Back at the Page
I've been without a computer at home since early summer, when the cat knocked over a beautiful vase of flowers onto the keyboard, which I'd left open on the kitchen table. So much has happened since I had regular access to this blog that I can't even begin to step back and make sense of it all. But, I'm back at the page, attempting now to do my best not only to summarize the last four and 1/2 months of my life, but also to see them as one of my creative writing professors told me I ought to, stepping not just a few feet, but at least a mile backwards, but also in a new direction.
I like that image, of walking backwards away from your life in a direction you've never traveled before, of seeing everything from a new perspective, and knowing you are nowhere you've been before, in unfamiliar territory--but also facing in the same direction from which you came, with the path back always in your sight.
There were a few times over the last few months that I've tried to turn around altogether, to walk in a new direction with my back to the old--but life doesn't work that way.
We begin where we are. We return, always, in one way or another, to the place where we began.
And so, in a little over a week we'll celebrate the fourth anniversary of the adoption finalization.
But let me move backwards to three days after my last post, when S and I sat with our friend T in a meeting with the principal, two staff from the special ed cooperative (neither of which had ever met S), S's special ed teacher, and our social worker. This was on June 1, the date S was scheduled to walk across the stage and get her diploma. We had decided in an earlier meeting that she wouldn't take it--that we would, instead, opt for at least one more year, and possibly longer, in a special program in a town about 45 minutes away for young people with disabilities who need additional training to prepare for college or a job--and to learn important social skills. The school had already agreed to this program, but as it turned out, they called another meeting to tell S that she couldn't go after all. Instead, they would provide her with any resources she needed to succeed.
But you haven't done that so far, she said. And I don't feel safe in your school.
We went round and round for over an hour. Her English teacher, who had been invited because state law requires a regular education teacher to be in the room for all IEP meetings, left after the hour was up, totally bewildered. He handed S a card and told her he felt lucky to have known her.
In the end, there was no conclusion. In the midst of the meeting, the father of S's brother called, lost on his way to our town. My cousin C who raised me called to say their plane had landed--she, my cousin P, and my 88-year-old aunt K were on their way.
S didn't walk. We walked out of the meeting beaten down, totally bewildered. And then I did something remarkable. I turned to S and said to her, "We are not going to let the school ruin your high school graduation."
And we didn't. We had a huge party--more than 100 people showed up, and I'd only invited maybe 50--and we ate well, and talked and laughed and hugged and it was so beautiful to remember how loved and supported we are in this small town I've made my home for the last 12 years.
We spent two long, beautiful summer days with our family, and another week traveling around the state with S's brother and his dad. We went down into a mine and came back out into the light. We saw wolves and bears. We ate well, drank well, loved every moment of our time together.
And then my sweetheart T arrived for the summer, and we went about trying to make a home together for the summer, as a family. And I went on advocating for S until I had secured enough resources to ensure she would have support to explore career options and practice social skills. I hired a staff. We got her diploma in the mail. We got used to being a threesome rather than a twosome. We learned how to talk through the difficult times and how to love the good times. We got to know T's family, who live 45 minutes away. We traveled to see my cousin C and had a wonderful, relaxing week with her and her husband. We traveled to see T's best friend in Missouri and met her new baby. We spent a lot of time in the car, and even more time around the house, just soaking up a long, relaxing summer. I worked half time and only half time; T worked full time but didn't have to think about her job after hours.
By the end of the summer, I was completely broke after paying for S's care out of pocket for three months--but just a few weeks later, the aid kicked in, the staff began to work, and we were back into a routine. T left a few weeks after that.
And now it's just S and I again, missing T, getting along better than we have in a long time, actually, and getting to know five new caretakers who are helping S study for her ACT, learn to sew, make art, and care for animals.
In the midst of it all, we've been involved in trying to defeat the marriage amendment in our state, taking part in heart-wrenching, difficult conversations, hoping and praying for the best.
And I have found myself suddenly aware of how unsatisfied I am, overall, with my work, and how ready I am to move on to something new. I love my students, and I love the big picture of my work, and there are these transcendent moments--like the first day of our community ESL program, when 84 new students show up--or the day in class when we had an honest conversation about how our faith, or lack thereof, affected our desire to volunteer and how we plan to vote--when I'm sure I am living my vocation. But there are other days, like when I am dealing with campus politics or dealing, once again, with a task that should have been done right the first time by someone else--or running up against a barrier when advocating for a GLBT student--that I think about how if only I'd been more responsible with money I would be fleeing right now.
Fleeing for what? For Healing Ranch--a safe place for people and animals, a place for healing and hope and empowerment. I can see it in my mind's eye, but I don't know how to make it happen.
I believe we can make it happen, someday, T assures me. She says that all she has ever wanted to do is to heal people--it's why she chose nursing over med school, why she's choosing a path that's unconventional compared to her peers. Next year, the plan is that she'll move here and live with us and get a job until we can get out from under our debt, and that we'll keep dreaming of what might come later--and working toward that dream as best we can.
Sometimes I dream that some rich person sweeps in and buys us property and builds us the structures we need and I quit my job and walk away from all those file folders that need to be cleaned out and all those service-learning supplies that need to be organized, and we start over.
But I have internalized my creative writing professor's words deeply enough to know I can't just turn around. I wouldn't have this dream if I hadn't had this job for 12 years. I wouldn't have adopted Lisa if this job hadn't taught me how to advocate for people who needed an advocate, if it hadn't taught me, through the projects I've worked on with students over the years, about how my small suffering is nothing in comparison to the suffering others experience--and how deeply I am called to heal and to fight unjust systems that keep people in suffering places.
And animals, S reminds me. Yes, I say, animals too, and although I will never love animals the way she does, I get why she loves them now, after more than four years of caring for our dog and cat--well, her dog and cat. I see that they are agents of healing, also, carriers of hope, every time I watch her hold them in her lap, or hear her having a pretend conversation with one of them, or watch her with the animals at our local Humane Society, where she volunteers.
S is struggling now with eating issues in a big way, and we are navigating our way through these in the same way we've navigated through all the other issues she's had since I brought her home. I don't know how or if this new struggle will end. What I do know if that we're on a neverending path that winds and twists and turns and ends up, somehow, back where we started, in a place we can see with new eyes when we take the time to step back.
I like that image, of walking backwards away from your life in a direction you've never traveled before, of seeing everything from a new perspective, and knowing you are nowhere you've been before, in unfamiliar territory--but also facing in the same direction from which you came, with the path back always in your sight.
There were a few times over the last few months that I've tried to turn around altogether, to walk in a new direction with my back to the old--but life doesn't work that way.
We begin where we are. We return, always, in one way or another, to the place where we began.
And so, in a little over a week we'll celebrate the fourth anniversary of the adoption finalization.
But let me move backwards to three days after my last post, when S and I sat with our friend T in a meeting with the principal, two staff from the special ed cooperative (neither of which had ever met S), S's special ed teacher, and our social worker. This was on June 1, the date S was scheduled to walk across the stage and get her diploma. We had decided in an earlier meeting that she wouldn't take it--that we would, instead, opt for at least one more year, and possibly longer, in a special program in a town about 45 minutes away for young people with disabilities who need additional training to prepare for college or a job--and to learn important social skills. The school had already agreed to this program, but as it turned out, they called another meeting to tell S that she couldn't go after all. Instead, they would provide her with any resources she needed to succeed.
But you haven't done that so far, she said. And I don't feel safe in your school.
We went round and round for over an hour. Her English teacher, who had been invited because state law requires a regular education teacher to be in the room for all IEP meetings, left after the hour was up, totally bewildered. He handed S a card and told her he felt lucky to have known her.
In the end, there was no conclusion. In the midst of the meeting, the father of S's brother called, lost on his way to our town. My cousin C who raised me called to say their plane had landed--she, my cousin P, and my 88-year-old aunt K were on their way.
S didn't walk. We walked out of the meeting beaten down, totally bewildered. And then I did something remarkable. I turned to S and said to her, "We are not going to let the school ruin your high school graduation."
And we didn't. We had a huge party--more than 100 people showed up, and I'd only invited maybe 50--and we ate well, and talked and laughed and hugged and it was so beautiful to remember how loved and supported we are in this small town I've made my home for the last 12 years.
We spent two long, beautiful summer days with our family, and another week traveling around the state with S's brother and his dad. We went down into a mine and came back out into the light. We saw wolves and bears. We ate well, drank well, loved every moment of our time together.
And then my sweetheart T arrived for the summer, and we went about trying to make a home together for the summer, as a family. And I went on advocating for S until I had secured enough resources to ensure she would have support to explore career options and practice social skills. I hired a staff. We got her diploma in the mail. We got used to being a threesome rather than a twosome. We learned how to talk through the difficult times and how to love the good times. We got to know T's family, who live 45 minutes away. We traveled to see my cousin C and had a wonderful, relaxing week with her and her husband. We traveled to see T's best friend in Missouri and met her new baby. We spent a lot of time in the car, and even more time around the house, just soaking up a long, relaxing summer. I worked half time and only half time; T worked full time but didn't have to think about her job after hours.
By the end of the summer, I was completely broke after paying for S's care out of pocket for three months--but just a few weeks later, the aid kicked in, the staff began to work, and we were back into a routine. T left a few weeks after that.
And now it's just S and I again, missing T, getting along better than we have in a long time, actually, and getting to know five new caretakers who are helping S study for her ACT, learn to sew, make art, and care for animals.
In the midst of it all, we've been involved in trying to defeat the marriage amendment in our state, taking part in heart-wrenching, difficult conversations, hoping and praying for the best.
And I have found myself suddenly aware of how unsatisfied I am, overall, with my work, and how ready I am to move on to something new. I love my students, and I love the big picture of my work, and there are these transcendent moments--like the first day of our community ESL program, when 84 new students show up--or the day in class when we had an honest conversation about how our faith, or lack thereof, affected our desire to volunteer and how we plan to vote--when I'm sure I am living my vocation. But there are other days, like when I am dealing with campus politics or dealing, once again, with a task that should have been done right the first time by someone else--or running up against a barrier when advocating for a GLBT student--that I think about how if only I'd been more responsible with money I would be fleeing right now.
Fleeing for what? For Healing Ranch--a safe place for people and animals, a place for healing and hope and empowerment. I can see it in my mind's eye, but I don't know how to make it happen.
I believe we can make it happen, someday, T assures me. She says that all she has ever wanted to do is to heal people--it's why she chose nursing over med school, why she's choosing a path that's unconventional compared to her peers. Next year, the plan is that she'll move here and live with us and get a job until we can get out from under our debt, and that we'll keep dreaming of what might come later--and working toward that dream as best we can.
Sometimes I dream that some rich person sweeps in and buys us property and builds us the structures we need and I quit my job and walk away from all those file folders that need to be cleaned out and all those service-learning supplies that need to be organized, and we start over.
But I have internalized my creative writing professor's words deeply enough to know I can't just turn around. I wouldn't have this dream if I hadn't had this job for 12 years. I wouldn't have adopted Lisa if this job hadn't taught me how to advocate for people who needed an advocate, if it hadn't taught me, through the projects I've worked on with students over the years, about how my small suffering is nothing in comparison to the suffering others experience--and how deeply I am called to heal and to fight unjust systems that keep people in suffering places.
And animals, S reminds me. Yes, I say, animals too, and although I will never love animals the way she does, I get why she loves them now, after more than four years of caring for our dog and cat--well, her dog and cat. I see that they are agents of healing, also, carriers of hope, every time I watch her hold them in her lap, or hear her having a pretend conversation with one of them, or watch her with the animals at our local Humane Society, where she volunteers.
S is struggling now with eating issues in a big way, and we are navigating our way through these in the same way we've navigated through all the other issues she's had since I brought her home. I don't know how or if this new struggle will end. What I do know if that we're on a neverending path that winds and twists and turns and ends up, somehow, back where we started, in a place we can see with new eyes when we take the time to step back.
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