Referral-versary

On November 10th last year, while visiting family in Mississippi, we heard for the first time about our daughter. I was with my parents, and we printed these photos.

One year later:

That's kind of cool, right?

I would write more about this day except that two kids is a kick-in-the-pants that leaves little time for reflection, at least for me.

Pappy

Pappy arrived, and we promptly went for a walk in the woods.

Perspective

My dad arrives today for a week-long visit. Why did he choose a random week in rainy and cold November to come see the grandchildren (one of whom he'll be meeting for the first time)? Well, it's because Ted is working in Canada for two weeks, you see. He's been gone for eight days now, and his absence has made me realize how spoiled I am by being married to a man who believes so heartily in the sharing of all household responsibilities. Since every last one of them has fallen on me in the last week, I've gotten...frayed around the edges.

I didn't get around to taking out the garbage this week (it was Halloween night and who has time?). I only managed one simple hairstyle for Beti for the whole week. I snapped at the kids more than usual. When the kids were in school, I was 100% of the time at the office trying to squeeze in work. I haven't slept enough (I could relate to so much in this article).

Friday morning at work, the art lesson was to draw/paint your home in Africa (the art teacher was absent, and this is what I came up with on my own). One of our newer seniors, a woman from Somalia, started telling me about her family and her home. It was bright pink and had a coconut tree beside it that they would use in most of their cooking. Then I asked about her children, and I always forget what a painful question this can be for our seniors.

She told me that when fighting broke out in Mogadishu when her nine children were all at home, she only had time to grab and gather to her the youngest five. The four oldest, all teenage boys, she had to leave to fend for themselves, hoping they were meet up later in a safe place. They were capable and strong, and it was the choice she had to make in that moment.

She hasn't seen them since then.

Four of her children now live in Minnesota, but she chooses to live in Oregon because she can't stand the cold over there. She sees them regularly though. She has a Somali roommate she takes care of. She works at a hotel, cleaning the rooms. She comes to our art classes and creates beautiful pictures. She wears gorgeous robes, sometimes with sequins in intricate designs. It's easy to make her laugh. I love having her in the program.

I still feel a bit ragged. As I write this, it's Saturday morning, and my kids didn't really take too much to heed my directive last night, "Tomorrow is Saturday, so when you wake up, close your eyes and go back to sleep." They both woke me up way too early (as in, school-day early!) despite being allowed to stay up last night to watch a movie from start to finish. It's only 9am, and I've already felt frazzled by their neediness.

So really what I think is that I need to get over myself. My kids are here with me, alive and strong, and what do I really have to complain about. Nothing.

Thankful 1 (which should be 2)

A good night's sleep and waking up fully rested an hour before the kids.

My library, which I know belongs to everyone in our county but that I still think of as only mine.

True-blue friends, the kind who never judge, who swear and let me swear, who make me and my children wonderful things by hand and love, who I can call at a moment's notice and who ask for help from me too.

Sunny fall days that start out right above freezing but warm up by afternoon.

The people of Ireland for creating and selling Barry's black tea.

Old Friends

These two were born one year apart in the same city in Ethiopia. They traveled together to Addis Ababa.


Now they both live in the Pacific Northwest.


Now they have brothers and sisters.


And they'll always have each other.

School Meeting

Tonight, we went to a meeting at B's school about changes that will be happening next school year. There was a fair amount of complex drama that happened last year about district lines and such. With no kids in the system at that point, we just listened from the sidelines; this year though, we are going to these meetings to educate ourselves about all the ins-and-outs. It's interesting.

At one point in the meeting, we were to join up in small groups to discuss the proposed changes and to clarify what our values are as a community. I ended up in a group with a four other parents, two of whom were African-American mothers. One of these women brought up the issue of diversity in schools, and how important it is for her kids to have some faces that look like theirs in the class.

I'm pretty sure at this point she didn't realize I was an adoptive mother of a black child, which I'm sort of glad about since I then got to hear her unfiltered opinions about white parents who adopt black children. She joked about how she and her friend sit on the soccer field and try to pick out which of the black children are either "mixed" or "adopted." She pointed her finger saying "Yep, look at that messy hair. Adopted. Mixed. Adopted, adopted, mixed." Then she started laughing.

She went on for a while about how these parents think that "love is enough" all while not preparing their kids for the "different reality" that their kids will grow up in, simply by having darker skin. She's exactly right. Turns out she's a therapist and that some black adult adoptees have come to her to talk about how they don't know where they fit in, how their white parents didn't expose them to black culture so they have no way to judge character. She said that these kids end up in wrong crowds sometimes because they don't have positive black role models who show them how to judge character and help them know their place in the world. She even said that some white parents don't listen when their kids tell them instances where they were discriminated against.

I also found it interesting that she makes sure when her children are placed in their classes each year that "if there is only one other black child in that grade, they better be in my child's class." I was also thrilled to hear that one of her children was taught by B's kindergarten teacher, and that she loved her. I mean, she gushed about how wonderful she is.

She does "curly hair parties" for moms like me who are just learning. She is a bright, shining light of a person.

I also got her card before I left for the night.

As Long as One and One is Two

Today on the playground, I noticed Abe standing at the bottom of a slide screaming up at some bigger boys at the top. I called him over to me. He trudged my way with shoulders down, Charlie-Brown-style. He said they'd been making fun of him for sucking his thumb.

So it begins.

I guess I sort of liked that his response was to yell back at them, despite their being older than him, bigger than him, and at the top of the slide with him at the bottom. I also admit to liking that he let me pick him up and walk with him out of sight of the big boys while he rested his face against my face with his thumb back in his mouth. I told him about how this is one of the reasons we've been telling him that he should reserve the thumb for the bed. As I'm telling him this, he looks at me sort of googly-eyed, leans forward and kisses my nose.

Substitute "father" for "mother" and "daughter" for "son," and you've got my feelings for my son. Sometimes, it's a literal ache in my chest, my love for this boy.