Little Reminders

Sometimes, life takes us in so many different directions that I end up not being in the right place to catch one of the endless balls in the air. Keeping a calendar helps, and sending myself text and email reminders has been a great technological advantage. Appointments, rehearsals, meetings, classes, work assignments - there are very few days when at least one of us doesn't have to be somewhere, or have a deadline to meet.

Pie safe, with a new lease on life!

There are other reminders that serve to keep us on our path, and help us remember what's important. Dearest recently 'rescued' the pie safe that I grew up with; cleaning, refurbishing, and tightening all the joints after it spent several years gathering dust and falling to pieces in my mother's garage. It's a piece of furniture that has always given me comfort, because it was there when I was too young to know about the very hard things in life. It came out of an old house when Dad was working in demolition, before I was born, and he just couldn't bear to toss it aside. Hard to believe that glass has survived all the roughhousing when us kids were growing up! My brother took it when my parents moved, and stripped the old black stain to reveal the warm oak color. He gave it to me when my big kids were little, and I felt as though I was welcoming an old friend.

Lately, with Carey and her family moving, there has been a flood of reminders wrapped up in the house next door. The house where Dearest and I decided we'd have children, first through fostering, and then adoption. Where Girlie came to us only weeks after we'd made the decision. Where we said 'hello' to a brand-new-born babe that we thought was going to be our own, and then - with only two hours notice - 'good-bye' six weeks later (I choose to believe his story has a happy ending, because with confidentiality laws I will never know for sure). Where Tall Boy and Carey finally came to live with us full time, then Boyo came - and through one thing and another we ended up with two more for a total of six children in that little house (four of them teenagers), for eight months! The pie safe was there then, but had to be moved a few years later due to a severe case of us bustin' out at the seams in that house. Considering there was one person in particular, not to mention any names (coughBoyocough), who literally climbed the walls, and a couple little people who threw things during meltdowns, the pie safe was no longer safe in my care in such a little house.

No matter how many times I thank him, Dearest can't completely know the importance of this gift. Just a piece of furniture? No. In fact, although the photo shows it empty, it never was. The pie safe has always been full of reminders of comfort, safety, and the assurance that we can endure. ♥

For what it's worth...

I'm not the only person in my family who actually got choked up when I reported that Girlie came downstairs, after getting ready to go to youth group, with her hair completely brushed and dried and a very modest amount of carefully applied makeup on. Makeup! Including a tiny bit of mascara! She looked like any other 14-year-old girl-next-door. Who would have thought I'd ever place so much importance on wearing makeup? Naturally it isn't the makeup I care about, per se, it's the typicality of the situation that caught me by surprise. Girlie is growing up, and she has come a long way, Baby!  :-)

A beautiful smile can reveal interesting things in an x-ray. Boyo is going full speed ahead in orthodontia - the consult was today and braces will be on in one week! There were some aspects I could identify as problematic even without explanation from the orthodontist, so I'm glad we're not losing any time. Yes, he's anxious, and so am I (about how he'll deal with it, not about the orthodontia), but trying not to let on. Of course Girlie has been in one phase or another of her extensive orthodontia for nearly five years, so I hope that will help lessen the anxiety a bit for Boyo, in addition to knowing that his case will take about a third the length of time.

My mom is going to celebrate her 80th birthday this month. I didn't think that would be possible.

My Tall Boy is going to have a birthday this month.  I didn't think that would be possible - twice.

Dearest is going to have a birthday this month.  I've helped him celebrate eighteen of them - there have been times I wished we'd met earlier in our lives, but we would have been different people with different contributions; who can say whether we would have fallen in love?

Worth is subjective, but these things fit very nicely with the way I've been feeling lately.  Is it possible I've gone overboard about makeup, braces, and a few birthdays?  No. In fact, I think pretty much everything is holy now.

Starting somewhere

Several people have suggested I write a blog, or asked if I'd thought about it, and the answer has always been a resounding, "No" -  in fact, I have always doubted there was anything new to say.

But what if I put together just the right combination of words and released them to the ether so they were put before a person who needed them, just when they were needed?  Well, I'd hate to miss that opportunity, so here goes...

I knit.  A lot.  It's a meditation sometimes; a form of defense other times; a way of playing solitaire so I can think about my next move.  By 'my next move', I mean, "How can I handle this latest crisis?"  The crisis usually involves behaviors, academic issues, or family dynamics that one might encounter in a family with a 13-year-old daughter who has Asperger's Syndrome and ADD, and an 11-year-old son who was prenatally exposed to methamphetamine and has Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), ADHD, and anxiety.

These are Second Round kids:  I have two older kids who are married and have families of their own.  I finally reached the brass ring in the husband department when they were 8 and 10, and by the time they were teens, Dearest and I decided we needed to have children together.  Into the foster system we bravely forged, without any sense of how it might really end up.  To be fair, it wasn't just us; we got these kiddos so young that no one could really know what we might face.  We were pretty naive, and I was definitely in an "I can save these children!" fantasy world.

Fast forward:  Girlie has been with us since just before her first birthday, and is 13 now.  Boyo has been with us since he was 6.5 months old, and is 11 now.  If our family was a brick wall, you would see more patching compound than brick, I think, because we have seen many, many cracks in the mortar that holds us together - BUT, we have not fallen.

In 2008, my oldest daughter madmaxmama and I decided to learn to knit, while she was pregnant with her second child.  Actually, we had both learned as young girls, but we both ended up decided we'd rather crochet than knit.  When we took it up again, though, we went at it with gusto, watching videos and consulting with each other and anyone else we could find.  I wouldn't consider either of us experts, but we have grown and gained a lot of experience, and I think both of us feel pretty accomplished as knitters.  Wouldn't it be great if we could grow as parents as quickly as we can improve our knitting skills?  For instance, in 2009, a few months after I started knitting, I wanted to dye my own self-striping yarn.  I found tutorials about dyeing with Kool-Aid  and my first go was successful!

Or was it?  No, in fact, it wasn't long after I started knitting a project with this yarn that I realized the colors were ridiculously bright and even if I were capable of knitting some fun striped socks at that point (which I wasn't; I didn't learn to knit socks until several months after this episode), it wasn't the best kind of yarn for socks.

Thankfully, I learned I could have another try.  A dye-over, if you want to put it that way (and I do, because I'm easily amused).  I bought more Kool-Aid, rewound the yarn into a loose hank, and put it back in the pot. This time, I got lucky, and ended up with beautiful fall leaf colors that turned into a cute little project bag:

If you're a knitter, you might have already learned that you may have chosen a yarn not well-suited to the project you had in mind.  Or colors that, on second thought, don't really work with your wardrobe or personality.  That's all right, though, because you can use the yarn to knit something else, or dye it, or or choose a different yarn to go with your pattern.  Raising kids can be like this, too.  If what you tried didn't give you the desired results, go back to the drawing board.  Even if your kids have the same syndrome/condition/behavior as the kids you read about, they are not the same kid.  Give yourself permission to try something different; a different way to praise them, a new way to start conversations, a way to let them know that no matter how much you love each other, you still have to work to get it right.