Hold on to your hats...

            One of my all time favorite movies is Parenthood, starring Steve Martin and Mary Steenburgen.  I thought this movie was hilarious even before I had children.  Steve Martin is a Dad who tries too hard to make everything right for his family. He has a hard time accepting the rollercoaster ride that comes along with having children.  If you are going to be a parent, you had best bring along your sense of humor - and your juggling skills.

            Earlier this week, I was on a ROLL.  I had Easter goodies bought and stashed in the trunk of the car.  Evan needed an Easter hat for a parade.  I bought some cheap Easter stuff at the Dollar store, pipe cleaners, colored foam to cut out bunny ears…you get the picture. This had to go to school on Wednesday.  I got it all put together and hid it in my room so it wouldn’t get destroyed.  I planned to put it on his head on the way out the door to get on the school bus.  I wasn’t going to take any chances.

            At my job, grade books had to be finalized a few days earlier than anyone anticipated.  I was up in the wee hours of Wednesday morning entering the prerequisite comments and making sure everything was logged in. I had an epic amount of corrected papers ready to be returned in my students’ Wednesday folders. It was full-court-press all morning. Then, it was time to get the boys up. 

            Two boys up, bathed, uniforms on, breakfast on the table. I stood in the kitchen constructing lunches and signing folders.  I glanced at the clock:  7:15.  Time for me to jump in the shower. I would be out, dressed, combed and made up in time to stick the hat on Evan’s head and greet the school bus outside of our house around 7:40.  “I’m good,” I thought, gloating.  Everything like clock work, I am Super Mom!  I smiled confidently to myself. 

            “Mooooom,” Ben called into the kitchen. 

            “Yes, Ben,” I answered, stepping off the podium in my imagination.

            “I need to hand in a Science Fair topic,” Ben replied. 

            “A what? When is that due?” I queried.

            “Yesterday.” 

            Gulp.  Ok. Ok.  Look at the time. Oh crap.  I pull out my 730 Easy Science Experiments book. Flip through; flip through.  This is not the science fairs of my youth, when you could crib everything out of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Noooo.  You have to have a real, testable hypothesis and plan experiments. 

            I see a whole section on lemons and conducting electricity with lemons.  I show Ben.  “Oooh, that looks cool.” Me: “Sure.  Sure it does. That’s your project.” Quickly, because it’s easier for me to do it than to help him do it, I type up a few lines explaining his topic and question.  Pull the paper from the printer and hand it to him.

            I glance back at the clock.  It’s really late. 7:25.  I consider for a moment foregoing a shower.  Then, “No, I just can’t do that. I will be quick.” I jump in with such velocity I cannot say whether I got wet or perhaps the water just evaporated in the wind I created.  I jump out.  I wrap my towel around myself thinking, “Throw some clothes on, you can do makeup after the bus.  Except…..

            “MOOOOM!!!  THE BUS IS HERE!!!”  Ben is yelling.  I run down the hallway, in my towel, unlock the door. Now would be a good time to mention that I live on one of the busiest streets in Savannah.  It is not unusual to have colleagues and former colleagues driving by and waving as I put my kids on the bus in the morning. There is no way in God’s green earth that I am stepping out onto the porch. 

            The bus driver must have seen me, and my predicament, because she mercifully pulled closer to the curb for the kids. I clung to the doorway watching.  Embarrassed.  She laughed at me.  I couldn’t blame her. I’d laugh, too.  Then, as the bus pulled away, I realized in a sudden moment of clarity, that I had forgotten to give Evan his Easter hat! 

Super Mom, my aspirations!

            Ugggh!  I walk in, dig through the recycling bin to find Evan’s class newsletter. “Please let the parade be tomorrow!”  I am trying simultaneously to figure out how I could manage to drive all the way to Evan’s school with the hat, if need be.  I finally find the newsletter and breathe sigh of relief.  The parade is tomorrow. I haven’t ruined my kid’s day again.  (Some of you may remember that I sent him to school dressed as an elderly man for the 100^th day of school, but I had the wrong day!) 

            I slapped myself together and ran out the door so that I would be on time.  At a red light, I looked at the seat next to me and realized I had left the mountain of papers I had worked on in my house.  I slumped down and rested my head on the steering wheel. And then I laughed and laughed.  Sometimes you have to laugh so you don’t cry. Being a parent is hilarious.  You are either laughing at your self or laughing at your kids.   

            On the last day of school before break, the boys decided to run outside, still in their uniforms, and spray each other with the hose. They were running back and forth, screaming and yelling.  Ok –Ben was doing most of the screaming because Evan had the hose. 

            “Mom!” ( Ben was banging at the back door.)

            “Yes?” I look at Ben and he is in hysterics, drenched to the core.

            “Evan soaked me!  And now I am peeing my pants,” admits Ben, still laughing.

            I have Ben strip down right there, and I give him a towel to quickly wrap up in on the way to the bath.  Evan is busy spraying down some dirty toys in the yard. It is about 5 pm.  I think, “I can leave him alone for a minute and get Ben in the tub.”  So, that is what I do.  I start Ben’s bath and he climbs in.  Then I return to the back door. I look out expecting to see Evan playing with the hose. And he is.  There, in the center of my yard which is clearly visible to all neighbors and anyone –police cruiser or pervert- who may be travelling down the back lane on this bright, sunny late afternoon, is Evan -completely naked, standing in a knee-deep plastic toy bin he is filling up for a bath. I trot down into the yard and tell him, “C’mon get in the house! You need clothes!”  

            Evan assumes I don’t “get it.”  He reaches down into the water and splashes some up on himself, and says, “Ahhhhhhhhhh,” grinning ear to ear.  

            I have to stifle my laughter to avoid encouraging more shenanigans.  I pull Evan out of his backyard Jacuzzi and tell him to go inside the house. He does, and I proceed to shut the water off and replace the backyard toys.  Inside, the boys are laughing and screaming.  Wet clothes are everywhere. All of this has transpired in the 30 minutes since they stepped off the bus. 

            Lately, I have been reading about the concept of adventure tourism.  People pay guides to take them up a mountain or into the jungle.  I am thinking of starting my own company.  No plane tickets needed.  I’ll just send the boys to your house for a week.          

            By the end of Parenthood, Steve Martin is learning to let go and have fun despite the ups and downs.     You have to.  Sure, you could go along white-knuckled and tense. But it is way more fun to throw your hands up in the air and laugh the whole way.

  

(I promised I wouldn't post this to Facebook, but this isn't Facebook!  So, it doesn't count!  Here is Ben doing the Ice Age Continental Drift.) 

The adventure guides...

As I am.

            I knew from the moment I saw Evan in a photograph that he was my new son.  I also knew he was profoundly deaf.   I did not widely publicize this detail, partly because I didn’t want to be called a lunatic by my dearest friends.  But also, I didn’t want Evan to be known as the “deaf kid.”   I wanted the focus to be on Evan as my new son and Ben’s new brother. 

            For more than a year prior to meeting Evan, we prepared. Ben and I attended sign language classes.  I researched online.  Along the way, I read about the latest technology, cochlear implants.  Most people have by now heard of these.  A brief internet search will turn up dozens of videos of kids hearing their parents’ voices for the first time.   On the periphery, they seem to be a magical “fix.”  I had done enough research to realize that they are not.  They are useful to some people, but not for others.  I adopted Evan knowing and accepting that this was quite possibly not an option for him. 

            A quick tutorial:  There are two parts to hearing.  There is the access to sound, and then there is the processing of that sound. Without processing capability, sound is, well - just noise. From the time a baby is born, they are hearing sounds and their brains are building the neurological pathways to process those sounds.  If a child has not been exposed to sound, the cochlear implant can give the child access to a lot of sound, but it will not be meaningful because those pathways are undeveloped. 

            Today we went to an audiologist that specializes in evaluating candidates for cochlear implants.  She explained that they surgically implant a device into the head.  There is another piece that the child would wear outside.  It adheres to the implanted piece by a magnet.  This would give Evan access to a lot of sound.  Unfortunately, this could be very annoying and probably not very helpful.  The audiologist went on to explain that at Evan’s age it would likely take intense therapy to help Evan develop any speech.  She elaborated that even with considerable intervention; she did not think he would be capable of spoken conversation.  (However, he will have the capability to converse in ASL.)

            The audiologist suggested that we could continue with the trial with hearing aids that Evan is now involved with at school.  He has worked up to wearing them for 30 minutes.  She recommended pursuing outside speech therapy, too.  What would a speech therapist work on? Recognizing the presence and absence of sound, and patterns of sound. This approach would likely not lead Evan to much useable speech, but it would give him an awareness of sound.  In time, there may be a few words.

            I expressed that I hardly thought it would be worth risking surgery and the hours of effort it would take to produce a limited amount of speech.  Certainly, Evan would be better off spending his time developing reading and math skills.  I asked about more classes to further our fluency in ASL so that we could fully integrate with Evan’s world.  I hoped I sounded steady,  mature, and accepting.  I could feel that tightness in my throat and a slight stinging in my eyes. 

             

            The doctor kindly offered to call ahead to the surgeon and cancel our consult.  She suggested that we may revisit this question if Evan really takes an interest in sound with his hearing aids.  She asked if I had any questions.  “Not really,” I said.  I would follow up by looking into information about more ASL.

              There was a toy box in the corner and Evan had been playing throughout our entire conversation.  He was oblivious to the gravity of the discussion, to the possibility that he had essentially been ruled exempt from.   I smiled at the doctor and thanked her for her time.  Evan and I left.  He looked at me as if to say, “What was that about?”  I just shrugged and told him, “C’mon.”  He waved goodbye to the ladies at the counter. 

            We got in the car and headed towards the nearest Dollar Store. I remembered that I needed to make some kind of Easter hat for Evan for a school parade later this week.  The rest of our afternoon was suddenly clear.  Evan was in the back seat playing with toys.  I desperately did not want to feel disappointed.  I knew ahead of time it was not likely an option for Evan.  From the moment I decided to adopt Evan, I accepted him along with his deafness. From the beginning, I did not delude myself into thinking that we would just “fix” it.  Despite that, as I drove I fought back tears behind my sunglasses.  How strange it was to now be on the other side of this question.   I glanced back at Evan. He was looking out the window.  I reached back to touch his leg and missed.  I pulled my hand back, afraid the gesture would betray my emotional turmoil.  I didn’t want Evan to sense I was upset.  He made a sound to get my attention.  I looked back and he was smiling at me, holding his leg up to meet my hand.  I reached back and held on for some time. 

            Recently my sister Peg sent me a book called Far From the Tree, by Anthony Solomon.  The author writes about children who are different in some way.  It is a heavy, enormous book with chapters dedicated to various issues and conditions.  The author begins by discussing how disability often becomes identity.  He talks about the grieving a parent must go through on the way to acceptance when their child turns out to be different.   I cannot lay claim to such emotions because I chose Evan as he is.  I am not sad because he is deaf.   Today, I felt sad for Evan, that he will not have the benefits of speech.  As a parent, I felt deep regret that I cannot fix this for him.  I think back to the beginning, when I didn’t share that he was deaf for fear that this would label him – that this would be all people would think of when they thought about my new son.  When I looked into my rear view mirror and saw my little guy looking back at me, I saw both – a gregarious, smart, funny, stubborn seven year old, and a deaf child.  It’s all he has ever known.  Deafness is part of his identity; he does not see it as a limitation.  I watch Evan do everything other kids do – and more – every day.  He is perfectly ok with it.  And so am I. 

Laugh at the Sky

Last year, I read an old folktale to my students. The Reader’s Digest version is this:

    An old man and his wife lay in bed night after night, unable to sleep.  A branch had grown too long on a tree by their bedroom. Every time the wind blew there was a horrible scratching noise as the limb would scrape against the window. They went to the village elder to ask his advice.  Oddly, he advised, “Bring the chickens into the house.”  The couple was not about to question him, and did as he prescribed. When the solution was not forthcoming, they kept returning for more advice. “Bring the pigs into the house.”  “Bring the goats into the house.”  Bring the cows and horses.”  At last, the old couple started to lose faith, and went to him and complained, “We did as you asked, but we still can’t sleep.”  The old man shrugged and told them, “ OK, go home and let all the animals out.”  The old couple went home and did as he instructed once more.  That night, they lay in bed and marveled at the quiet stillness of their house.  They barely noticed the scratching of the tree limb as they drifted off to sleep. 

Two weekends ago we brought the Pugs to Aunt Sandy’s.  Mind you, in the realm of dogdom, these two were completely inoffensive. They were more like furniture with fur. But somehow, having them in the house transformed Evan.  On a normal day, Evan channels a blend of ancient warriors and cartoon characters. Evan-on-Pugs is like Little Rabbit Foo-Foo. 

The Pugs were not amused. They cowered in a corner.  One tried to make a break for it and leapt through a missing picket in my fence – no small feat for a geriatric obese animal not known for athleticism.  One backed out of its harness upon seeing the boys disembark from the school bus and hurled his fat little body into oncoming traffic.   Evan took none of this personally.  Every night after school, Evan would run, laughing maniacally, through the house scooping up Pugs.  In his mind, it was a great game. The Pugs were horrified.  Evan loved it so much he would sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and go Pug-hunting.  I was exhausted. 

Then, Aunt Sandy came to the rescue.  The Pugs have retired to Jacksonville. Ben and Evan seamlessly resumed our life before dogs.  The remarkable side effect is that pre-Pug behavior that I found challenging now seems Absolutely Minor.  It’s a little like hitting your head with a hammer to make you forget a pain in your toe.  If you are struggling with any difficulties that seem unsolvable, I highly recommend it. 

Of course, the other force at work here is that Evan is actually improving on many levels.  We have reached the 8^th month of being a family, and I marvel at the progress Evan has made.  When I first met Evan, he was a surly, somewhat feral child with no formal system of communication.   I watched in dismay as my new son deliberately stuck his foot out to trip strangers in the Zhengzhou airport.  When he was mad at me -which was all the time - he would grunt, jab his finger in the air, and sometimes hit me.  He bore no resemblance to any 6 year old I knew.  He had the confidence of someone much older. He was not genuinely affectionate.  He did not cry. 

 He was all mine.

 And I was terrified.  

Evan is like a huge toddler, now.  If I am working or sitting on the couch, he wants to sit on my lap.  This morning, Evan crawled into my arms and wanted me to rock him like a baby.  He is my 64 pound baby boy.   He gives me kisses and tight hugs that feel like love instead of an attempt to strangle me. 

Evan cries now.  Normal, bottom lip-out pouty tears.  His eyes well up.  He is turning back into a little boy again. 

Evan laughs….giggles…smiles with twinkling eyes…and not because he is up to something!  (At least not all the time!) 

His personality is coming through in 3-D Technicolor.  He can be very funny and loves to be the center of attention.  I would not be at all surprised if he ended up on the stage some day.  Evan loves performing, dancing, and music.  Some evenings, he treats me to dramatic presentations which usually involve him playing a warrior. 

Evan can be very sensitive and caring at times.  Last week, we were in the food court in the Mall and I purchased food for the boys.  I didn’t buy three meals because I knew there would be plenty for me, too.  When we sat down, Evan noticed I did not have a Styrofoam box. He slid his chair closer to me and positioned his meal between us.  He glanced at me and gestured, “Eat.” 

One of the most impressive areas of progress has been communication.  Evan had no words.  Evan presumably lip-read in Mandarin, had no exposure to English, and had no sign language.  He has spent a little over six months in Kindergarten now.  He is in a regular-ed classroom, but gets pulled out by a deaf-ed teacher. He also has the assistance of a full time interpreter.  With their help and persistence, Evan now knows all of his upper and lower case letters.  He also has surpassed my meager signing vocabulary and has me struggling to keep up!  Evan is also reading now.  Really reading!  He comes home with sight word books every week and can read/sign all the words to me.  All of Evan’s teachers have confirmed what I knew from the beginning: Evan is one smart little guy. 

I don’t want to sugar coat.   I think the number one fear most people have about adoption is that you will bring home Rosemary’s Baby.  You could invite a child into your family that will make you sleep with one eye open and hide all the lighters.  The truth is that all children, even biological ones, are a crap shoot.   Open the newspaper on any given day. You will see stories about children who fell from their resident parent’s wombs and did not turn out as hoped. 

Evan can still be exasperating and I have to stay on my toes!  Evan prefers to learn from experience.  This means “No” sounds like a dare, and he acts on most of his ideas.  I've heard from other parents that this is not necessarily rare. 

Prior to adopting, you are required to go through pre-adoption counseling.  You are told to let go of idyllic fantasies and prepare for a long road ahead.  One piece of advice that I think about often now is that you should not attribute all issues and behaviors to your child’s previous orphan status.  As a teacher, I have observed that every personality you meet as an adult is present in a Kindergarten class room.  People just are who they are.  They don’t change all that much.   Evan has a very strong personality. He is very mischievous.  I doubt he would be a lot different if I raised him from infancy.   If Evan and Ben were colors, Ben would be a soft, calming light blue, and Evan would be Chili Pepper Red.  Don’t feel sorry for Ben, though.  Somehow, this is just what Ben needed.  Ben is becoming stronger and more assertive.  I could not have drawn that out of him.

As for me, I am doing well.   I've evolved from thinking I was an awesome parent (pre-Evan), to thinking I was a terrible, clueless parent, to thinking lately, “Wow, I might be getting good at this yet!” These past months have taught me that if you aren't doing something uncomfortable, you aren't growing.  This quote from Buddha has special significance to me now: “When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky”

Brothers....

 A few of you may remember, one of the names I considered for Evan (before I met him) was Marlon.  Everyone said it reminded them of a fish instead of Brando.  Coincidentally, this picture was on a wall in a Western restaurant in China this summer.  Evan does have the swagger!

Evan decided to join a performance at Forsyth Park last weekend.