School

So, we've had a bumpy first few weeks of school. Mane has gone from excited to distressed and resigned and back again. We considered homeschooling all of last year...seriously considered it. And I'm still pretty much homeschooling, except that she's gone for a few hours every day. Now we're in the struggle of deciding whether to keep her in school or not. Because she's learning very little content. Though, Mango will tell you that learning process is just as important as learning content...and I believe him. But she also has the longest bus ride I've ever heard of on the way to school. And she doesn't like the bus driver on the way home. And the boys in her class push people.

She is learning to put everything away after taking it out. To wait her turn without interrupting. To take responsibility for herself when she has needs (like getting off the bus past kids who won't move). She is making friends, learning new games, and singing new songs. She has stories to tell from life on her own in the big, big world.

But I miss her. And I have so many things I want to do with her. And I want her to learn the things she's interested in learning. And I want her to do that without being so tired from school that she cannot possibly do/learn one more thing. I love the way that homeschooler talk about their homes and their families. I might really want to homeschool. And the bumps this year have given me a lot of pause.

Soooooo, this morning she said AGAIN that she didn't want to go. So, I said, "Ok, you could stay home. You don't have to go to school." Mane paused, considered, and said, "No, I really like school. I want to go to school." Later she said that school was too long, and that it's boring, but she still wants to go. What am I supposed to make of that?! Well, I supposed what I can make of that is that a 5yr old cannot be relied upon to make such a decision, and I still need to make it myself.

And so I sit and stew. I need to talk and talk and talk about it. I'm even bored of hearing myself talk about it. So, now I'm writing instead.

I know she needs friends. And I know that's the age-old question about homeschooling, and homeschoolers have lots of ready responses. I know all the responses. I've even used those responses in defending my potential decision to homeschool. But, the truth of the matter is that there's something unique about spending several hours a day with the same group of kids. Even if I arranged other social activities for her, I'm sure I couldn't find people who wanted to get together for a few hours a day a few times a week. That's what school is for, right?

And now I have to run because Mane needs attention. Probably more thoughts to come...though everything may have changed by the time I get back to this.

Spanish

I'm going to just say the cliches. I have to get them out of my system, ok? Spanish is the most beautiful language. Truly. It rolls off the tongue in a way that English almost never does. Now granted, you can say things very, very specifically in English. Spanish has fewer words, tends to be less specific. But, it makes up for this in beauty, in emotional expression. You have to put your heart into your words to get at the specifics. Maybe this is why I find Spanish music so powerful. You can tell the specifics, not by the actual words, but by the inflection. It's not a tonal language, yet if you use the whole range of emotional expression available to you, you can say much more than the words actually say. I suppose this could, perhaps, be said of English also. But, there's something different about Spanish. So much of it sounds sensual, juicy, full, brimming. English words do not suffice to describe Spanish.

I love it, and Mango love this, that Spanish has ONE word, meaning "with you." Contigo. Go ahead. Say it. (cohnteego) And "with me." Conmigo. (cohnmeego) My favorite Spanish words. You see, in Spanish one has to use the familiar form of the verb to say "with you" or "with me" as one word. If one is speaking formally, one must say, "Con Usted" or "Con Yo." But, informally, familiarly, it's one word. And such lovely words. I don't know why I feel this way. I just do.

Big Days

Vespera's adoption was final one year ago last Saturday. She spent the day with her birth family and playing soccer. That has a certain poignancy all by itself. Life with her is often filled with the paradoxical.

It wasn't too painful, though, as it gave us the opportunity to reflect on her adoption and find a suitable gift to celebrate the one year anniversary of the day. She came home to us on Sunday and we ran off to a birthday party & housewarming. On the way we stopped at a coffee shop. (Yes, we've gotten her addicted to coffee shops, too.) She got a smoothie with whipped cream. Truly the way to this girl's heart is, at least partly, through her stomach. Her mama taught her to love good food, no substitutions. So, we all sat down, and I passed her the gift we'd found...a book of wonderful quotes. She (and her boyfriend) can spend hours reading quotes. She just loves these little gems. It's like short poetry. I have to admit to enjoying a good collection of quotes myself.

I sent her off to school on Tuesday brimming with excitement, carrying the posterboard she made about vectors for summer homework, two apples & granola bars for the time between school and her soccer game tonight, brand new backpack & notebooks & folders. Mango was anxious and tired, ready but not ready for the new year. Vespera sang to him the night before, "Lean on me when you're not strong. I'll be your friend..." It was cute, her helping him along for the first day of school. The relationship between them has taken several gigantic strides since a few weeks ago when we got some new info from Vespera about her birth family. It's amazing what honesty will do.

Our celebration Sunday was small. Sunday & Monday passed in the relaxed ease of time shared together and with friends. Tuesday saw Vespera & Mango off to school, and I just now have a moment to reflect. We tumble through these momentous days one after another. I sometimes feel it a desecration to not honor each moment in some big way, but this year small seems to suit us. We didn't have big adoption parties or back to school parties. The quiet of this year is a dramatic contrast with last year. Somehow this is right. We are nourished and satisfied by the sweet, small moments.

Now, tomorrow, Mane begins kindergarten. This is her moment this week, and I have a feeling it will be big...

We have PETS

These are our new baby rats, Luna (meaning "moon" in Spanish) & Nube (noo-bay, meaning "cloud" in Spanish). Luna has the white stripe down her head. Nube has the all brown face. I wasn't excited about the idea of rats at first, but I hear they are friendly, clean & smart. In fact, I hear that they spend 1/3 of their lives grooming themselves, they can learn to come when called, they love to play games, and they will go for walks on a leash. What more could you ask for if you can't have a dog?

The Opposite of Faith

I just wanted to say a little something about the quote that's been hanging out at the side of my blog for a while. "The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty." Anne Lamott said this in an interview on NPR a while ago. She probably had no idea it would end up in print on somebody's blog. But, in any case, it resonated with me in a way I could never have expected, and the concept has come back to Mango & I numerous times in the several weeks since I wrote it down. It's just a little gem of wisdom that fits some thoughts together neatly in a new way. Lots of people scratch their heads at this idea. But here, let me break it down. If you are CERTAIN, you are not employing faith. Faith means you are believing in that which you cannot see, that which you cannot know. I am so comforted by this. Faith is not a religious platitude to make us feel better. Faith is messy. Faith is when you are living on the edge. Faith is when you are so confused and unsure and blind and scared. And you believe God anyway. Just God. You don't know anything else, except that God is. And you know the tiny glimmers of God that have flashed through the dirty lenses of life. You know some little bit of who God is. And that has to be enough. Because nothing else is certain. You simply have faith. And that isn't cute or religious or easy.

Stay With Me

We were talking about college the other day when she said, sort of off-handedly, in that off-handed-I’m-dying-to-know-the-answer kind of way, “Where will I live when I go to college?” I responded quickly, “Well, right here, of course.” She smiled and laughed and got that relieved, excited look. “Really? I can stay here?” Of course. Of course. Honey. Child. Sweet Love. You are always welcome here. You can live here for the rest of your life if it pleases you. And I am so happy that you want to, that you want to know if you can be here because you’re comfortable here, because it feels like home.

I am so grateful. I have so many thoughts about this past year. Last summer was so new, so full of raw emotion, uncertainty. It was a blood, sweat & tears kind of summer. We held tightly to each other, as though if we let go we’d fly into opposite directions. Vectors. She’s learning about vectors right now, and that’s what I think of. What happens when two things are bound together tightly, but they’re pushing at the cords? When you set them loose they fly apart so hard they’ll never find each other again. So, we held tightly, with persistence. We held tightly even though we were scared and worried and tired. We cried.

And then the cords loosened a little and we could walk away from each other still attached. It was hard and scary, and we weren’t always sure that the connection was still there. She held loosely, with her face turned, buried in school work, not always interested in connection, not full of the gratefulness that first filled us all in this journey, not always conscious any more of the gift we were giving, nor of the gift we received in her.

And then, slowly, painfully, and somewhat surprisingly we discovered that closeness exists through time and space, that connection can happen after separation, that somehow we can flow in and out of each other’s space in a comfortable sort of way. I guess we became family. It wasn’t so much a decision any more. The focus is not the adoption. We simply belong to each other. We didn’t think about the strangeness of it all the time any more. We just live together. We just live together. Now. In the moment. And maybe now it’s in her heart, in her emotional memory, ingrained in who she is that she will always be family. Maybe it’s moved out of her head and into her existence.

And she wants to stay. I could not ask for more.

Camping

Excerpted from an e-mail to a friend:
We just got home from our own camping adventure on Friday. Wednesday night was 50 degrees & we shivered our way through dinner and then went to stand with our faces in the wind down by the water. The lake was rough & wild. Vespera sketched pictures, and I took some paper & a pen down to the lake. My fingers froze, but it was so powerful and wild out that we couldn't help but be drawn to face it. Then we snuggled down in our tent and slept peacefully to the sound of crashing waves & roaring wind. Thursday was chilly in the morning, but by afternoon everybody was wading in the water, collecting agates and skipping rocks. By evening it was downright warm & we sat on the shore taking pictures while the sun set. Friday we packed up to leave, as both Vespera & Mango had broken out in hives - I think from the moths, but that's another story. We took ourselves to the Munsinger Clemens flower gardens in St. Cloud and took more pictures, dangled fingers in the fountains, danced in the gazebo, and sat on the swings facing the river.

My journaling out in the wind & the cold:
This place has been a place of healing, the balm of water, the relentless wind. I found beauty here when the world lacked beauty. And power, power so strong I couldn't help but open my arms and fall into it. Trips to this lake, to this shore, are a way of marking the passage of time for me. Here I found the freedom of traveling alone with my lover, my friend, the one who knows my soul, to whom I have been married these 9 years. It is a heady sort of freedom to find that now you are married and you're "allowed" to go on trips alone with your love. We took one of those first trips here. And here I snuggled my baby to my chest to keep her warm with my heat and my milk through a long, cold night. I was filled with the fierce mama-love to protect my own from the elements. Here I opened my closed fist to hope when I learned the tragedy of my family's history, when I had closed my hand and my heart to most of the world. Here I found myself much healed the next year, walking the shores with a toddler, holding her hands, holding the hands of my love, snuggling under the rain, through the thunder, laughing, smiling, feeling the pulse of our lives and a readiness to live again.

Then, this year, I've returned, with another daughter, two years since I last was here. Life so full, so rich that I find myself not just standing, facing the wind, hands, arms, face open, but longing to run to the shore and splash my face in the warm summer water, letting the waves wash over my feet. "I have known the wind. It's been a friend all of my days..." even when I didn't want it, couldn't feel it, ran from it. And this year my smallest daughter sat next to me on the rocks and said, "I'm thinking about the waves, Mama," and she threw her hands up to the wind. My older daughter, the one who lives intensely in a baptism of wind and waves, the one who calls me out to immerse myself, who makes me remember that this is what I always wanted anyway, she is drawing on a bench facing the lake. She is recording the moment, after spending a roll of film for her photography class. The ones I love the most are all around me. Sweet windy darkness is falling. The air is chill and still we sit out in it, wrap ourselves in it. This is our life, embracing the wind and all it offers. And I know that I will always love the wind.