againsttheglass.com

It’s all about me!

No matter how much I try to focus on my kids, I always seem to experience them through the thick goo of my own experiences. To that end, I’ve always had in the back of my mind the thought that the way I parent may partly be determined by the gender of my child. I’m embarrassed about this.

This may not be relevant to those of us who were parented by empowered, confident women. I’m not one of those. My mother was naturally brilliant, but bonzai’d by the early 20th century Catholic culture into which she was born. She graduated from college in the 1930s (no small feat during the depression), but marriage and pregnancy took her out of the workforce a mere 2 years after that. In short, without all the uncomfortable details, she was not a happy camper all of her life. She was a bundle of unrealized intellectual capacity married to a man who, admittedly, could not match her abilities. She knew it, too.

I internalized her self-loathing for missed opportunities, her willingness to sacrifice self for the ambitions of her husband and the welfare of her way-too-many kids for whom she had little aptitude for raising. (Quote: “I never even liked dolls when I was a kid.”). She loved us fiercely, because she had real depth, but her mothering was perfunctory in spite of her love for us. She described it as benign neglect, and said that was why we each developed so differently and independently.

She missed her father, who left her, all her life. She married a man who knew how to abandon you even while living under the same roof. And she idealized men as a result. That’s the gooey uncomfortable part for me, and the part that I’m now having to face as a parent more forcefully than I’ve had to face before. This started to become apparent to me during my week in Ethiopia. My response to Mihiret was decidedly different than it was when I first met Blake.

I have idealized Blake since he was born. My love for Blake remains in the realm of adoration. Part of this is simply because he is my first, but the part about his being a boy cannot be denied. I have written countless songs about this, how the love I had for my father was distant and idealized. The love for my mother was more real, about snotty noses, vacuum cleaners, second-hand-smoke, booboos, the smell of Canadian Club on her breath, and packing lunches. It lacked romance, until I felt her slipping away from this world. Grief has a way of creating sentimental feelings out of painful stuff, and it’s a great survival tool for us humans.

Trouble is, when your relationship with your father, your husband, and men in general, is characterized by prolonged absences and only fleeting windows of presence, the grieving is constant, the longing impenetrable. They are either loathed or idealized, and with me, the two are frequently simultaneous. It’s too hard to love in a real way a person whose presence is more ephemeral than the one who’s folding your underwear every Tuesday with a Parliament hanging off her lips and curlers in her hair.

I’ve transferred this to Blake and Mihiret, and it’s concerning me. My first reactions to Blake are the desire to help make him better, to help him realize his potential through his learning and behavioral difficulties. Objectively, he’s not an easy kid to live with, but my love for him is so eternal that I see this as a call to arms rather than a white flag of retreat. I put too few expectations on him, and give him many indulgences that I shouldn’t. I’m getting better at it, but it’s a largely intellectual process for me to overcome this tendency. He is my father and my husband rolled into one, ready to head out the door and put me in the back seat of his life, quietly tucked away until he has some free time, or needs me for something. I dread losing his love pathologically, as though his love were to be withdrawn at a moment’s notice.

Then there is my brand new daughter. No such transferrence is taking place there. Instead, I see her as having to master the day-to-day realities much more quickly. I hold greater expectations of her. I feel myself feeling harder towards her, less yielding. I take every encounter as a challenge to shape her responses to the world in a responsible way.

I don’t do that with Blake nearly so much. There are variables here beyond gender: Blake has verbal and cognitive challenges where Mihiret is exceedingly verbal beyond her years. I held Blake in my arms from the time he was 10 hours old and I just met Mihiret at the age of 4. Blake’s emotional challenges make him hard to understand and communicate with; you can see him struggle within himself at times to “get it right,” frequently giving up and having a fit of anxiety. Mihiret, on the other hand, projects that the world is her oyster, and that she’ll consciously test you until you either succumb to her charms or challenge her with a better way. She’s a decidedly different person. And, let’s face it, Blake was my first. I’ve had 6 years of practice and am much less naive about parenting than I was in 2002.

All that taken into account, I could brilliantly rationalize my bifurcated feelings by the above. However, I’m concerned now less about how I’m parenting than about how I feel about these two children based on my historical reactions to male and female. This is just one more thing I’m going to have to dredge out of the depths of my subconscious regularly to make sure I’m not indulging it.

One of the parents on the bus in Ethiopia told me that old saw that parenting is not so much an opportunity for us to help the child grow up as to help ourselves grow up. That’s a healthy way of looking at the parent-child relationship as not a dichotomy between narcissism and self-sacrifice. Rather, it’s a chance to take a trip together towards our better selves. Let’s hope I’m up for it.

People keep telling us that we are “such good people” for adopting Mihiret. We aren’t such good people, take my word for it. And Mihiret is not a charity case. She’s a child who has no more idea about global politics and world hunger than any other 4-year old. Mihiret basically knows only that she wants to eat oranges frequently (we’ve gone through three bags since she arrived 7 days ago), doesn’t want to share anything with anyone, wants to change her clothes about 4 or 5 times per day (can’t wait for this month’s water bill), and brush her teeth constantly since we got her a Cinderella battery-operated toothbrush. The kid is either going to have the healthiest teeth ever, or her gums will be worn away by her 5th birthday.

It’s been a week since we settled in with her. Well, settled being a figure of speech. There really is no settling with a 4- and a 6-year old of any origin. But, this week has been a tumultuous one, for sure, and a lot more painful than I thought it would be for me to adjust.

I am taking maternity leave (called “child care” leave technically) and vacation time so that I can be at home with Mihiret during her first weeks here. I wanted to ground her in the home as much as I can before sending her out into the larger world that today’s 4-year old needs to open up to (IMO).

The plan is to transition her to pre-school gradually until I have to return to work. We will begin that next week, one hour at a time, until she is comfortable enough to see me leave for a prolonged period. Given Mihiret’s obvious advanced verbal abilities (albeit in Hadiiya and Amharic), her need for socialization with others her age in this culture, and the fact that she’ll be starting kindergarten next year, pre-school is going to be the best thing for her. Which gets to my own limits, of which I am rarely proud, but at least willing to cop to.

As the reality of two kids hits me, one well-known and the other new and ready-made, I’m having more trouble coping than I thought with the full-time motherhood thing. It may be that our second child is not an infant, which is the “natural” order of things, I suppose. But, the willfulness of two kids all at once is making me exhausted.

I use willfulness not in a pejorative sense. Rather, it’s a palpable experience, and one that any parent understands. It’s that great sucking sound that’s made when your depleted energy is being called upon to be further depleted in service to a child’s happiness. The will of an infant, although exhausting, is basically biological in nature, and the emotional connection is generated through the fulfillment of the biological needs. Kind of a two-for-one, if you will. With an older child, the difference between need and want is fuzzier, and when the child has not been with you since birth (as Blake has), and comes to you with a history of unmet biological needs (although, thank God, she was very loved), it’s hard to discern the difference. It’s hard for Blake to discern, too, as he alternates between indulging her and bickering, rather loudly at times.

Mihiret has some personality quirks that no doubt arose as a result of prolonged privation. She has learned the art of manipulation for survival, complete with cocked head and wide grin as she attempts something inappropriate; at times not unlike the well-taught beggar children I encountered all over Addis Ababa. The conundrum facing us now is whether to indulge every appetite until she feels more secure and knows that she won’t be wanting any longer OR to shape her expectations appropriately. Which is cruel, and which is compassionate? It’s not so easy to determine when you delve further than your narcissistic need to be “such good people.”

it is tempting to view her as others do: as a deprived charity case that should be given every desire to make up for the past. But, hard-hearted person that I am, I am inclined to think differently. As long as the issue of WANT is the issue, then the fulfillment of WANT, however gratuitous, seems to reinforce that WANT is the holy grail of existence. I think the higher task we are being called upon to take on is to discern, and eventually help her discern for herself, where want and need part company. Which is where not being “such good people” comes in.

We’ve had to say “no” to Mihiret this week, and every time I do, I feel like I’m being knocked further off the “such good people” pedestal. I’ll give you an anecdote to demonstrate. Mihiret likes to color, and only on white paper. That’s something that’s reasonable, and I’m not going to force her to use construction paper, or no wire hangers, if you catch my drift Some preferences are just not worth fighting over. So, I gave her a pile of white paper, and she proceeded to color, spreading the paper all over the floor in the basement playroom as she went from one sheet to the next with a pink and green crayon.

When she was done, the paper was literally covering half the basement floor. She was then on to the next thing. When it came time for lunch, I asked her to pick up the paper and place it in a single place. That’s when her will met mine, and we had a battle for the ages.

Mihiret gave me a look that she gives, kind of a “we are not amused” look. Her lips come together, slightly pursed, and she looks away, tilting her head down. So, I gave her the benefit of the doubt that she may not have understood, and tried to demonstrate. I took one piece of paper in my hand, and showed her how I carried it from the floor to the little desk. Then, I placed it in her hand. She kept her hand limp, and would not accept it from me.

Okay, the narrative in your head then says “the poor thing — she’s been through so much, give her a break — it’s her first week.” But what happens the 4th week? I have to set precedent, even if it’s with a kid that you know has known a lot of pain. So, I give her a time out, and have her sit on the ottoman with her hands in her lap until she’s ready to see the light.

But the light goes unseen. Every few minutes I ask her again to do it, placing the paper in her hand, seeing it go limp and watching the paper fall to the floor. This goes on for about a half hour. She’s not crying, mind you, she is silently refusing.

I see I’m getting nowhere, so, I introduce consequences that I know she won’t like, but with little language at my disposal, and so little history to go by, the only thing I know that really bugs her is taking a nap in her bed. I tell her that she’s obviously tired, and it’s naptime. I take her up to her bed to sleep.

When I do so, she begins to cry, and I’m the worst person on the planet. The “give her a break” committee is lobbying loudly in my head as I carry her to her room. The volume of her resistance escalates. She goes from passive, non-violent resistance to a more “hell no we won’t go” stance, squirming and yelling “No, Mommy!”

I am now the biggest shit on the planet.

In her room, on the bed, she is beside herself. I ask her if she will pick up the paper, and she says nothing. I tell her she’ll have one more chance. As I tell her this, my husband and son arrive in the door, and I make it clear not to interfere with the unfolding process of my reluctant exercise in cruel-to-be-kind parenting. I take her downstairs, her tears falling all the way.

I place her on the floor, on her feet, amidst the scattered paper. “Will you pick it up now?” I say. Nothing. She is sniffling. I place the paper in her hand. She holds it tentatively. I gesture to the desk, and she takes it over. Blake and I then cheer and cheer, and she picks up more paper, and the pile is eventually made as we all help her do it, cheering all the while.

This may sound easy to do for those of you who raise a child from birth, where you have about 18 months to get ready for discipline, but trying to be a really mean shit of a parent to a brand-new, long-deprived child does not come easy to me. I have to divorce myself from the narrative I learned from my Catholic pagan-baby-sponsoring childhood, from Maryknoll magazine images of black children with distended bellies and bony limbs. Mihiret is not a cause, not a movement, not a “mission.” She’s just a kid who needs guidance and parenting as well as a chance to simply survive. And as long as she and her brother are fighting over who gets to drive the Power Wheels Jeep, that’s the only narrative that “such good people” like us can afford to follow.

The day started out early. I got up at 5:30, and rushed to get ready for the bus that was taking us south to the city of Hosanna. The bus ride was to be 3 ½ hours long, so we were leaving at 6.

Hosanna is where the satellite location of the foster care center is located. Most of the children that this agency cares for come from the southern part of Ethiopia, so many of them are relinquished in Hosanna. The children stay there for a couple of weeks to get basic medical care, and then they move them up to the care center in Addis Ababa.

Mihiret has been in Addis Ababa since late May. The purpose of this trip was for all of the families to meet with the respective birth parents of our children. To comprehend, let alone convey, the power of this meeting is impossible; I will instead simply keep it to the facts. The emotions go beyond anything I am capable of writing.

The bus was full by the time I got downstairs to board, just as the sun was coming up and a light rain was falling. They had an extra passenger van that sat three. One family, a nice young couple adopting an infant, sat on board. I was so grateful to be on this van because, rather than having to engage in social banter, I could have a long opportunity for reflection and observation of what I saw along the way.

The road from Addis Ababa to Hosanna has been recently completed. Apparently, in the not so distant past, it was a dirt road. In many ways, it’s a lot like the two-lane highways in Virginia. But there are very few vehicles. There are NO private cars. You see only large passenger vans or trucks. In that way, it’s not at all like a Virginia two-lane highway.

Also, the left hand/right hand side of the road seemed rather flexible. Because there is so little traffic, folks seem to drift back and forth between the two. Our driver’s style was reminiscent of a NY taxi. He honked the horn at anyone walking along the highway (which was pretty much all along the way). He darted in and out and got mad when someone with a goat, or a cow, or a cart, got in his way. He attempted some near misses of kids and old men.

The goats, cows, and carts were an integral part of the life along this highway. Clearly, this highway, as most highways in the US, was a main thoroughfare that had grown up spontaneously and had been used for many years for people on foot before the government paved it and made it ready for motor vehicles. I’m sure there were some eminent domain issues involved since a lot of the huts and small subsistence farms were right up on the road. From what I’m learning about this government, imminent domain is kind of arbitrary and unilateral; there is no government appeal, and the people have no say in anything. They are not reimbursed in any way, simply evicted.

The lives of those living along the highway appear to be continuing as they always have. Children play right along the shoulder, and sometimes in the middle of the road. They wave at you and smile as you drive by. Women washed clothes in the water of the concrete storm drains that lined the sides of the road. A man in tattered pants was washing his feet in it.

Many, many people walk along this road, and they are of all ages. They seem to disregard that this is a motor highway, so walk sometimes five or more abreast. Our driver honked and honked and never slowed down when he saw them. They would move to the side, but were clearly, and justifiably, not very happy about it.

The ways that people organize land and community seem to have some commonalities with the US. Largely, the highway led through farmland, and then eventually you would come upon a town. The towns here were commercial storefronts mingled with residential buildings. It appeared that a family who owned a business would build the store along the street, and live in the back of it.

You don’t walk into these stores. Rather, they are tin lean-tos that are sometimes covered in mud, and sometimes painted bright colors. They are the size of a NYC newsstand, with a shutter that opens in the front, all the goods behind the counter, and a store operator standing there waiting for customers. Many people mingled in front of the stores. At each town, there appeared to be a ping-pong table and a foosball table set up somewhere in front of one of the stores.

The women wore long skirts, the men pants and western clothes. In each of these towns, and there were about six along the way, some people seemed well fed and healthy, and some destitute. They all mingled. One or two women I saw were in western clothing, but for the most part, the clothing was traditional. I took a few pictures, but wanted to save the camera battery for meeting Mihiret’s father.

At one point along the road, the driver stopped to allow the bus to catch up to us. He told us we could get up to stretch our legs. We got out. We were very white and conspicuous.
The children gathered from the side of the road to stare, which they do a lot when they see us anywhere here. There were three sisters, about 10, 8, and 5 was my guess, who poked their heads out from behind bushes one at a time, and trepidaciously came across the highway to look at us. They weren’t begging, but were curious. These three girls were particularly thin compared to the other children. Their hair was long, which is unusual, and unkempt. The other woman asked to take their picture, but that felt weird to me, so I didn’t. I didn’t know what to do. We were advised not to give to beggars. Coward that I am, I went and sat in the van. The driver said we would move on, and I turned around and saw the bus coming up in the distance. I heard these words in my head “When I was hungry, you did not feed me.” I reached into my bag and got the one Odwalla bar I had left for the trip, along with some cash, and ran out the side door. I handed the bar to the littlest one, and the money to the biggest. I smiled at them, turned, and ran back.

The van moved on and, eventually, we arrived in Hosanna. The road turned to dirt for the last mile. It had recently rained, so the dirt was mud and the potholes were deep puddles. The driver of the van weaved in and out to avoid the craters, and we were bounced all around. I have since heard that this bouncing action is called an “African massage.”

We arrived at the Hosanna care center and were taken into a room. There were about 20 of us; about 8 families, some with their current children in tow. The room was a carpeted lounge with a TV, a table, and a woman sitting at a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony in the corner. She was roasting the beans as we came in.

They explained that they had three meeting rooms to meet the birth families. So, they would call us three families at a time, and we had a thirty minute limit. As it has many times this week, my heart beat rose to my throat. I found a seat on the floor and proceeded to quietly freak out. Everyone was kind of silent with the occasional comment back and forth.

They called the first group, and I wasn’t in it. I took the seat that was vacated by one woman and sat next to her sister who had accompanied her on the trip. We talked a little, but I was not very engaged in the conversation with all the nerves. Thirty minutes wore on slowly as the lady in the corner took some frankinscence and threw it on the hot coals. The smoke filled the room, and the childhood smell of Easter Sunday Mass brought me back to Sacred Heart Church and Monsignor Kelly.

They came in and called one more. It wasn’t me. About ten minutes later. It wasn’t me. About 5 minutes later I heard Mihiret’s name. I got up from the chair as if a string were pulling me from the top of my head, and walked outside, along the covered porch, to the door of the little yellow room with five mismatched sidechairs and an old banged up desk desk. I could see Mihiret’s father sitting with his back to the door. I walked further in, and he turned around, extending me his hand.

I went to take his hand, and my emotions got the better of me, so I just reached around his neck and hugged him. He was shaking; this was not culturally correct, but it was something I wanted for Mihiret, something I could tell her when she was older, what it felt like to hug her birthfather.

Mihiret’s birthfather sat, and I sat opposite him. The social worker, who was also the interpreter, sat between us to the side. Mihiret’s birthfather looked at the floor, then at me, at the floor than at me. I didn’t know what to say, although I had a cheat sheet of questions they gave me. I was supposed to take notes, but I couldn’t. It seemed rude. So, I just held the paper and pen on my lap.

First I introduced myself, told him about my husband and son, our work, and where we live, and took the framed picture of our family from my lap and handed it to him. He looked at it curiously, and placed it in his lap as I told him who the people were.

Before I had a chance to ask, he began to explain why he formed an adoption plan for Mihiret. The details of this are part of Mihiret’s personal story, and belong only to her and our family, so I cannot divulge it in this space. But, suffice it to say that the reasons are painful, and his love for his daughter is deep and enduring. He told me about her extended and immediate family, and the events that led up to his taking Mihiret to Hosanna.

I gave him a second framed picture of Mihiret, taken recently, showing her healthy, with a full head of curls, full cheeks, and a flower in her hair. He called her name, took the picture to his lips reverently, and kissed it once, twice, three times before holding it to his heart. His smile was wide, and there was only a single tear from his left eye. This was a man of great strength and dignity. For sure, this was a great man, and Mihiret will know that.

We continued to talk, and eventually each felt a sense of some relief — if not relief from sadness, perhaps from excessive worry. We were told that the session was over. We rose from our chairs, and this time I let him shake my hand and touch my cheek with his, as is the tradition. We were led outside, and I was asked to get my camera. I ran back into the sitting lounge, got my camera from my bag, and one of the care center workers took our picture together. I asked them to take one picture of Mihiret’s father alone, and they did, and it’s a great picture. We then parted.

I went back into the room, and we waited a bit until all the parents were finished. There was a lot of weeping. I wasn’t weeping, just sad. The social worker came in when everyone was done. They told us that we would now have a coffee ceremony, followed by a candle ceremony with the birthparents. A man went around with popcorn (popcorn and coffee is a tradition here, it seems). It was sweetened like kettle corn. The woman then rose with a small iron pan full of roasting, smoking coffee beans. One by one, she went around the circle and held it under each of our noses to smell. She then went back to the coffee pot and cups. She filled each cup with one small heaping spoon of raw sugar, poured the coffee in each one, setting the full ones on a large steel tray. The man went around with the tray, and handed us each a cup, and we drank. Things started to calm down a bit within us and among us, and folks began talking a little bit.
After about 10 minutes, the social worker entered the room and told us it was time for the candle ceremony. They asked us to line up shoulder to shoulder as we were called. They called us by our child’s name. I got in line when I heard “Mihiret.”

Then, the birth parents came in one by one, standing on the opposite side of the room, each facing the adoptive parents of their children. The man lit a candle on the small table, and placed several other candles on the table. One by one, the birthparents picked up a candle, lit from the single flame, and gave the lit candle to the adoptive parents. Mihiret’s father gave me the candle, looking me in the eye only briefly, bowing his head as he turned and walked back to his place in the line facing me. He was shaking.

The birthparents then were asked to recite a prayer in their own language. It was a prayer asking us to care for their children and trusting us with their children’s lives. We then said a prayer thanking them for the gift of their children, promising to care for them, and never let them forget they are proud Ethiopians. I was weeping half way through and could barely get the words out. When it was done, we were told, “You can now say goodbye.” I walked to Mihiret’s father, shook his hand, pressed his cheek to mine, and whispered “Amasegenalahu,” “thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

He turned and walked out, and my heart pulled out with him, but my feet had to stay where they were.

It was then that I finally began to weep, then to sob, then to wail in a way I have not wailed since my father died. As at my father’s wake, I felt my mother’s arms around me, letting me cry, wanting to comfort me. She came to my in spirit, and then in the people in the room who saw how excessively I was crying, and wanted to help. Through tears and snot rolling over my upper lip, I told her I was angry. Angry that the world is like this, that I can’t help him except to give his daughter hope for the future. Angry that our country is so focused on its own greed and aggression when it has every means at its disposal to help this nation. Angry at the leaders of Ethiopia who let this happen to their people as they live off of government lard. I was angry for this man because he has nothing, and angry at myself because I have everything I could wish for but don’t appreciate.

Then, I breathed, and grew silent as she just sat with me. After the emotions, they told us that we would now walk to the care center next door to see where our children first slept when they came. The walk was about two blocks along a dirt road lined with tall hedges. There were children everywhere. Not begging, just curious.

One of us asked if she could take their picture. They were thrilled because they like to look at the picture on the camera after it’s been shot. Apparently, each Sunday when a new group of adoptive families come to town, the kids know, and they come to greet them. So, we all began snapping pictures like crazy, showing the kids. One group of boys was fighting to be closer to the camera, laughing as they popped up in front of each other. I got lots of pictures, and was very grateful for the new camera my husband had given me.

We waved goodbye to the kids when we approached the front door of the care center, a small one story house with a large playroom/living room, and four sleeping rooms. We went first to the newborns, who were amazing. The rooms are small, so the bassinets have no space between them. There were about six bassinets in a 6 X 9 room. One baby was particularly thin, so had probably come in more recently but you could tell had been eating and sleeping well. He rested peacefully as we squeezed in a peered down on his little crib. The others were a little more lively, some sleeping two to a bassinet, foot to foot on opposite ends. They were all peaceful and happy.

We went to the toddler room, which was the room where Mihiret would have slept for her first couple of weeks. There was a new crew there, all precious, a little bleary eyed from their nap. These kids had puzzlement on their faces, half-asleep, seeming a bit disoriented. But there was no crying or fussing.

We saw another two rooms of babies, most in their first six months, including one set of twins. One had a full head of hair with little colored bands in it, and a set of unbelievably wide open eyes. I waved goodbye to her after playing for a few minutes.

We left the house, walked to the bus with the kids again, and waved goodbye.

On the road home, the social worker in our van said that there was a family in a hut along the way that would let us visit and take pictures. When we got there, we crossed the highway and their kids came running, led by the youngest, a toddler with a little yellow knit cap and the chubbiest cheeks. His brother, about six, followed and had a much more skeptical look on his face. I snapped some pictures of them and their house, and the goat tied up in the front. We were invited into the hut, and it was astoundingly large inside. There was a large pole in the middle, with supports fanning out from the top like the spokes of an umbrella. One wall was lined with all types, colors, and sizes of pots and dishes. The floor was hard, painted compressed mud, or cement. The mud walls had been painted white. Half the width was traversed by long, wood supports, running from wall to wall, that acted like loft beds. It was impeccably clean.
The mother and the rest of the children were there. The toddler followed us back and took off his hat. I greeted their mother, and, with her permission, took pictures of her home. Her baby blinked at the flash, and I blinked back, and everyone laughed. I told her that she had beautiful children and a beautiful home, thanked her, and walked with the others back to the van.
The rest of the ride home was like the ride back. I took more pictures, smiled and waved at people. I had some peace. I pray that Mihiret’s father slept well last night, picture of Mihiret by his side. I pray that his peace is lifelong, and that we are agents for good in his daughter’s, in our daughter’s, life. Amen.

Well, today I met Mihiret. They drove me with the other parents on a bus to the child care center and brought all of us into a room. We waited for what seemed forever, and the kids were in the other room, sitting obediently and saying their A, B, Cs loud enough for us to hear. One by one, they took a child down the hall, out the door, and to the playground. Then, they came in and asked their parents to come out. I was fourth out of six.

I walked outside the front door, back along the side of the building to the playground in back. When I did, I saw one of those carousels that kids ride on and push, and they were spinning Mihiret in it. She was wearing a white Winnie-the-Pooh shirt, brown suedecloth pants (with pockets — Mihiret will only wear pants with pockets) and pink strapped sneakers.

My heart started beating really fast when I saw her, and I wondered if this could be real.

I walked towards the carousel, and she dashed up, wanting to get on the swings next to it, smiling and laughing. At this point, she hadn’t looked at me yet. I got to the swing, and one of the nannies spoke to her, telling me I was her Mommy (they call them that here, too). She didn’t look at me, but laughed, and ran from the swing to my arms, giving me an enormous hug. Then she quickly spun around and sat on my lap as though she had been doing that all her life. She sat there for a few minutes, and we cuddled. Then, she wanted to show me a bit of what she could do.

She got on the swing, and I began pushing her. One thing you should know about Mihiret: when you do something with her, she wants to keep doing it for a long time. So, I pushed her for a long time. Then, she got off the swing, turned around, and lied on the swing seat on her belly, just like Blake does. I told her that her brother did that, too, but she doesn’t understand yet what I’m saying. She kept swinging there until the nanny came over.

She walked Mihiret and me to a playroom behind the playground, and we proceeded to play with cars. None of the cars have batteries – they are mostly the kinds you roll along the floor yourself. She had one ride-on toy, a truck that you sit on and ride, and she showed me how she used that. Then, I took a toy car, and wheeled it to her. She began to wheel it back to me. One of the nannies arranged her on the floor directly facing me so we’d have room to continue doing this. Just like Blake, Mihiret likes to make the cars go fast, and gets excited when she makes them crash. She started rolling the cars to me, then immediately pretending to faint, letting out a squeal and falling to the floor. I did the same.

Needless to say, this lasted for a long, long time.

All the while, there were 5 or 6 other toddlers in the room all wanting me to do with them what I was doing with Mihiret. So for every car I rolled to Mihiret, I rolled 2 or 3 cars back while she was rolling ours back to me.

Then, the chasing began.

Mihiret had a rubber duck in her hand, and handed me a toy. Then, she ran out into the playground with the toy, wanting me to chase her. Unfortunately, another family was meeting their child, and Mihiret got right into the video and pictures they were shooting. Everyone laughed – apparently, she does this kind of thing a lot.

We settled back into the playroom, and eventually she and I sat on the floor together, just cuddling. Her hair is very soft, like Blake’s, and it is quite thin and fine. As pretty as she is in her pictures, she is stunning in person. Just like people always do with Blake, folks stop in their tracks when they see her. To a person, all the parents said “Wow. She is beautiful.”

The nannies got the kids one by one to line up at an outside wauter faucet and rinse their hands. Then, they got them together on a picnic table for their morning snack. Miihiret sat on the table, and I stood behind her. They handed around a plate of small pastries, and she took one. She kept turning around, looking up at me and smiling while she was eating. She had crumbs all over her face, and was just beaming up at me.

Snack was over, and she wanted to chase me again, and this time we could do it because all the private videos and photos were over. This chasing lasted a long, long time, each time with her handing me a toy, and running away from me. She would run out to a grownup in the playground and cling to them, or hide behind them, and want me to find her (sound familiar?). Every grownup got to know Mihiret that way, and they could not believe how much running I was doing.

Mihiret was starting to get tired, so she stopped at the climbing bars, and decided to show me how she could climb. She dropped her rubber duck, and another kid took it. She started to cry, and the nanny retrieved it for me. I then helped her down, but she stubbornly preferred to do it on her own.

Mihiret has a stubborn streak, a quick temper, and a quick ability to let go of being angry. She does not need to be told twice to do anything if she’s doing something she shouldn’t be doing. I think I was the only parent whose child was so attached at this point that she was actually beginning to test me to see what I’d do if she misbehaved. It seems that a gentle “no,” and holding (not grabbing or pulling) her hand will stop her. She pulled a girl’s hair, I hold her hand and said “no,” she took it off, and looked for the next toy. She also pushes other kids a lot, but I think this is her age and, like Blake, she has a very individual spirit that stands out. I venture to say that she will not suffer fools gladly.

Now she was really tired. She began scratching her ankle, and it appeared she had been bitten by a bug. She got cranky and wanted the nanny. I stepped back, and let the nanny do her thing. It was time for the children’s nap. I said goodbye to Mihiret, and “Abesegenalehu” which means “thank you.” She laughed. Then, as she was walking away, she turned around and gave me a pouty look.

There were other activities the parents had, including lunch back at the guest house, a presentation about Ethiopian parenting and a tour of the facility. We then had time for another hour-long visit with the children. This time, it was at the infant care center, a newer building where they had brought all the kids, dressed up in fresh clothes, and were interviewing them one-by-one for their life videos. When we walked into the courtyard (all the buildings here are surrounded by high block walls and have a courtyard in front), Mihiret was on the terrace in front of the camera, sitting on a chair. She saw me walk in, got the biggest grin, and waved at me. My heart again. I was so glad she knew who I was, and was glad to see me.

We walked into the center, took off our shoes, sanitized our hands, and wore rubber shoes (like Crocks). Then we walked into the playroom downstairs. Most of the kids were there, so the other parents were playing with them. But, it would be a while before Mihiret got there, and the nurse told me “She is getting her video. Do you understand?” I told her I did, and patiently waited for her knowing that even if there was not enough time this time, there would be tomorrow.

There had to be at least 20 kids in there, mostly toddlers, and mostly kids that have not yet been adopted. It was a familiar scene of kids grabbing toys, playing, throwing them down, grabbing for another, running, laughing, staring at each other with the nannies watching.
Mihiret came in eventually, wearing an orange turtleneck, orange crocks, and blue jeans with flowers on them (with pockets). She was blowing a green and yellow wooden whistle. The kids were beginning to sit down in their chairs for a snack, so the nanny sat her in her chair. This time, she was pretending not to see me, and seemed very serious. I just sat on the floor a few feet away letting her be. Eventually, I caught her looking at me, and I looked back. She smiled, but then ate her snack (a piece of bread) and played a little with the girl in the next chair.
I looked away, and before you knew it, she dove into my lap. She sat there for a while just blowing her whistle and looking around. Then, she spied some Little People toys on the window sill, which was just high enough for her to reach. She proceeded to take them off the sill and hand them to me. One of the toddlers came along and took one from my hand. Mihiret got angry, and I told her “no” holding her hand. She gave the toddler the toy. The other toddlers had, meanwhile, gathered round the action. Mihiret then amazed me. She took each toy, and handed them out to each of the toddlers, quietly and kindly. She had no problem when the toys ran out. She went back to blowing her whistle and sitting on my lap for a while.

While on the floor, she picked up a book. It was a small cardboard book about America, and it had pages of drawings of the 4th of July: parade, rodeo, fireworks, flags. She began to look at the pages one by one, pointing to the people in the pictures, imitating their gestures, and telling a story about what was going on in the pictures. It was all in a language that I didn’t understand.

I stood up and picked her up. At that point, my attention was drawn to these little dolls that they had hung from the ceiling on fishing line, like little mobiles. They were random small toys, the kind you get with a Happy Meal or at the dollar store, or a stray part from a game long since disassembled. I lifted Mihiret up to touch one, and she hit it with her hand.

This lasted a long, long time until the nannies had to tell her in her language that Mommy was very tired. I was ever grateful to them, and we all laughed.

It was time to go, and her nanny came and took her. It was obvious that this nanny loves Mihiret very much. I kissed Mihiret’s cheek and said goodbye. She smiled and I left.

“It’s farther than Chuck E. Cheese!” Blake spoke these words to me this afternoon as we waited to pick up his Dad at school, and I had to agree. He was asking and asking how long it would take to get to Ethiopia, and I said about a day. So, he was trying to understand why I can’t come back tomorrow since it takes only a day.

Blake’s anxiety over my leaving has been getting the better of him. The drive to Dulles from Charlottesville was a nightmare of traffic jams, a bad route from Google Maps (Noel had his iPhone, which, I must say, was handy with traffic reports!), and my forgetting the better way to get there. Nothing like Rte. 66 in rush hour.

To add to the tension, Ethiopian Airlines sent out this rule to passengers that you had to arrive 3 hours before the flight, and that no one arriving later than 2 hours before the flight would be allowed to board. So, I had an 8:30 pm flight, and was shooting for 5:30.

At 6:09, we were stuck in traffic just outside the airport.

“We’re not going to make it!”

“The traffic stops just about up here. You should be good from there on.”

“I’ll call the airline.” Which helped not at all.

“Ethiopian Airlines Departure Terminal 1!” Noel was shouting at this point.

“Okay, okay, I see it!” I was shouting, too.

We finally reached the location of the departure terminal, and skid into the curb at 6:15. The tearful, emotional goodbye to Noel and Blake was reduced to a kind of panicked shouting about “no parking there…I know!”, where was the luggage tag, “Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom,” and running to the baggage check-in line.

Noel had to get back to the car, so our hugs were brief. I gave Noel a big romantic kiss, forgetting that he had a tooth extracted last week and is still in pain. I tried not to take it personally. Blake was so goofy from the drive that he didn’t hug me, he just laughed and said, “Don’t cry!” He walked away with his Dad, turned around to me once, smiling, and waving. My heart just sank seeing him walk away, but I was so glad he wasn’t upset.

Once at the gate, I called them both. There were on the road back home. Blake was anxious to speak with me. I could hear him crying in the back seat of the car.

“I want you to come back! I want you to come back! I love you! I miss you!”

I tried to console him, but his weeping got more and more intense. I felt like the worst parent in the world. Hurting my son, causing all this trouble for our family. I felt like I was betraying Blake, going around the world to bring someone home that will make him lose his only child status after 6 years of being the center of my attention and the apple of my eye.

We got off the phone painfully — I had to board my flight. As I was walking down the aisle to find my seat, and the usual stop and start line stopped for a while, I looked up at the exit sign, in Amharic and English. I was conscious of the easy-listening Ethiopian pop music on the speakers overhead.

“What the hell am I doing?” What I am doing is going half way around the world to disrupt the beauty of our little family. What will happen with my nightly ritual with Blake? How I know his little habits, his preferences, the way he falls asleep with his curly hair on my lap. I have focused so much on our new daughter, wanting Blake to have a playmate and a sibling, which he lost when we adopted him from his birth family. There were times along the way with the unending, byzantine adoption process when I hung in there just for his sake, feeling exhausted at just being a mother to one. But I owed Blake a sibling, and he wanted, very specifically, a “stistah.”

But now, what we will lose is the familiar of our little times together. New ways to share and make room will have to happen. Room not just in our schedules, but in our hearts, in the way we live day-to-day. We’ll have two baths to give at night, two children to soothe to sleep, two reasons to no doubt lose some more sleep in the bargain. It will be as big a shock to the system as when Blake was born and we made that all night drive to Erie to see him in the NICU. Nothing has been the same since then, and nothing will be the same from now on.

Blake, we all will lose something in gaining a sister. A precious chapter in our lives is ending. My darling, precious, only boy, the light of my life, I saw you for the last time today as my one and only — and I grieve.

Epilogue

By the time I arrived at Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, 15 hours later, I was in a daze. Luckily, I had read the instructions for what to do (sent by the agency) over and over so I had it memorized. I spotted the “Visa Upon Arrival” room, and stopped in front just to get a cell phone signal and call Blake and Noel. No such luck. My heart was in my throat: would my cell phone work in Ethiopia? It would according to the AT&T web site, but, it wasn’t working now.

I had to steel myself to wait on this and get my visa, go through customs, claim my bag, and look for my driver. Outside, I tried to cell phone again. Still, no luck. The driver tried his, and it worked fine. So, my phone was not working, period. He told me that the care center had cell phones you could borrow if you got a phone card. I asked where we could get one, thinking, presumptuous american that I am, that every airport these days is like a veritable shopping mall.

But, it was not to be. The Bole International airport is very big, but has only one snack/coffee bar, and an upper level with three small stores reminiscent of the mom and pop shops you used to see at train stations in NYC. The man kindly said that he could go to a store and get me one later, on his way back to the center. He was an extraordinarily nice man, seeing the panic in my eyes, and hearing me tell of my son sobbing on the phone. He was probably concerned since I was the only one coming alone to pick up her child — everyone else seemed to bring a brood.

Despite his kindness, my inner panic about not reaching Noel and Blake was causing my heartbeat to now slowly rise above my throat and into my eyeballs. It was now about 1 pm Virginia time, so I told myself that at least I had about 2 hours before Noel would get him, and Blake would wonder if I called. I could have the phone card by then.

Two and a half hours later, the kind man told me that no stores were open. He truly went out of his way, and I thanked him profusely. He really is the only person working here that I’ve met so far. The agency workers were not in when we arrived, so we were all on our own. If everyone is as kind and patient as this man, this is an amazing place.

I saw a computer when we arrived at the guest house. It had a dial-up connection! At the very least, I could email Noel and tell him what was going on so he could ease Blake’s mind and read him the email. One of the parents was sitting nearby and told me that the instructions for logging in didn’t work. So, I tried it myself, tweaking the internet connection settings a bit, but no luck.

It is now 4:28 am Addis Ababa time, 9:28 pm in Charlottesville, and I can’t sleep. This is usually when Blake finally gets to sleep with his head on my lap, and my stroking his curls. My heart is aching that all he has known from me in 24 hours is absence and silence. And Noel must be worried sick — I’m hoping he has the presence of mind to call the main agency in Minnesota just to make sure I’m okay, so he can be reassured and reassure Blake in return.

In the absence of technologies that I foolishly take for granted, all I can do is pray for their well-being, safety, happiness, comfort, and security. I can’t shield everyone from pain, and I sometimes have to let go and let Blake and Noel cope on their own, but it does not come easy to me. I have to trust them, and God, to get through. Right now, I have to sleep. I’m meeting Mihiret in 5 hours.

God be with all of us.

This is the only question I now have in my head. My plane departs Dulles at 8:30 pm on Wednesday, arriving the next evening in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I will soon thereafter meet our new daughter, Mihiret, for the first time.

The house smells like paint as my husband completes work on her bedroom. I’ve been shopping for girl clothes, and have bags of pretty things for her to wear when she gets home. The paperwork is done, save for one more notarized form, and my wardrobe for the trip is pretty much complete (lots of long skirts). But I lack the presence of mind at the moment to focus on any one task that I need to do to prepare. All I can think about is being apart from Blake for a whole 8 days which is just unthinkable to me. Noel and I endured much longer separations than that, but Blake and I have never been apart longer than 3 days. I am just beside myself about how stressed he’s going to be, and his anxiety is already being played out, as you would expect. He is anxious to spend time with me, so I’m going to do the best I can to spend all my free time with him until I leave.

Will I have a big enough heart to hold two children? This is not a baby, but a child who will be conscious on a very real level of how I perceive her and her new brother in relative terms. I was my mother’s favorite, hands down, and I’m sure it takes a lot of work on the part of my seven older brothers and sisters to not want to strangle me as a result They work it out by making me the butt of many jokes, which makes my paper-thin skin a little thicker as a result.

But there is something about embarking on parenting a child that makes you want to eliminate all the possibilities for the kinds of emotional callouses that life forces on all of us. I have only learned this year to become conscious of opportunities for Blake to feel constructive hurts that may inspire him towards better choices in the future. It’s taken a while to accept that, and not wrap him in virtual foam rubber.

The kinds of hurts I fear for them the most are the gratuitous ones. I stand at the ready to be offended by any racist remarks, as though by readying myself I can strike the offender with Samurai precision, eliminating any further threat. The world doesn’t work like that, does it? And I can’t spend eternity anticipating someone hurting my kid. Somewhere along the line, I will have to let go and let God, and all that stuff.

For today, I will just have to make lists, go on autopilot, pick up travel-size toiletries and insect repellent, and trust that when I land in Ethiopia I pack all the love I have to give for our little girl. The rest will, without any prodding from me, unfold.

Thank you, oh formidable Sarah Palin, on behalf of every hard-working, sometimes burning out, saddled with too many responsibilities, dedicated community organizer in America that thought they might actually be doing something useful. You’re right. They are all jerks.

From an infertile mother who would give anything to have given birth to a Downs syndrome infant to love, stay home with, and help to have a happy life.

My husband’s abstract for his dissertation research:

A plethora of cellular and blood-borne chemical factors-neurotransmitters, trophins, glucocorticoids and prostoglandins, to name a few-have been shown to robustly affect the pro- or anti-inflammatory and antigen-presenting characteristics of myeloid cells. In turn, factors produced by myeloid cells (macrophages and microglia, for instance) are able to potentiate changes in nervous tissue. Thus, the population of myeloid cells located in the meninges of the brain are perfectly situated to mediate interactions between the peripheral immune system and the CNS. There has been much progress made recently into the phenomenology of immune-CNS interactions, and a great deal is known about inflammation in disease states, but far less is known about these cells on the borders of both the periphery and the brain. How do they get there? When do they get there? Are they involved in CNS homeostasis, emergency response, bidirectional signaling, or all three? Questions abound, but empirical data is sparse. I am interested in characterizing these myeloid cells first from both a developmental and a mechanistic point-of-view, including the nature of the upregulation of inflammatory mediators/messengers within meninges, CSF and brain parenchyma, and concomitant changes in neuronal and glial properties in key cortical areas related to mood and cognition, such as the amygdala, cingulate gyrus, and hippocampus.

In short, he’s messing with mice for another 3 years.

I have to say, I’ve never ceased to be moved by Barack Obama when he speaks, when he shows how much he cares about people, and how much he loves his family. The guy’s got a smile that knocks you over, and a family that is so beautiful that it takes your breath away. He’s told us about his childhood, his love for his grandparents and his mother. For sure, there is some pre-packaged schmaltz about all of the display of his warmth, but he has to go over the top on this now. Why? Because, unlike his warm, fuzzy, huggable opponent McCain, he has been attached with this tag of being “aloof.” Here’s my take on why that tag seems to stick.

If you’ve ever been pregnant (which I haven’t) or spent any time with a woman who is, in public, you’ll notice a fascinating thing: people feel compelled to touch their stomachs. It’s as though, suddenly, touching a woman in the personal area of her body becomes public business. There is something about the archetype of mother that makes folks feel that they can go straight through a boundary and access a woman’s body in a manner that would otherwise be unthinkable.

Here’s another one: All those years I lived in NYC, I had lots and lots of opportunities to walk by construction sites. Sure, you heard the usual unimaginative lewd stuff, but, what you heard the most (and sometimes, you heard it just from guys in suits walking by) was “Smile!” This is not something that a normal person would even consider saying to another guy walking by. These folks seem to be uncomfortable with the idea that a woman could be lost in thought, out of reach, and maybe thinking bad things about them. Saying “Smile!” is a power play that changes entirely the dynamic of walking down the street. My emotional landscape is suddenly transformed into a public park where all are free to walk on the grass.

I am not a Black man, so I can only speak to the unspoken cultural presumption of access to a forbidden and personal places from the point of view of a woman. But being Black, and being a woman, in American culture share some common experiences and characteristics, and histories. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t see such passion in this Democratic campaign, such division in the party over Hillary’s defeat. We are all of us wounded.

At one time in human history, both African-Americans and women worldwide, have been, legally and literally, chattel. There is something in our collective historical consciousness in America that still feels this way, however subconsciously, to many. Access to the most personal recesses of your chattel is not considered unacceptable, anymore than checking out what’s under the hood of your car to see what’s that buzzing noise. Chattel, by definition, requires full access. Whipping a slave boy is merely responsible maintenance, rape is simply taking that baby out for a spin to see what she’s got.

There was a cartoon in Playboy years ago that depicted a stripper on stage who took everything off. Standing there naked, there were still shouts of “Take it off!!!”. In the final frame, she disemboweled herself.

So we now have a candidate, in the subconcscious category of “chattel,” who is showing his family life with appropriate boundaries, demonstrating a warm smile, apparent deep love for his family, and a life of commitment to the disempowered. We also have John McCain, whose kids I wouldn’t know if I fell over them, whose wife mysteriously denies having siblings, and whose ex-wife that he deserted for the heiress has received NO coverage (compared with the Indonesian school that Barack attended). I don’t know if McCain went to public or private school, what his favorite hobbies are, what he does in his spare time, who are his deepest loves, what are his deepest personal aspirations. I have been given a window to such things about Obama, and still, the voices scream from the crowd “Take it off!”

We cannot bear this kind of respect for boundaries when it comes to chattel. We assume it when it comes to the privileged class, who get a thumbs up for being “a regular guy” just for posing with someone on a Harley. We accept personal information and displays of emotion from John McCain on a “need to know” basis. We’ll be damned if Obama doesn’t give us full access.

The term “the race card” came from the OJ trial. Used by his lawyers in the post-trial analysis, it meant using racism as an excuse to weasel out of something. The term has been misused in this campaign (how a white person can play the race card, I don’t know). This is one time, however, where the issue of race is very much front and center, and no card is being played. There is something about those in power that simply cannot accept our previous underlings from rising up and taking their place alongside us. We demand full access to their most inner places, and Obama will never be able to meet the standard of access that we expect from our “boys,” anymore than Hillary could escape the kind of inuendo that folks feel so comfortable with around our “girls.”

After that passionate speech last night, with a video that gave a deeply personal look at Obama’s life, David Brooks of the New York Times persisted in perpetuating the myth of Obama’s aloofness. The New York Times in general appears to have hopped on the aloofness bandwagon.

It takes a huge leap, a huge “AHA!” to realize that a thing, an object, is actually a person just like you and me. Most people go through life without that ever seeming to be a necessary transformation. Having the potential of a leader that is in the chattel class is simply not able to be processed by people until that leap is made. There is no language with which the object can express “itself” that will suffice, that will provide the unfettered connection to the submissive chattel that we once relied upon to be there at our beck and call.

All I pray is that enough people make that leap by November 8, and that America begins to heal, once and for all, from its shameful history of dehumanizing the disempowered. Until then, if Barack Obama were any warmer, the polar ice caps would melt a decade sooner.