When Do I Just Give Up?

I am stuck in the never-ending cycle of thinking I can get the house clean, organized, and well... peaceful. It goes like this: Evening time and I am looking at the house trashed from the day and I think, "Tomorrow I will really bust my ass and get this house whipped into shape! I will even make a nice dinner. Finish the laundry, get the accounting done and bills paid, follow up and the odds and ends of the adoption." I go to sleep and try my darndest in the morning. I make good progress despite the fact that the phone rings off the hook and my mom tells me more stuff than I had imagined when I call to ask a simple question about the company picnic. Around 11:00am I realize that I am not making such good time as I had hoped, am behind already in my prediction of just how much I can get done in one day, but Scott reminds me that there is still day left... except that I need to think about making dinner NOW because dinner can be a major production with everything else going on around here interrupting things. If I need something out of the freezer I should have done that last night so it would be thawed. So nevermind the freezer.. wish FlyLady had sent a reminder about that. Hmmm... peer in the fridge... nothing obvious, might as well wait till later. Lunch time for the kids. Today Ariah invited a friend over so she could be occupied while I worked. I even had a whole list together and resolve to do it! So... lunch... by now I have caught on that the girls have converted the almost clean living room into an American Girl hide-a-way.



Then I eat lunch myself, sitting amongst the dirty dishes left on the table by the girls, feed Pacifique and encourage the girls outside. They skip the bathing suits and sprinkler and head for the plethora of blackberries instead; they are on a mission to make soup. A while later, they are lugging the house furniture out to the front yard. Gawdzukes... my June Cleaver plan is unraveling! They are looking for paper, and finding the rolls of tape. The kitchen becomes a large scale STICKY (think lots of honey to sweeten their "soup") disaster and my hopes for a clean house and peaceful dinner go outside with the table and chairs.



I am quickly becoming June With A Cleaver! Turns out they have decided to have a sale of their blackberry and now mint echinacea soup in the front yard. Ariah's friend apparently can't do this so easily where she lives off the beaten path in the hills. We are in town, almost at the crossroads, so we get a bit of traffic here and the girls look like ants going back and forth from front yard to house to gather supplies.



They set the price and it is not priced to sell, I'll tell you. Judging the size of the miniature shot glasses they have lined up at the front of the table, and wondering how much dirt is in the "soup" I cringe and resolve to hide in the bushes so I am not regarded as anywhere near involved with the sale. With time, they manage to sell thru the soup and head for the kitchen to raid the organic lemon juice supply and more and more lemonade is made. Scott has returned from his errands and gives them appropriate plastic cups. At some point, they discover that holding Pacifique up to the road along with their lemonade sign really attracts the customers. In the end, they have a blast and make a huge profit.



So now Scott is cooking dinner, the kids are counting their loot, and I am blogging while Pacifique fusses on the floor in the other room. The office desk is a complete mess and I am finding myself with my hopes for today dashed but planning how to correct this insanity tomorrow. After all, it is a new day. Right?

Afloat

Many would wonder why if I fought this long and hard to find Pacifique why now I would be torn inside out, feeling inept and awkward with my ability to parent him. I used to be a good mother: loved mothering fiercely. People even wondered why "me" of all people had to lose a child; as if the mother who frequents the Rutland, VT Wal-Mart and slaps her child when he yells would be more deserving of such a retched circumstance.

Pacifique is gorgeous: he has the most luscious sateen skin, huge eager eyes, a squeal of pleasure that ends in qiggles half of the time. Heck he even cuddles right into my chest and sucks his three fingers: a habit that pre-existed our time with him, a method of self-soothing necessary for orphanage survival. But now he presses against my heart and lays his warm head just under my chin, and yet I am beside myself at times with anxiety, impatience and anger. He cries and I want to stop up the hole where the noise comes from with any material nearby. Something spills or drops and I am fuming. The normal follow up question would be, "what the heck is my problem?"

I've decided that the learning curve, especially without the running start of pregnancy, required for parenting two children is a steeper incline that anyone with only one child could ever have anticipated. I have never been in this territory before: dividing my already precious little self between the needs of two children. But moreover, I realize that I have work to step into the position (that isn't even the correct word choice)of MOTHER for this wee one, Pacifique. I have been so far reluctant to become or believe that I am his mother.

I think of the woman, his mother, who brought Pacifique into this world. She grew this child under her own beating heart, fed him with her body and her breath, and rode the waves of pain that opened her entire being to allow Pacifique to push past her body and become his own separate life here on Earth. I know what it is to lose a child forever. I imagine this mother everyday, and what she might be doing or feeling. If she walked back thru the door yesterday I would have handed him to her saying I had done the best I could while she was gone. No way could I stand between a mother and her child. But it is time for me to step into the honor, the sacred path, of being Pacifique's mother. Today, I drew my protective circle around him and donned my mama bear claws. Today, if the woman who birthed our son walked in the door, I would pick him up, clutch him to my chest and pray for what to do next. No handing over, no more thinking I am just the temporary guardian of this little soul.

My blessed friend and midwife for Ariah held the space for me to see this aspect of my disconnect to Pacifique and to my mother-self. It has been uphill since, and for the first time in days, I feel I am alfoat. This is uncharted territory, this new life with Pacifique. With the support of many around me, I am slowly coming home to myself and stepping into the love that awaits me and us all.

Tonight Pacifique awoke crying, very early compared to the normal routine of needing to eat. Ariah and I ran up the stairs and found him crying unlike we had heard before. She wanted to pick him up, but I knew he needed his mother's touch, and I scooped him up and encouraged her to rub his back instead. He burped. Twice. Still he cried, but snuggled into me with his entire being. Lied against my core, my heart, with the warmth of his whole everything. This little fellow needs me and only I can sooth him like I did. He soon fell asleep, trusting me with all his weight, to hold him fully. And I will... forever.

Home Now

It's five thirty Vermont time, and boy are we all jet-lagged. Last night at six, I lay on the bathroom floor moaning and wondering why I felt as if I had drank an entire bottle of cheap booze the night before when I haven't touched alcohol in the time since we heard about our miracle news from Rwanda. There just hasn't been time to drink. Still, I felt as if I had alcohol poisoning and all I could do was moan and complain all day. Not the best homecoming possible, but then at least we got home. Ariah fell asleep with me on the bathroom floor while trying to decide about dinner, crying because she couldn't decide if she wanted noodles or rice or broccoli or green beans. After 15 minutes of painstaking deliberation I took it as indication that she was too tired to do anything but sleep. I managed to move from horizontal to vertical long enough to make it to the bedroom, and we zonked out for the night. That left poor Scott on duty with Pacifique, but he's used to taking care of everything after we have a baby, so to a degree it is par for the course. With Ariah, I had a nasty recovery from the surgery that brought her into the world, and with Trace... well... Of course I wasn't able to do anything. Dad was up with Pacifique twice in the night- but the boy is still asleep for the tenth straight hour otherwise. That is a blessing, since we wondered if he would be all backwards schedule-wise form the time change.

We arrived in Wednesday night, midnight, after a admittedly hellish day on the plane. Flight leaving Addis was late departing, and four people in three sardine can plane seats is uncomfortable at best. There were times I had both children in my seat and the man in front of me nearly decapitated my knee cap when he rammed his seat back into me. Neither Scott or I were able to sleep as the seats are configured so that the only place your head can go is forward when you doze and we all know just how conducive that position is to sleeping. The flight was uneventful but long and when we arrived in Dulles we had about an hour and a half to clear immigration and customs, get our luggage out, check it back thru, check into United Airlines and RUN thru the airport for our Boston flight. We made it, running thru security and cutting in front of people, out of breath. The only truly hairy point was going thru customs with Pacifique. We hand the immigration officer our four passports, and he looks at Pacifiuqe and says, "I need the Yellow envelope". Silence, then he repeats. "Do you have the yellow envelope that came with the visa?" My breath catches standing here in the immigration line, people behind me, the final port-of-entry that we have been anticipating for so long, and I say, "You are kidding, right?" followed up very quickly with a "You officers probably don't joke, do you?" The officer is getting very uncomfortable and nervous. He is kind, not irritated at all, just exceedingly worried for the situation. We go over the details while my heart moves to my throat. "They gave us the passport and visa only, no yellow envelope. No one mentioned a yellow envelope. Scott went to pick up the visa.. .I wasn't there." Finally after about what feels like a suspension of time for at least 5 minutes, Scott digs in the black back pack we have been lugging around Kigali and Addis for over 2 weeks. The one we decided after much deliberation to include our adoption paperwork in even though we were technically finished, rather than get rid of the load and include it in with our checked baggage. He fishes around and pulls out a yellow-tinted manila envelope. "Is this it?" And the officer breathes a sigh of relief. My god, Oh, man my nerves... I could kill the guy right at this point. I guess he just doesn't pay attention to the details like I do. Like if the Consular in Addis handed me Pacifique's passport along with a hermetically sealed yellow envelope, I would likely inquire, "What is this big fancy envelope for with my son's photo on the outside for? Ah, but the point is we had it. If I ever become a Embassy Consular, I will be certain to tell people what that fancy important envelope is for. I will stress it to them, in case they decide to toss it before traveling home to lighten their load.

We board the plane with a minute to spare only to sit on the tarmac for an hour due to bad weather in Boston. Then we fly the hours flight only to land in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to refuel. Yes, you read it right. There was no logic my brain could wrap itself around. We must have been doing figure eights all the way to Harrisburg, if you look at the map DC and Harrisburg are about a 10 minute walk apart. And refueling? We got fuel and found there was a ground stop in Boston, so there we waited for another hour and a half or so. I cannot tell you how anti-climactic that flight was... being so close to my folks waiting at Boston for us, but not being able to get there. When we finally did arrive, we determined what I suspected: there was not enough time for the Airline to get our luggage to the connection, so we are still without bags. Sigh. No wonder we all feel as if we haven't quite arrived yet.

Regardless of arriving late and my butt feeling like a mammoth rock had grown out of it sometime during the night, handing Pacifique to my mother was worth everything it took to come to that point. Watching her do exactly what I did when I first laid eyes on my son and he was put against my chest was the moment I had been anticipating with tears for three days solid. Upon arriving home in our dooryard at midnight, pulling all the last bags out of the van, I looked at our son asleep in his car seat, infant head cocked to one side. Jesus God (yes, I know I am swearing) did we go to the end of the world to pick up this little man, to bring him all the way back here to our little humble home in Vermont. I have been traveling the world over for two years and have finally found what I was being called to. A person, a human being, an entire life that I knew without a doubt was there, calling us to find him. Many wondered what I was after, why, doubted if I really knew. But I did, I have felt this particular child, this particular soul for nearly two years now, and we finally found him. Amen.

More later...

mama Jaya