Wind
Today, on the last official day of summer, S. and I go to the beach. We are two of only about eight people there, and there is a good reason: it is windy. And when I say windy, I'm talking about a kind of wind that people who aren't from the prairie can't fathom.
I lie on the beach, trying to finish a book of poetry, but the sand kicking up against my skin is seriously and strangely painful. I can feel it in my eardrums, in my mouth, against my side, little stinging daggers of pain. The waves are high, and when I try to float on my back, I swallow water, breathe water, squirm to get back up. The water, the wind, reminds me of Ikaria, and for a second I am homesick for that island where I have never lived, and then, I daydream briefly of taking S. there, something we've planned for next year, how it will go, what particular challenges might arise, what it will be like to show her another place, other people, that matter to me. Briefly, I feel grief for all of her places and people that I will never see, never know--foster homes, biological home--I can only imagine these spaces and people as they come to life in stories, most of them painful, tragic.
But today is about celebration. We've cleaned the house, carefully packed her school bag, picked out her first day outfit, talked over her fears about her ninth grade year. And now we're off, driving across the prairie toward a beach we know well in a neighboring town, hoping we won't encounter lake itch signs this time--and we don't.
When sunbathing proves to be too painful, we try sitting in the water and building a castle, but the waves take it, lapping it up the way our hungry dog will eat his dinner. So we dive in, swimming against the current, S. holding onto me out of some kind of primal fear, but I am not afraid of water, of waves. I get her to stand up with me and we link arms and the waves hit us, belly, chest, and she shrieks and laughs, and I try to remember all the stories I know about wind, stories from my own life and stories from the Bible and stories from the old Greek myths we learned as kids in Greek school--but I'm blank, I have only this moment and my daughter's shriek and the pure joy of being in the sun, tanned and sandy.
But before this, last week, there was a hearing that threatened to take her away--it wasn't going to happen, I knew that all along, but her biological mother would be in a room with the three people who had been on her case the longest--attorney, guardian ad litem, social worker--all of them negotiating with a woman who wanted her back. All of them trying to convince her, and the judge, that she shouldn't keep pushing this complaint: that somehow, her daughter had been stolen from her, the story confused, the reasons untrue.
I now know the tug of mother-love. Do I think I'm the perfect parent for S? I wouldn't venture to guess, though if you asked the question another way, is she the perfect daughter for me, the answer is definitely yes. If you asked whether she's better off with me than in any of the places she's been before, that's a yes, also, no doubt. If you ask me what I'd do if someone tried to hurt her, or take her away--the things that come to mind are scary, crazy-scary, so I can't totally write off this abusive woman who made my daughter's life hell during her first ten years of life. I know her story now, too, her losses, the pain of her own childhood, I see how cycles go on and on, how families don't change unless something shakes them up. I also know the capacity of love, broken as it may be, the desire to keep a child close.
My father is awaiting results from mysterious medical tests he can't explain to me that are delaying his return to Ikaria, where he lives for at least half the year with his sweetheart. He's sick, he says, a spot in his lung, some blood, but he can't get into details. Here we are again: four years ago, or was it five?--he had a nervous breakdown, and there was a dance to do, trips to Ohio, conversations with doctors and lawyers who didn't know for sure if they were supposed to be talking to me. Somehow, as always, he survived, reconnected with his high school sweetheart, went on with his life. Somehow, he also managed, in a quiet moment on a drive during one of my visits to see yet another doctor, to tell me he was sorry for all of the years before, for everything he'd done. He didn't have to be specific. I went home more sure of who I was, what I wanted, and for the first time, I thought, maybe I could be a parent. Maybe the fact that I have the father I have doesn't necessarily mean I'll fuck it up.
But I got off topic there: I meant to say that somehow my father evolved from an angry, abusive, massive, scary man to a bone-skinny, weeping, boy-man who lay, suicidal, on the couch in the living room of the home where I grew up--and from that to a potbellied elder living in a low-income apartment, having lost everything--his business, his home--but having found love. He is perhaps happier now than he's ever been.
My father is nothing if not dramatic, but tonight he delivered this news of a potential health threat, of his delayed leave from Ohio, easily, without overwrought emotion. He was simply going to wait to find out what the doctors thought he should do next, and he would let me know.
My friends who adopted three beautiful children out of foster care recently learned their daugher had a new biological sibling. When asked if they wanted this baby, addicted to drugs, in intensive care in the hospital, they said, immediately, yes. They visited regularly, began to receive gifts from friends, the carseat, the high chair; they were ready. And now the tide has turned: this addition to the family may not happen; someone else has stepped forward, claiming a biological connection my friends can't claim. Oh, the grief of it, and yet they go on. Most recently, they sent an e-mail to friends about their children's upcoming first day of school.
My daughter, whom I'd called to the computer to read their blog, not knowing the news we would discover, said, incredulously, "How could they take this baby away and give it to someone in the family? Don't they know that bad families stay bad?" Her tone sounded exactly as it had when, a few days earlier, I'd told her that her biological mother was insisting on continuing to pursue her right to parent S. if S. did not agree to some contact. "But I want to keep my good grades, my good life!" she exclaimed. "I don't want any more of her crazy letters!"
There is plenty of grief and fear in the world. We sit on the sidelines and watch our children get sucked into it all (at best), or, at worst, we watch them slip away from us. The ending to our story is better than my friends', so much so that I hesitated to share our news with them, though of course I did. We agreed to a stupid p.o. box to which S's biological mother can send letters, which S. claims she'll never check, which we can close when S. turns 18. But, she said, "What if I'm tempted to look in it? What makes them think this is a good thing?" The "them" could be anyone--judge, attorneys, the whole social system that had messed up her life. "What makes them think this is a good thing?" she asked again, the question ringing over and over in my mind the rest of the week.
You can read the letters, I tell her, if you want to, when you're ready, when we're sure you're strong enough--but as I say these words I remember how I threw up when reading the letters her biological mother had sent her, pages and pages that added up to "you caused your own abuse" and "don't blame me" and "you're my princess, I love you more than anyone else ever could love you." S. herself would read them, weep, lash out, try to talk to people who didn't want to listen, talk to her therapist, write back (sometimes), get through the days or weeks until the next letter came. This was her life, dictated by these letters, which she longed for and dreaded, the mother-love deeply rooted, deeply flawed. (Even now, I will catch her sometimes re-reading them, or looking at old photos, though she's covered her mother's eyes in some of them, though she says, over and over, "You're the only real mother I've ever had.")
"You have to protect her," my aunt who raised me said. "That's your job." And she's right. But I can't protect this child from the box sitting there, filling with letters, that she'll now be tempted to read. I can't protect her from the past, how it comes back swiftly and painfully, a face, the sound of someone's voice, a book she reads.
Or her fears: rape, beatings, raised voices, tornadoes, pregnancy (longed for and feared, all at once).
But in the end, on Labor Day, almost five months to the day after she moved in with me, she'll lie down in the water and let the waves take her, bouncing her here and there, and I'll do the same, and we'll both laugh hysterically, and the other eight or so people on the beach will stare.
"Don't worry, we're not going to drown!" my daughter shouts out to anyone who's listening. "We're both strong swimmers." Sher turns to me then, adds, "Well, you are, anyway. And I'm right beside you."
Later we rebuild the castle until it's strong enough to stand the waves, and then we leave, go home, have supper, get ready for bed. Take in the day's bad news: the fates of those we love, suddenly unclear. We wonder how to feel about the clarity in our own lives--we can finalize the adoption now that the biological mother has agreed to this settlement; we'll be together forever, in one way or another--but how to process this good news when the people we love are up against such deep uncertainty?
"I sure hope Obama wins," S. says sleepily right after the last kiss goodnight. "I sure hope things get better, especially for kids like me. It's good that he mentioned kids in his speech, and gay people, isn't it, mom? And good that his vice-president wrote that bill against violence."
She's said this before, last night, in fact, but this time, I look her in the eyes and say, more attentively, "Yes, it's a good thing."
"I sure hope Obama wins, and that Papou's OK, and that K and S's baby gets back to them somehow," she adds, drifting off. And then, she stirs: "That wind, that was so..." but there's no word for it, really. "We had fun, didn't we?" she says, but she's asleep before she hears my whispered, "Yes, we did."
I lie on the beach, trying to finish a book of poetry, but the sand kicking up against my skin is seriously and strangely painful. I can feel it in my eardrums, in my mouth, against my side, little stinging daggers of pain. The waves are high, and when I try to float on my back, I swallow water, breathe water, squirm to get back up. The water, the wind, reminds me of Ikaria, and for a second I am homesick for that island where I have never lived, and then, I daydream briefly of taking S. there, something we've planned for next year, how it will go, what particular challenges might arise, what it will be like to show her another place, other people, that matter to me. Briefly, I feel grief for all of her places and people that I will never see, never know--foster homes, biological home--I can only imagine these spaces and people as they come to life in stories, most of them painful, tragic.
But today is about celebration. We've cleaned the house, carefully packed her school bag, picked out her first day outfit, talked over her fears about her ninth grade year. And now we're off, driving across the prairie toward a beach we know well in a neighboring town, hoping we won't encounter lake itch signs this time--and we don't.
When sunbathing proves to be too painful, we try sitting in the water and building a castle, but the waves take it, lapping it up the way our hungry dog will eat his dinner. So we dive in, swimming against the current, S. holding onto me out of some kind of primal fear, but I am not afraid of water, of waves. I get her to stand up with me and we link arms and the waves hit us, belly, chest, and she shrieks and laughs, and I try to remember all the stories I know about wind, stories from my own life and stories from the Bible and stories from the old Greek myths we learned as kids in Greek school--but I'm blank, I have only this moment and my daughter's shriek and the pure joy of being in the sun, tanned and sandy.
But before this, last week, there was a hearing that threatened to take her away--it wasn't going to happen, I knew that all along, but her biological mother would be in a room with the three people who had been on her case the longest--attorney, guardian ad litem, social worker--all of them negotiating with a woman who wanted her back. All of them trying to convince her, and the judge, that she shouldn't keep pushing this complaint: that somehow, her daughter had been stolen from her, the story confused, the reasons untrue.
I now know the tug of mother-love. Do I think I'm the perfect parent for S? I wouldn't venture to guess, though if you asked the question another way, is she the perfect daughter for me, the answer is definitely yes. If you asked whether she's better off with me than in any of the places she's been before, that's a yes, also, no doubt. If you ask me what I'd do if someone tried to hurt her, or take her away--the things that come to mind are scary, crazy-scary, so I can't totally write off this abusive woman who made my daughter's life hell during her first ten years of life. I know her story now, too, her losses, the pain of her own childhood, I see how cycles go on and on, how families don't change unless something shakes them up. I also know the capacity of love, broken as it may be, the desire to keep a child close.
My father is awaiting results from mysterious medical tests he can't explain to me that are delaying his return to Ikaria, where he lives for at least half the year with his sweetheart. He's sick, he says, a spot in his lung, some blood, but he can't get into details. Here we are again: four years ago, or was it five?--he had a nervous breakdown, and there was a dance to do, trips to Ohio, conversations with doctors and lawyers who didn't know for sure if they were supposed to be talking to me. Somehow, as always, he survived, reconnected with his high school sweetheart, went on with his life. Somehow, he also managed, in a quiet moment on a drive during one of my visits to see yet another doctor, to tell me he was sorry for all of the years before, for everything he'd done. He didn't have to be specific. I went home more sure of who I was, what I wanted, and for the first time, I thought, maybe I could be a parent. Maybe the fact that I have the father I have doesn't necessarily mean I'll fuck it up.
But I got off topic there: I meant to say that somehow my father evolved from an angry, abusive, massive, scary man to a bone-skinny, weeping, boy-man who lay, suicidal, on the couch in the living room of the home where I grew up--and from that to a potbellied elder living in a low-income apartment, having lost everything--his business, his home--but having found love. He is perhaps happier now than he's ever been.
My father is nothing if not dramatic, but tonight he delivered this news of a potential health threat, of his delayed leave from Ohio, easily, without overwrought emotion. He was simply going to wait to find out what the doctors thought he should do next, and he would let me know.
My friends who adopted three beautiful children out of foster care recently learned their daugher had a new biological sibling. When asked if they wanted this baby, addicted to drugs, in intensive care in the hospital, they said, immediately, yes. They visited regularly, began to receive gifts from friends, the carseat, the high chair; they were ready. And now the tide has turned: this addition to the family may not happen; someone else has stepped forward, claiming a biological connection my friends can't claim. Oh, the grief of it, and yet they go on. Most recently, they sent an e-mail to friends about their children's upcoming first day of school.
My daughter, whom I'd called to the computer to read their blog, not knowing the news we would discover, said, incredulously, "How could they take this baby away and give it to someone in the family? Don't they know that bad families stay bad?" Her tone sounded exactly as it had when, a few days earlier, I'd told her that her biological mother was insisting on continuing to pursue her right to parent S. if S. did not agree to some contact. "But I want to keep my good grades, my good life!" she exclaimed. "I don't want any more of her crazy letters!"
There is plenty of grief and fear in the world. We sit on the sidelines and watch our children get sucked into it all (at best), or, at worst, we watch them slip away from us. The ending to our story is better than my friends', so much so that I hesitated to share our news with them, though of course I did. We agreed to a stupid p.o. box to which S's biological mother can send letters, which S. claims she'll never check, which we can close when S. turns 18. But, she said, "What if I'm tempted to look in it? What makes them think this is a good thing?" The "them" could be anyone--judge, attorneys, the whole social system that had messed up her life. "What makes them think this is a good thing?" she asked again, the question ringing over and over in my mind the rest of the week.
You can read the letters, I tell her, if you want to, when you're ready, when we're sure you're strong enough--but as I say these words I remember how I threw up when reading the letters her biological mother had sent her, pages and pages that added up to "you caused your own abuse" and "don't blame me" and "you're my princess, I love you more than anyone else ever could love you." S. herself would read them, weep, lash out, try to talk to people who didn't want to listen, talk to her therapist, write back (sometimes), get through the days or weeks until the next letter came. This was her life, dictated by these letters, which she longed for and dreaded, the mother-love deeply rooted, deeply flawed. (Even now, I will catch her sometimes re-reading them, or looking at old photos, though she's covered her mother's eyes in some of them, though she says, over and over, "You're the only real mother I've ever had.")
"You have to protect her," my aunt who raised me said. "That's your job." And she's right. But I can't protect this child from the box sitting there, filling with letters, that she'll now be tempted to read. I can't protect her from the past, how it comes back swiftly and painfully, a face, the sound of someone's voice, a book she reads.
Or her fears: rape, beatings, raised voices, tornadoes, pregnancy (longed for and feared, all at once).
But in the end, on Labor Day, almost five months to the day after she moved in with me, she'll lie down in the water and let the waves take her, bouncing her here and there, and I'll do the same, and we'll both laugh hysterically, and the other eight or so people on the beach will stare.
"Don't worry, we're not going to drown!" my daughter shouts out to anyone who's listening. "We're both strong swimmers." Sher turns to me then, adds, "Well, you are, anyway. And I'm right beside you."
Later we rebuild the castle until it's strong enough to stand the waves, and then we leave, go home, have supper, get ready for bed. Take in the day's bad news: the fates of those we love, suddenly unclear. We wonder how to feel about the clarity in our own lives--we can finalize the adoption now that the biological mother has agreed to this settlement; we'll be together forever, in one way or another--but how to process this good news when the people we love are up against such deep uncertainty?
"I sure hope Obama wins," S. says sleepily right after the last kiss goodnight. "I sure hope things get better, especially for kids like me. It's good that he mentioned kids in his speech, and gay people, isn't it, mom? And good that his vice-president wrote that bill against violence."
She's said this before, last night, in fact, but this time, I look her in the eyes and say, more attentively, "Yes, it's a good thing."
"I sure hope Obama wins, and that Papou's OK, and that K and S's baby gets back to them somehow," she adds, drifting off. And then, she stirs: "That wind, that was so..." but there's no word for it, really. "We had fun, didn't we?" she says, but she's asleep before she hears my whispered, "Yes, we did."
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