Each Small, Good Thing

Note to reader: All the text in italics is from Mary Oliver's poem "Love Sorrow." 

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,
what if you should lose her? Then you would be 
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. 

She stretches out her fingers, shyly, this child who is anything but shy. As the woman paints her nails, she chats excitedly about everyone she knows who has been adopted. She calls over her grandmother, wo owns the small salon--the only one nearby with an opening on such short notice--to tell her it is our daughter's adoption day. 

Before that, I walk our son to the door of his school, then into his classroom. He doesn't want to let go of my hand. This is unusual--usually he runs into the building with something specific he wants to tell his para, who waits for him just inside the door. But on this day, like most days during the previous two weeks, he looks exhausted, wan, and it's hard to tell if this is physical or emotional. 

About 24 hours later we are on a video call with his therapist, making a decision no one wants to have to make just days before Christmas: he needed to be hospitalized, again.

Before that, there had been a series of more and more urgent calls from the school, then the police, then the local ER. We had chosen to stay with our daughter. She needed this day to be about her. 

---

After he tells his psychiatrist he knows he needs to go, my spouse goes upstairs to pack his clothes. She'll sit with him in a ER room three hours away for several days until he can get into the hospital that can best meet his needs. 

I'll stay home with everyone else, trying to keep things as normal as possible, while also giving space for the questions, the grief. Each child, in turn, weeps for him. Each child, in turn, admits they are also relieved. Everyone agrees, when we can finally talk about it, that for about two weeks he hasn't been himself.

He won't be home for Christmas. 

But before all of that, our daughter will sit in a chair and grimace as her ears are pierced a second time. I'll feel sick, need to leave to sit outside and put my head between my knees. 

And before that, early the same morning, I'll inexplicably fall down the stairs, dislocate my shoulder, convince my teenage daughter to push it back into place. I'll take some pain medication and somehow get through court, lunch, the phone calls, the manicure, the ear piercing--and the goodbye the next morning.

Before that, many times before that, our daughter's first mother weeping. 

Adoption is rooted in loss. All of our children have lost more than we will every understand. 

--

Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does not

altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,

abandoned. 

The day before our daughter's adoption, I take a drive with our son and ask him about his sadness. I ask him if he has mixed feelings about her adoption, if he knows it doesn't change how much I love him. I ask him if he has been feeling more tired, if he knows why. I ask about his dreams. I ask if he can still see the beauty of the landscape. 

He doesn't answer. It is hard to tell if he is being oppositional or despondent. 

I don't know how to help you, I say. In spite of myself, my eyes spill over with tears.

Don't be sad, he answers, the first words he's said on the whole drive. 

We're getting our Christmas tree today, I say. It's my favorite day of the year. You are so good at picking out just the right tree. Do you think you can do that with us today?

He doesn't answer, but later that evening, we cut down a beautiful tree and all of us are happy, calm. There are photos taken by my spouse of the three of us--son, soon-to-be adopted daughter, and me--hauling the tree toward to the car. 

It's a good night.

-- 

We take a family trip to a town about an hour away to grab supper and do some Christmas shopping. Our son isn't with us; the day before, he finally got a bed in the hospital we were hoping would take him, which meant my spouse came home, but also that we wouldn't see him for awhile. 

Still, we're all feeling festive, excited. I look up and see the moon--almost full, bulging with heft and light--and I feel a pain in my chest, because my son loves the moon so much. I wonder if he can see it out his window.

Earlier that week, I had explained at supper to everyone together what was going on, answered the first round of questions. My two year old grandson was there, but, I thought, not really listening. He was talking to himself, moving food around on his plate. 

But later, he will get up on the step stool and pull a photo of our son from the wall. He'll caress his image and say, "Don't worry, Yiayia. Home soon."

---

What would Papou think about me going to the hospital? he asks me, just before he and my spouse drive away.

I am taken aback. He never knew my father. 

He might not understand at first, I say. But he would want you to get the help you need, and get better.

Say it in a Greek accent, like he would have said it to me, he says. 

So I do. 

---

Before this--many years before this--we took a walk together to talk about whether he wanted to change his name. He wanted my last name, but at the time, we didn't know we would have more kids, and I had already adopted my eldest daughter, who had my name. I suggested he take my spouse's last name.

But I want your last name, he said. 

I told him about the Greek naming tradition of naming children after grandparents. I told him my eldest daughter had taken my mother's name as her middle name.

Then I'll take your father's name, he said. He says the four names he wants, in order, one name for each of his first parents, one name for each of us. He says it over and over, like a mantra, and when we go home, we fill out the forms, the last step.

---

She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. 

Every Greek is named for a grandparent (or, if there are more than four children, another important relative) and a saint. Later, I will tell him about St. Stylianos, always pictured holding a child wrapped in swaddling clothes. 

He is the saint of children without parents, of children who are ill. 

Children like me, he says. Because my parents couldn't take care of me. Because my brain isn't always OK.

---

After I tell him, in a Greek accent, that it's OK for him to go get some help, that I understand, he asks, what would St. Stylianos say?

Oh, he would say you are going to be OK. He would hold you and tell you that you are loved by all of us, and so many others, I say.

He lists the names of his siblings, his aunts and uncles, his cousins, his grandparents, making sure they all love him. I assure him they do.

He points to the icon of St. Stylianos hanging on the wall behind where we are sitting. 

Can I take him with me? he asks. 

I don't answer. He's been there before; he knows he can't. 

But I don't have to answer, because he stares into St. Stylianos' eyes and says, It's OK, mom. I know he's in my heart.

---

                                    And you may see,

as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.

                                And you may see,

as the two of you go

walking together in the morning light, how

little by little she relaxes; she looks about her; 

she begins to grow.

In court, when the judge declares us a family, our daughter will put her arms around us and grin. We'll all gather around the judge and he'll give us permission to take off our masks for one quick photo. The assistant county attorney who questioned each of us in turn will take photo after photo with everyone's phones, and then we'll slip our masks back on.

It is sunny and unseasonably warm and we'll walk home, get in our car, drive an hour away for lunch, manicure, ear piercing, shopping--my daughter's ideal day. 

I think of her first mother, at home, probably weeping. I think of her first father, in prison, and wonder if he knows today's the day. I remember when they said in court that they wanted us to adopt her, during a virtual hearing many months earlier, and how I had to turn my camera off because I was openly weeping.

Adoption is rooted in loss, in trauma. 

Adoption is rooted in hope, in love. 

The only way to hold it all--no, the only way to survive it all--is to hold tight to each small, good thing:

The beautiful tree, decked out with lights and ornaments.

Our daughter's arms around our shoulders. 

Our son's eyes fixed on the eyes of St. Stylianos. 

Our grandson saying, Don't worry, Yiayia. Home soon.

The moon that rises and falls, waxes and wanes. All over the world, the same moon.