nudle

What do I know that I could write about, that would be different from what other people write about? I know motherhood. I know what it feels like to be an unpublished, unknown author, but that sounds sad. Like a sad sack wrote it. No one likes a sad sack. Cry, and you cry alone and all that. Oh. It's weep, and you weep alone. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1883. So I know how to look stuff up on the internet, but that's not different from anyone, these days.

I know adoption. There is much mixed up in the wondrous, miraculous, gruesome sausage that is adoption. I'm not sure I have the courage to write about it. But thank you, Ella Wheeler W. for your headsticker of a platitude, because not having the courage to write about our adoption sounds sad-sacky too. It sounds worse. It sounds pussyish.

I can't write words like pussyish in a public blog though, because I want to be a children's book author. I wonder if there is a way to separate my identities, and I wonder if this is just another way I am torpedoing my new chosen career. By the way, part of the seventh definition of pussy in the Urban Dictionary reads "incapable of the capabilities." This cracks me up a little. I'd give the rest of that whole Urban Dictionary site a miss, if I were you, if you don't like a lot of crass profanity. If you do, I recommend you pick up a Chuck Palahniuk book. He's much better.

I need to write something besides this infernal middle grade novel that I cannot finish. (I WILL finish it.) (Hi, Sybil.) My training-wheels book.

I'm thinking about starting an adoption blog. I hope I can remember stuff to write about from the last six years, and was it really six years ago that we started thinking about adopting? Maybe five.

What else do I know besides being a mother (there are a lot of those mothers out there) and some fading knowledge of design research, and rusty-as-hell print design expertise, and what it's like to grow up in the suburbs and move to the city, only end up in a suburban part of the city? Heh. Never actually thought about that truth until now.

What else do I know, anyway?

Dear Han,

One week ago today (it feels like five minutes) we all, with Grandma and Granddad and Kathy and Delaney, went to family court. Finally, our union is done! In the eyes of the world, we are a family. Our lawyer was efficient and funny, supplying a running patter that was part instruction, part explanation and part humorous commentary. He has helped with five thousand adoptions! One of his families had forty family members and friends in the courtroom. He said, "The judges love it. It's the only happy thing they see in family court." Then, addressing you and pointing down the hall at a shackled, orange-jump-suited man being led into a courtroom he said, "And you want to avoid that look if you can, son. Now congratulations, go celebrate, eat junk food."

You want so badly to talk these days! When, in a book, you see a cat (or a fox or tiger or bat) you yell, "Cat! Cat! Cat!" You have a lot of words, including beer. When you fall or hit your head on something you tearfully reenact it for me, pointing to the offending piece of floor or furniture and saying, "There! There!" You occasionally throw mini-tantrums, kicking your feet and making your mouth into an O as you cry and lie down. You are not a fan of costumed children or adults. But you love to celebrate everything, hoisting your schooner of milk and crying, "Coo!" 

Coo to all of us, Hanster Monster.

Love,
Mom

   

Dear Han,

We are in the office. It's sunny out, and this room is cozy. I am more relaxed than I've been in days, and you are sitting on my lap at the desk, in front of the computers. I feel warmth from your small, solid body. You move the mouse and it messes up my typing and when something happens on the screen, an odd pop-up window or a flash of mistake, you say, "Oh, cool!" I take the mouse out of your hand (you are now examining the underside) and you say, "No, no." You pick up the rollerball pen and take the lid off, put the lid on, take the lid off, put the lid on. You say, "Guck." I think you mean stuck, but who knows? You pick up the stapler and the pen falls to the floor. Out come the staples. "Uh, oh," you say. Half the staples fall to the floor. You pull the spring, I say no. You reach for the return address stamp. The papers to hire the attorney to finalize your adoption sit on the desk in front of us, waiting to be put in the already-addressed envelope. I will mail them on the way to the park, after we have a snack. You will fall asleep in the stroller on the way home.

Love,

Mama

Dear Iona,

I feel like I should be writing a letter to your brother, because I haven't yet, but I want to write to you. I carry a lot of guilt lately about how I feel (and don't feel). I don't know how to shake it yet, but I'm going to shake it, the guilt. It makes me angry, which is bad for everyone.

Tonight we were reading a book we've been enjoying, Holes, by Louis Sachar. I suddenly realized I should have read it first, because it is too old for you, by perhaps three years. There is a part about racism that knocked me flat on my ass, only since this is a letter to you I will replace that word with bottom. I cried when I read ahead a little (thank you, foreshadowing, my trusty ally) and cried when I closed the book. I want to shield you (and your brother) from the ugliness in the world.

I want to shield you and your brother from the ugliness in me. Which brings me to...

...this letter is partly for Han after all, because what I want to write is that I think I have a touch of Post Adoption Depression. Which is why I'm up at 1:30 in the morning when I need nine hours of sleep every single night. I spent the past four hours researching PAD (its snappy acronym). So, sorry I've been a bit of a nightmare lately.

Maybe this letter is for me.

I do want to say to you that I love you, and I expect to love your brother just as much as I love you, soonish. If I push you too hard to be something you're not, or good at everything because I know you can be, or old enough to read the books I want to read, I'm so sorry. I love you just the way you are, sweet and wise and innocent; seven years old.

Any minute now, I'm going to let go of guilt.

love,
Mommy

Illness, tears, transracial adoption and long, parenthetical avoidances.

I'm sitting in the local independent coffee shop and thoroughly enjoying my vacation from parenting while putting off writing. Oh, is this writing?

I've been thinking (and crying, the tears are always just below the surface these days) about illness and children lately. A young friend is in the hospital, and through him I've met another young man who is ill. Another friend, the mother of a girl we know with a chronic (but under control) illness just finished a book of poems about it and did a beautiful reading at the children's hospital (very proud of her) and I wept from the moment I sat down, the tears just streaming down my face, and I found that embarrassing but I was riveted by her poetry so I couldn't leave (though a huge, scared part of me wanted to escape). It is so completely unfair for children to be very ill, and I rail against it, and then I took Iona to an eye doctor to investigate this thing she's been saying for years (since she was three? four?): "Mom, things look small. Everything's smaller. You look really small, like tiny!" Then things go back to their normal size after a few minutes, and she never seems particularly upset by these episodes, and I only recently took it seriously (let that be a warning to you all out there with children seeing things small or large; go get them checked). This is the third time we've seen a doctor about it, though the first time it was just one of those chain optometry places in Chicago when she was four or five, and they had nothing to say except that her vision was fine.

Her pediatrician did routine neurological tests last winter and said she seemed perfect, and suggested we see an eye doctor, and so now I've finally gotten around to taking her. The diagnosis is micropsia, which is a change in visual perception that can be caused by early onset migraines, epilepsy, a brain tumor or extreme substance abuse and/or psychological problems. I choose migraines for Iona; thanks. But our next stop is the neurologist, where we will rule out the scarier stuff.

Meanwhile I have a babysitter and I've been watching a really well-done video here in the coffee shop as I avoid writing (this DVD is way overdue at the school library so I can justify my writing avoidance for the next few minutes at least). It's called Struggle for Identity: Issues in Transracial Adoption and A Conversation 10 years Later, and within these interviews with adult adoptees there are all sorts of things pushing my buttons, so many I had to stop for a few minutes and write this (so I guess, again, I'm not really avoiding writing as much as I'm avoiding watching this thought-provoking, discomfiting video and avoiding writing what I should be writing which is, in my head, a story for children about a brother and sister whose mother has run out on them, leaving them with their largely absent father, and one of them is adopted, hmmm, and then I would like to illustrate it myself so I'm also avoiding my drawing practice which, any day, I will start, really, and I did actually sign up for a drawing class, thank you Sarah for your encouragement and I wish you the best of luck in LA! and this is the longest parenthetical passage I have ever written! and possibly with the most egregious punctuation too).

I would like to post all my thoughts about the video, but since it's all about carpe diem lately because I seldom come back and do what I mean to, I'll list what I've got so far, quickly:
- The young people (who then become older people in the 10 years later conversation) say you (as transracial adoptive parents) better be able to articulate why you're adopting transracially
- They talk about the importance of taking a strong, active, anti-racist stand, throughout the whole rest of your life
- They say that (and this is so right, I think) for many children the things that are important to parents are the things that become important to their children, so you can't just pay lip service to the racial customs of your child -- you have to truly value them, get behind them in attitude and deed

Cripes almighty. There's a lot rattling around in my head. My heart has been doing this nervous fluttery thing it does when I am suppressing stress, and shit I was supposed to go for an EKG today which means I will have to leave the coffee shop! I am sad to leave the coffee shop! I am not leaving until I have written some of this little story that's plaguing me, kicking from inside, bothering me every day, wanting to come out, about this mother who runs out on her children. Which I would never do. So there, heart. Flutter away.

Family 2.0

Family portrait by Iona. I like how Ewan is flexing his muscle.

I've been immersed in parenting, my mother and father-in-law visiting, the gradual process of getting to know Han, writing in my cheap notebook, badly-needed exercise, and now the first day of second grade.

In one moment about a month ago, sitting with Han in the rocker before nap, I became aware that bonding is the sensation of not knowing where your body ends and the other begins. I am getting there with Han, you know, the place where you don't think before you reach out and wipe your child's nose with your bare hand? Most fifteen minute increments are good. Some are magical. Others, I don't want to be that person. I try to breathe through those bad time periods, and they pass, and I look back twenty minutes later and I'm surprised they happened.

Everyone who meets Han wants to touch him, hold him, love him. That helps me love him during more of those fifteen minute increments, and I'm not sure I 100% like that fact, but I accept it.

We continue apace.

Getting better, though I constantly wish I could be more.

I realized how much help I need; I'm humbled and grateful.

Incrementally, I let go of the illusion of control.

I discovered that eco-friendly diapers can overflow a toilet.

Now it's five minutes later.

Han was dancing just now, actually standing and bouncing up and down and looking at me with devotion, and this goofy but brilliant classical rendition of AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" was coming out of the speakers, and I felt it: Love. We humans truly are bizarre. And maybe we should call him Angus after all.

It's going to be great!

Han is a really nice kid. We're lucky. He slept through the night last night and took an almost-two-hour nap today. As long as we feed him enough, he has a sunny personality and is active and curious. Instead of a laugh when he's amused he makes this sound like a pterodactyl, a breathing-in creaky croak, and we all laugh, and he grins and does it again. He's cautious with the attempted walking (it won't be long), a little cautious with Kitty, and he drools, and he thinks touching the (plugged) outlets is a fun game. I say no and get increasingly stern, and he smiles, bows his head, and goes for it over and over until I remove him. I need to memorize Korean "no," a word with which I'm sure he's familiar. We have a small booklet titled, "Basic Vocabulary for Adoptive Family" that the Korean agency gave us. No, when addressed to a child, is ah-ni-da. Bowel movement is ddong. How do you pronounce that?

So things are going really well, but I'm not yet in love. You know when you're dating and at first you think you're in love, because the person is particularly attentive or adorable or performs well on stage, and then on the tenth date you notice that they like to scratch their head with their fork or have a habit of ending sentences in prepositions, and you feel that sinking feeling, like maybe this isn't a good match after all, and you see the ugly breakup in your future, and the disappointment and heartbreak and going back to dating, and then in the end you marry them and the fork-scratching thing just seems cute? Han and I are on that date, and it happened fast, and what I mean by that really bad comparison (because there is nothing he does like misusing prepositions; all he does is need me and occasionally make the mistake of pulling a table over on himself and cry, and then I think at him, you should know better, geez, and then I feel bad for thinking that) is that I know I will fall in love eventually.

So, though I know it's a matter of time, the currently-not-in-love thing makes me feel panicky when coupled with the I-have-no-time-of-my-own-any-more thoughts, that precious time I once had, and frittered away! I frittered it! And I can't finish anything, but that was always the case anyway.

I expected this. Deep breaths. It will be fine, I know.

Last night, as I watched him roll around in his sleep in the Pack 'n Play we have set up in our bedroom because we can't agree on which baby monitor to buy (Ewan wants a video monitor and I don't want to spend the money) I was attacked by tenderness for this tiny, motherless boy, and I wondered if he senses he's not yet the center of anyone's world. Don't we all crave being the center of someone's world, of their heart? I know I do. I felt sad (and more than a touch guilty) that I can't completely share my center with him yet. But like I told a tearful Iona at violin camp a few weeks ago, fake it until you can make it, and I'm taking my own advice.

In the meantime, I emailed a friend who babysits for Iona to see if she is available during the day. I know, it's too early and I need to bond with him, but once a week, for a half day or maybe six hours? That's okay, right? I'll consult some books, and he's off to the pediatrician tomorrow so I'll consult her as well.

Getting used to each other.

Of course, I have to do everything more quickly now, and can do only half as much.

Han is teaching us to care for him. Some lessons:

1. Hold me all the time, preferably standing (walking is best)
2. I only like the ugly baby carrier so don't even think about looking hip
3. I will only sleep if I am lying on you
4. The less sleep you have the easier it is for me to practice mind control
5. Make sure I have a full belly, but please know it is bottomless
6. I might reward you with a smile and a laugh if you demonstrate full understanding of the above

Above: the exception.

Four people in three coach seats for eleven hours.

He likes dad best.

Likes to eat.

Below: Seoul adventures...

Goodbye to hotel, featuring Iona in hanbok: