Monday, April 5, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
It's all a Marathon
On Valentine's Day I ran the Austin Marathon. It was a beautiful day and save the last 4 miles where I moaned dramatically and wheezed "this suuuuuuuuuuuuucks" to any good soul on the sidelines, I found the whole experience rather glorious. I'm going to do it again, and again, and again, as long as this old body will let me. I am a person brought easily to tears. I like this about myself. I used to kill time at the office by You Tubing old Academy Award acceptance speeches. Nothing like a little emotional porn on a slow afternoon. (Tom Hanks for Philadelphia is pretty damn moving, and I love the unbridled exuberance of Sophia Loren announcing "Rrrrroberto!" for Best Director.) So it was no surprise when I found myself on the verge of tears at the starting gun, as waves of excited people started bouncing in place before breaking into their slow jog. Such community! And what neighborliness we enjoyed throughout the 26 miles, as throngs of people sang and cheered and offered food and drink and high fives and a young boy banged on his drums in his front yard and a couple of awkward teenagers played their cellos at the top of a hill. It was all so lovely and moving and I want to be as good of a citizen when I find myself in future spectator roles. But what really made me tear up again and again, sometimes to the point of there being a great catch in my throat, was knowing that my little family would be waiting for me at the halfway mark and then again at the finish line. I couldn't help comparing the run to the long slog of the adoption process. I can't barely believe how far we've come in the last year, or two years when we were just recently committed to adoption, let alone three when we hadn't even a clue that adoption was a part of our future. How far we've come! At times, like when I was hoofing up that one fucking hill, and I sighed to that one fucking guy "Dude, this suuuucks" and he said "Now, now, hills are our friends!," I figured it would be a miracle if I ever reached the finish line. There at the finish line a miracle awaited.
Enough about finish lines though, as I've quickly realized there's no such concept for a parent. What has struck me dumb about becoming the mother of Ava Bekelech* is the sheer ceaselessness of feeling and work and hopes and dreams and anxieties that goes along with this new world. I want so much for her. I want her to have the life she was meant to live, with her parents and her four older siblings. If she must be stuck with me I want her to have a better, more imaginative, more energetic, more selfless me. I want her to experience the big old emotional range of a fully lived existence and yet I also find myself wanting her only to be happy. (Ha!) I want her to be fearless but man I'd love for her every once in a while to show a little caution. I want her to laugh her head off with joy at her gymnastic classes but if she ever falls on her neck like that again on the trampoline I want someone to shoot me with a horse tranquilizer. (She bounced right back up; I had to fight falling to my knees.) I want everyone to recognize her magnificence and charisma and beauty and I also sometimes want folks to leave her alone. I want her to want to go to an all black college. I want her Grandparents living closer. I want some solid poops for this child. I want to learn another hairstyle besides puffs. I want that kid who intentionally tripped her at Extreme Fun to get pantsed in public.
I want to be a more patient mother for my brave and beautiful child. I was talking motherhood with a woman many years ago and she said that she had always been a fiery broad but when her first child was born she felt like some switch of anger or edginess was forever flicked off inside her. I wanted that to be the case for me too. But I found myself hollering at my baby girl one hard day, hollering at her almost as if she was a peer instead of my toddler daughter, and I was horrified to hear the fever pitch of my own mother in my ears. Not okay. I wish something had magically turned off in me but it didn't. So now I like to think that I check my switch daily, maybe cover it up every so often with a little duct tape. Because what you cannot prepare yourself for when you become a mother is how much of your own childhood junk can bubble up and overwhelm you. I work hard at forgiving myself for not being everything I think Ava deserves. I know full well that kicking myself ad nauseum isn't going to help this child practice her somersaults or make play dough balls or accept that the dog does not have a belly button.
And yet, and yet.
I have done nothing in my life to deserve the honor of parenting this child. And yet there she is, down the hall and under her blanket, sleeping off another hard day of play.
*We were going to give Ava her mother's name for her middle name. But when we were in Ethiopia, she was Bekelech. When we spoke with her Special Mother at the Care Center she was Bekelech. And when we spoke with her uncle about her parents and about how we would one day return to Ethiopia so this little girl could see her siblings again (and again, and again), she was Bekelech. And Ava Bekelech she will always be.
Enough about finish lines though, as I've quickly realized there's no such concept for a parent. What has struck me dumb about becoming the mother of Ava Bekelech* is the sheer ceaselessness of feeling and work and hopes and dreams and anxieties that goes along with this new world. I want so much for her. I want her to have the life she was meant to live, with her parents and her four older siblings. If she must be stuck with me I want her to have a better, more imaginative, more energetic, more selfless me. I want her to experience the big old emotional range of a fully lived existence and yet I also find myself wanting her only to be happy. (Ha!) I want her to be fearless but man I'd love for her every once in a while to show a little caution. I want her to laugh her head off with joy at her gymnastic classes but if she ever falls on her neck like that again on the trampoline I want someone to shoot me with a horse tranquilizer. (She bounced right back up; I had to fight falling to my knees.) I want everyone to recognize her magnificence and charisma and beauty and I also sometimes want folks to leave her alone. I want her to want to go to an all black college. I want her Grandparents living closer. I want some solid poops for this child. I want to learn another hairstyle besides puffs. I want that kid who intentionally tripped her at Extreme Fun to get pantsed in public.
I want to be a more patient mother for my brave and beautiful child. I was talking motherhood with a woman many years ago and she said that she had always been a fiery broad but when her first child was born she felt like some switch of anger or edginess was forever flicked off inside her. I wanted that to be the case for me too. But I found myself hollering at my baby girl one hard day, hollering at her almost as if she was a peer instead of my toddler daughter, and I was horrified to hear the fever pitch of my own mother in my ears. Not okay. I wish something had magically turned off in me but it didn't. So now I like to think that I check my switch daily, maybe cover it up every so often with a little duct tape. Because what you cannot prepare yourself for when you become a mother is how much of your own childhood junk can bubble up and overwhelm you. I work hard at forgiving myself for not being everything I think Ava deserves. I know full well that kicking myself ad nauseum isn't going to help this child practice her somersaults or make play dough balls or accept that the dog does not have a belly button.
And yet, and yet.
I have done nothing in my life to deserve the honor of parenting this child. And yet there she is, down the hall and under her blanket, sleeping off another hard day of play.
*We were going to give Ava her mother's name for her middle name. But when we were in Ethiopia, she was Bekelech. When we spoke with her Special Mother at the Care Center she was Bekelech. And when we spoke with her uncle about her parents and about how we would one day return to Ethiopia so this little girl could see her siblings again (and again, and again), she was Bekelech. And Ava Bekelech she will always be.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Butts Down
I haven't smoked a cigarette in 365 days. In said time I have completed a book, arced my way through the adoption process, traveled to Ethiopia, and become a mother.
I rule!
Also, lest I sound righteous, I admit to eating a rogue pot brownie (my first!) in 2009 and going on a wild space odyssey in a very queer West Hollywood hotel room with my best friend. (Rest assured judgers, skinny went down before Ava came home to our nest.) We tried to watch the wretchedly awful movie Bride Wars on pay-per-view but I had to keep pausing it and asking my friend to explain the story to me. ie., "hold up, hold up, hold up, why does Kate Hudson have those strange bangs?" Halfway through the night my friend turned to me and wondered if we ought to go to the emergency room. Instead we adjourned to the mini-bar. We ate everything in there, with a couple wrappers to boot. It was a truly stupid, utterly ridiculous, hopelessly ill-advised evening. Ain't never laughed so hard in my life.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Stay Awake Baby Girl
“We’re almost home, Ava. Five more minutes.” A week before Thanksgiving the family was driving home from the airport. We had survived the plane ride back from Florida! We had a wonderful time at the beach! Ava met her other Grandpa and said meeting was a triumphant success! We were safely back on Austin soil and Tulip's butt was wagging in the back seat, happy to be scooped up from the kennel. Ava was half-asleep. We were stopped in the left-hand turn lane waiting for a break in the traffic. The old man let out a broken gasp and I looked up to see a car in the opposing lane careen the median.
The wallop of impact was breath-taking, like someone reached inside my teeth and took a quick saw at the roots. I sat there for a second dumbfounded, staring into what looked like an exploded box of Kleenex. The airbags had released a noxious smell into the air and dandelion puffs of dust danced around our heads. Everything was eerily quiet except for Tim moaning "Oh no, oh no, oh no." I told him I was alright several times, he told me he was alright. At the same time, we turned to Ava. She’d been shocked into muteness but when we smiled at her, our wobbly voices insisting that she was okay and everything was alright, she took a breath and started wailing.
Somehow that night, despite two totaled cars, we all made it home to our own beds. Ava cried for a couple of hours, but she had finally fallen asleep and the next morning she danced and sang songs and the doctor assured us that she was fine. Her parents had a harder recovery ahead. At first we walked around in a daze, like we had just gotten off a roller coaster and were still a little foggy from the rush. Then, maybe as the pain kicked up a notch, and the shock started wearing off, I turned into a puddle. I cried one day from sunup to sundown, streaming tears while reading Go, Dog. Go! or pushing a giggly Ava in a swing, or rubbing her back to sleep.
Somehow I’d stumbled upon this sickening idea that I had in some way helped cause the accident. I do picture her first year of life spent in a routine state of transition and grief and occasional chaos. My girl is tough. (I mean it, stubborn as a mule and alarmingly self-possessed.) Since we met—oh glorious day!—there have been a few occasions when I've seen her look truly startled or scared. Her little face froze up in fear during her first big thunderstorm, or when a really loud motorcycle vroomed past our front yard. The sight of her so vulnerable about sucked the life out of me. I’m still astounded by the sharpness and rawness of parental love. And so I said over and over, to anyone who would listen, how I couldn't imagine anything worse than being in a car accident with her. The scene would horrify her and thus unhinge me.
And then, as if grasped from my panic-prone imagination, that car came straight at us like a magnet. In my wretched state, I started blaming myself for conjuring up the whole accident. I had voiced aloud my worst nightmare and somehow had brought it to life. Court doom long and hard enough, I cried to my husband, and it will come for you. This accident happened to her on our watch.
A few mornings after the accident Ava started whimpering to herself at an ungodly hour so we pulled her into bed with us. The dog stretched and made room for her and we all fell into a comfortable doze. When I opened my eyes I was struck that somehow we had all settled into the same configuration of the night of the accident. And yet there we were, breathing deeply on a queen-size life raft. I had gone to bed the night before in pain and grief and woke up to a soft sun and dew on the grass.
As the grief over the accident has worn off, so too has the guilt. I of course don’t think I have the power to will strange and random events that effect not just me but total strangers. And yet what I'm left with is this idea that I don't want to raise my child in an active state of almost masturbatory fear. Awful stuff happens all the time, over and over in a person's life. You’ll never see it coming. Sometimes you'll be really, really lucky and get to walk away with your entire family intact. What happened that terrible night in the car was really scary and really bad. But instead of cursing the randomness of it all, and wringing my hands over life’s fragility, I somehow find myself wanting to celebrate. Everyone that night told us it was a miracle that no one had been killed. I winced every time I heard this, because I didn't want my family involved in such a close call. But once I regained my equilibrium I managed to recast the night. It was a miracle of luck! My life is many miracles of luck! And how lucky if it helps me forever shift something so that I don't now start obsessing over the next awful thing that might happen or could happen or what if it happened and how would I survive if it happened. I don’t know what will happen tonight or tomorrow. But Ava sang in her car seat on our way to the grocery store this morning. I sang along with her!
The wallop of impact was breath-taking, like someone reached inside my teeth and took a quick saw at the roots. I sat there for a second dumbfounded, staring into what looked like an exploded box of Kleenex. The airbags had released a noxious smell into the air and dandelion puffs of dust danced around our heads. Everything was eerily quiet except for Tim moaning "Oh no, oh no, oh no." I told him I was alright several times, he told me he was alright. At the same time, we turned to Ava. She’d been shocked into muteness but when we smiled at her, our wobbly voices insisting that she was okay and everything was alright, she took a breath and started wailing.
Somehow that night, despite two totaled cars, we all made it home to our own beds. Ava cried for a couple of hours, but she had finally fallen asleep and the next morning she danced and sang songs and the doctor assured us that she was fine. Her parents had a harder recovery ahead. At first we walked around in a daze, like we had just gotten off a roller coaster and were still a little foggy from the rush. Then, maybe as the pain kicked up a notch, and the shock started wearing off, I turned into a puddle. I cried one day from sunup to sundown, streaming tears while reading Go, Dog. Go! or pushing a giggly Ava in a swing, or rubbing her back to sleep.
Somehow I’d stumbled upon this sickening idea that I had in some way helped cause the accident. I do picture her first year of life spent in a routine state of transition and grief and occasional chaos. My girl is tough. (I mean it, stubborn as a mule and alarmingly self-possessed.) Since we met—oh glorious day!—there have been a few occasions when I've seen her look truly startled or scared. Her little face froze up in fear during her first big thunderstorm, or when a really loud motorcycle vroomed past our front yard. The sight of her so vulnerable about sucked the life out of me. I’m still astounded by the sharpness and rawness of parental love. And so I said over and over, to anyone who would listen, how I couldn't imagine anything worse than being in a car accident with her. The scene would horrify her and thus unhinge me.
And then, as if grasped from my panic-prone imagination, that car came straight at us like a magnet. In my wretched state, I started blaming myself for conjuring up the whole accident. I had voiced aloud my worst nightmare and somehow had brought it to life. Court doom long and hard enough, I cried to my husband, and it will come for you. This accident happened to her on our watch.
A few mornings after the accident Ava started whimpering to herself at an ungodly hour so we pulled her into bed with us. The dog stretched and made room for her and we all fell into a comfortable doze. When I opened my eyes I was struck that somehow we had all settled into the same configuration of the night of the accident. And yet there we were, breathing deeply on a queen-size life raft. I had gone to bed the night before in pain and grief and woke up to a soft sun and dew on the grass.
As the grief over the accident has worn off, so too has the guilt. I of course don’t think I have the power to will strange and random events that effect not just me but total strangers. And yet what I'm left with is this idea that I don't want to raise my child in an active state of almost masturbatory fear. Awful stuff happens all the time, over and over in a person's life. You’ll never see it coming. Sometimes you'll be really, really lucky and get to walk away with your entire family intact. What happened that terrible night in the car was really scary and really bad. But instead of cursing the randomness of it all, and wringing my hands over life’s fragility, I somehow find myself wanting to celebrate. Everyone that night told us it was a miracle that no one had been killed. I winced every time I heard this, because I didn't want my family involved in such a close call. But once I regained my equilibrium I managed to recast the night. It was a miracle of luck! My life is many miracles of luck! And how lucky if it helps me forever shift something so that I don't now start obsessing over the next awful thing that might happen or could happen or what if it happened and how would I survive if it happened. I don’t know what will happen tonight or tomorrow. But Ava sang in her car seat on our way to the grocery store this morning. I sang along with her!
Friday, November 6, 2009
This Blog Brought to You by Swiffer
You want to keep a busy baby entertained? Give 'em a mop.
*Tulip is all "Bish, please, it's 5:30am. Why are we awake?"
*Tulip is all "Bish, please, it's 5:30am. Why are we awake?"
Sunday, November 1, 2009
My Experience
I'm knee deep in a training schedule for the Austin marathon. Running—always with the dog, often with the Pops next to me pushing our Cheerio-gobbler—has proven to be a terrific head-clearer. It's fall now in Texas, which means crisp perfection with just enough of a cozy early morning chill. It's so strange not being hot anymore. Stranger still seeing Ava in hoodies and little pairs of jeans with butterflies on the pockets. I counted up the days since we first met. Five months, six days. I realize that Ava has now been with us longer than she was with her family at home, and then with her patchwork family at the Gladney Care Center. I wonder if somewhere in her subconscious she is able to let out a soft exhale that perhap she will not go on and on and on finding herself in the care of new people.
When I run I listen to the same mix of songs. This is the first song.
Every time I hear it I'm brought to tears. For me it captures the build and urgency of our adoption process—from the mournful beginning to the steady summoning of breath and strength to the heart-pounding moment of referral to the cymbal crashing trip to Ethiopia. There's even a little lullaby whistle at the end, when we laid her down for her first sleep in her new home. Sometimes I imagine in hazy fashion what this same time period might have looked and felt like for my little girl and my heart feels clotheslined. There I am with my family, gasping to myself, and wondering how it is we all found ourselves running towards and then finally alongside each other.
When I run I listen to the same mix of songs. This is the first song.
Every time I hear it I'm brought to tears. For me it captures the build and urgency of our adoption process—from the mournful beginning to the steady summoning of breath and strength to the heart-pounding moment of referral to the cymbal crashing trip to Ethiopia. There's even a little lullaby whistle at the end, when we laid her down for her first sleep in her new home. Sometimes I imagine in hazy fashion what this same time period might have looked and felt like for my little girl and my heart feels clotheslined. There I am with my family, gasping to myself, and wondering how it is we all found ourselves running towards and then finally alongside each other.
Friday, August 14, 2009
The Kid Rules
We met 10 weeks ago this Monday.
The first 8 weeks together were pretty hard. I was flabbergasted by her, and she by me. We had good times but no rhythm. She was off, I was off—though everyone kept saying we were doing great, which somehow made it a lonelier experience. Didn't feel great. Didn't feel bad or wrong. Just felt overwhelming and very, very new.
Time did its thing. My girl now sleeps from 7 to 6:40. She has started babbling little stories to her stuffed bunny and cat and bear and puppy and pig. She loves shoes—her sandals, Mama's sandals, Daddy's sneakers. She wants all of them on her feet. She loves blueberries! She loves a good pratfall! She loves jumping off the side of the pool into her Daddy's arms! My girl laughs like you wouldn't believe. I dare say she's funny too. She doesn't walk; she scampers. When we are at a friend's house she plays and plays but checks in every 10 minutes or so with me. She does this by scampering over and flouncing down on my legs with a giggle and then—my heart!— gives me a big baby bear hug.
I like her, I love her.
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