To Neverland and Back

This is a strange feeling - one I haven't had for probably about four years back when I was in grad school sitting down late at night to get started on a paper that was due early the next morning. It's 9 pm on Monday night of a three day weekend. Tomorrow morning, starting at about 5:30 its bye bye winter break for the kids and back to the grind for Brent and me. Our family has been fighting something involving sore throats, a lot of snot and lovely coughs for a few weeks, and staying up until midnight for New Years has really taken its toll on the parental folk in this household (yes I'm just a year beyond thirty and I admitted that to the interwebs). I just helped Brent cut up two bags of organic kiwi for snack for Ashagre's class tomorrow, and I must write a blog post. Yes, must. You see, my friend Kimberly was having a hard time getting back into the swing of blogging after the holidays and asked me for some inspiration. I delivered. I suggested we both write on a common theme and post at the same time. Kimberly's post is already up. I have to hold up my end of the bargain.

We agreed to write on what it's like to go from living life as a childless couple to parents of two (or more) walking, talking, bike riding, opinion stating, hugging, snuggling Ethiopian kids over night. Brent and I met Kimberly and her husband Charles in Addis in November when we traveled for our court trip. We were staying at the same hotel. They had traveled in hopes of a court trip too. They happened to be from the same small town in Idaho I was born in. Brent and I stalked them - we played it off very casually enjoying our machiatos on the veranda they had to pass through to go to their room - hoping they'd want to join us for dinner. They had already had the same idea and plans were set. We did dinner again the next night and have kept in touch ever since. We even visited them in Idaho when we traveled to see my family this summer. Kimberly's three, yes, THREE, kids came home a few months after ours and we have been comparing notes ever since. I can't tell you how reassuring it has been to have someone out there that I could share anything with during those first few months that would quickly write back to say things at their house look pretty much the same as they did at ours. I also can't tell you how grounding it was to, every once and while, think, "Wow things must be REALLY crazy over at the Manning's right now." After all, we only adopted two at once. They adopted three!

Ok, on with the theme or its going to be a long night.


Peter: I want always to be a boy, and have fun. 
Wendy: You say so, but I think it is your biggest pretend. [Peter Pan]

Tonight was hair night for Ashagre. Now that he has dreadlocks, hair night only comes around every month or so, but his dreads were getting fuzzy and fluffy and I figured I might as well re-twist them and clean them up before the big day back to school tomorrow. Brent scanned the selection on Netflix and I convinced him that the movie Hook wouldn't be too scary. Ashagre was SO not into it until Robin Williams finally returned to Neverland and the adventures began. I kept telling him to be patient, that it was one of my favorite movies. He really had no choice since I had one or two of his dreads pinched between my figures at all times so he settled in and ended up cheering and raving about the movie in the end. Elsa, who can scare easily from movies, teared up once but absolutely loved it.

What does this have to do with going from zero to two kids over night? One thing no one ever told me about having kids, especially ones that can walk and talk and have their own ideas about how the world works already, is that the experience is sort of like being in the possession of a large, unavoidable mirror. No matter how you try to advert your eyes, your reflection is always right there staring back at you. Becoming a parent to a vivacious 6 year old girl and a silly 5 year old boy overnight for me was sort of like returning to Neverland for Robin Williams in the moving Hook. I've learned a lot about myself in the past few months. Actually, learned isn't the right word. I've had to face and come to terms with a lot about myself in the past several months and some of it hasn't been all that flattering. Challenges I've known I've had for a long time, but have chosen to push under the rug have come dashing out of hiding demanding for me to attend to them since the kids have been home. Its been pretty hard at times, but also one of the most inspiring times of my life.

You want to know a secret? Since we announced that we'd found an attachment therapist and started therapy several months ago our therapist has only seen the kiddo that was struggling once for an evaluation. The other six? eight? sessions have been either with Brent and me or just me alone. It turns out that if you want to help your traumatized kid heal and build healthy attachments you have to be whole yourself. You have to be ready to take on whatever trauma they throw at you with warmth, compassion and understanding. You have to teach them that no matter how bad it gets you are strong enough, capable enough, and loving enough to ride it out with them and love them through it.

Going from zero to two kids overnight has made me aware of how selfish I am. Despite the fact that Brent and I wanted to parent these two kids with our whole hearts and every cell in our body and have never regretted that decision, I've had a really hard time redefining myself as a mom. As anyone that has been reading the Perfect Space knows, Brent and I lived many years together with a good dose of the Peter Pan mentality.  We were never going to grow up. There were days when the kids first came home that I had to lie in bed for a few minutes after I woke up and give myself a pep talk to make myself get up and care for them. Not because of anything having to do with them, but because there was still a part of me that was holding tight to the freedom and independence you so quickly loose when you become a parent. I wanted to be Elsa and Ashagre's mom, but a part of me still didn't want to grow up. Up until I became Ashagre and Elsa's mom, the only beings Brent and I had to attend to were our dogs. They're pretty darn easy and don't ask for much. All of a sudden there were these two little beings in our home who's needs occupied the top of the list. Everything else came second to them and some little voice in my head wasn't very happy about it.

Going from zero to two kids overnight illuminated the fact that I am not a naturally nurturing person. It made me admit, out loud, to a complete stranger that I was having difficulty loving one of my kids the way they needed to be loved. Going from zero to two kids also taught me that, while I wasn't the snuggly, hugging, cooing mom I had painted myself to be as I imagined motherhood, I also had more of a natural mothering knack than I would have once given myself credit for.

Going from zero to two kids overnight is helping me redefine what's important in life. It's showing me, for the first time ever, the value of living in the moment. The importance of being present enough to let those fleeting moments of utter joy get through my 100 mph, always planning the next adventure or complicated schedule, mind. This is not easy for me. Living in the present is something I've been avoiding for nearly my entire life. Going from zero to two kids is helping me allow myself to feel the inevitable pain that accompanies parenting kids with such sad stories so I can also feel the sublime joy. The kind of joy that comes from watching Elsa effortlessly and without anxiety engage and ecstatically playing with her new friend, Bobby, at the playground today and then pause to help her other new friend, Dinkinesh, join in the game without even a glance in my direction for reassurance or help. The kind of joy that comes from overhearing Ashagre announce to himself that he is really good at building things with his Erector set. Choking back my own tears as Elsa's eyes welled up in response to the little girl in Hook steadfastly believing in the ability of her mommy's and daddy's love to keep her safe.

In her post, Kimberly writes about the moment she mourned the life she had lost after her kids came home. I have to admit I'm kind of jealous to read that. For me I don't think its been so concrete. Its been more of a constant battle. A continuous fight against the little voice that says, "I don't want to. Not right now. Can't I just have a moment to do what I want, to put my own needs first? Where are the rewards? When am I going to start getting as much out of this as I am putting into it?" Over time though, the voice is loosing its power. Its harder to hear it and easier to ignore it. Those rewards are either becoming more frequent or I am getting better at noticing them.

Postscript: I think when I suggested this theme to Kimberly I was hoping we would compare notes on the significance of becoming parents to more than one older child through adoption. Rereading my post above, I can't say that's what I've written about at all. Here's the truth though. Before the kids came home, when Brent and I would tell people we were adopting two "older" kids people would almost always stammer, "Two? Really? Why two?" Many told us outright that we were crazy (in a kind way). I'm not going to go into the specifics on why we knew this was the right choice for us in this post, but I will say that our answer to the disbelievers was always straightforward, "We've never had any kids, so we won't know the difference. Zero to one or zero to two, its going to be a pretty big change either way so why not adopt two?" I've told several people that adopting two unrelated kids of almost the same age was actually one of the best adoption decisions we made. I still believe that, and I, honestly, besides the obvious constant micro-battles for our attention, I really can't even begin to imagine how adopting only one would have been much easier.

If you haven't done so already, head over to BigLifeSmallTown and see what Kimberly has to say on the matter.