Open Adoption

My family has always had some biological and some adopted members; one brother, several cousins, and then when I married- my husband's Mom and both her siblings were also adopted as children. It made perfect sense then, that when I could not get pregnant after 10 years, adoption became the option of choice. We walked into a store and saw a little tri-fold next to the cash register that said, "November is adoption Month." We looked at each other and knew the time had arrived, so that day we called the agency, Adoption Horizon's and arranged to go to our first meeting.

We were both teachers and had a lot of experience with special needs kids and we knew that newborns were hard to get, so we were confident that being willing to take a sibling group or kids with handicaps would increase our chances but there were other plans for us.

We did look at several groups of siblings but the opportunity always fell through, and we tried to buy a house in the next State, our dream house on a Sea Cliff, and that fell through as well. Life felt pretty frustrating. How could we prepare if we didn't know if we were getting a school aged adolescent in three weeks, or three pre-school girls in 5 days? But we never gave up hope, and indeed, decided to act as if the future was assured, and it felt like it was. We always believed it was a matter of "when" and not a matter of "if." My husband and I would take long walks on the beach and pray that our child, wherever he or she was, would be safe and loved until we could keep him safe and loved ourselves.

Then I was at work and the call came, "We know you said older kids, but would you consider a newborn - because a mom in our birthparent center accidentally got your file, and she picked you." (Her 15 month old had picked it off a desk and handed it to her.)

My heart was pounding as I asked, "When is she due?" and the answer was TWO WEEKS AGO!! Three days later she was placing a perfect, 14 hour old boy into our arms. A baby who could only be placed within the two-counties where we lived. Then we forgot to "turn off the prayer faucet" and within 6 months I was pregnant with his younger brother.

Now, on my oldest son's 17th birthday, I put him on an airplane to fly 1400 miles and spend spring break with his birth sister, their mom, the mom's new husband and his 3 younger half sisters. After 17 years of cards and letters from them, he is calling me, sending me texts and photos and loving every minute. The fact that one sister looks like is twin is amazing to him. It reminds me again that my own brother had to wait until he was a Dad to see a face that resembled his.

Our open adoption was probably helped by the distance between our families for those years, but I believe it was planned for all along and the jobs we were offered, the home we got all put us where we needed to be to be there where he would be born.

The relationship he has with both families who love him, has made him a warm, wonderful and loving young man who can make two Moms proud. Both Mom's listen to the song, "From God's arms, to My arms, to yours" and tear up.

Edit: The pictures above are of my family, my husband, both boys and me - then My baby and his big sister in his birthmom's and birth grandmother's arms - and then my baby with his birthmom and his four sisters this spring break.

Now he is back home - but happier and more complete for having had the time in the roots of his family tree.

Self Storage

I have been only the latest in a long line of pack-rats in my maternal family line. Everything that I come into contact with, I feel an overwhelming desire to hold on to. The fact is, I don't find too much difference between the "Hoarders" TV show and where I am capable of going except for the fact that I have been motivated by, "Clean House" and FlyLady.com and my love of my family, to turn off that road about a year and a half ago.

Clutter no longer rules my home. And it did. Once I even threw my wedding ring away, because my husband dared to try to throw away the pile of clutter that had accumulated on out dishwasher without letting me go through it first. Yet last August I had a two day yard sale, then donated four pick-up truck loads to charity and took another three loads to the dump and am still going strong.

What made the difference? As flylady says, it is learning to Finally love yourself, and to give up on perfectionism. The main thing for me was the simple point that I am not getting rid of the memory, or the person, by getting rid of the item that they gave me, or wore or touched.

My problem started the day My Mom ordered me to clean my room, and then cried because I had thrown away a valentine card with a flocked grey kitten on it. It was from her, "Don't you love me?" and from then on, I was afraid to throw anything away. Now, She lives in a pack-ratss dream, next to the packed house of my Grandmother, and there are several, cousin's, aunts and Great-Grandparent, homes that went the same way. It is easy to see, even on a short road trip, my relatives are the ones with bags and cartons tucked around our feet in the floor of the car.

The biggest cure in my life is my digital camera, and a scrapbook that I named "Self-Storage." So I can always find Myself.

I took pictures of the clutter, and then wrote poems or paragraphs about why those items stirred my memories. Then I could lose the clutter without losing the memories of the people, and the places that I loved. That scrapbook was little more than a concept and two pages before my teenagers were interested - yet I know that if I had left the piles of old t-shirts and motel soaps and grade school art projects, they would have eventually been forced to throw them away for me, and been angry and frustrated, and clueless to the rich history that I can now share with them.

The things I keep now, the best things, are no longer saved for special occasions, because no time is more special than now - while my family is all still here, to chip the good china, and laugh at the memories when they see that chip later.

For Olyhiker

From me to Jeremy

Olyhiker,

I sense a disturbance
in the force tonight
as a thousand voices around the world
cry out in protest
then are silent
waiting for your one voice
to answer
but it is lost in the silence.

In the silence
a candle flickers
another joins it
the lights a river of sparks
stars winding through the darkness
leading you to where the campfire glows
Warm and welcoming.

Warm and welcomed you join the group
lift your guitar while prayer flags dance
dance in the music filled breeze
that ruffles the stream
where the salmon spirit returns home one more time.


Find peace JER,
It is here.

Jer sent me the rock for christmas, but he painted salmon many times too. And after the panic when he was missing turned to grief I did the other picture in response and hope that he will find the peace he was looking for.

But the fury is very real too, D@mn it Oly, you were my friend and almost the only one who followed this blog. I wish you good things, but I am so angry. So I also wrote the following Rant, to help me understand the anger.

"Why would you want to leave a world with Orcas in it?"

Selfish, greedy
inconsiderate
bastard pig

YOU couldn't
"take the Pain"
so YOU
multiplied it
and
sent it out into the world

You can't find Peace
by avoiding life, someone said
and their tweet arrived
the day I heard you had died

Fuck no

YOU didn't die

it didn't happen to you

You caused it
you embraced it

and in closing your eyes forever

you filled the eyes of the world with tears

WHY OLY
if you were going to end this way

why did you get in my mind
promise me friendship

wake up my creativity

send me gift that made me smile every time I entered the room

and now only make me cry


YOU FUCKED UP

and if you could see all these tears

You'd know

Too late

Your life wasn't meaningless

but a great gift

and should never have been tossed on the lake shore

like so much trash.

I'm sorry if my anger hurts anyone else. That was never the intention, and after writing this, I felt peaceful enough to draw the orca picture above.

Life goes on, just lonelier now.

Reading to our Babies

When I look back at nearly 17 years of parenting, and 23 years of teaching, I find that the best choice I made, other than to be a Wife and Mom in the first place, was to spend time reading to my children and to nearly every other child who ever entered my life.

Babies are never too young to read to. At first you snuggle that baby on your shoulder and you can read anything out loud. The baby is getting the bonding comfort of your voice and while you are reading, you too, are bonding with your child in moments of heaven you will never forget. You think the book is what you are sharing and obviously the baby can't understand it, so why bother? What you are really sharing is time and contact, and while you read the book, your baby is reading the book of your face. Every expression and glance from you is where that babies eyes will be focused.

Then as the baby grows, the book will catch his attention, then you go for simple board books with big, contrasting images, repetitive wording and interesting sounds. At this point my baby loved "Goodnight Moon" and an animal book that made me moo and oink, and the three little kittens where I meowed and said "Hush Hush." I also made our own 8 page board books with family Photographs and laminated them and sent them to daycare with the boys so they could always have a bit of home with them.

A little later we snuggled side by side on a bed or sofa and read picture books, still repeating a lot, and Dr. Seuss and Jan Brett and Patricia Polacco filled my book shelves. We loved the old "Look out for Pirates" with its tricky and clever manipulation of the bad guys. One son was "Captain Jim" for almost 6 months.

As they grew and started reading to me, we used to take long road trips. All our family members lived close to a thousand miles away. We read all the Lioness books from Tamora Pierce, all the Harry Potter and Narnia and Little house books while on the road. I wrote my own novel about a boy who has CP and survives a school shooting and ends up in another world trying to get back to his sister who was shot. Maybe "Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog" will never be read by wide audiences, but I read it to my boys as we travelled through Idaho and Wyoming and their enthusiasm was one of the highlights of my life. Later I read it to a class of 7th grade students who begged for more.

Now one of my boys is a reader and the other one will tell you he's not. Still, when I find the rare book that catches his attention he stays up all night to finish it, usually a C. J. Box book or a true outdoor story. The one who is never without a book is into the Harry Dresden series for his third time through.

Still, a reader or not, both boys have impressive vocabularies, both are great travelers, and both have experienced a lot of closeness with their Father and I as we shared the stories and adventures in the books.

I realize that my love of books began on my own parents laps, and snuggling in beside my grandmother, demanding the 100th repetition of "Chicken Little." Still caressing the pages of that book brings back the sound and feeling of my Grandmother's presence. I can hope that long after my boys are grown and away from home, when they remember Mom, it will be with the knowledge that I loved them enough to spend hours reading to them.

You've had a great life!

The other day, I was at school and a co-worker and I were looking through my ancient photo albums from when my husband and I travelled as exchange students to Beijing in 1987. We were studying the Chinese New Year and she looked at me and said, "Dixie! You've had a great life!"

I turned and laughed and smiled as I said impulsively, "Yes, and it's not over yet!"

She was referring to the travels I have done - not the massive debt I have accrued in doing them - but it struck me that she is right. I whine and feel overwhelmed and depressed with the rest of you - but my life has been blessed with a lot of good stuff, stuff that is not "Stuff" so much as the more valuable but intangible things like living in beautiful places surrounded by those I love and having them love me in return.

I made some different choices than financial wisdom would have dictated - but in so doing, I have always been able to keep a roof over my head and food in my children's bellies. True that there are termites in the walls and little in any savings accounts, but those walls are covered in photographs as reminders of memorable years and the savings account in my boys minds will be filled with a multitude of wonder at the beauty of our troubled, but oh so lovely world.

I have never lived where it is not beautiful. And I have travelled to see more of the beauty around this earth. I was raised where my grandfather had been raised, in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains in the heart of yellowstone country. I moved to The Black Hills to live in Custer State Park and then to Ashland, Oregon, and finally to the Pacific Redwood Coast. I spent a semester in Beijing China at a teacher's college and an extra month traveling by train and boat through rural China in 1987. I travelled through The Netherlands, Poland and Germany with my husband and his Choir. I took my boys to the lovely Guatemalan Lake Atitlan and drove from Los Angeles to Niagara Falls as I loved this country of ours, "From Sea to shining Sea."

So Thank you my friend for the reminder that it has been a great life, and that it keeps on being great. Si I need to keep on being grateful.

Babes of the woods.

When I was a child, my Dad was an incredible Father. He would play with us for hours, pull us on a sled or in a wagon and hike with us on the weekends in the mountains around Cody, Wyoming. he would run up the trail with one us on his shoulders, or swing us between him and Mom so that we flew between every step. Unless he was at home, in front of the TV. Then he would say, "I can't see. You make a better door than you do a window." as he craned to see around us. Or if we spoke, "Wait until the commercial."

I vowed that I would never have a TV. So after my boys were born, we spent a lot of time outdoors. We went camping, and hiked in Yellowstone, the Black Hills of South Dakota and the Pacific Redwoods. I thought I was doing it for them, but they don't remember it. Maybe it was a good influence, because they do both love camping, and just went together a few weekends ago - but the memories I treasure belong only to my husband and I and these old photographs.

Never-the-less, when they look back and swear that we spent all our time in front of the computer. I can tell them in all honesty, "I loved your childhood. I saw you. And I still do." and I will never regret making them play with sticks and rocks instead of dancing in front of Barney. I never felt bad about raising them unplugged except once, when a classmate asked, "What is your favorite football team?" and my son gulped and took his best guess, "the Pirates?" So now he loves camping and hiking, and THE STEELERS!

Why I love, Where I live.

I promised myself that I would write a post here, at least once a week, but like most resolutions, I have not managed to keep up on that. I am sorry, but instead of beating myself up over the lapse, I will just do what Flylady.com suggests and tell myself "You are not behind. Just jump in where you are. Baby Steps."

The reason why I moved to Crescent City, CA after growing up in Wyoming, is that it has so many of the things I loved about Wyoming. Yet it doesn't have the baking heat and the far below freezing cold. As a redhead, I have always been heat sensitive, and the massive amount of overcast, rain and fog we get here, suits redheads the way that it suits redwoods. I do miss the snow at times, but I can drive to it in 40 minutes or less in the winter.

Here, I have the Pacific, the forest, the Mountains, and a small enough town that I never go to the store without being stopped by conversation in almost every aisle. The world has many beautiful places, and I have lived in some of the best, but I want to share some pictures that may show you why, this is the one place that always calls to me when I have to be away, and the home where I always return.

Happy, Happy 2010.

Dixie/Echo