I don’t think I can put into words my euphoria Monday morning. Four kids in school after such a long time of no-routine, I just dove in: returned emails, pitched stories, wrote invoices and thank you notes, and generally attended to all that good loose end clean-up that can make a person feel kind of accomplished in a short timeframe. My window on productivity and normalcy, it lasted just the morning.
Monday afternoon, Saskia got the tummy bug. The one that makes you start to remember all the words for vomit you ever knew—and think about it, there are so many of them—and catalogue them in your mind for the rest of the day as you wonder nervously whether she might hurl, spew, Ralph, upchuck, toss, barf, pray to the porcelain g*d or simply throw up again—and worry about where she might do so. The most prolonged episode occurred across the kitchen floor, one bout of regurgitation after another (parenting writing isn’t always pretty, sorry about that) as she backed away from puddle of the contents of her insides after puddle of the contents of her insides.
Oh, well. Oh, dear.
In the middle of the night, she cried out: “I’m hungry! I’m hun-gar-ee!” The fabulous father and devoted spouse fed her crackers and water and stayed up headache-inducing-nearly-forever and Tuesday of course she was home and feeling pretty fine. So Remy woke feeling unwell, exhausted, unable to go to school and he wanted to go so I knew he really didn’t feel great and I worried about his possibly losing his innards at school—that would be mildly traumatizing—so I erred on the side of caution and suddenly I had two at home, essentially healthy. By midday, he was fine, of course. A visit from our grown-up pal, Amy, for a game of Yahtzee helped and after school shenanigans with pals Kate and Bela hastened the home day to its conclusion.
There must be a point to this, huh? Beyond feel sorry for us because our kid was sick after one morning at school?
I think it’s simply this: in ways big and small, so much of what we imagine our lives to be—us in drivers’ seats, steering ourselves to wherever—isn’t really the thing at all. We’re riders, surfers or something, charting courses through terrain we can only somewhat know. Our work is to keep looking at where we’re going, to stay aware of our surroundings—those waves—and somehow, too, to enjoy the journey, even when it’s not so obviously scenic.
For her part, Saskia had to talk out her vomiting sessions all day yesterday, as if to reassure herself she’s fine and that what happened was really okay, too. In addition, we had a long conversation about adoption last week and I think it became clearer than it was before that she didn’t begin in my belly. She’s grappling with this a bit. I told her that her papa and I took her home from the hospital in a different car than we have now. I am not quite sure how this came up, but it did and I explained that we got the van a tiny bit later in order to fit us all. She’s mentioned the “different car” numerous times this past week and even called the van our “new car.” I’d do really well to hold to this clumsy surfing metaphor and work hard on issues of balance and observation and wave riding.
There’s a lot about adoption—in the writing, in the blogosphere—about the feelings of first parents and adoptive parents, about power and control and tone and openness and welcome and identity. Each adoption, closed or open, is so different from the adoption a few doors’ down. These moments with Saskia talking about the car remind me that she’s really at the center of our story—and how she feels about the van and the older car, that’s what I’m going to be thinking about over the coming years. For the minute, when my gut says she’s seeking extra hugs, I’m holding her super often and as tightly as she asks me to.
