose this name because he identified the birth of triplets (a first in his region) as both amazing and surprising!

Samuel -- Samuel is my paternal Grandfather's middle name. He bore a quiet integritiy and patient wisdom that I hope will translate into similar gifts for my own children. He is well worth being named after!

Tarikwa Rebekah/Rebecca/Rebekah/Rebecca --

Tarikwa -- Tarikwa means "This is her story" in Amharic. Like Girum, Tarikwa's name reflects her father's astonishment at the miracle of the triplets' birth, an event that impressed him as integral to the life story of this little girl. So much love is inscribed in her still short story already!

Rebecca/Rebekah -- Can you tell that we still haven't settled on the spelling for this one yet? Tarikwa gets her middle name, first, because of my little sister, Karen Rebecca, whose impact upon my life could never be measured or recounted in words. Also a person well worth being named for! I also have two wonderful aunts named Rebecca, whose love for this little girl will always be a part of our family's fabric. But how to spell it? I really like the biblical transliteration of the Hebrew Rebekah -- I like the way it looks with the name Tarikwa. "Tarikwa," however, is spelled a number of different ways on our paperwork, and I conjoined this Rebekah spelling to a different Tarikua spelling --- with the "kwa" ending, I'm not sure which spelling flows best. ......hmmmmmm....

Taye Stephen/Steven/Stephen/Steven

Taye -- Taye means "He has been witnessed," or, as one Ethiopian friend explained, "His life is an event so important that it cannot help but be witnessed." Again, Birhanu gave Taye this name because of the overwhelming miracle of his childrens' birth. His beauty and joyful spirit certainly bear out all the significance ascribed to his lovely name!

Stephen/Steven -- We struggle with spellings, don't we? Steven reflects the names of Josh's wonderful father and the middle name of his amazing big brother. The love and the spirit of these important people have helped my husband to become the fantastic father and man that he is, and the same love that nourished my husband continues to encourage all of us -- every day. A wonderful name with a wonderful heritage.....now if we could only settle on a spelling:)

(I think we have to solidify the spellings this week -- the kids' green cards are in, and we are preparing to file all of the stateside paperwork to confirm their citizenship and change their names).

Here's a fact about the babies' names that we didn't know until we met Birhanu -- Their names, in the order of their birth, form a grammatically correct sentence in Amharic. "Girum Tarik(ua) Taye" means "I have witnessed the most amazing story" or "An amazing story has been witnessed here (by me)."

Interestingly, on the day we received their referral, while we were still months from knowing about the sentence their names actually formed, Olivia and I worked all of the kids' names into a family sentence that we walked around saying for the entire "referral week": "I have witnessed the most amazing story of hope, peace, victory, and a boy king!"

What a great first sentence in the story of our lives together!

This Big Life

It's 12:23pm. Asleep in the room directly adjacent to this computer wall are three of the most important people in my life: a man whose hand I have held and whose heart I have relied upon for nearly ten years, a little girl whose unsettling wisdom and whiplash laughter incinerate my pretenses, and a tiny little boy who chose me with his eyes and captured me, liquified me, with his smile just 5 short weeks ago (read: a lifetime). Across the hall lay three more of the most important people in my life: a little boy who has never, ever given up on his mama, a tiny little girl who has owned me with her eyes since before I knew her and has delighted me with them ever since we met, and a sweet smile of a person who makes everyone feel pertinent -- special -- especially me -- when his hair and eyes and face and mouth erupt in unmatchable laughter. Thank you all for your prayers and your patience. We are home. Home indeed.

The Architecture of One Family

Our town is famous for its architecture. Apparently, we sport works by several well-known (not Mich#el Jord$n well-known.....but well known if you know about that sort of thing...which I do not) superstars in the architectural cosmos. All of this style and elegance is pretty much lost on me (pretty much -- I enjoy a big witch-hat church as much as the next guy, and -- although I have no desire to investigate the aesthetic resonances that elicit such a response -- I am vaguely pleased by the curvy lines and asymetry of most of the buildings around here), I can be impressed by the effort, if the intentions are explained to me.
More often, though, I leave a building by winding my way out of its artistically complicated corridors after some completely pragmatic errand or other a little annoyed at the cumbersome exit route. And when I reach my car (which sometimes takes me awhile), I glance back at the building and finally "get" it. The weird twists and turns built into my unwieldy walk were part of a larger design that looks... at least planned if not exactly awe-inspiring. I usually say "oh" or "hmmmm" (I'm nothing if not audible) in that dull-girl-just-getting-the-picture sort of way, and then get into my car and drive away nodding (the nod is gratuitous -- it's just what I do).

Last week, I looked back through my early adoption blog entries. (I am -- in many WONDERFUL ways, on the "walking toward my car" leg of this journey, and I guess I wanted to scan the building one more time). Almost nine months, to the day, before OUR (and until this adoption, I never had an imagination for the enormity of the word "our") babies were born, I wrote this letter to their distant but suddenly and absolutely un-anonymous mother. Shortly thereafter, I posted this message about our decision to open ourselves to TWO babies with its prophetic little tag about the paperwork we filed that certified us for a sibling group of three.
Joshua was out of the country when THE referral call came. For days before he left, I had dreams of three babies. Finally, just before taking him to the airport, I said, "If she says three, I'm saying 'yes!'" He reminded me of the height of the emotional and spiritual ledge he crept onto with our decision to stretch our parameters from one to two and asked me to keep that decision in mind. I did. And then I answered with my heart. And so did he!
After two hours of falling in love with Girum, Tarikua, and Taye, I FINALLY made contact with Josh. He had received the same electronic file that I had (along with a half-a-dozen emails from me urging him to READ THAT MESSAGE) and found a way to call me from Germany. After hedging around the question pressing against every cell in my body for a sentence or two ("Hi! It's YOU! So what do....you....think?" "I think.....wow." etc.), I asked: "Do you think we should accept this referral?" To which he responded: "If this is what God has for us, then...this is what He has for us....and I am so honored that He would choose me for this responsibility." And then, "Aren't they just so beautiful, Amy?"
And they are.
So we accepted the referral...
And then we made it through court! On June 25th, my caseworker said, "I am calling to let you know that, as of yesterday, you are officially the mother of FIVE children! Congratulations!"
And now,
after a long walk through such complicated corridors,
we are waiting to travel to bring our children home.
What a magnificent building!
What a Brilliant Architect.

My Kids on Our Adoption

Today, another mother mentioned how well-spoken Olivia and Josiah seem to be, making them seem so much older than the ages I quoted her. I couldn't help but think about the ways in which this adoption has aged us all. We care more....and so we are older......about more people.....older again......we have millions of anonymous loves all over the world, all of us, and we are prepared to be named family together with any two of them at any time, and they don't know us, and they may not have anything to eat, and every day, we love them......so very old. And so my kids talk the way they do (and you should hear how they talk!).

A long time ago (months? weeks? decades?) I began to consider, for the first time, the impact of our newly adopted childrens' grieving on ALL of the members of the household; Josh and I have done our homework (okay, mostly me...I read, I bring issues before Josh, and he, intuitively, responds much better than the experts.) regarding attachment and grief and have learned so much about hope and loss in the process, but Olivia and Josiah could be faced with a brother or sister who screams and cries for hours with no discernable explanation, and I haven't done a thing to prepare them for this possible eventuality.

So, just as I was mulling over my best approach to the situation, that VERY week, Olivia stopped me mid-laundry and asked me to play with her. I said yes (laundry....Olivia.....laundry....Olivia,......hmmmmm...) of course. She said, "I want to play orphan."

I said, "Okay...." visibly thrown off-balance, I'm sure, but this is a posture she's accustomed to seeing from her mother, so she was unshaken when I haltingly asked, "how do you play?"

"I'll be the orphan," she said. "And you've adopted me, and I'm glad. I like you. I might even love you. But sometimes I get really sad because I still miss my mom, and I'm sad that she's gone, and I don't know how to tell you that. I don't want to make you think I don't like you. And sometimes I get sad, and I don't even know why I'm sad. So you have to show me that you're going to love me even if I get really sad sometimes and you don't know why."

Thank you very much, sweet Olivia.

Fast forward through countless prayers for the "new babies"....earnest, honest prayers.... to this week.

A couple of nights ago, I was home late from teaching. I still had some work to do on the computer, so I didn't make it to bed until VERY late. My usually night-comatose husband woke up almost immediately to tell me that he and the kids had had a "big night." "I think you should know about it," he said, " in case it comes up tomorrow."

"Okay," I thought, blank-brained.

"We talked about the adoption," he went on. "I'm not sure how it came up, but when it did, I asked Olivia if she was getting excited about the new babies....."

Let me interrupt to let you know how deeply invested she is in this whole process. In trying to save for the completion of this process, we eliminated virtually all extraneous memberships/activities from our lives and the lives of our kids. That meant that music classes, dance classes, etc. were all suspended for at least several months until we could be sure that our resources were sufficient to complete this process. Olivia was with me when I stopped by the ballet office to pay the last bill from last spring. I hadn't planned to "announce" the no-ballet edict at the actual ballet studio, but the question was posed, and I stood trying to explain my reasoning to a lovely administrative ballet person while my daughter melted into sobs at my side. Mother of the year I was not. After we left, I talked to her about the choice. Then I decided to try something, committed to affecting whichever outcome my experiment solicited, whatever it took. I told Olivia that I hadn't planned to stop ballet without talking to her first and that I still had time to enroll her in classes. I told her that we, as a family, were trying to cut out a lot of extra costs this fall so that we could bring the new babies home as soon as possible. ...sometimes giving up things we really enjoyed. I told her that, no matter what, the new babies were coming home and that we were going to find a way to make it happen.....that we were making these small sacrifices just to make sure we are absolutely ready when it happens so that there aren't any delays. Then, I let her choose: she could do ballet or she could forgo ballet, and we would include the money that we would have spent in our provision for being ready to bring home the new babies as soon as possible. The Nutcracker is this weekend. We aren't going because she thought that would make her very good choice feel just too sad.

SO, back to the conversation with Josh...

"She said, 'yes, I'm excited....well maybe...' and then she burst into tears. She said 'I'm just afraid that you won't have room on your lap for all four of us.' I scooped up her and Josiah and showed them how my arms stretched so far that there would always be room...that I could hug, and cuddle, and tickle...and I reached around and tickled them....four kids with no problem. We talked about that for a long time. I told her that no matter how many kids we had, she would always be my only Olivia and he would always be my only Josiah and we talked about what it meant to be completely special. Then, I thanked her so much for talking to me because my greatest sadness would be in thinking that she had to be so afraid and so sad all alone...I told her that, even after the babies come home, I want her to always tell me whatever she's feeling so that, no matter what, she doesn't have to feel it alone."

"It sounds like you handled it really well, Josh....You're a great da.."

"There's more. I asked if she had anything else she wanted to talk to me about. She said that she and Josiah were worried about something. She and Josiah, and I looked at him, and he nodded. Like they've been talking about this together, just the two of them, for awhile. She said that both she and Josiah were worried that you and I were going to catch whatever sickness might have killed the babies' mom and dad while we're in Ethiopia. And they are afraid we are going to die too. "

"Wow"

"So we talked about AIDS"

"You talked about AIDS?! You had a HUGE night!"

"I told them that there are a lot of sicknesses in Ethiopia that we don't have in America because there are medicines in America that stop people from getting sick. They know about vaccines, and I told them how you and I are getting vaccinated for everything we possibly can so that we won't catch any of the sicknesses that lots of people die from because of those American medications. Then I told them that one virus that a lot of people die from in Africa called HIV can only be caught in certain ways, and I told them that you and I aren't going to be doing any of the things that can cause someone to catch that virus while we're in Ethiopia."

"Perfect answer."

"You should have seen them. It looked like a 40 pound weight was lifted off of both of their shoulders after we finished the conversation."

How about that father and those kids!

To date, the biggest worry that Josiah has expressed about the new babies is that they will bite or hit him. Who knew he had such heavy concerns? And such conversations with his sister!?

We're all a little older.
I'll be glad when we can be older all together.

Homeschool vs. Public School

Perhaps I'll revise that title later; it sounds like I'm heralding a steel cage deathmatch between two opposing groups of kids. I'm not (I'm NOT). I've been revisiting a longstanding debate between myself and.....myself: me vs. me (much more boring than my aforementioned wrestling intimation....but much less ethically volatile). Where to begin.... Do I start with the sometimes glorious sometimes grueling (mostly pretty terrific) year of homeschooling my kids that I only recently wrapped up with a preschool graduation ceremony at grandma's? Or should I begin with the school supply aisle at Targ*t last month, where our public elementary school list "outed" us in front some of our favorite fellow homeschoolers?

I'll just give you my lists...the nebulous coagulations of pros and cons and what?s that I've never organized into lucid bulletpoints.....never...until NOW.

What I love about homeschooling:

1. Spending time with my kids. If you've met my kids, then I don't need to elaborate on this one. In case you haven't, imagine hours spent pretending to be....any number of real and fictional characters....while hiking in the woods....sharing grapes, water, mudpies, and knock knock jokes much funnier than the ones that actually make sense....then add my kids to the scene and you have a fairly accurate rendering of the better part of our afternoons together.

2. Learning whatever interests them....and me. As it turns out, I love science and history: two facts that completely eluded me during my years of studenting (it SHOULD be a verb). As it turns out, they love EVERYTHING, with an emphasis on all things attached to a story, song, or bug net.

3. Field trips. I've said it before (is there a more arrogant introductory clause in the English language? I seriously doubt it), I am a terrible stay-at-home mom (so I'll balance it with a little self-effacement). I require the perspective of an apple orchard, or a stage, or a creek, or a museum, or a zoo, or a factory, or a festival, or a creek (yep, there it is again, we love them that much), or a park, or a tree, or a sky, or a library to keep me from going berserk (see my previous post wherein I describe the calculation with which I anticipated conversations with visiting mormons for further elucidation of this point).

4. Scheduling and unscheduling our days. I love poring over lesson plans, unit studies, children's books, and educational theories until my eyes burn and I have no feeling in my feet only to wake up WHENEVER WE WANT TO the next day and implement the very best of what I've learned with fantastic students or drop it all and celebrate Bat Day.

5. There are a million or so other things that we loved -- enough, at least, that I thought the bulk justified an open-ended numbered point. We love the seamless continuum across which we turn our loves into our lessons and our lessons into our loves. Josh and I get to play to our strengths, and I think we are all stronger for it.

Things I don't love about homeschooling.

1. Failing, failing, perpetually failing. Here's one glaring example: I planned a year of activities geared to address each day of creation across the span of seven months(so we would spend a month loosely discussing light, one on water and the sky, one on land, dirt, rocks, sea, plants, seeds, and climates........and there it stopped. No "etc." Who knew day three was so rife with educational potential? We didn't do half of the hands on exploration that I had planned for the first three months, and after a full year we were still jostling around in day three.) Some of you more generous readers (hi, mom) are thinking "that's not failure," but I bought wall-length charts of the human skeletal and digestive systems! I organized our entire children's library by their relationship to the days of creation! I planned science experiments, display posters, and literature-based unit studies that we never even broached! I bought wall-length charts! WALL-LENGTH charts! And it turns out we just really like dirt and plants! Who knew!

2. When they love school, they love me. When they hate school, well...you get the idea. I am the one urging them to finish their projects, put away their markers...with lids...when they're finished, and stand for our closing song (oh, we HAVE a closing song, and an opening song, and transition music.....transition music planned to coincide with the relevant aspect of the day or creation we are discussing.....who can blame them for being annoyed?) And when I (also annoyed by my own anality [it OUGHT to be a noun]) failed to communicate the central idea of a lesson or the phonics concept or mathematical principle or logical structure during a given school period, I often failed, too, to love them effectively in the process. My patience waned, frustration mounted, and occasionally someone cried. It stunk. Some days, it really stunk.

3. Balancing passion and pressure. This point relates less to the time I spent with my kids, directly, and more to the interaction that I maintain with the homeschool community at large. The passion we share for enjoying and educating our children drives us together. The pressure to represent is overwhelming. And in case the nineties-rap jargon (you know how I love love love 90s rap) turned homeschool verb(al) seems confusing, I'll take a minute to unravel "represent." What's your curriculum? Is she reading? Phonics or whole language? TV or no TV? Latin yet? Music class? Art class? Ballet? Do you test? Co-op? If none of these questions resonates with you, think freshman year, "What's your major? Did you rush? Are you ready for finals?" or Fall semester, senior year: "What are you going to do when you graduate?" Or for you preacher-readers (hi, dad), "emergent or traditional? saved or baptized? gay-friendly or homo-phobic?" (as a side note, however, I need to point out that, although I referenced my father when I prefaced the religiously-oriented hot-button topics, I can't imagine that any one of these questions would cause him the slightest alarm or that he would venture into a discussion about them unless one of his kids needed a sounding board during a personal crisis....and it would have to be a crisis. He's not particularly religious, in the strictest sense, and RARELY engages "issues" of religion.....unless we make him:). Exhausting! And if it's exhausting for ME to have to represent, imagine the trickle-down effect on my kids! (Emotional Reaganomics!)

4. Which brings me to number four: homeschool weird. There, I said it. I don't think the socio-psycho-pop-cultural-iconifiers have constructed an esoteric label for this one yet, but it's a very real phenomenon. Somehow, the pressure to represent (see number 3)mingles with the overarching sense of failure (see number 1), yielding an environment in which homeschool weird is likely, if not certain, to take over. I don't buy the "lack of socialization" explanation for HSW, for a couple of reasons. First, most homeschool students have a broad and active peer group in their communities and churches. Second, I think the factors that contribute to the HSW phenomenon are so obvious and so obviously unrelated to issues of socialization that I'm surprised they are still discussed so frequently in tandem. Here's an example of the petrie dish in full effect. I have attended a number of homeschool plays, concerts, and performances at which the performance anxiety in the audience is as high or higher than that which is on stage. The sense that lines misspoken, a blip on the public school screen of parental concern, reveal some amplified failure to educate or support by parents whose days and often nights are spent thinking acrobatically of ways to educate and support their children oppresses the otherwise joy-filled atmosphere of a homeschool gathering. Which is why, in the homeschool dyad, it is quite often the parent and not the child who winds up HSW. Some families manage to skirt the issue entirely, finding a glorious middle ground between hyper-intensity and inattention that makes for remarkably close, loving, and enviably educated parents and children. And I need to point out that HSW is not an altogether pejorative term! Some of my favorite people are HSW. I, myself, am branded many different types of weird and am secretly proud of most of them. The danger, for me, that forces this point into the second category rather than the first rests on the fact that I think my personality is exactly the kind of personality that could contribute to the most damaging kind of HSW, where the kid, my kid, feels that a parent's success or failure rests squarely upon his ability to spell really tricky words or to properly assess a logical fallacy. NO BODY needs that kind of pressure. (I am seriously doubting that I'll be invited to speak at any homeschool gatherings on this topic, but it has been a part of my own deliberation, so I thought I'd pass it along).

I'm going to have to abbreviate my public school comments as it is very late, but I'm going to give it a whirl.

Things I love about public school.

1. The pledge of allegiance. I have no explanation for this one. In fact, in a rigorous, ideological debate, I'd probably fall closer to the platform of the anti-pledgers. But I love it. I love the standing up, hand-over-the-heart solemnity of the whole thing. I love feeling like I'm a part of something as big and important as "liberty and justice for all." Throw in a little "My country 'tis of thee" before we are seated, and I'm so full of the untrammelled national pride of youth (before discontent makes you say that stuff with a sneer) that I'm ready to write a treatise or run for office or something. I think you only get the corporate resonance of the language and the broad range of its application in public school (which is why we never did it in homeschool.....our thin three voices couldn't drown out my sneer.....and we already had the whole opening song ritual....it seemed like overkill).

2. THAT teacher. The one who notices and reaffirms the talents and aspirations that your parents have cultivated and encouraged since birth (or, in a couple of cases I can think of [not you, mom...parents of my friends] gifts that parents may have been completely blind to). Somehow, in the language of this teacher, this third party observer, your potential sounds true and you begin to chase it down. I love teachers who challenge and inspire individuals rather than categorically educating their students. There are tons of them! Ask your public school graduate friends, and most can name at least one.

3. School plays, field days, sports, dances (yes, dances....think of my 90s rap affinity, and you just about have the picture), academic teams, competitions, clubs (although, I never really did clubs....they didn't make sense to me without performances or competitions...I'm too much of an extra-curricular capitalist, I guess), choirs, bands, and ALL of their AWARDS days. I eat this stuff up.

4. Report cards and tests. (And right about now you're thinking I should elaborate on the phrase Public School Weird because what else would you call that?) I love knowing what's expected and then knowing where I stand. I love it.

5. The system. I love participating in a predictable system that, given time and attention, can serve your every inclination. Do you want to learn? There's a way. Do you want to do as little as possible? The system allows for that. Do you want to cross-list courses and achieve as much as possible with as little effort as you can manage? There's a system for you! The public school system is (or at least has historically been) pliable and a student with supportive parents has almost no greater ally than a predictable educational system.

Whew.

Things I don't love about public school

1. The conspiratorial folder. You are 5 or 6 or 7. You believe that your teacher loves you, has taken you into her confidence as a partner in learning and fun. You have grafted her into the thin tree in your inner nursery of trust alongside your parents and favorite grandparents and a couple of aunts, and then, WHAM, in walks another teacher, and she whips out the conspiratorial folder behind which she is most certainly scoffing at you, maligning you, mocking the class, discussing your bad habits, or berating your parents. WHATEVER she is doing, she is making a dramatic gesture of excluding you by holding up a notebook or a folder that conceals her words but not her adult-ish, whisper-masked scornful tone....sometimes it's held so carelessly that it doesn't even hide her animated, almost assuredly snide eyebrows! You feel isolated, violated, and excluded. And here's a weird thing. Some teachers are so surfeited with kid-culture that they whip out the conspiratorial folder around parents. I've seen the thing used at PTA meetings, in conferences, at orientations, all of which involve only adults. On what planet is it deemed acceptable to overtly exclude other grown ups for the purposes of whatever teacher-speak cannot be accomplished outside of the context of that impermeable folder? It's not....ever! I hated it as a kid, and I hate it now....and I hate it for my kid.

2. Lunch, recess, and student elections. After a whole decade of movies devoted almost exclusively to disassembling the tenuous social strata of public education (think Goonies, Pretty in Pink, Breakfast Club, Can't Buy Me Love, Sixteen Candles, Lucas.......etc.), the "youth of America" remains unphased. Lunch tables are unmistakably demarkated; hallways are minefields. It's a feudal state. I'm not sure I was a serf (look at me pulling out the medieval terminology I learned in 5th grade....there's nothing I learned in public school that I didn't learn in either 5th or 6th grade....ask my parents; they'll back me up on this one). In fact, I think the problem was that I wasn't sure where I belonged. I bounced from landowner to serf to sub-aristocracy with uncomfortable ease (that's the oxymoron that could caption my entire high school career)....I never really landed, but I'm not sure that anyone ever did. Maybe if we had tackled the Molly Ringwald movies a little sooner....

3. Checkmarks, punitive writing assignments, revoked recess privileges, names on the board. I hate crap like that. Give me a good old-fashioned trip to the principle. Or demerits. Or detentions, or something. AHHHHH, the system. The system, I can handle. It's the renegade dictatorial classroom strategies that wear me thin.

4. THAT teacher. If they can build, they can also destroy. For my husband, it was an elementary school choir teacher; for my Dad, it was, first elementary PE and then a long string of English teachers; my mom had several of them in grade school; and mine was a first grade teacher. The parts that these teachers break off never grow back. And so my husband won't sing in front of people, and my father won't dance, and my mom carries around innumerable scars, and I am earnestly self-conscious and mathematically awkward. And lots of teachers break lots of kids. Just ask any of your public school graduate friends; they can almost all name at least one.

5. The heavy girl in the sparkly sneakers. I hung out on an elementary school playground with my son the other day during a kindergarten recess in the early part of the second week of school. Three girls ran over chasing some boys in an ill-defined tag game. A few steps behind, an overweight little girl tried to find her way into the game. The most vocal of the tag-players was oblivious to her presence. In fact, it was tag-player number three that the hopeful little girl was addressing. "Hey, can I play with you?" Pause, "Hey, can I play?"......Again and again, until finally #3 turned to the little overweight girl with an irritated expression and some surreptitious muttering before looking for approval to Tag leader #1, conventionally cute and well dressed, and recommencing her ambiguous role in the game. The heavy girl looked down and shifted her weight back and forth in pink, sparkly sneakers. I didn't want to cry until I saw her shoes. I've bought sparkly shoes of all kinds. One year, I was given $20 or something for my birthday, and I went to the mall...the MALL, and stretched the $20 at a sale in some boutique-y store to buy 4 sweaters. You can imagine how cool I must have felt (and, with some perspective, you can probably imagine how "cool" my sweaters must have been at 4 for $20...they had short sleeves). I just knew that my time on the periphery was over, that with these sweaters, I could break through into the mystical ring of belonging that I kept bouncing off of. Of course it didn't work, for various reasons (not the least of which were the sweaters themselves, I'm sure.....4 for $20 at the mall....short sleeves....short sleeved sweaters), but it was worse than before. I kept looking down at my meal-ticket tops expecting the situation to change...expecting to feel important like in my dreams....and the rebuffing was more painful because of my uniform.....I stared at my sweaters the way this little girl looked at her pink sparkly sneakers. And they gave her courage; she tried again, "Can I play too?" This time she called out as the #3 girl began to run away, with a vaguely sympathetic but still annoyed look of disdain on her face....off to more amorphous tag, I guess, increasingly aware of the threat that sparkly shoes posed to her own position in the tag game.....fearful, I guess, of her own not-belonging. But, wide-eyed, the heavy girl with the sparkly shoes followed, calling after her again and again the same, steady unrelenting question, "Can I play?......Can I play?".....Until finally, the teacher blew her whistle and the kids began to fall in line, the little girl shuffling to her spot, her eyes, confused, glued to her sparkly shoes. A few days later, my son and I were parked in the car line waiting to pick my daughter up from school, when I saw the little girl again, lined up with her kindergarten class on the way in from recess. They were lined up alongside a brick wall, and the little girl had both hands up in her hair, clutching strands on either side as she faced the wall, kicking it again and again with her sparkly pink shoes....fierce and bitter...while other children filed past her, until a teacher finally told her to get back in line. All of this during the second week of Kindergarten!

None of this analysis is designed to be even-handed. Not everyone experiences school, at home or elsewhere, the way I have. Not everyone listens to Pink Floyd's The Wall with their matriculating Kindergartener, assuring her that her teacher will certainly encourage and appreciate the unique and special person that God made her to be, but that the song illustrates the pull toward conformity - the insistence that children become the same, like bricks in a wall that ultimately keeps people apart - sometimes engendered by the social circumstances of school and validated by some teachers.......not her teacher of course because her teacher wants her to become the unique and special person that God created her to be......but some teachers. Our three year old danced around the house for days yelling out "How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?" We are, in some ways, unique. In other ways, we are not.