Growing Family

Year One is a Terrifying Audience

This term both Small Sun and Sprout are studying "Families" in their classrooms. Like an idiot I immediately put my hand up to come in to talk about adoptive and foster families. I've done it for years, and even though it makes me nervous every time, I think it is important, so I press through my nerves.

This year is different. 

This year I am talking about adoption AND foster care. 

Previously I've always framed my discussion around a baby's needs, (physical and emotional) and talked about how sometimes a mother can meet some of the needs (taking care of the baby in the womb, giving birth, giving love), but is unable to meet the other ongoing needs (shelter, medicine, etc). 

Personally, I dislike talking about it because I see all the holes and "what ifs" and grey areas and I want to explain it all completely, but you can't. Not to a class of six and seven year olds. 

I am not confident about how to introduce the idea of foster care into the mix. Many of these kids know our family, they play with B in the playground. Some of them might know he is our foster son, I don't know.

How do I simultaneously introduce adoption as a loving and permanent choice on behalf of a child, alongside foster care which involves forced removals, abuse, neglect, and temporary placements and unknown futures?

When I talk about adoption I say that the first family has a "big problem" they are trying to work through, and they are so busy working on that problem they can't take care of a baby, so another family adopts the baby to love and care for forever. Maybe the first family  doesn't have a house, or maybe they don't even have enough money for food, but it is a grown up problem and the baby is perfect no matter what. 

I could say that in foster care a family is having a crisis, and another family takes care of the child(ren) while the family is working on their crisis. 

I think the thing I worry about there, is suddenly Small Sun wondering why some family crisis can be resolved, and others can't. Or why his family's crisis led to them making an adoption plan for him, while B's family is fighting for him even though they have "big problems". 

It's so tricky. Any ideas? Any suggestions? I've read so many articles and tutorials, but I still feel stressed every time!

PS-I also find the discussion hard here in Australia, where there is such a big safety net for issues of poverty, access to healthcare, etc. The reasons children get placed for adoption in the U.S. and around the world, hardly sound legit here, even to kids.

Citizenship!

When we came here, nearly five years ago, it was for a bit of adventure. I never imagined that we'd end up having a baby here, buying a house, putting our children in Australian schools, becoming Australian foster carers, and now, today, become citizens!

Today I kept Small Sun and Sprout out of school for a half day so that they could be at the citizenship ceremony with me. I wanted them to remember this important event. 

The room was filled with women in saris, and all manner of traditional dress. There were turbans and kilts, suits, and sandals (sometimes together in one outfit, which was disastrous). Everyone dressed in their own celebratory clothes that spanned the colors of the rainbow. 

Part of the address given before the pledge is made, includes the fact that each person becoming an Australian does not need to leave their language, culture, religion, and customs behind. Rather, they are encouraged to bring their heritage into Australia, and share it to enrich the nation. I love that. 

Living in 2013, in Sydney, I feel that I am truly immersed in the greatest mix of cultures I have ever experienced. It is fantastic. 

At home, this evening, there was much fanfare, and flag-waving. My favorite quote from the day was Finch (and yes, he is wearing a tutu), saying "everyone's a winner!" at the ceremony.

I'll leave you with the first verse of Advance Australia Fair, the national anthem, which I love.

Australians all let us rejoice,

For we are young and free:

We've golden soil and wealth for toil;

Our home is girt by sea;

Our land abounds in nature's gifts

Of beauty rich and rare;

In history's page, let every stage

Advance Australia Fair.

In joyful strains then let us sing,

Advance Australia Fair.

 

Vision

My brother was the first person to teach me how to drive. I can remember being behind the wheel and feeling like the curb was roaring up at me, then the lane divider on the other side was way too close. I swerved from one to the other, feeling trapped in an impossibly small space.

"Don't look at the curb. Don't look at the lines. Look where you're going and you won't hit either one."

My brother's advice has saved me many a side-swipe when driving in tight spaces, but it has also guided me in life. 

Parenting B, our current foster child, I often feel like I am being pummelled between pillar and post. Over the last month or two I feel like my parenting him became reactionary to his behavior. Like my early driving, the closeness of the curb sent me into the neighboring lane, and I was in a constant swerve.

Over the last week or two I have felt a deepening conviction to lift my gaze, to re-find my vision.

When we had our first foster child, a premature baby from the hospital, I can remember being up with him in the night and feeling tired and over it all. In the dark winter nights I would feel God whisper into my reluctant heart, "you don't have to do this. I can find someone else. This is a gift I am giving to you, a privilege." 

It would pierce me every time and re-align my heart with Truth. Caring for the vulnerable child may feel like a burden, but it is actually an honor. In doing so, we get to walk under the shadow of the Creator's wings in a breathtaking way, if we have the vision to see it.

 This week I've been working on repenting. Not in a tearing my clothes and sackcloth and ashes kind of way, but in a "I'm sorry, I was wrong" kind of way. 

I had begun to hate caring for B, and resented his hurt spilling into all corners of our home. With this repentance, I am receiving a renewed vision. I am finding deeper affection. I am less hurt by the swirl, and I feel closer to the tender affection of the Father.

"Don't look at the curb. Don't look at the lines. Look where you're going and you won't hit either one."

 

Perfect Parcels

I miss my family so terribly, and being far from them is really challenging. We are so blessed by family that sends us wonderful fat envelopes with gorgeous  letters and cards, care packages of Dutch treats for the holidays, and magnificent presents sometimes for no reason at all. 

My sister is especially skilled at putting together the perfect parcel.

My sister is a pattern maker for COACH, the luxury accessories brand. Since she started there I have been ushered into a world I would not otherwise have entered. Gorgeous handbags, scarves, and jewelry have all landed on my doorstep, what a thrill!

This month I took advantage of a serious employees discount sale she gets to participate in several times a year. I waited, excitedly for boots I have been swooning over for months.

The delivery man arrived and I rushed inside to unwrap, layer by layer, my sister's loving concoction.

For my children there was a coloring book and flash cards of UnderAppreciated Animals. She has a sense of humor, my sister, and always finds the quirkiest things for my kids!

Then there was the fun post card for me. I have a growing collection of absolutely fantastic cards from my sis. They are tucked here and there around my house, and always make me smile.

Then there's the packaging. Just the box feels and looks special. I mean, it has a leather monogrammed tag sewn to the box. Fancy.

Finally, I lift the lid and there they are! Boots that make me think of The Princess and the Goblin, one of my favorite books. They do look like the boots I imagine gold miners wear, getting all gold-dusty in the mines. Or maybe they've just walked through a field of buttercups and a little bit of the magic stuck?

It is still too hot to wear them, but they are waiting for me, in their fancy box, and I can't wait to start trying them under dresses and over skinny jeans. I'm sure I'll get my money's worth out of them, since I am still wearing the Converse sneakers I bought ten years ago, and often keep clothes and shoes at least that long.

Receiving a package from my sister is always delightful, and on more than one occasion I have been known to squeal and jump up and down. The best thing she ever sent me was not a designer product, but one of her own creations, a snakeskin and grey-blue suede belt with layers of lace-cut leather, curving perfectly around my waist.

I love receiving presents, and I love these packages, but I'd love squeezing my sister in real life even more! 

Long Time Coming

Years ago we made the decision that, as long as I was happy to do so, I would stay home with our children until they started school.

Two weeks ago, after seven and a half years of stay at home mothering, I experienced my first day of having ALL my children (even little B) in school/preschool/daycare at THE SAME TIME. 

Here's how it went down.

Two hours after I left my house at eight in the morning, I had finally dropped of my last little charge. Only then did I sigh my relief and turn my thoughts to "what will I do? I am free!" I calculated how much time I had before I needed to start the whole two hour long pick up cycle and felt a little deflated that I only had four and a half hours, and not the Whole Free Day I had imagined.

No matter, four and a half hours was more than I had ever consistently had before. Emboldened by pure possibility, I decided I would go see a movie, by myself, at eleven in the morning!

First I ducked into a favorite op-shop and was rewarded with the find of a gilt-framed mirror that I have been hunting for some time. Score! So, with my purchase in the trunk, I was off to the movies. 

I can't believe people actually go to the movies at eleven a.m. It's true! I saw some people there! Grandmas, mostly, but the theatre wasn't empty like I thought it would be!

I treated myself to a snack of overpriced fruit salad, and even ducked into a shop to buy myself a cute and cheap sweater since the aircon in the shopping center was set on "freeze".

So, with fruit consumed and my snug sweater keeping my toasty, I settled in to watch The Impossible, the true-life survival story of one family in the Boxing Day tsunami.

I'll come back another day to write more about the movie because there were some poignant themes I would like to explore, but for now I'll just say that it was intense! Typically I would spend great portions of that kind of movie with my head in hubby's shoulder, and plugging my ears. I don't do well with suspense, or graphic injuries, or nasty vomits... Instead I had to occupy myself with browsing FB at different point to carry my through.

I exited the theatre and picked up an overpriced lunch to eat in the car. I was driving the rattling loan car from the mechanic (have I even told you the car drama from the first week of school? no, I haven't.), I was distracted, and listening to Heidi Durrow's The Girl that Fell From the Sky, and without realizing it, I stuck my parking ticket in the credit card slot instead of the ticket slot.

You, like the incredulous guy on the other end of the "help" buzzer might say "You're kidding, right?" But no, I really did. 

Not to let a little thing like that distract me from the awesomeness that was 4.5 hours of solitude, I buzzed off in my little hatchback (with three car seats across the back), to check out another favorite antiques/collectables boutique. By that time the wind was getting cold and whippy, and the sky was getting dark.

I sat in the parking lot at preschool, finishing my expensive sandwich, and listening to my book, before running in to get Finch early, before the rain hit. We continued on to school, where we were early again, but we couldn't stay ahead of the rain. With my umbrella in my car at the mechanic, (who am I kidding, my umbrella was at home in the cupboard where is always is) I ended up soaked to the skin trying to get all the seat belts buckled for all the kids in that tiny hatchback. 

Traffic was gridlocked in the pounding rain, but eventually we arrived at daycare, the third and final pickup at the end of my "day" of freedom. We all got wet running into daycare, and when we came out I had to stand in the rain again, trying to maneuver everyone into too-tight car seats. Finally, dripping, I heaved myself triumphantly into the driver's seat, happy to head home.

I turned the key in the ignition of the little loan car that could, and nothing happened. I turned it again, ditto. I let it sit for a bit before trying again. Nothing. After fifteen minute of trying in vain, I got all the kids out of the car, back through the rain, back into daycare, and called the mechanic.

Long story short, (no, it is still long isn't it?) the mechanic took 45 minutes to arrive, then it took another 45 minutes to make the usual 10 minute trip home. I had left the theatre triumphant at 2:30 p.m. and arrived home, soaked, sneezing, and dumbfounded at 6 p.m.

I came down with a horrible cold, and that is the story of the day I dreamed of for seven and a half years. Good thing I get a do-over once a week. They must get better!

Seasons

I grew up in Tennessee, enjoying four distinct seasons. In early spring I would wake up of a morning, sometimes before the sun was rising, and I would feel the hum, and hear the bird call, and the slight warming of the air, and I would know spring was coming. 

Towards the end of summer, I would suddenly become aware of of the sideways slant of the light, repositioned on our bit of the planet, slipping away to somewhere else. 

The daytime seasons still seemed the same. Winter. Summer. But there were clues that a change was coming. Clues around the boundaries of the day. Clues in the feel of the wind. Clues in the sounds in nature.

I didn't need a calendar to tell me change was coming when I spied those clues. The "first day of" only labeled what I had already known.

It has taken me years in Australia to read nature's signs in this land of drought and flood. Almost five years in, I KNOW that February means the dog days of summer, when children are back to school but the cicadas buzz noisily in the afternoon, and some nights I lie in bed, damp, with no breeze stirring the heavy heat from the day.

I know that in August we will have bright blue skies, and the whole landscape seems to open arms to the warming sun. I know that there are August days where you can wear a t-shirt and wade in tide pools, even though it is the tail end of winter.

I know about the arresting fragrance of the jasmine that blooms in the day, and in the night. I know about the gardenias that sing out from urban gardens as I walk past. I have learned that the low call of the Kookaburra means oncoming rain.

When we left Tennessee, on the 1st of April, we left in a spring rainstorm so intense, the windows of my best friend's car fogged up on the way to the airport, turning the nearly impossibly neon green of a Tennessee spring into an impressionist rendering of the countryside. Green broken by dogwoods flashing white and lush pink, surprises in the woods.

Sydney, the new home we arrived at on April 3rd, was dry autumnal gray of gum trees and sandstone, like all the colour had been left behind us when we flew. I couldn't see the beauty in it. I cried when I saw my new landscape.

The scents won me over before the scenes, and now I know that wherever I am in the world, I will crave the citrus yellow of golden wattle, flashing out midwinter, and the magnificent purple jacaranda haze in early spring. There are things to love here, the flash of lorikeets, their wings whirring low as they dash in pairs from tree to tree, singing the worship of nectar.

The glint of silver sun on a black lizard's back as it scurries across the rocks along the sidewalk, and the intense gleam of the oceans that carress this country on every side. 

"The season's changed, didn't you see the light?" The Captain asked. I did see it, but I hadn't realized what is signified. Now I do. Now I am ready to become Australian. 

The Isolation of the Difficult Child

"When my son was young he had a biting problem. I remember being so embarrassed and horrified. I stopped going to playgroups and the park because he usually ended up biting someone and I would feel awful. It was a really hard time."

This was the memory of one friend, looking back on her child's toddler years. Another talked about how she struggled with her child that couldn't integrate into the common play settings either, and how frazzled she felt at making all the effort to reach out socially, only to have things go poorly with her children, and leaving feeling like a failure.

What I'm learning (foster) parenting a "difficult" child is that it can be socially isolating. Our outings seem to be an even mix of "somewhat successful" and "absolute disaster".  Friends point out to me that we have come a long way in the "somewhat successful" category, and I appreciate that, especially when I am overwhelmed with experiencing the "absolute disaster" that has just taken place.

We are two weeks into the school routine and things have been challenging with B. It often starts in the morning with him working himself into a full out tantrum because the breakfast is not! getting! in! his! mouth! fast! enough! No matter that you're mixing it in front of him, speaking to him calmly, patting him for reassurance. "I want it faster! I hate you for not meeting my needs fast enough!" That is what his screams say to me. 

The morning tantrum can often last the full hour of getting ready for school time. Then, at school, he's happy! He likes the bustle and the people and he likes going places! But then, something will go wrong for him. He'll want to run to the other side of the school grounds and I'll say no, or he'll want to play in the water fountain and I'll say no, and then the tantrum hits like a truck. He's down, he's screaming, he's rolling, he's flailing, and I am scooping him up, kissing my kids goodbye, and beating a hasty retreat away from the school, all the while B is turning heads with his passionate efforts at eardrum annihilation.

I've felt lonely standing around the Year 2 classroom, feeling unable to engage with the parents I don't know, because most morning end with me doing the scoop and run, and it is more embarassing if I am right in the middle of meeting a new parent when that happens. 

Preschool has  been worse. There is water play out every morning and B wants to get into the water more than he has ever wanted anything, ever before. But, with his own daycare drop off yet to come, or a trip to the grocery store or the doctor, or whatever, I can't let him go into the water. Each preschool drop off for Finch has been brought to an abrupt halt by me carrying a hysterical toddler out to the car. 

I feel bad. This is Finch's first year at preschool. I want to  be there to help him settle in. I want a meaningful goodbye with hugs and kisses. I want to be present in the experience.

I am also embarrassed. I have not met a single parent yet, because how do you introduce yourself and make small talk when you are holding a high-volume protester, who is doing his best to pull your hair, rip at your clothes, and scratch you? These people don't know us. They don't know our story. They just see me struggling to strap B into his car seat, and you can still hear the screaming after the doors are closed. 

I stand outside the car door for several moments to straighten my glasses, smooth my disheveled hair, and reposition my rumpled clothes. This gives me time to take a few deep breathes and steel myself to the continued screaming that I know will last for several more minutes, at least. I am thankful that my job is to drive the car, and that it is okay for me to tune him out until we have both calmed down. 

It is hard. I feel isolated. I am embarrassed.

For me, this particular challenge, with this particular child is temporary. I can look ahead to a time when life will become easier after B goes. I hope then to become more connected to my children's classrooms and school and preschool communities. Having this experience has really given me more insight into how life feals for carers raising a child that doesn't easily navigate typical social settings.

I also think about families where these challenges aren't temporary, rather this is the life they have to live. 

I had B to the pediatrician today and I wanted to discuss his behavior and how we are addressing it. As if on que, B became frustrated with some small thing, and ended up having a meltdown in the doctor's office. One minute he was delightful and engaging and fun, and the next he was bashing the walls, kicking on the floor, and trying to knock the toys over. 

The doctor said 'I can easily see that he has issues with regulating his emotions, and managing frustrations. He is, as you say, a roller coaster, and that is likely the challenge his temperment will present him for life. We just need to help him learn how to manage that as best as we can."

It just felt so reassuring to be seen in the midst of a difficult moment, and for someone who knows about it to say "yes, this is hard, but you're doing the right thing."

I guess it just helps to be seen in the struggle, and affirmed for my efforts, even if the big picture might not look like success.