Leaving on a jetplane
Oct 7, 2006 Parenting, Writing
I’m having a dilemma.
Do I bring the family to the Nieman Conference or don’t I? Will I have more fun being wild and free but guilt-ridden? Or more fun being hemmed in by family but assured that Madison is not missing me?
Jessica says, “Oh my god! You spend every waking moment with those kids! You deserve a break! Go alone!”
Brett says, “It would certainly help the budget if you went alone but I support whatever decision you make.”
AmericanFamily says, “Are you kidding me?”
Becca (nailing it) says, “I think you will have a better time without them IF you don’t spend the whole time feeling bad about it and missing Madison. If you are going to be miserable without them, bring them.”
Noah says, “Please leave us here so we can eat all the junk food Daddy is going to buy us!” (Really — that’s what he said.)
Madison says, “What’s this called? A pickle? I want my nose wiped!”
I would never have left Noah at 2.5. Never ever ever. Of course Madison is not Noah — Noah couldn’t breathe if I was away for more than two hours. Then again Madison is adopted and maybe she needs me more even if she pretends she’s just fine. Then again Noah wasn’t as bonded to Daddy as Madison is.
Ugh.
It’s three days! And two nights!
Of course, it might be less traumatic for Madison to miss me for two nights (because she’s often so busy running around with Daddy that she only has time to flash me a smile and demand I take her ponytails out now on weekends anyhow) then to be busy in a city where nothing is familiar. I gotta remember that she’s got Daddy here and it’s not like leaving her with — I don’t know — a stranger.
Being more of a Noah, I can remember my mom going on vacation without me when I was about five. I felt:
- abandoned
- alone
- forgotten
- broken-hearted
- resentful
- miserable.
But (again like Noah) I was the kind of kid who would go into the bathroom to watch myself cry and think, “Wow, I am sad! Poor me! Let me think of all the ways I am unloved!” I would be smitten with my own sadness the way other kids might be infatuated with a new toy.
Madison is not like that.
But what if she’s just less in touch with her feelings??? What if she would actually be miserable, suffering, grief-stricken only wouldn’t have the words to say??? Who am I kidding — she’s in touch with her feelings, she’s just not obsessed with them.
I’m leaning towards going alone. But I had nightmares about it last night (and the night before). If I had the time, I would go into the bathroom to watch myself worry. “I am concerned! Look at how concerned I am!”
I know some of you are going to write and tell me it’s ok and I should go (because that’s what everyone in real life is telling me) but that won’t necessarily make me feel better about it because I’m just all neurotic and stuff. And any given minute I’ll just assume that everyone else is cold and unfeeling instead of thoughtful and reasonable. Brett is going to have his hands full until he puts me on that plane, lemme tell you! But I’m leaning — hard — to going alone.
Oh my god. ALONE! A cool, clean bed devoid of cracker crumbs! Adult discussion without interruption! The ability to say, “Oh sure, I can go get a coffee. Let me just grab my bag.”
I’m going to be jittery and wired from all the socializing anyway, being an introvert. Sleep will be hard enough coming down off of that without worrying that Madison is going to fall out of the bed. (I don’t sleep well in hotel rooms with the kids because without Brett on the other side — he sleeps in the other bed with Noah — to hem her in, I’m afraid she’ll crack her head open on the side table or get wedged against the wall.)
Of course, I’m going alone! It would be supremely idiotic not to!
(Brett said, “Will it be better if you call us a lot?” Oh god no. It’ll be worse. I can’t hear her little angelic voice!)
AmericanFamily said to buy a wee little (i.e. cheap) gift for the kids for the two mornings when they wake up and I’m not there so they can see that I did NOT abandon them but also because then they can see how time is passing. (As if Noah needs it but he’ll be in the bathroom watching himself cry if he doesn’t get one, too.) So that’s a good tip. I could use more. (hint hint) But don’t let the tips be like, “Dear god, Dawn! Get a grip!” What are you, my mother? Besides I’ll be calling said mother for a verbal slap (you know, like the give to hysterics) later today. Of course, she is the woman who wantonly went off to a conference without me after five years of full-time motherhood (half of those years parenting three kids under five with a spouse who travled for weeks of a time). Like bringing me along wouldn’t be restful! Sheesh. She could have left Erica and Justin — they were the ones who sucked up all her energy. I — I’m sure — was a delight of a child! A little self-obsessed and moody, perhaps, but a delight!
(Do you think maybe Brett is trying to get me on that plane alone so he can get a break from me? Perish the thought!)
addendum: Thank you for your comments below! I am definitely going to go. I have to especially thank Susan for giving me her perspective as an adoptee, a writer and a mother! And my mom, sure enough, laughed at me (gently) and said I always have taken things too hard.
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Tags: Becca, Erica, introvert, Justin, Madison, my mom, Noah, wordpress
Protected: Last picture
Oct 7, 2006 Pictures
I swear. At least for awhile. But my kids are too good looking in this one NOT to share.
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A follow up
Oct 7, 2006 Adoption
I’ve been meaning to write a follow-up to my (now infamous — at least on some message boards) Primal Wound at Our House post. (Conveniently linked for anyone who missed it.) I wanted to update it because I’ve seen positive changes since it happened and I’m hoping that people will find it encouraging instead of daunting. (I know how daunting it can look before you’re actually in it.)
So Jessica came over today and it’s been awhile since she was here because she’s been working. It’s not the first time she’s been over since that visit but it’s the first time we’ve gotten to spend more than an hour or two hanging out. Madison (and Noah) were both very excited to see her and they spent the hour before her visit hanging out in the front yard going like this every time a car went by, “Is that her? No. Is that her?? No.”
Since that fateful day, Madison has been much calmer and more open about Jessica. Not that I noticed her being particularly closed before; if we hadn’t had this moment, I likely would not have thought of her as someone particularly hemmed up about her adoption. But since that breakdown/breakout, she’s more apt to bring Jessica up and to talk about her in an everyday way. She also got interested not just in pregnancy (like a typical 2-year old) but in her pregnancy story. She got really into her photo album with her brand new Madison pictures and she wanted to hear about us meeting her and bringing her home. She wanted to hear that story pretty often. And I saw her get more comfortable with it. She brought it up with visitors the way Noah brought up his baby pictures and she could say concretely, this is how it happened.
I also noticed Jessica get more comfortable and more confident since I told her about it all, which has been gratifying.
Anyway, today at the visit they were looking at the picture of Madison that Jessica has on her keychain (it’s one of the pictures they took in the hospital) and Madison says, “Hey, why you put that thing on my belly button?”
I realized she was talking about the clampy thing the hospital put on her umbilical cord. She was confused because she knows the cord connects a baby to its mama and she can see in a couple of her hospital pictures that there’s this plastic thing stuck on there. So we got out the photo album and explained that the cord was what connected Madison (and here Jessica did a neat little riff about why the cord connects the baby and what kinds of foods she craved and how Madison would kick “because you didn’t like it when I ate that!”) and the clampy thing is something the doctor’s put on (in that hospital it’s also where they have trigger so you can’t steal babies so it was stupid huge). Then Madison flipped through the album with Jessica and explained all the pictures to her. (I got a great photo of them looking at it together and you can see the album is open to the picture of Jessica giving Madison her first bottle. Their heads are together looking down at those pages and it’s the best picture I got today out of a lot of great pictures.) She stopped at a picture of her belly button still dark (before her umbilical cord totally fell off) and then pulled up her shirt to show off her now stellar belly button.
Madison would say, “There you are again and there I am and here is brother …” It was very nice.
Then later Madison was at the sink (scrubbing paint off of her hands) and she said, laughing, “Do you remember that I was in your uterus and brother was in mommy’s uterus?”
Then later she brought up that sad “primal wound-y” day herself.
“Remember that I missed you and I cried and I wanted you to come back? Remember that? I was sad.”
And Jessica said, “You can tell me when you’re sad and I’ll come over and play. You can always call me.”
I feel like it needed to come out into the open for Madison — not just the story (”You have another mother…”) but the feelings (”…and sometimes you miss her”) and now that it’s out, she’s free to feel the good parts, too. I don’t think, “Wow, glad that’s over!” like their relationship is officially A-OK and that we can put those difficult adoption feelings behind us, just that all of us grown-ups have let Madison know that she can feel how she wants to feel and that we all love her and that we can handle it. And she’s getting the message that she doesn’t have to reject one mother to get the other mother.
(At one point we were both fiddling with her at the same time — I was messing with her hair trying to pull it back and Jessica was trying to wipe her nose — and she was hollering at us to stop and I think that right at that minute she was thinking that two mothers was two too many but she’ll just have to deal! Heh.)
It was a great visit.
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Protected: Hair pics
Oct 6, 2006 Pictures
First pic — just done still damp ponytails. (See that pink poodle? That’s the poodle Noah picked out for her while she was in the hospital. She loves that poodle.)
Next pic, the frenchbraid with wispies pronounced “OK” by our babysitter.
Finally, taken yesterday. Four braids (like she’s wearing today). The kids were showing off their matching Halloween shirts and their new boots from Grandma. I cut them off at the waist because Madison, bless her heart, was wearing little else. You can’t totally see her braids here though ‘cuz of the lighting. Sorry. Still — her funny face is pretty cute.
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Our hair routine
Oct 6, 2006 Parenting
Just ‘cuz.
We rarely wash her hair — only when it’s obviously dirty like last night because she has a cold and kept wiping the snot into her hair (when she wasn’t wiping it on me). Most of the time we just rinse it and maybe do a scrub on her scalp with baking soda. She hates to have her hair washed and I’m afraid of drying it out so that’s that. When we do wash it, we use a baby shampoo with conditioner. Some kind of Suave, I think. When we bought the last bottle she and I spent a long time in that aisle sniffing all the bottles before she settled on strawberry. I hoped that would cut down on the screaming during hair washing but it didn’t. Much.
Every day I spray her hair with Soft & Precious Detangling Moisturizer. I’ve tried others but this one seems to work best on her. It doesn’t weigh down her hair like some other African American hair products and it makes her hair softer than the Pantene conditioner we were using. Also it’s inexpensive and readily available at our regular grocery store, which is a good thing for both our money and time budgets. And Madison really likes the smell. (Yes, she’s into smells. So was Noah at this age, come to think of it.)
Ok, so I spray her hair down and comb it through with a wide-toothed comb. Then I ask her how many ponies she wants. (Ponytails.) If she wants one, I just pull it back. Since using the Soft & Precious, a single ponytail no longer looks like, “Oh my god, what the hell should I do with her hair?” (This is a look I see on a lots of little brown-skinned girls with pink-skinned mamas and I want to avoid it.) The conditioner leaves every curl defined and shiny and the little curls that are coming out around her face don’t look dried out. (Madison’s hair is getting thicker and curlier — around her face are one inch curls replacing the wispies. I don’t know what her grown-up texture will be.)
I have tried twists on her hair just to see what they look like and they look cute but not like twists. I’m not great at frenchbraiding but I do that, too. Sometimes she just has curly ponytails that used to be close to her head and now are getting longer. If I haven’t wet down her hair (sometimes necessary to bring her curls back), they are poofier but the pic I’m going to upload after this shows them looking sleekier ‘cuz her hair was just done before the picture and was still pretty damp.
Today she has four braids (parted with a rat-tail comb) and she yanked out the little dragonfly clippies at the end of the two in front. (sigh) Because her hair isn’t all that textured, the braids in front are slowly, sadly coming undone. (sigh again) I’m looking forward to the stage when she will maybe perhaps hopefully like having little doodads in her hair.
Madison is not tender-headed. While I’m doing her hair she will yank her head around and not mutter a word. (I wish she were just a tad tender-headed so maybe she’d keep her head still.) She does hate the rat-tail comb and calls it the “ouchie” comb even though we just use it for parting. (I think she’s afraid it might hurt because it looks pointy and also because we won’t let her run around with it — why, you could lose an eye that way!)
We started doing Madison’s hair when she was about fifteen months old and started to have enough to comb. I hoped that this would get her used to it but she can still be really annoyed at the bother. If the weather tolerates, we do her hair outside after breakfast while we’re sitting on the front porch. I use brother to keep her occupied — he’ll sing to her or read or just be silly and keep her looking at him. Or she’ll sort her rubberbands. It takes me ten or fifteen minutes to comb it out and do a style, depending on the style. I always sit her between my knees and start by saying, “So, how’s your day going?” Then we chat. Then she gets wriggly. Then I call for reenforcements from brother.
She likes to do my hair after (she asks, “So, how’s your day going?”) and she instructs me to complain (”Say ‘no no no’, Mommy” and then she’ll say, “I almost done. Just hold still!” or “It won’t be much longer!”)