I Love To Tell The Story

Some days I feel like I have nothing to say. That everything has been said before. On those days, I question if I write because I actually enjoy it or if I’m just something of an egomaniac.

But I also know that stories are powerful. That people’s personal tales, including people I’ve never met, have helped bring me where I am today.

This is especially true of our adoption story and our limb different story. I’ve done my fair share of 2 AM other-people-in-the-same-boat story reading while nail-biting through the next chapter of our own.

But it isn’t just the stories of the similarly situated that connect us. Stories are common connections that transcend time. We all know the one about George Washington and the cherry tree and that one isn’t even true.

Some days I read blogs because I’m looking for advice or a good recipe. Other days I just want to know that I’m not in this thing alone.

I think that’s what we want. Everyone using social media, whether they’re posting cute pictures of their kids or their pooch, whether they’re knuckle-headed enough to be documenting the crime they just committed or what they had for lunch is seeking the same thing, connection. Don’t believe me? Then why does Facebook have a “Like” button? Why do blogs have followers? People are seeking different types of connection - validation,compensation, commiseration, a shared laugh - but we’re all ultimately seeking the same thing.

Maybe the guy typing out #atebadburrito isn’t just a twenty-something self-absorbed technology addict. Maybe he just needs a hug, virtual or otherwise. Or maybe he just needs to be heard.

Maybe so do I. Maybe so do you.

When It Isn’t Black and White

I used to think the world was so black and white. Life was easier when I believed that something was either right or wrong.

I used to make choices according to “the rules.” Consequently, I was more sure of the decisions I made.

These days I still believe in Absolute Truth.

But I also believe that Absolute Truth has a whole mess to say on the merits of long-cut detours, seemingly impractical decisions and getting our hands more than a little dirty.

My life is not as black and white as it once was.

The safety net of a reflexive “yes” or “no” has been replaced with angsty soul-searching and the joys of tossing and turning.

Yet, strangely enough, I eat and drink a song of peace.

 

PS – Did you vote for Love Without Boundaries today at Intuit’s Small Business, Big Game site? LWB is in the running for a professionally produced commercial to be aired during the Super Bowl. Go here to vote.

Linking up with Sunday Snapshot at Ni Hao Yall.

Literacy of Life

Are you literate? Not can you read, but are you literate in the language of life?

Are you well-educated and learned when it comes to the transforming power of pain, to still reverence, to the quiet whisperings of grace?

We tend to think of ourselves as either literate or illiterate. But there is a third possibility: aliterate.

An aliterate person can read and write but has little interest in doing so, whether out of indifference to learning in general or from a preference for seeking information and entertainment by other means.

Today, which do you choose to be?

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Here's an interesting podcast from two adult amputees about how they deal with children staring at their prosthetics. My favorite part is when the mom says her child wanted to take her prosthetic leg to career day.

The Luxury We Can't Afford

There's a phrase that irritates me. It's "I did the best I could with what I had/or what I knew at the time." It's that qualifier there on the end that gets me. It's like saying "I love you, except when...." or "I'm sorry, but...".

It's understood that you did the best with what you had or what you knew. That's the whole point of doing your best. If you had it all or knew it all, you wouldn't need to do your best. You'd just do it. 

 If you did your best, own it. You gave it all you had. Period. End of story. 

But sometimes we add that qualifier not as an inartful turn of phrase but as a means of justifying ourselves. It's the out we give ourselves when we choose to turn away from inkling, intuition or the hardwork of digging deeper and learning more. It's far easier to claim no outright knowledge than it is to go through the looking glass. We are afraid to cross the point of no return, knowing that we will be charged with what we've seen and heard. 

The luxury of ignorance is a luxury we can't afford. 

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke

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Here's something you can't claim ignorance of today. Love Without Boundaries is an organization whose vision is "to provide the most loving and compassionate help possible to orphaned and impoverished children in China, and to show the world that every child, regardless of his or her needs, deserves to experience love and be treated with dignity and care." LWB is in the running for a professionally produced commercial to be aired during the Super Bowl. Go here to vote for LWB. You can vote daily.   

Keep Calm and Sing On

A piercing scream let out, so I went running. Given the decibels and duration of the scream, I expected to find blood or grey matter on the concrete. Instead I found water. Ying was trying to pour water from a cup into a spray bottle and lost hold of the cup.

After I refilled the cup I told her she HAD to stop screaming when she was frustrated, remarking “we’re going to have to teach you how to curse instead.”

Grandparents of Ying, fear not, we won’t turn her into a salty sailor. But after I made the offhanded remark, I actually thought about what I’d just said. Ying gets legitimately frustrated and she needs away to work through that frustration. My telling her to quit yelling isn’t helping. I need to show her what to do with that frustration.

We have a calming jar. I actually made it for Luk Chaai but both kids like to look at the falling glitter, particularly when they’re already calm. Thus defeating the purpose. But as fond as I am of the calming jar, I don’t really think it works in this situation. 

Because I have one child who frequently gets compared to a “spider monkey jacked up on Dew,” Ying, Luk Chaai and I do yoga for kids together sometimes. (That’s a Talladega Nights reference,  courtesy of my husband).  So I’m going to try having Ying doing breathing techniques in place of screaming.

But I think the best technique may be to teach her a little song she can hum or sing when she gets frustrated. We’re going to find a song just for this situation and we will sing instead of scream.

I sure hope it works. Of course, if it does, my ears will be kicking me that I didn’t think of it sooner.

Read This, Eat This, Watch This

We were at a nationally recognized children’s hospital last week and I was struck by something. There were no books in the waiting room. None. There was a tv playing a kid’s movie, but that was it.

I’m all for a quiet wait at the doctor’s office, but it made me a little sad. Where was the Highlights for Kids or those books whose stories all had a moral ending? Those modern day Aesop’s fables made a real impression on me. In one story a greedy girl grabbed the biggest cream puff only to discover that it was full of air, not custard. She, of course, learned to be less selfish and more considerate.

I learned something too. To this day, I never take the largest donut or pastry on the off chance that, it as well, may be devoid of gooey goodness.

But all that to say: I love to read and fewer things make me happier than seeing my kids lost in a good book. I’m always looking for book suggestions. Maybe you are too.

Here’s what we’re reading, eating and watching right now.
Reading: Me – Bellow Stairs, Wild Thing: The Art of Nurturing Boys
Them – Families Have Together (this was a library stumble-upon, it’s especially great book for adoptive families); And I Mean It, Stanley

Eating: This zucchini bread (you sugar the pan!), these Asian Pork Sliders and popcorn, the old fashioned way (we skip the staple and just double-fold the bag)

Watching: Life ( tv show about a wrongfully convicted police detective who, when exonerated, rejoins the police force but with a Zen attitude. It’s from 2008 so I’m watching via Netflix).

When You Can’t Be There

Because it’s a new school year, both Ying and Luk Chaai have had emergency preparedness drills at school. Luk Chaai explained all of the components of a fire drill to me in the spirit of grand adventure. “When the bell rings, you walk, not run,” he admonished me. “You stand on the line and wait for your name to be called,” he explained. You couldn’t help but admire his enthusiasm in the face of pending doom.

Ying was late coming out of school one day. We had a drill, her teacher explained. My initial reaction was to be glad that she too was having the complete school experience. Then the potential seriousness of the situation dawned on me. What exactly did you tell her to do, I asked the teachers. For days I was nagged by ‘what ifs’ and ‘how cans.’

Should there ever be more than a drill for either child, it goes without saying that I’d want to be there. I’d also like a Marine, a fire fighter and an officer in SWAT gear standing next to me, regardless of the situation. Wouldn’t we all?

But life doesn’t work that way. My presence is not a shield. There have been bumps and bangs whether I stood two feet from a child or two cities over. Children have acted rudely before my very eyes and when my attention was elsewhere. It’s the nature of life. 

As a nation, we grapple with difficult questions of being the world’s policeman; as a parent I must acknowledge that I’m not.

We can prepare and pray and plan, and then we must release.  Otherwise we bind ourselves and our children with the silken strands of the dark unknown.

Instead I chose to believe that when help is needed, someone will be there.

It’s two o'clock Christmas morning and food poisoning strikes. Someone was there.

Shortly after we came home with Ying, we spent the day with friends. Sensing our exhaustion, they insist on pushing the stroller. Someone was there.

After a long thankless day, I phone a friend. Someone is there.

The car alarm went off and the neighbors called to check. (Some little people got a hold of their father’s keys.) Someone was there.

My child was in an orphanage and I wasn’t. Yet, someone was there.

Psychiatrists tell us that the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. I chose to believe that someone will be there when they need to be, because someone has always been there.

Someone is always there.