Cleave, 2

Our Boo is very attached to his father.   It may be at age 9, he is starting to see the world from beyond the film of childhood.  We hear that it's around this age that children begin to see aspects of this world that were merely distant imaginings, like illness and death. It may be that he is just now able to begin processing the fears and pains of having watched his father felled to the floor.  His mother weeping and screaming, trying to get a response.

If you do not already know, our little guy has Asperger's Syndrome.  One of its symptoms is the inability to understand others' nor even his OWN emotions.  He has watched his father go off in an ambulance.  Over. and Over.  Something like 13 times in 12 months.  Through it all, this little guy never shed a tear.  I so distinctly remember, as I was tending to my fallen hero, then desperately going to the phone to call 911, seeing this little guy walking along the edge of the room.  In my mind, he is surfing on a board of denial, sweeping his hands along the walls, the doors.  Several years ago.

Several weeks ago, he started saying, "Oma, daddy, remember when daddy was in the hospital and I gave him my baby bunny?"  Yes, dear, that was very kind of you.  We didn't think much of it.  Then one day, little guy was laying with his dad, their heads nestled together.  Once again, "Dad, remember when you were in the hospital and I gave you my baby bunny to hold?"  But this time, his dad felt a tear trickle down little guy's cheek and land on his own, the rivulet continuing.

What is it like to not know your emotions?  [Alright, cut it with the comments about your husbands, okay?]  What is it like when you can barely recognize happy, sad, angry, let alone the more subtle satisfied, suspicious, or dismayed?  When you have to be shown flashcards of facial expressions and associate them with a word that may or may not make a connection?  It is stepping out of yourself, and looking at yourself, recalling the flash cards you've seen in therapy and see if one matches with your own psychic face.  Like recalling a spelling word.

But then again, we get some unique perspectives from our Boo.  And sometimes, it's spot on.  Like when recently, his dad was away on business.  They've been such close buddies lately.  Boo is in the back seat of the car, and we are driving away, leaving dad at his conference.  This time, the tear is not a rivulet but a watercourse, running over, under and around him.  Swept away, and little guy says,

"I feel like he's right next to me, but he's not here."

Is that not the essence of emotional pain?  being cleaved but then cleft?  Amazing, clear thinking from a boy who doesn't understand emotions.

Right.

Cleave

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.  - Genesis 2:24 (NASB)

I just read Little Bee.  We is thinkin it be bout goodies and baddies.

There is a horrific scene of g*ng r*pe. This isn't a spoiler because as soon as you start the book, an ominous valance of doom hangs over you.  Like a cloud which lovely fullness turns gray at the horizon.  It's just a matter of how and when the story unfolds.

Cleave isn't a word you hear much these days.  Except on the Food Network for cutting meat. Isn't it odd that a word would have a meaning and it's opposite? The word that means

to adhere closely; stick; cling.  to remain faithful.

also means

to split or divide by or as if by a cutting blow, especially along a natural line of division, as the grain of wood.

It made me wonder why r*pe is so traumatic.  Such a deep, primal wound that seems to even overshadow beatings.  Why children, who are barely aware of their body parts are almost irreparably damaged by it.  Not just the physical pain and physical trauma but there seems to result in a knowledge of deep betrayal.  A knowing.  

She also gave some to her husband....and he ate it.  Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.  - Genesis 3:6b - 8 (NASB)

When sin entered, why did Adam and Eve know they were naked, of all things?  How did they think to cover their loins of all things?  Could it be that their cleaving physically represented their cleaving psychologically, emotionally...primally?  And that something deep, at their very core, had been irreparably broken?

God is a poet.  God is Poetry.  Would He create us with this Cleaving which does not reference His own Cleaving to His trinity?  I cannot help but think that for  us to Cleave is to see a little glimpse of the Trinity.  Separate but Whole and Equal.  At His earthly end, it was not hanging by nails through his body, cleaving his sinews.  It was the agony of the cleft between Himself and The Father.

Perhaps the r*pe, the forcing, the tearing, perhaps it is essential humanity cleft to the core.  Left broken and shattered down the primal human grain.

The Right to Choose

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"I choose to love you.

I do.  Some moms?  They get pregnant; have a baby in their tummy by accident.  Like your tummy-mom.  She wasn't ready to have a baby.

I choose to love you."

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do.  I chose to call the adoption agency.  I chose to fill out all those forms, to make copies, to mail them, to travel to different offices, to make all the phone calls.  I chose to buy airplane tickets, get on a plane, to pick you up.

I choose to love you.

But you don't have to love me.  That's your choice."

He lifts his head from my lap and his cheeks are flushed, his body radiating the odor of fear.  His round cheeks, his unbridged nose are covered with weeping.  Not a rivulet or shiny drop, but awash like the streets in a rainstorm.

We sit like that, him surrendering to my love, boneless, heaped over my shoulder, wetness upon my shirt.

I didn't know what the words would do; what the tears would wash.  But today, yesterday and the day before, he holds my hand as if he chooses to love me.

A Mom's Story

"Boo doesn't love me," I said.  My therapist told me my expectations were unrealistic, that I was putting an adult's definitions and behaviors onto a little child.  She was good, but that didn't sit right with me.  That was the beginning of my end with her.

If Boo loved me, it was a love maimed by terror and trauma and insecurity.  Toddling along, he would avoid me, hurt me in little ways.  Never sit in my lap.  Never.  Unless you count the 1 second his little butt would touch my thighs before sliding off to something else.  He never said, "I love you," no matter how many times he heard it from us.

Whenever we would get in the car, he would repeat little phrases over and over, one after the other.  "Stimming," they call it:  self-stimulating behavior to soothe themselves.  It made me crazy.  Crazy. And sometimes, I'd forget he was this beautiful, little, little child, and I would act in ways that still twist my stomach in knots from shame.

Now he says, "Oma, I love you," over and over again.  Sometimes, every 5 minutes.  It nearly made me scream, but I must have learned a thing over the years because I calmly said, "Boo, why do you say 'I love you' so much?  Do you feel it or do you just want to say it?"

"Well, mom?  Mom?  It makes my love get big."

Happy Mother's Day to me.

7 Years

Exactly 7 years ago, we traveled to our home in State College via Seoul, Taejon and DC.  He must have sensed we were at the end of our journey because he fell into a deep sleep, a deep sleep he hadn't known since 2 strangers took him away from his home the week before.  The journey, of course, was just beginning.

Happy Family Day, little boy.  You transformed one couple into a Family.
I love you.

A Long Time

I'll never stop loving you.

From my little boy.  It took a long time to get here.  Along the painful journey to love, I have learned so much.  Healed so much.  Through the pain of this child, God healed me.

If he hadn't been sent away, he wouldn't have suffered.  If the sending country had a better social service system.  If they weren't sexist.  If they weren't biased.  If.  If.  If.  Some even think the whole idea of adoption is evil.  So many evils in the world.  What we do with them?  There are some that insist that I believe certain things, fight for certain rights, join certain organizations.  Maybe I will.  Someday.

Today?  I am still reveling in a little boy, laying in bed, blanket tossled and twisted around his legs, his arms around his oma,who can say,

I'll never stop loving you.

Innappropriate

This is a comment I made on someone else's blog awhile ago.  Looking back on it, it was totally the wrong place to share this. (hang my head in shame)  BUT.  I did think it was well written!  ha!  (pat myself on the back)  I've written about this in several ways in the past but I thought I'd share a serendipitously well-written comment:

I want to insert an idea that I have never seen. I’m pretty new to the bloggy thing so I may not be going to the right places. I apologize ahead of time to incorrect or innappropriate uses of terms. . . please just read my heart.

As an adoptive parent (internationally,) I have lived through the trauma that my child went through, and I believe, many children go through when transferred from first mom to foster mom to foster mom to adoptive mom.

I believe some of the pain that the adopted feel can be explained neurologically. I believe, as many therapists and AP do, that the children, yes, even infants, are traumatized by the separation from their (in their mind) moms, over and over again. The bond of birth is torn, then the bond of trust that the infant develops with the next carer is broken, then broken again. Depending on the child’s internal temperament, this trauma can cause neurological damage. This was true of my son. I hope none of you find this hard to believe, because anybody who has lived through trauma can become altered neurologically (PTSD, depression, anxiety, etc.)

There is a special kind of horror at seeing an infant screaming in terror and horror after being taken from his carer. That pumping of “bad” chemicals into his sytem for months…years…can wreak havoc emotionally, mentally and physically. Had I not been made aware of this phenomenon and sought the right therapies and parental methods, I cannot imagine how he would be today. And, what kind of adult he would become, thinking that the world was a dangerous, unpredictable, uncaring place, where the safety-ness (safety nest) can disappear at any time.

Adoption is rife with the complexities that you all are blogging and commenting about – and I cannot remove the fact that his first mom, for whatever reasons and forces, “gave him away.” I cannot erase my unborn dead baby, her relinquished baby, or his lost parents. But I can give him a level playing field of being as neurotypical as possible, retraining his brain to rewire disrupted development.

Adoption has been going on since forever.  (highly accurate terminology) I talk about the trauma aspect.  But do you know about coercions?  profiteering? selling babies?  buying babies?  false documents?  outright lies to your face?  Innapropriate.  (understatement)

Drifting

I am underwater. Hard to move. Hard to hear. Thoughts percolate, then rise up and *pop* like soap bubbles. It's glossy and pinkish and bluish then disappears without leaving a trace. I'm left standing in a conversation with a blank look on my face. Like I don't get it, or I am incapable of getting it.

What was an almost neurotic sense of orderliness and perfectionism, girded by insecurities and overlaid with raging hormones has, over the years, melded into depression. Almost as if my emotions have given up. Tired from holding itself upright for so long. I've fallen back after getting to such a good place. Why? I don't know.

You know, it's not what you think.

It's not what I think. I'm perfectly functional and you'd never know I was depressed. I don't lay in bed with the curtains drawn, crying needlessly. No. I just can't finish a sentence. I keep losing that thought, that connection.

drift drift *POP*
drift drift *POP*

I can't get very interested in anything.

I should be blogging - Eden, garden walls, Israel, His sheep, neither Jew nor Gentile, neither male nor female, wives submit, ability and roles, insults, adoption, the barren, saints, princesses. SO many thoughts.

I can't get myself there. My mind drifts away...

Sleavin

His baby teeth are going.

I see for the first time
he is getting too big for the slides.
His hugs are gangly
no longer fitting on my lap
Stride Rite soles leave chalk marks on my legs

Almost seven
I didn't have you for seven + 9
I thought six-and-a-half would be enough.
"I grew you in my heart"
I feel ripped-off
those years I didn't really have you
screaming and stimming
Alternating from
fighting like a caged animal,
to clinging like a frightened animal.

When did you turn into my baby?

I turn with wind-blown hair
to look
and find
you are leaving already.

Baby.


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Note: The title of my post is a play on two phrases: "Sleven" is the slang for the quick-mart 7/11. Blink and he's 7, blink again and he'll be 11. And he'sleavin'.

The Miracle In You

If you're a mom (or even if you're not,) you may be saying "Awwwww, how sweet." But you also might think that it's not so extraordinary.

You may think you understand when I say that this makes me choke up and practically hysterical. If your child has or had a life-threatening disease, then you do understand. A woman like me, who a close buddy described decades ago as "like glass - shiny and hard but breaks," has been shattered. To smithereens.
Silica.

I am not weepy in a Hallmark or Kodak kind of way. No, not weepy. But I weep because it is Redemption. The power of producing Good out of Evil. What could do that? Who? This month 6 years ago, the 3 of us via Seoul, Taejon and DC, arrived back in Pennsylvania. Even then, as a 7-1/2 month old, we are sure he could sense our relief, that this, finally, was our last stop. He fell asleep on the sofa, into that arms-over-the-head I-give-up nothingness.

Our home, but not his. His was back in Seoul, with that other family he knew as his own. In that garlic aromad, seaweed souped, crowded apartment.

He never let me rock him. He never hugged me out of joy or affection. He never sat in my lap. For more than a second. Never mimicked me the way toddlers do. When he was 2-1/2 years old, I distinctly remember laying down behind him while he slept. I reached out to touch his shoulder and he flinched to shake me off. Time and time again, night after night I tried. Weeks of moving bit by bit, a hand, an arm. After months - of emails, phone calls, one therapist then another, this book then that, changing my entire focus and approach, neurological reorganization - this boy, this boy. . . became my son.

During the night, 3 and 4 times, I go to his room and watch him sleep. I touch him - and now - 6 years later, he leans into me. Now he seeks me out to fall asleep on my breast. He was lost but now am found. The miracle in you.

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Forever Mom

Boo has been having some behavior "issues" lately. OK, he's been bad. Ba-aad to the bone. So I was splainin that he's not 4 anymore; that he's six and a half and should act like it. "Boo, in six months, you'll be seven!"

After a moment's pause, he said "When I'm seven, will you still be my mom?"













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The Serenity Award Goes to...

Not me.

Boo has had a tough coupla weeks, what with harabuji and halmuni invading our space an' all. He did great for what I expected from him, but still, it was hard to go from a family of 3 to a family of 5. With one who couldn't communicate with him.

Almost instantly from the time I put my parents on the plane, Boo became his ol' self. We've had a great coupla days, but a tired 6 year old is still a tired 6 year old. And a tired mom is still a tired mom.

So the Boo got a little defiant last night, not wanting mommy's help in the bath. And what did he do? HE LOCKED THE DOOR! Which for some reason infuriated me. BANG! BANG! BANG! OPEN THIS DOOR! I said as the model of serenity. Ahem. And when he did, WHACK right on his soft little tush. You know, as a reward for obeying me right away. [You got the sarcasm, right??]

You know the look...the tears welled up in his eyes, the lower lips started to shake...and I felt like the worst mom...no, human being on this whole earth.

He climbs into my arms and immediately whispers in my ear, "Mom, do you still love me?"

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I Love Mommy

"I Love Mommy" by Lizi Boyd is one of my favorite books for Boo. I love everything about the book. I love the graphics, including the font, the drawings, the colors, the characters, the size, the paper - everything. I ran across it at a local bookstore, which sadly, is no more.

I bought the book because Boo had a rather narrow range of emotions. It was one of the many effects of early trauma. I am sure he had feelings, [aside from anxiety, which he readily knew how to express] but I'm not sure he recognized them, and he certainly did not know how to express them. You may say "Oh so-and-so wasn't very affectionate, either." But that's not it. Do you know, somewhere deep inside you, when something is not right with your child? When that rash, that cough, isn't something "normal?" Well, I knew. I couldn't be in denial because he never sat on my lap, never hugged me, never felt pain or extreme cold. Never. I mean never. I had to teach him how to put his arms around me and hug me. I can't explain to you fully what happened in his little brain, but I know, surely as I know there is a God, that he was damaged by being taken from the family he had come to trust. Can you imagine getting all the diapers, crying, messes and duties, but not the cooing, the imitating, the nuzzling? Well, all that's for another post.

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I was drawn to the book because it so simply shows a relationship between mom and child, and how the very ordinary things in life form the bonds of love. That mommy "always has a fizzy drink for me," that mommy makes me dinner, prepares the perfect bath and tucks me in at night. Fortunately, Boo took to it, too. We read it over and over and over, literally for years. One day, I took the cover image, printed it on some iron-on transfer paper and made him a t-shirt. He loved that shirt and wore it for quite awhile. Then, like most things, he moved on to other books, other shirts, other characters.

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The other night, he suddenly said, in that tight, tear-filled voice, that he missed his "I Love Mommy" shirt and pulled it out of his drawers to wear that night. I was deeply satisfied, that he had such affection for something I made him, but also that he could feel and express what was locked inside of him. We were both disappointed to see that he had grown out of the shirt. Then he said,

"Oma, when I'm a man, and I'm big, could you make me a 'I Love Mommy' shirt that is man-size?"

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Ofcourse, honey. Ofcourse I will.

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Every Heart

Yesterday, I had just dropped off Boo at school. Hugged him. Promised I'd see him at 11:20. Satisfied, calm, I stopped to get coffee and turned on NPR.

I sat in my car as I listened to Renee Montagne interviewing Melissa Block, a regular correspondent. She and an NPR team were in China, preparing for a week-long series, when the earthquake hit. They obviously had to revamp or even cancel some of the scheduled stories. When asked about the impact of the quake, Ms. Block said she had been concentrating on individual stories and so still has a hard time "wrapping her head" around the scope of the tragedy. When asked what is the most enduring image in her mind, Ms. Block relays this:

A 2-year old child and his grandparents were buried under the rubble of their house. His mother was climbing through the rubble, and "In this incredibly anguished voice, with this just heart-breaking pain, calling out to him, 'Mom is coming for you.' "

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Memories are not what you think

There's a woman I read about in National Geographics. She is not a Savant, just another person like you and me. But she can remember the events of a day going back twenty years. Centuries ago, before technology, and before Barnes and Noble, people were considered intelligent if they had a good memory. A Peter of Ravenna had tomes memorized, including the entire Bible, and would "re-read" books in his mind as he travelled the roads of ancient Italy.

But memories are not what you think. Atleast not all that you think!

The following is a true story. The name has been changed, because, well, I don't know the guy's name. This guy, let's call him Jose. Jose hated elevators. Which may be tolerable except that he lived in a high rise. The panic attacks came intermittantly, and unexpectedly. One day, he entered the elevator and met up with an elderly neighbor whom he rarely saw. He exchanged a tentative smile with her even though he could feel his pulse quicken and his panic rise.

Then, through the panic, something came to him. At that moment, he realized that this woman smelled just like his mother...one of those old fashioned fragrances. The mother that brutally abused him as a child. If this neighbor left her lingering scent in the elevator, Jose would start to panic, and he could not tie it to anything in particular, except the elevator, until that moment.

Memories are not what you think. It isn't all about verbal or image recall, stored in your consciousness. Memories are often "stored" in your body, somewhere. I find this fascinating.

Do you, or do you know someone who gets sad at certain times of the year? When I was a naive 15, I dated a very handsome 18 year old. All summer long, he'd pick me up in his Mustang at dusk and we'd do the movie/pizza routine. By the end of the summer, when he hadn't gotten what he thought was a package deal, he broke up with me. For years and years after, when August would wane and the sun would lean toward the horizon, I would get malancholy without knowing why. Some people actually develop real, physical symptoms - allergies, illnesses as well as phobias. Do certain songs, smells, tastes take you back to another time? or more accurate to this phenomenon, do you get in a mood you can't explain? Your body may very well remember, triggered by an unrecognized stimulus.

Memories are not what you think.

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BooBoo

This is the first snippet of my love story for my son. I hope he will forgive me for sharing his life with you.

This little boy was handed to me by another woman. A woman and her family, that loved him fiercely for 6-1/2 months, and cried harder than I did when we said goodbye. She got him from another woman, who cared for him for a month. I don't know if she loved him or she simply did her job, but I am thankful nonetheless. This faceless caretaker, in turn, got him from his mother, a 19 year old single woman, who is not allowed to keep her own flesh.

Torn. Torn. Torn he was.

And now he sleeps with a measure of peace, hoping that he will not be torn again. The little scars in his heart remain...turning red with anger when he is afraid.
I will take care of you. I will love you forever. I will never leave you.