When Am I Ever Going to Use This?

In their book Made to Stick, authors Heath and Heath talk about a high school math teacher’s response to the age-old question, “When are ever going to use this?”.  “Never, he told his students, you will never use this…. You do math exercises so that you can improve your ability to think logically, so that you can be a better lawyer, doctor, architect, prison-warden or parent.”

What a great answer. Why didn’t any one ever explain it to me like that before? I might have let go of the grudge I’ve held against my math teacher long before now. (And am I the only one who thinks the career choice of prison-warden or parent side-by-side is funny?)

So often in life, the most difficult moments are the whys. Why did this happen? Why am I going through this? Why won’t this ever end?

I think a high school math teacher has given us all the answer* - so that we’re better prepared for the rest of life.

Not once since school have I had occasion to use Trig or Algebra II.  Thankfully, not once. But all those times when I thought I just couldn’t go one step further, I’ve learned from those moments.

Hindsight and the perspective of distance are a curse, and a beautiful gift. Because of them, we watch seemingly random dots connect and we exhale a collective ‘Ahhh, so that’s why. This was the reason.’ We nod sagely with our newfound insight and we congratulate each other on “unanswered” prayers.

Then the next time we are in so deep that we can see neither the beginning or the end, we moan and sigh at the unhappy fates that have befallen us.  We forget that those moments are the aligning of the stars, the shifting of the planets and that they are just for us.

*Jeremiah 29:11 also contains the same answer, in a different format: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

The Postman Only Rings Once: Care Package Suggestions For Adopted Children

When I was in college my mom sent me fairly regular care packages and my dad gave me monthly access to his credit card. College was a good thing.

My kids are no where near college-age, but as is common in adoptions, received care packages from us long before we met them. If you get graded on your care packages, then I totally flunked the first time around with each child.

The clothes I sent my man-child were quite snug. I went to the opposite extreme and sent Ying clothes that swallowed her and fell off her left shoulder. (I have since learned how to dress her.) Each time I saw pictures of my kids in their ill-fitting clothes I wondered if the caregivers questioned the competency of the parents coming for these kids. There were no raised eyebrows when we met Luk Chaai and Ying, so perhaps our care package missteps were forgotten and/or are a common occurrence.

The care packages we were permitted to send had to meet with some pretty stringent requirements: flat, silent, fit in a gallon-sized Ziplock baggie and weigh less than a pound. That meant for some pretty creative shopping.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Here are a few suggestions if you are planning a care package:

For both – photo albums, photo blocks (not sure if you can get this to squish flat though) disposable cameras, bi-lingual books, lift-the-flap books, crayons, sun hats, sun glasses, stickers, bubbles, wooden stringing beads (especially good for kids with a  hand/arm limb difference), anything you can record your voice (Build-A-Bear,  K K’s telephone).

For little boys – cars and trucks, plastic slinky

For little girls – nail polish, bracelets, hair bows

Happy shopping!

Yanking Out the Weeds, Pulling Up the Grass

So Ying and Luk Chaai like to do “yard work.” 

It mainly involves cutting the grass and the spider plant with scissors.

Their poor father though, he’s going to have so little to do now this weekend.

Luckily, I bet I can come up with something.

Tedium: Public Enemy Number One

Photo bombed photos make life worth living.

It’s been another week of fighting with the insurance company, there have been two trips to the DMV and the bog of paperwork keeps getting boggier.

To top it off, the sun is baking and I feel uninspired and unimaginative. 

I’m my own worst enemy and I know it.

When I hear people say things like live every day like it’s your last, I’m always a little lost. If it were indeed my last day, I wouldn’t be doing laundry or taking out the trash. Yet I’m pretty sure that there would be a general outcry if tomorrow there are no clean underpants. It’s hard to mourn properly when you lack washed skivvies. Just saying.

I think the message that the  ‘live every day like it’s your last’ people are trying to send is that every day matters,  even the days that are longer than they are deep.

When the muck is knee high and the devil is whispering black nothings in your ear, I find it helpful to chant something.  Here’s my new favorite: Saints are sinners who kept on going. Robert Louis Stevenson

Keep going friends, keep going.

We’ll get there yet.

Love: The Standard Operating Procedure

My Nana is 98. She’s well, old, and sometimes it shows. For example, she thinks Luk Chaai, who is a rather energetic, all-boy, four-year-old male, is a girl.

Nana also has a tendency to repeat things. Ying, who is three, shares the same tendency. It makes for an interesting visit sometimes.

On Sunday, Nana kept asking what happened to Ying’s other arm. Before we got there, Nana had torn apart something. So, Ying, for her part, kept asking why Nana had shredded the item. Apparently my answers satisfied neither of them because they both kept asking. It was good times, especially because about fifteen minutes in Luk Chaai got bored and made no secret of the fact that he wanted to GO. As we were packing it up, I wanted to ask myself why we do it.

But I know why we go. I go because I love my Nana. But I also go because I was taught to. Sometimes it would be a heck of a lot easier to skip visiting, but Nana gets a kick out of seeing Ying and Luk Chaai. Plus, I want my children to know something: love is a policy. 

Shortly after I was married my grandfather became quite ill. I flew home, leaving my new groom solo for our first Thanksgiving (thankfully friends invited him over). I went to my grandfather’s nursing home to pick him up. I hugged him and told him I was there to take him to Thanksgiving dinner. “I can’t go with you,”  he told me. When I asked him why not he said said he’d already told the woman in the yellow sweater he would go home with her. I looked around. There was no woman in a yellow sweater.

Love is a policy.

This wasn’t the first time my grandfather had become confused. Many months before he’d mistakenly believed that his neighbor, John, was acting nefariously. When the neighbor came over to speak to my grandfather, my grandfather snubbed John. About 20 minutes later, my grandfather’s lucidity returned and he realized what he’d done. He asked me to go next door with him, where he apologized to John.

I learned something that day.

Love is a policy.

When things aren’t easy, when life gets complicated, when getting out is easier than staying in – love is a policy.

On Children Of Our Own

Shortly after I'd returned to work after Luk Chaai's adoption, someone pulled me aside. "Can I ask you something?" she asked. "Sure," I said. In a hushed and slightly embarrassed tone she asked me, "Do you love him like he's your own?"

"No," I told her. "Not like he is my own. He is my own."

It wasn’t a nosy question, but a vulnerable one, and I’m glad she asked it. But as I told her, I'm wasn’t sure I could fully answer it. Because somehow the children with whom I share no biology are flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones. The strands of our DNA reveal no genetic similarities. Blood doesn’t bind us, yet spirit connects us. 

I remember waiting for Luk Chaai and feeling as if those signs in the Babies R' Us parking lot mocked me. You know the ones that say Expectant Mother and are feet from the entrance to accommodate swollen bellies and equally swollen feet. Occasionally, I'd walk past those signs and feel illegitimate somehow.

There was no listening to the beating of a heart, no humming to a baby in utero, no forsaking of caffeine, no abstaining from wine. Aren't these the things that make a mother?

I had a handful of pictures, a medical report with as many missing blanks as filled in ones and measurements of head size that showed my child had one truly big noggin. Yet I was a momma. 

My heart lurched long before I met my babies; it flip flopped and flop flipped. I prayed over their pictures, hit refresh endlessly on my inbox waiting for updates, yearned to meet them, dreamt of what was to come. But the day that I felt like their mother was the day I tasted their grief, the day I watched the salt dry from their tears.

Each time, we drank from a bitter cup that day, both me and them. My husband clutched my hand, our eyes transfixed on the little person before us. Ying and Luk Chaai had very different reactions upon meeting us. Both clearly recognized us from our photographs, both uncertain and afraid, each in their own way.

I remember a friend telling me that a man wants children, he wants something of "his." My friend was right. A man does want something of his. The sorrow, the joy, the worry, the fears, the sleepless nights, the blindingly beautiful days, they are his. They are mine.

They are this and so are we.

We are theirs and they are ours.

When We’d Least Like Them To

 

I overhead a teacher telling a mother that her son made a little girl cry on the playground. Apparently, the little boy was making fun of a differently abled child and throwing wood chips at her. He was told to stop twice before he did.

He was a kindergartener.

The mother didn’t have a response for the teacher, at least not one that I could hear. No abject apology, no horror (feigned or otherwise), no calling the son out for his behavior right then and there. I obviously have no idea what later occurred between parent and child, but I know what my reaction was.

I wanted to tase mother and son and then put that child in my trunk and ship him out on the first plane bound for Singapore. (Anyone else remember the caning incident over vandalism?)

But most of all I wanted to wring my hands and cry. Where did a five-year-old get the idea that was okay?

We all know this, but it bears repeating. Our kids are listening and they are watching. Now obviously none of us would never condone or encourage this kind of blatantly egregious behavior. (We’re above it, of course.)

But do we sometimes convey that people can be treated with contempt?  That at certain times and under certain circumstances, it’s acceptable (and even understandable or expected) to act like certain people are less than we are? Remember that bumbling checker who put the eggs under the canned goods and you mumbled that she was an incompetent moron? Or remember those teenagers standing on the street corner Tuesday night, did you call them lazy fools when you drove past? 

Do you shout at the TV about the right-winged Fox News watcher or the agenda of the liberal media, about the anti-American ACLU-er or the woman-hating prolifer? Did you have a mouthful to say about Chick-fil-a that was commentary on more than just waffle fries? Post Newtown, did you rant to friends and family about card carrying members of the NRA or conversely about the people who want to destroy the Second Amendment? After the Trayvon Martin verdict, did you have a few choice words about one or more of the following: Zimmerman, the judge, the jurors, the lawyers, law enforcement, rioters, the President?

Have you run down the politician, the picketer, the preacher, the Facebook poster that you don’t agree with?

No one is saying you need to go around linking arms with those you disagree with and singing Kumbaya or that you shouldn’t speak to your kids about what you believe and why.

We should be a people of outrage and indignity at injustices, wrongs, complacency and moral morass. We should be impassioned by our beliefs, principled in our convictions, diligent in our duties to ourselves and to our families. 

But there’s a way to call a spade a spade without denigrating him and ourselves in the process.

Our children are listening and learning when we’d least like them too.

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Feeling a little demoralized? I was. Then a friend sent me this video. I love his and his parents’ ingenuity. Then there’s this quote, “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot in life, period, that I would say I can’t do. Just things I haven’t done yet.”  Cheering madly for you, Richie Parker. Cheering madly for you. Thanks for making my world a little brighter, a little better.

Adoptable

I recently had a conversation with an adoption agency about congenital quads. I’ve never seen a congenital quad eligible for adoption from [this country], a case manager said. I think it’s possible that [this country] finds them “unadoptable.”

She wasn’t quoting a country’s official adoption policy. She was just making a statement based on her experience. From firsthand experience I know that certain countries either officially or unofficially think certain diagnoses make children “unadoptable.” Cerebral Palsy springs to mind as one such diagnosis. I believe that Down Syndrome in some cases may be another. The adoption community is certainly familiar with the idea that children “age out” becoming ineligible for adoption at various ages in various countries, in spite of the fact that there are numerous families seeking to adopt older children. 

The idea that a limb difference might make a child unwanted isn’t confined to the idea of adoption. Pregnancies are terminated for children being the wrong gender, certainly families abort because a baby is missing limbs.

I’ve never been in a delivery room or with an ultrasound tech and received unexpected news. I get that. I had the luxury of time and research and connecting with other families before Ying came home. As a family we spoke to medical professionals before we reached a decision. I’m aware that nothing was thrust upon me.

But that doesn’t change a reality. My daughter lives a vibrant, beautiful life. We live a vibrant, beautiful life.

Is life harder sometimes? Sure it is. But there is just as much crying because the Tinkerbell plate is dirty and she’s reduced to the horrors of a plain pink one as there is because she doesn’t want to go up the stairs by herself or because her arm isn’t long enough to wipe the sand the wind flung into her eyes.

A day is coming when I have to answer the question of why. I don’t have an answer. I don’t have so many answers.

What I do know is I have now. I have this moment and maybe the one two seconds after it, and I’d better make the most of them. That’s all that’s guaranteed.

Could I be struck down tomorrow by infirmity, illness or death? Yes. Could my beautiful  husband, my precious kids?  Yes. Please, God, no. We’re not exempted or insulated, no one is. The only promise of tomorrow is that it will come (with or without us) and that we will not be alone. That He will never leave us or forsake us.

I hope I live every day like I believe that.

I hope I do.
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Read this interesting article from Compassion International about disabilities. Here’s an excerpt: “I vividly remember meeting one mother in Zambia,” Corwyn says. “It was like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. She was just slumped over and held a baby in her arms. She was so ashamed. But when I pulled back that baby’s blanket, the only thing ‘wrong’ with him was that he was missing a thumb. That’s all! She told me that as soon as the father saw the child’s deformity, he left. She’s never seen him again.”

Puzzles: Via Hands and Feet

Ying has great dexterity in her feet and finger. Because of this, she shows almost no preference in which she’ll use to do activities like stickers, coloring or turning the pages of a book.

But when it comes to puzzles, she uses her feet.

Ying and Luk Chaai were doing puzzles after dinner. Stephen Hawking said, “Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet.”

But I couldn’t help but look down at the feet.

I love those hands and feet, even the dirty pair.

Linking up with Sunday Snapshot at nihaoyall.com.

On Coming Home, Life After Adoption Day

My brother decorated Luk Chaai’s doorway with a crepe paper web for our homecoming. This would be fun for a birthday too. 

Thomas Wolfe said you can never go home again. He was speaking figuratively, of course. After an adoption trip, like any trip, you do, go home again. 

You sink gratefully into your own bed, clutching your somewhat lumpy, yet beloved, pillow and closing your eyes without even knowing it. Later you watch your new family playing together on the living room floor and it’s not just like you imagined, it’s better.

Except when it isn’t. 

Because being deposited back on your own doorstep means you’ve arrived. It means you’ve made it past the red tape and bureaucracy,  past the mounds of paper work and the long flight. You’ve arrived to the place where there is endless hot water but also dishes, laundry, and a car with a gas tank.  You now have the comforts of home,  but you also now have compromised sleep because your child isn’t used to her bed or the smells of the house or the sounds of her room. You ache when she whimpers and grimace when she screams because you know that the still silence of night is new to her. You know she’s accustomed to the ever present cries of the baby room and that this new quiet jars her soul.

When you finally wake bleary from the restless night spent on a yoga mat by her bed, there will be another child who will want your attention. A child clamoring for your whole being, not the apportioned part you now have to offer. He will melt and rage because he knows what was once all his has now been divided and that the mathematics have taken place on his own turf.

There will be morning when you when you hug him though his storm and send him off to breakfast. As the footsteps descend, you’ll hear the answer “eggs” in response to the question the man who is knee deep in this with you asked. Then you’ll hear the skipping of a beat and a,  “Ohh, buddy, I’m sorry. Your sister just ate the last one.”

From the upstairs railing where you’re eavesdropping, you’ll curse the inartful phrasing of the response. Blasted rookie mistake. You’ll pause for a second, listening for the torrent of hurt and angry that will send your feet flying down the stairs.

But it does not come. Disappointment has been replaced by excitement over a trip to the egg ranch in, wait for it, daddy’s car. 

Now that the moment has passed, you’ll sink down to the floor and lose it. You’ll cry, knowing that it’s ludicrous to cry over spilt eggs, but it can’t be helped. 

Your life will never be the same.

Hallelujah. Your life will never be the same.

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If you haven’t read Jen Hatmaker’s post, After the Airport, you should. You should also read her book, 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess.

Water Works

Ying and Luk Chaai both had swim lessons through the city this summer. I looked into getting Ying swim lessons through a couple different instructors, but almost all locations wanted me to do private lessons. The city, however, made no such requirement. They did ask me bring Ying to the sessions at pool with a big shallow end, and I was happy to comply.

She worked one-on-one with an instructor. The primary focus was teaching her how to flip onto her back and keep her head safely above water should she fall in. But they worked on swimming too, and I loved seeing those little legs flipping away in the water.

On the last day of lessons, all the kids had the option of jumping off the high jump. We’d had a little chat about it in the days leading up. Ying and Luk Chaai both declared NO high jump. I told them that if they were skipping it because they didn’t like it, then that was fine. But, if they were passing on it because they were afraid, then they needed to at least try it.

We can’t be afraid to try new things, I encouraged them. As the words slid out, I thought of the number of times I had ignored that advice. So I said it the once and then shut up, hoping to silence the devil on my shoulder whispering, “Physician, heal thyself.”

That Friday, Luk Chaai got in line for the high jump, waving at me as he climbed the stairs. It was raining, so I stood there with my camera in one hand, umbrella in the other, trying to keep the camera dry while focusing and waving back. He jumped and when he resurfaced, his little head bobbing above the water, he yelled, “Mommy, I was BRAVE.”  All the parents around me erupted with laughter; my pride bubbled over.

He wasn’t the only one to jump, Ying jumped too. Her instructor held her in his arms and they both took the plunge with me hollering from the sidelines. It was a fun day, and I’d like to think we all learned a little something above and beyond the swim lessons.

Take that water, take that life.

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Two more swimming tidbits:

- The swim instructors tied poola noodles around the kids’ waists to keep them afloat. They tied them kind of like a pretzel and the kids stayed afloat. I think you need long noodles though because I tried it with some we picked up from the dollar store but they were too short.

- My friend Rebecca’s son is a congenital quad. You can watch his mad swimming skills here.

School Days, School Days, Good Old Golden Rule Days

Someone is about to start school. We can hardly believe it. When Luk Chaai started school a few years ago, it was fairly traumatic for both me and him. The first few days of school he reported his activities solely as washing his hands and crying. While this was an accurate, if limited, description of his days, it broke my heart more than a little.

These days he loves school. In fact, just last week he complained when I picked him up early. I hope Ying loves school too.

We’ve been practicing for school. She has the requisite new book bag and lunch bag, and we’ve been working on opening and closing them. At first I had ribbons on the zippers, but her OT swapped those out for binder rings, which has made it easier. She uses one foot to hold the bag and uses her toes on the other foot to manipulate the zipper. If she gets impatient ,she uses her teeth. It’s effective but likely to earn us the ire of the dentist.

Two more school tips:

I bought two of these portable storage totes from the office supply store, one for Ying and one for Luk Chaai. I file important or extra special school papers or projects in here. Everything else I photograph against a piece of white poster board so that it has a white background. Then I turn those photos into a photo collage in their photo books.

After everything has been photographed, I tiptoe outside in the dead of night and deposit the artwork into a storage receptacle also known as the recycle bin.

Finally, maybe I’m the last one to figure this out (in which case, why didn’t anyone tell me?). If you’re helping beginning writers, tell them to keep their letters between the blue sky and green grass. My instructions have been been ‘stay between the train tracks.’ The sky/grass trick admittedly makes more sense. (I learned this handwriting tip at therapy; just another added perk of therapy!)

Happy school days! May it be much more than just reading and writing and arithmetic.

The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers.
~ Jean Piaget

Happy Feet: A Girl and Her Shoes

Ying loves shoes like only a girl can.

She’s frequently pointing out someone’s shoes when we’re shopping or walking through a parking lot.

The other day we went shoe shopping for her brother.

Shoes are wholly impractical for Ying. She uses her feet to do so many things. Plus she’s short a few bones in her feet, so shoes tend to fall off. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love them.

Or that she didn’t talk her momma into buying her a pair.

Because she did.

She is now the owner of some undeniably gold sandals.

She also has a new pastime -- dangling her feet off the curb so that she can admire her shiny new beauties.

Oh girl, may the road always rise up to meet you and may you always have happy feet.

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Linking up with Favorite Photo Friday Photo at The Long Road to China.