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| Franny trying out some sod |
Life becomes a bit easier, day by day. Sod has been laid down over the dust bowl that was the front yard; the dachshund, Theo, was the first to treat it like a fluffy carpet, sunning himself and rolling on his back to kick his feet. Children soon followed. Lily and Helen spread blankets on the grass and read their books in the sun, inspiring Franny, the Rat Terrier, to take it out for a spin. Boys violently pursue soccer balls and each other. Donny yells for everyone to be careful with his flowers.
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| DIRT |
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| sod! |
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| sod with Japanese cherry tree |
Orphanage behaviors did reappear last Friday. Helen mentioned that Daniel wasn’t speaking to her, that he hadn’t spoken to her for many weeks. I drew Daniel outside to sit on the royal blue and spring-green Adirondack chairs. I angled mine in order to enjoy a view of the handsome front lawn, and I asked him what was the problem.
“Helen very bad, Mom.”
I laughed.
He was not laughing. “You think she good, but she is very bad to me.”
“You think she’s bad to you on purpose, to make you unhappy?” I asked.
“My life, oh my God,” he said, putting his head in his hands.
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| Daniel: life is hard |
Perhaps a point should be mentioned here about adopted children. Adopted children are no more likely than any other children to feel grateful, to consider the alternative to life with you, to imagine where they might have been. Daniel, who would have been on the streets, on his own, in Addis Ababa, within a year or two, now sits in the royal-blue Adirondack chair under the blossoming wisteria, cradles his head in his long fingers, and moans, “My life, oh my God.”
“You’re having a rough life, are you?” I asked.
“Yes, Mom.”
“What’s Helen doing to you?”
“Last night, she at the computer very late.”
“She was doing homework.”
“It does not matter.”
“Daniel,” I said, peeved, “I’ll worry about that. That’s not for you to worry about.”
“Is not equal,” he said.
Which was a revealing statement from Daniel and helped me remember that he has a sore and deep sense of injustice, of being deprived of his rights, of being the victim of favoritism.
“Also whenever we play, she cry. We play soccer, she cry. Jump on jumpoleem, she cry.”
“I agree, Daniel,” I said. “If she cries too easily when you play, then you’re right to avoid physical play. But that doesn’t mean you can’t talk to her. You can talk to her.”
He listened.
“We just can’t run a family this way, by not speaking to each other,” I said, not for the first time.
I offered him an extra half-hour of playing computer over the weekend, and this enabled him to summon up a few monosyllables for Helen.
Meanwhile Yosef was coming to me crying about once an hour, to say that someone (Daniel, Sol, or Jesse) had hit him. His implied message is, “Do something.” His implied message is, “If you loved me, you’d do something. You’d punish them.” I see this as an orphanage behavior, too; I wonder if he didn’t feign grievous injury in order to win sympathy from Waizero Haregewoin or other caregivers. I suspect he bugs Daniel, Sol, and/or Jesse beyond endurance, gets slugged, then comes crying. I KNOW from experience that intervening in minor sibling fights will escalate them to major sibling fights. So I hug him, pet him, express regret.
I felt sad on Friday, realized how intensely I was missing Molly, Seth and Lee. When the younger kids generate strife, I feel trapped. I feel, “Is this what I’m supposed to be doing at this point in my life?” I imagine, ‘If they weren’t all here slugging each other, killing the grass, whining for computer time, and not speaking to each other, I could pack my bag and zip off to London, New York, or San Francisco to see my older three.”
I comforted myself by looking at photos just sent from London of Seth’s visit to Lee, and by having a long telephone chat with Molly, and by making plans to join Molly at a family wedding in May, and by remembering that I’ll see Seth in New York next month. “I can still see my older children!” I remembered. This cheered me greatly.
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| Lily seated at far left, keeping an eye on her mother |
Meanwhile, there are also many pleasures in raising the children. At Lily’s high school soccer game last week, I sat in my folding chair in my sunglasses and hat—a new hat, a brimmed straw hat. I do not look good in a hat, I know this. But the sun was very bright and blinding. And I thought the compromise between straw hat and baseball cap would be passable. Lily sat on the bench with her team-mates on the far side of the field. My phone buzzed, announcing a text message. I reached into my purse opened the phone. The message was from Lily. It said, “Mother! Take off that hat RIGHT NOW.”
Without a word, I handed the phone to the mother sitting nearest me, and she passed it to the next mother, and all the way down the row, mothers of teenage daughters laughed and laughed and sympathized.
The sun went behind a cloud. I took off the hat.
