Patriots Day Storm

Some days my faith, like the flag on a cloudy, muggy day is suspended like a deflated balloon. The still air should calm my innermost fears but without the wind my ears hear everything. The screams of my own childhood, The gunfire and bombs crumbling homes in Syria The panicked cries of babies unable to breath and the swooshing of the fire hoses as they try to remove the poisonous gas from the children’s lungs. The waves lapping at the overcrowded boats packed with children, women and men and their eerie silence as they make their way to the Greek Isle of Lesbos. The whimpering of children in cages, crying out for their mothers. When I was six I had strep throat. A fever kept me home all day to watch the Cuban missile crisis unfold on television. In the night I called out, afraid we were all going to die. My father came in and said it was OK, that I should go back to sleep. His words, like my affirmations of faith some days Didn’t soothe the fear I heard murmuring loudly around me. For three days we have gone to bed wondering if a nuclear war will have started while we sleep. In my America, we elected a trigger happy bully who is dismantling civility and giving permission for the demons in us to rise like a ghoulish nightmare talking death: billows of smoke, rape, walls of hate and discrimination. The safe places are disturbed by sobbing. Where does a lesbian feminist, mother of two black daughters go in a country that is no longer speaking Goodness? On my desk a post-it note in my own hand scribbles: "Who are my people and how can I serve them?" Some days the answer comes back quietly: “today, just you.” (The airline attendant reminds us “put the lifejacket on yourself first, then on your little traveling companions.”) I cannot cover my ears or shut my eyes to the despair around me. The 3-year-old body washed upon the Greek coast, his little pants and shirt looking like something I could buy in Target or Walmart. He is silent. But his clothes scream to me: “He is one of you!” Yet the collective “we” doesn’t hear, doesn’t see. I go to post Women’s March huddles where we talk about what we (first world women) need, while I hear other people’s children gasp their last breath. I have listened to the wind pick up in the trees at night, blowing away the storm clouds. The heavy air yields to a bright morning sun. In the day-after the flag flaps proudly in the breeze and fills my ears. Just for now, just today.

Old Kinda Dads Don't Belong On SCOTUS

“You may be told that the legal decisions lead the changes, that judges and lawmakers lead the culture in those theaters called courtrooms, but they only ratify change. They are almost never where change begins, only where it ends up, for most changes travel from the edges to the center.” Rebecca Solnit It was my misfortune this morning to be behind a school bus, stopping every few blocks to pick up grade school students. At the first stop was a man in an electric company truck. As the bus rolled up he jumped out of the driver’s side in his coveralls and walked around to the passenger door. A little wisp of a girl came bouncing out. His hand hanging by his side rested on the back of her head and walked her towards the bus. With a quick squeeze she was gone, her little backpack trailing behind her. The doors closed and we traveled to the next stop. This time a tall balding man with a young boy by his side, standing in the road. The boy ran onto the bus as the doors open and the father stood for a moment to watch the bus drive on. The third and fourth stops were similar, also with men accompanying children onto the bus in varying degrees of intention. A few more stops were a woman with children and then a woman and a man with children. These dads stood in sharp contrast to the angry dad I saw yesterday afternoon defending his nomination for the Supreme Court. That morning, a woman told a powerful story of violation. It was moving, it was powerful, it was excruciatingly painful to watch. The angry dad said he liked beer. He said he worked his tail off to go to Yale. He drank beer with his friends in high school and college. I have heard that the woman’s dad couldn’t support her decision to come forward and testify in the Senate. He lived, worked and was a member of the same country club as the angry dad and he didn’t want to lose his place there. But more than 1700 men took out an ad in the NY Times supporting her testimony. Those dads, let the world know they believe this woman’s story of violation. Maybe many of them are dads like those that I saw at the bus stops. I had an angry dad. He liked vodka. He wasn’t a country club dad. He wasn’t a bus stop dad either. Five out of the 7 bus stops this morning had dads there. Something is changing from the edges. The angry dad probably doesn’t need to be a judge in the courtroom as the changes ripple from the edges….at least, not for a lifetime.

Capturing Water

Once again my daughter calls angry. This time it is about a tax refund she couldn’t get a couple of years ago because she was told someone else had claimed her. She believes I did this. A time before that, she was angry because I had said, in response to her saying she was going to buy a car from someone she just met that “she needed to make this decision.” A couple of other times it was something else I either did or did not do. Trying to love someone with mental illness is like trying to hold water in your hand. Even so, sometimes that love is a like wave that washes over you, and you are so stunned by the intensity, you forget to try and capture it. Sometimes that love is like the foamy sea after it breaks, its bubbles providing an illusion that you can hold it longer. Very rarely is it a faucet in which you can hold it if you cup your hands just right, for at least a few seconds before it drips away. Rarer still are the times when you feel as though you share a cup. As her mother, I still try. I can’t help but see the brilliant artist, remember the witty observations or just the quiet times when she fell asleep in my arms. I can only sit with my sadness. Just recently I read a quote that said that grief lives in the space between expectations and reality. True to pattern, after an angry text, I am cut off from her social media, my back door to seeing in on her life in another city. As my partner reminds me, she’ll reach out again at some point. We just don’t know when. So I inhabit this space between expectation and reality. Hoping the gap isn’t too big or lasts too long.

#MeToo and the Men Who Don’t Understand It

When I was teaching undergraduate architecture and planning students, I facilitated a classroom discussion one afternoon about the built environment and it’s enabling of places on campus that put women, primarily, at risk. Blue-lit boxes with phones in them had been placed strategically several years before, on this and other college campuses with the idea that if a woman was being pursued, she could use the phone. (prior to cell phones!) There were three women and myself in the classroom that day, offering our perspective on the issue of campus safety and architecture and 20 young men. We had just read an article on landscape architecture that made the case that trees and bushes and other accouterments that enrich a property were also “rape enhancers.” It was clear from our discussion that the young male students were primarily perplexed by this idea, but the young women were right there with the author. A discussion ensued about walls, shrubs and dark spaces in a landscape that were intentionally placed. The conversation shifted when a young woman said, “When I am walking at night, no matter where I am, if there are men behind me, I always cross the street, to be on the side that they are not.” This started a cacophony of responses. Most of the men were incredulous. “You cross the street no matter what they look like?” “You would cross the street, if you didn’t know me and I was behind you?” “I could be someone for whom you would cross the street?” “You would cross the street even if it is only one man?” It went on. The male students, to their credit, were not defensive, just hurt. They found it impossible to believe that women, any woman, would see them as a threat. They began to brainstorm what they could do to alleviate a woman’s fear. For some, the answer was to cross the street, so she wouldn’t have to. For others, they wondered aloud if they could call out to the woman in front of them, telling them that they are a safe person. To this the three female students giggled. “Do you think that you calling out that you are safe, would make me believe you?” This was a hard lesson to grasp for these young twenty somethings. Flash forward so many years later and the #MeToo movement has men wondering aloud about their own behavior again. “How do you share an interest in a woman without her thinking you are harassing her?” “What if I was interested in a woman, how do I communicate that to her in a safe way?” An older male pundit on cable news even lamented the age-old Freudian statement: “What do women want?” It was more than twenty-five years ago that I was a part of that classroom discussion and we have yet to really listen to the answers that women have given. But it seems like it continues to be an important discussion to have every 25 years or so. Who knows, maybe one day, we won’t have to ask the question; we will all already know the answer.

If God Had a Name, What Would It Be?

A Joan Osborne tune “One of Us” sung at church today had me thinking about all the ways that Wonder shows up in my life. Lately I have been feeling so challenged by my daughters’ adolescence and yesterday I rose before the sun to have some peace and quiet. Of course, that only led to tears and as I looked out my bathroom window, there was a beautiful red cardinal. It made me smile and took away the angst I had been feeling. These wonderful birds have shown up so many times in my life, just when I need them. The cardinal has been like an old friend calling out of the blue on a day when I have particularly needed someone outside of myself to make me smile.

If I were to name God, I would name her/him “synchronicity.” In those magical moments that come with friends or something in nature, or even a book or poem I open to or hear, I see and feel God’s presence in my life. My mother was an identical twin and as children we were constantly aware of the special communication she seemed to have with her sister. Picking up the phone to call her, her twin would be on the other line. Showing up at an extended family event, they would sometimes be wearing the same dress, or at least the same color. Even as a child these magical events seemed to bring the sense of Spirit to me more than most of what I felt at Mass. Although, I believe I felt the transubstantiation of the elements much more because I had experienced these moments of Spirit in my life.

In synchronicities, even those that come from the stories in sacred texts, that suspension of the ordinary is just enough to give me a moment’s pause from the mundane. It is in those moments that I find myself reveling in Spirit. As a child in Catholic school I had heard the story of Jesus walking on water many, many times. The emphasis in the story by the priest or pastor who was recounting it was always on Peter and his lack of faith that makes him fall as he is attempting to get to Jesus further away.

The first time I heard someone tell the story from the perspective of the disciples in the boat being the people who were unsure of their faith and not Peter, I began to smile. Peter got out of the boat. His faith was strong enough that he tried --- sure he faltered, but he got out of the boat!

This morning, again thinking about raising two girls by myself, I read a passage from Raphael Cushnir in a little book called “Surfing Your Inner Sea: Essential Lessons on Lasting Serenity.” The writing I opened to was titled, “you can’t do it wrong.” I laughed quietly to myself upon opening the reading and remembered the story about Jesus walking on water. A decade ago I wondered if I was doing the right thing, having fostered my daughters for a year, I was adopting them. I was getting out of the boat and my faith has wavered many times since then.

That lack of faith seems particularly acute just now, but here was this essay reminding me that I can’t do it wrong. With each “failure” I am learning, with each day, I am becoming more grounded in ways to take care of myself and them. So I say it inside to myself: “I can’t do it wrong.”

Letting go

When I grabbed the skillet of corn bread out of the oven, I realized that the oven mitt I was lifting the pan with was not insulated enough. I could feel my skin burn, but I had two choices, I could drop the pan, risking burning my legs and the floor, or continue to lift the pan and place it on the stove top. I chose the latter. Loving and raising children who came to me from foster care has been like that. I know my hand is burning, but I can't let go. As a foster parent of these two precious girls I went to all of the required family meetings in the hopes that their birth mother would be able to care for them. My hand burned as I comforted them when they came home from visits, their (doll) babies bruised and battered and in need of band-aids. My hand burned when in therapy they each shared information to the therapist that indicated that someone had sexually assaulted them. My hand burned when at the termination of parental rights hearing, their birth mother did not even testify as to her capability to care for the girls. My hand burned when it was clear that my youngest needed special schools and by 7th grade, a wise older teacher called, with worry in her voice, that there was something seriously wrong with my oldest daughter. There were neurologists and psychologists and psychiatrists who came in and out of our lives. I hung on while we searched for answers. More meetings, hospitalizations, residential care. As teens my hands blistered when they accused me of abuse and then took it back. It's been 15 years and some months and now, because the youngest turns 18 in a few days, I have to let go. The way that I have been advocating and speaking for and holding the system accountable for these two girls comes to an end, three days into January 2017. She has told me that she will make her own decisions, threatening to leave school before graduation even though she is just a few credits from a high school diploma in June from the special school I have written about before here. I can't blame her. Her older sister is 19. After a rocky four years, and a schizophrenia diagnosis, she signed herself out of her residential facility at 18 and began living with an Iraqi war vet with a drug problem. Then she found her birth mother and ran from that relationship, taking her pregnancy with her. She has now found her birth mother and is living in Kansas City with her mother, her mother's husband and her first baby since she lost one to murder and two to the foster care system. The troubled young woman who gave birth to these children is still challenged. According to my daughter, she sleeps a lot of the time and is heavily medicated. My heart aches for her as I see her in my mind's eye, clutching this new baby and welcoming the child she grieved for all these years. How can an 18 year old who will now have the power to choose her destiny, stay in school? My youngest is in touch with her sister and has talked with her birth mother and other family members on the phone. Only a few credits away but a lifetime of ache for her birth family is pulling her away. As a foster and adoptive parent, we get 9 or so weeks of training, and if we are lucky, a lifetime of opportunities to hold on no matter how bad it burns. My 19 year old calls me regularly and I hope that she finds some comfort from my presence in her life. But everything changes, even for those who are mentally ill, at 18. I can only let go, hoping we will have many opportunities in the future, to make bread together. When they first came to me, I was going to do two things: teach them little songs that would comfort them at times of trouble and let them know that God lived in nature -- and God's love is in every sunrise, every flower, every beautiful day. I am sad and relieved and fearful for them, as any parent is for their children. But I must let go. Their next step, is their own.

The Sounds of Graduation

When the four graduates came down the aisle of the gym in their caps and gowns (different colors representing the schools which represented their home district), to the traditional graduation march, a tiny knot caught in my throat and I felt the heat of tears well up in my eyes. They weren’t kids I knew, I was there for my daughter, who unbeknownst to her was getting an award for “Most Improved.” The room was full of the cacophony of special needs kids and their parents. care-givers, teachers and friends. I smiled to myself to hear all of the sounds, which my daughter would complain about later and call, “attention seeking behavior” or ASB. Her “ASB-ing” as she would call it, has been in check for awhile and so she has been less tolerant of it in others. While these particular graduates were unfamiliar to me, I knew something about the steps they may have taken prior to the short walk down the gymnasium floor. The nights of flying books and lamps, food splattered in rage on the walls and ceilings, late night tears and assurances that “even though you are different, you are still ok.” As the advocate for my special needs daughter, I recall the countless begging conversations to public school personal to let her go on the class trip, the museum outing, and the final school dance. I remember the countless meetings, the goal setting in her Individualized Education Plan and the trips to mental health personnel to seek answers. I regret the nights I lost my own temper with her frequent but inconsistent outbursts over something someone (often me) said or didn’t say. I remembered the nights I held her as she sobbed about being different. We are an army of un-unified advocates in this room. Adoptive parents, grandparents, birth parents, foster parents, reunited parents and relatives, sharing the room with teachers, behavioral support personnel, school administrators, youth support specialists and counselors. We haven't always seen eye-to-eye in how to help the children we love, but when it comes time to honor the little award winners in each class, we all clapped and many of us cried together. This special school is a hodgepodge of students with a variety of challenges; many have started out their lives, as their guest poet shared last night, “learning about life the hard way.” Neglect, abuse, and poor parenting are commonplace. Some of the youth in the gym with the graduates are still struggling with finding consistent care-givers. These are the kids still in the state’s foster care system. A girl in my daughter’s class won two awards, one for kindness and caring to others and another for leadership. Still in the foster system, no one and everyone clapped especially loud when she retrieved her awards. Some kids at this special school are not victims of poor parenting but were born with autistic spectrum disorders of some kind, challenges that public schools just can’t handle very well. Others developed some of those same challenges because of non-existent parenting or early child abuse and neglect. At the end of the night, the four graduates stood in front of the room and moved their tassels to the other side of their mortarboard and walked proudly out to the computer generated graduation march. Some of us cried, some of us cheered, and some of us let out our best Attention Seeking Behavior sounds.