Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Let's just start off by saying that some of our holiday traditions are weird. Or, at least, counter to what we do or say for the rest of the year. Take Thanksgiving, for example. We teach not to waste, not to be a glutton, to think of how much we have compared to people in, say, third world countries. And then we gorge ourselves until we can barely move.

Halloween. We teach our kids not to take candy from or talk to strangers. And then we tell them to knock on doors and TAKE CANDY FROM STRANGERS.

Christmas. Don't talk to strangers. Certainly don't climb up on the lap of a strange man. "Hey, kids, come here and talk to this stranger. And get on his lap. And then ask him to break into your house at night. While we all sleep." We are a weird bunch of Americans, y'all.

Anyway, all that recognition aside, we do the Santa thing in our house. Not as a focal point. We most definitely teach the real meaning of Christmas. Santa is a fun bonus tradition for us. Of course the older two no longer believe in Santa. Thank goodness. I mean, I'm not judging kids who believe in Santa until they're ten, I just find it weird. I was six. My kids were both pretty young. Still, we've taken pictures with Santa every year.

Last year, Garrett DID NOT WANT TO VISIT SANTA. We forced him to because we wanted just one picture of our three boys with the bearded jolly gift giver. This year he begged us to let him abstain. Matthew also begged us to let him forego a visit with Santa. We begged him to please please please participate because Will is a hater of strange men and also facial hair. He obliged. He's a good egg like that.

YOU GUYS! We were ten feet away from Santa. He stood up, kindly said, "Hi kids!" and my youngest son managed to usher in the apocalypse all by his little 17 month old self. Still in my arms, he started violently shaking and sobbing. Not once did I even so much as attempt to put him on Santa's lap or give him to Santa in any way. And still, copious amounts of hysterics. 

There was not a single other child in line and Santa and his good little elves kindly tried to get my son to take JUST ONE GOOD PICTURE. Will was perfectly happy to take candy canes straight out of Santa's hands but he would not smile AT ALL. In the following picture, I am standing exactly 18 inches from Will and he is in the lap of his most beloved Matthew and still, he thinks he has been assigned the tragic fate of living the rest of his life at the North Pole in the sweat shop sometimes referred to as Santa's workshop.

"Why don't you get in the picture, Mom?" Santa suggested. Because Mom did not even do her hair before she left the house. She ran a comb through it and called it good. But oh alright. What's that, Will? If you eat a candy cane and sit in my lap you will at least stop whimpering? Ok. Deal.

That lasted all of ten seconds before he launched himself off my lap and watched from a safe distance while Matthew sat with Santa, dramatically said, "Look Will, I LOVE Santa," and hugged him.

And then. AND THEN. While I was paying for my gold plated pictures, the photographer caught this. Yes, my toddler DOES take candy from strangers. Great.

Seriously though. If you're looking for a very patient Santa and very kind "elves" you should head over to Valley Fair Mall. I can't vouch for them when it's crazy busy but today they were amazing. Santa even told me that my kids were the best behaved of the day. Since one of mine cried almost the entire time, I continue to be very afraid of the direction our society is going.

Matthew asked Santa for an air soft gun. Santa seemed surprised. I thought, at first, that he was silently judging me for letting my kid ask for a toy gun. The more I think about it though, the more I wonder if he was surprised that what my son asked for can be purchased for under $30. I'm guessing a lot of kids ask for an electronic version of the moon.

Oh well, who am I to judge? I tortured my kid with a bearded fat guy today.

Three Little Girls: an adoption story

I have this abstract, floating idea to one day write a book about adoption. Perhaps it would feature the voices of adoptees, birth families, and adoptive families. Perhaps something else entirely. The idea wiggles around my mind and I have a hard time pulling it into focus. But regardless of whether it ever takes shape, the inspiration that I had for adoption will always be the same. During this, National Adoption Month, I thought I would share the story of how three little girls influenced my own adoption journey.   

           It was the late 80’s. Our bangs were high, our socks were slouched, Debbie Gibson reminded us that our youth was electric, and New Kids on the Block taught us to hang tough. In our small, bedroom community, I was carving a childhood without a care in the world. Winters were mild and summers were sticky hot. From June until September, the boys on my street ran sweaty, bouncing from house to house, for hours. We spent long, lazy afternoons at the local pool, splashing with kids who’d trekked yards or miles to seek solace from the heat. Summer nights were often made of running through sprinklers, bouncing on trampolines, and the more than occasional sleepover.

            Maybe it was the community pool or maybe it was all the hours serving on the PTA at the only elementary school within an eight mile radius, but friendships were forged between mamas. Those relationships led to a network of kids bound together by chlorine, Otter Pops, and the nagging dread that a new school year was coming.
            Somehow, though I do not remember the details of my introduction to her, I became instant friends with a gangly girl one year my junior. I can only recall pieces of our early friendship; her hideously broken arm, achieved by falling off of a jungle gym at a backyard Vacation Bible School, her subsequent enormous cast that dwarfed her tiny body and her impressive side ponytail at my surprise 8^th birthday party, her superior Barbie voice skills—especially when performing the role of Ken, and the fact that she was adopted.
            For whatever reason, I became obsessed with that last bit. Long after our parents had fallen asleep, as we laid giggling on the floor of one of our bedrooms, I would hear a nagging voice in my head, begging me to find out the details of her first life. I would try to hush the voice but, eventually, it became too much and I would blurt out some intruding question that felt innocent enough but probably sounded a lot like, “What happened to your real parents?” (Oh, how I hope not. Lord, let it not be so. I’m slowly dying inside at the mere thought that it may have come out like that.)
            She would tell me the stories. Of her parents. Of foster care. Of being adopted. And I would listen, riveted to her tale. I don’t think there was ever a conversation that ended because I was bored of the story. I think she spoke and I listened until, eventually, her narrative faded into the quiet rising and falling of our breath.
            My friend was the first adoptee I ever knew. Decades later, I would apologize to her for being so intrusive, for asking her, so frequently, to divulge every detail of her first handful of years, for wanting her to tell me deeply personal and, often, incredibly painful stories. I had felt, then, that I needed to whisper, that, perhaps, it was a secret. But I hadn’t realized the weight of what I was asking her to share with me and, as an adult, I felt guilty for how careless my curiosity may have seemed.
            She was quick to respond that I had nothing to apologize for, that talking about it was a release for her. So many years, and a great deal of maturity later, that was such a relief to me. To know that she had first kindled my passion for adoption, to know that I had served some purpose, however small, in her own journey gave me the sense that, in those early years, we had lived in perfect symbiosis. Me, presenting her with a space to share. Her, subsequently piquing my every interest in the complex odyssey of adoption.
            Nearly a handful of years later, my aunt and uncle announced that they would be bringing home a baby girl. I sat on my parents’ bed and listened to my mom chattering on the phone with my aunt. I didn’t know how infant adoption worked. I only knew that, when my mom hung up the phone, she announced that I was gaining a cousin. I welcomed that little girl with every excitement that a baby obsessed preteen could muster, which is to say that I wanted to hold her every waking moment of every day.
            Being so much older, I never grilled my cousin on how she felt about being adopted. In fact, I really never thought much about it. My aunt and uncle had a baby. And that was that. Except for one thing. In my cousin’s room was a photo album. The album contained pictures of her first family and photos of her birth. When I flipped through that book, I had this nagging thought that there was this whole other family that she belonged to.
            There was a woman who had chosen to place my cousin in another home. She gave her position to my aunt and handed over this tiny blessing wrapped in pink to be raised and loved and snuggled by someone else. And I was so grateful that she did it, that she chose life for my cousin and that she gave that life to our family. Adoption had brought me a friend and a cousin. Even though I knew the loss and had a limited understanding of the grief that would come from that, to me, it was only beautiful.
            To me, adoption was my cousin, toddling around with chestnut hair and big, wide eyes. It was my friend, now half grown, flailing wildly with me in a dance party gone bad and laughing until our sides ached. It was the little girl in an orphanage in Mexico.
            When I was in high school I went on a mission trip. Part of our time was spent at an orphanage. One day, as my peers ran through the yard playing games, I walked through the bedrooms--alone. I wondered what it would be like to grow up there, where the ratio of adults to children seemed like eleven million to one. As I walked through the maze of bedrooms, certain I was hopelessly lost, I heard a soft cry coming from several walls over. Quickly brushing through rooms of hand-me-down comforters and lone dressers--of which each child had one drawer to call his own, I searched for the soul belonging to that cry. The nearer I got the louder the cry became until I burst through a door and skidded to a halt when I saw her. She was sitting in the middle of the crib, fat tears dripping down her precious face, naked, except for the bulging diaper. She saw me and reached her hands to me. Inside, something yanked loose. The women had their hands completely full with all the other children. And me, well, my arms were holding nothing. My hands were completely free.
           In some ways, that one act of picking up that one child shaped me forever. I wiped her tears away and whispered to her in limited and broken Spanish. I tried English. She frowned. Hard.
           Her eyes were glued to my face almost constantly. I tried to get her to smile. But still, regardless of what I did, the frown. And then something happened and she giggled. The frown didn't reverse, it simply shook up and down as she laughed. I realized then that she wasn't frowning. She was smiling, upside down.
           Over the course of my time there, we became virtually inseparable. When it was time to leave, the lump in my throat felt like I'd swallowed a grapefruit. She clung to me and sobbed as they tried to take her away. I pulled her arms off of me and shoved her toward her caregiver. Then I spun on my heels and climbed on the bus. Looking out the window I saw her reaching her arms toward the vehicle, mouth open in a loud wail. I couldn't control the tears flowing down my face. It felt like someone had reached into my chest and squished my heart in his fist so that parts of it were sticking out between fingers while the rest thundered against palm. I couldn't breathe.
            In my tears I knew that I loved her.
            I knew then that I could love my own child, born not of my flesh but of my heart, instead. I knew that I could unconditionally love someone else's son or daughter. I knew that ethnicity and gender and circumstance didn't matter. I was in high school. I hadn't learned most of what I know now.
             I have loved her for many, many years now. Though we will never, ever, be reunited, separated as we are by cultures and miles and years, I am so thankful that she tugged on my heart in that crib. So thankful that, in her outstretched arms, I was granted the spirit of adoption.
            Adoption is sometimes a lot like an upside down smile. It is foster care and orphanages. It is first families making painful choices. It is grief and growth and learning to love in new ways. But it is beautiful. It is joy. It is recognizing that there is more love in the world than we can ever  know. It is a pilgrimage worth every mile. It is friendship and family. It reaches across blood and borders. It is, at times, disheveled and chaotic. But it promises to be the most beautiful of messes.

I am always and ever thankful to my Father in Heaven for imprinting me with a deep curiosity about adoption. I am also so grateful to Him for giving me a spouse with a desire to adopt. Finally, I am ever thankful for the mess of infertility. For even with the desire to adopt, had we easily conceived time and time again, I don't know that we would have been brave enough or bold enough or, perhaps, reckless enough to choose this life. And I am blessed, every day, because He built my family in this remarkable way. I've heard it said that when we get married, we are better capable of understanding the complexity of the love that Christ has for His church. When we have children, we have a wider comprehension of the way the Father cares for us. I would submit that when we adopt a child, we are given a deeper understanding of what it means when we are adopted into the family of God through the accepted gift of salvation. It's truly an experience like none other. If you would like more information on infant, foster, or international adoption, please feel free to contact me. I would love nothing more than to share ways that you can be involved in caring for little ones in need. I would also challenge you to pray and ask God if adoption is a part of His plan for your life. I've heard so many people say that they are not called to adopt. But I wonder if they have ever actually asked God what He would have them do. Sometimes, He has abundant blessing in store for us and all we need to do is ask what His plan is.

Three Little Girls: an adoption story first appeared on Livin' in a Fishbowl.

Sub for Santa

In the middle of National Adoption Month is World Adoption Day. According to their website www.worldadoptionday.org, "World Adoption Day is a day to celebrate family. World Adoption Day is a day to raise awareness for adoption. World Adoption Day is a day to raise funds to support families in their adoption. Ambassadors from all over the world are organizing events and parties, bringing together people from all walks of life to celebrate World Adoption Day. Join us as we create a day to celebrate the power and beauty of family brought together through adoption."

They ask supporters of adoption to put a smiley face on their hand and post a picture to social media. Of course, we participate in this.

Sometimes, though, I think it's easy to find yourself wondering what you can do. If you can't* afford adoption, you might ask how you can help. Since it's World Adoption Day, I thought I'd link here to an amazing opportunity. Perhaps you don't know how you would come up with $40,000 to adopt a child, but do you have $100? If so, you can sponsor a child in foster care for this holiday season. I was told by a former foster kid that Christmas is everything to a foster child. In the middle of all the chaos and turmoil these children are experiencing, we can help bring them joy on Christmas morning. Please consider responding to the information listed below. You can make a cash donation or choose a child to sponsor. There are still several hundred children waiting to be chosen.

I posted about this on Facebook and my friends and family responded. Together, we're sponsoring 5 children. Stand with us for adoption, for foster care, for orphan care. Stand and donate to a child in need. Click here https://www.adoptex.org/get-involved/donate/subforsanta/ 

*Time and time and time again, I have seen the Lord provide in incredible ways for those who faithfully answer His call to adopt. We couldn't afford it either. And yet we did it. More than once. Because He was so very faithful to us and He used so many people to help us bring our babies home.

This is Us and this is National Adoption Month

My blog could easily go from being a place where poignant or funny or, at least, moderately interesting things used to be written to a place where I discuss episodes of This is Us on a weekly basis. Except they wouldn't be discussions that most people would want to read because I'd be all, There's a girl named Kate and a guy named Kevin but let's not talk about them. Let's talk about Randall and Rebecca all the time! All the time.

Because listen, I do not generally identify with Kate or Kevin. There was an episode a few weeks ago where Kate got into it with Rebecca. Kate is a year older than me. I should take her side. But I wanted to slap her across the face and tell her she was a horrible person and APOLOGIZE TO YOUR MOTHER RIGHT NOW, KATE.

Then, there I was, talking about the episode with friends and one of them just gets Kate. She explained that she identifies with Kate's struggle and how authentic the show is in regard to her feelings. It didn't make me want to slap Kate any less but it made me so happy to know that they're getting Kate just as right as they're getting Rebecca. And, let's face it, the country isn't tuning in just to watch this transracial adoption storyline unfold. Some people are tuning in for that. Some are watching for Kate.

I've mentioned before that this show makes me cry but not every week. Goodness, I'm a statue. Or I used to be. I don't know, strange things make me cry unexpectedly sometimes now. But, anyway, last night's episode really got me there at the end.

It's National Adoption Month. And I know, everything single thing, every single cause, every single issue has its own month to be celebrated these days. That's okay. Because if we listen to the passionate voices on certain issues, we just might learn something. Those of us who are the passionate voices, certainly have a lot left to learn.

I watch This is Us because I find so much of myself in Rebecca and because I find so much of Matthew in Randall. I watch because Randall grows up and Rebecca gets old and I'm not there yet. I'm not to the "being a white parent of a grown black man" stage of my life quite yet. But I will be. I am so hoping that the show is getting it right about adult Randall and Grandma Rebecca and that I can learn something now that helps me then. Goodness knows its getting it right about ten year old Randall and his mom. Sometimes, it gets it so right that I'm looking around my house for signs that the screenwriters have bugged the place.

Last night, when ten-year-old Randall couldn't deviate from his Halloween plan because THE WORLD MIGHT JUST END. Matthew. The things he can control, he simply must control, and if that control is taken away, he may just explode. And if he grew up to be as amazing as adult Randall that would be pretty okay with me but I'd rather he grow up to be a little less rigid and a little less nervous breakdowny.

When the show gets the dialogue so perfectly right, I just want to celebrate. Or cry. Or both. Because, thank you, Hollywood, for doing this.

Rebecca: You're not instead of anything. You are the way it was always supposed to be.

When there's infertility playing in to the story, I think it's easy for children to feel like they are Plan B. I can see Matthew feeling that way someday, feeling like we couldn't have another biological child and so we had him. I can certainly see Will believing that we only adopted him because we'd lost his sister. Of course, neither of those things are true. They are not instead of something else. They are the children that were always supposed to be a part of this family, since before the dawn of time.

Randall: What was his name?
Rebecca: Kyle.
Randall: Kyle probably looked like you and daddy. And them. Nobody looks like me.
Rebecca: I know.

These are real conversations that real adoptive families have. Add a biological child into the mix and it's maybe even more difficult. My oldest son is my mini me. Matthew and Will are not. I've never once had someone tell me that either of them look exactly like me. The tendency is to find things that are similar and that, in its time, is good. Matthew, Will, and I all have brown eyes. So we talk about that. But sometimes it's okay to just acknowledge that we don't look alike.

As I said before, though, it was the ending that grabbed me and made those tears spring out of my eyes.

Rebecca: (talking to baby Randall) Hi, little boy. I'm sorry it took me so long to get over here. I was really nervous to meet you. See, I talked to my other babies over there the whole time they were inside of me. But you weren't there so I wanted to come and introduce myself and say hello and let you hear my voice...Oh. I forgot to introduce myself. I'm your mom.

I felt this exact way with Matthew. He was hers and then he was mine but I didn't know him the way I'd known Garrett. And so I struggled to feel like he was really and truly mine. And then I felt guilty for not feeling the exact same way I'd felt with Garrett. I was so worried that I wasn't feeling things the right way. Now, of course, I feel sad that I ever wondered if I was loving him the right way. I was just loving him a different way. A way made through adoption. I credit Matthew completely for the fact that I didn't struggle with this when Will was born. I had already had seven years of loving an adopted child. I knew all the joy before me when Will was born because Matthew had taught me.

And then, lastly, there was this gem.

Older Rebecca: (talking to her baby granddaughter) And we lost a baby and we thought it was an ending but it was also a beginning.

Just today, as I was snuggling Will before his nap, I whispered to him, "Do you know how many things had to happen so that you would be here in our family? Do you know how God worked to change my heart in so many ways? Because He always knew it was supposed to be you."

I'll keep talking about this show for as long as it keeps getting adoption right. And I'll keep talking about adoption because it is one of my most favorite things in the whole entire world. Happy National Adoption Month!