What do you do to honor your child's first mother?

I've been thinking of this for some time, as prodded by people like Tonggu Momma and those she links on her Sunday Links posts.  Luci brings up her "China Momma" about once a week.  I bring her up, too, along with other aspects of Luci's past so she will know that it is not taboo in our household to talk about what she's had to give up.  To keep any secrets from starting.  To help her heal.

While at Walmart this week, I told Luci that I would like us to honor her China Momma Saturday, to pray for her (and her China Daddy--we have not gotten into the fact that there might be a sibling or two out there.  I'm sure as she grows up that might come to her mind.)  and to remember the mother who is missing from our household.

Luci was quite happy with it, and picked out these "candles" and the holders.  (We don't do scents in our house, and having something that can't catch anything else on fire appeals to me, "Safety Susie.")

The hearts stand for Luci and China Momma, and the red dish stands for China, or the USA, whichever Luci is thinking about at the time.

Last night Luci was really being a toot.  So were the boys, by the way.  So everyone got "a talking to," which means I sorta yelled.  Real good, to do that before the Mother's Day cards are signed, huh?  I have lousy timing. 

Luci hopped up in my lap, or rather, I gathered her up and cuddled her as she calmed down.  I told her I was sorry I yelled.  She was sniffling, and said, "I wish I was with...(pause)...Pal."  (Pal is our sweet yellow Labrador retriever, killed three years ago.) 
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I hugged Luci, and looked at her straight in the eye and said, "You meant to say, you wish you were with your China Momma, didn't you?"
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Nodding yes.
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I know you miss her.  I wish you could see her, too.  Did you know that if you were with your China Momma she would have times when she is cranky, too?

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No.

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Did you know that you can wish that and say that and it will not make me mad?  I will still love you and will never walk away from you.  NEVER.  You could do whatever you want to make me mad, and I WILL STILL LOVE YOU FOREVER.

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This morning as I was opening my gift from Luci (a pink pig piggy bank! the perfect Mother's Day gift!), she said "I wish my China Momma could come live here."  
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Me too, I said.  I'd have to learn to cook more Chinese food.
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She could teach you!

Plan B

In a previous post, I mentioned that John and I are Luci's Plan B.  Plan A was for her to be raised by her first parents.  Whatever the cause, we are Plan B. 

God intends for us to raise our children, to "Train a child in the way he should go,..." (Proverbs 22:6)


Sometimes things don't go well, or something happens, then we are to do this: "look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."  (James 1:27)  Note that it does not say to adopt the orphaned or the widowed.  But sometimes that is called for.  Luci is one who was in an orphanage, with no foster care in her area.  So staying where she was was not a good option.  She needed a family.  We needed her, too.  


We did not set out to "save" Luci.  After losing a baby to miscarriage, we (me, mostly) realized how much we really wanted more children in our family.  


This past week I came across this post, God and Adoption, by Tonggu Momma.  So much of it I agree with wholeheartedly, and is true for Luci. 


Some select quotes:


Adoption is often a band-aid placed over a gaping wound.

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At the time of adoption, returning to her biological family was not an option... it was either to grow up in care, or to grow up with an adoptive family. She is a wonderful little girl... one who deserves a family, just as ALL children deserve families. Since her biological family was no longer an option, for whatever reason, I am glad that God chose us as His plan B to be her adoptive family.

But her adoption? Was a band-aid placed over a gaping wound in rural China.

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And this from Divine Caroline:

A close friend of ours who is both an adoptee and an adoptive parent says that adoption is “a redemptive response to a tragedy.”

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While I know that each and every child wants a mother and a father, getting a new set of parents doesn’t replace the void left by the absence of the biological parents.

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All of these thoughts have been buzzing about my head for a while now.  Today seemed like a good day to talk about them.  At lunch, I shared this blog story about what some families call "Gotcha Day."  I said to John that I wanted to make our celebration of our Family Day more low-key, doing what Luci wants and celebrating China during that time. 

Luci piped up and said she knew what Gotcha Day was.  

Oh really?  Tell me about it.

Yeah.  You have a ghost on your shoulder!!

me looking surprised...

See?  Gotcha!  April Fools!  

Then Luci put her head in my lap and said she missed her China-mama.  And she really does miss her.  If you haven't broached the subject with your adopted children yet, please do open the conversation.  A great book to help with that is Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child, which I mentioned back in November.

 Next post I promise to be more sequential in my thoughts and make more sense.

Dreams are not always a good thing.

On Monday night/Tuesday morning, Luci woke me up twice. She needed to cuddle, to know that she was safe. She often wakes up, once a night--the nights she sleeps all the way through are very rare.

But Tuesday morning's early wake-up just seemed so sad to me.
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"Mama, I don't want to dream any more."

She was able to go back to sleep, but I was wide awake after that comment.

Last night, Luci was up once for reassurance. Then when she woke up for the day (at a respectable 7:30, I might add), she told me her dream:

I was lost from you. I couldn't find you. Then someone helped me look for you and my friends but we couldn't find you!

I want her to sleep in her own room, but it's not going well. She is still on an infant mattress in our room. Good thing she's still so little: she still fits on the mattress. Tonight we are going to try her room again. She has a double bed in there (takes up the whole room! her room is so tiny) so I can get her to sleep and later when I'm ready for bed I can go sleep with her.

Wow, when we were building this house (and it's not palatial, by any means) we thought it was such a good idea to have the kids' rooms on the other side of the house. Not a good idea for her! She wakes up in a panic wondering where we are, and on the way to our room, in her drowsy state, gets lost (remember, I said this is not a big house!). Screaming! like you wouldn't believe!

Here is a post by someone else whose daughter is hyper vigilant. Hypervigilance and the Adopted Child: defining, through life examples, hypervigilance, which is an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect threats.
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Luci's predicament is quite a lot like this child's. She has calmed down some since John's deployment ended, but as I see nearly every night, there is a long way to go. I cannot leave her with just anyone. For babysitting, she will stay with Bryan and JT and very few others. Amanda was able to keep her for me for a few hours, and so was Diane. Both of those women have daughters with whom Luci loves to play; I think that's why she is able to feel calm with them. Even at Sunday School, Luci makes sure that I am the one dropping her off, and she makes sure that I am going to be the one picking her up.

What a Difference

One of the families in our Guizhou yahoo group (Guizhou being the Chinese province that Luci is from) posted a link to a video of their daughter's first few months with them. This daughter was adopted at age 8 months (1 1/2 months younger than Luci was when we got her).

I cried when I watched this hand-over from one family to another. This baby was in foster care from the time she was found until adoption. Luci was in the orphanage from the day she was found until her adoption.

Why the tears? Because this little girl looked so much like Luci except that she was well-nourished and was doing all the normal things 8-month-old babies do. Like sitting up. Rolling over. On her belly, pushing up, as if doing a push-up. Crawling. From lying down, putting herself into a sitting position. Picking up bits of food and putting them into her mouth. Sitting up nicely on the Red Couch at The Swan without slumping over. And looking so healthy with those chubby cheeks and legs!


Luci was so different. Such a stick-figure, and very poor muscle tone. How much brain development was missed by having such meager food and attention? And grieving for her for the lack of love lavished on her those 9-and-a-half months. Other than the physical differences, these two girls look a lot alike!


Luci, home for just one week. She pushed herself into a sitting position, for the first time ever, all by herself...at age 10 months exactly. You can see just how skinny she is. Nothing "extra" on this little girl, at all!


But heartened, as another blog friend said in one of her posts, we are "Plan B" for Luci. (Thanks, "Snapshot.") This mom tells better than I can here that God's "Plan A" for children is to be taken care of by their parents, by the families to which they are born. For some reason, Luci was not able to stay where she was. Was she a daughter when they wanted a son? Was it in-laws who pressured them into abandoning this precious little girl? Was she child number 2 after child number 1 was a daughter also? Was she half Buyi and half Miao (she looks so Miao to me but the orphanage director was adamant that Luci is Buyi), and that mixed heritage is the reason?

Whatever the reason, John and I are happy, deliriously so, to be Luci's "Plan B."

Luci two weeks ago. A lovely, healthy little girl who knows she is loved.

I do!

You never know what's going to bring up insecurities. Weddings are happy, aren't they?


College Road Trip was playing in the van's DVD player on the way to church this morning. Somewhere the dad mentions giving his daughter away at her wedding.

Panicky voice from the back seat...

Mama!

Luci, we will never NEVER give you away. Not even when you get married. When you get married, you will still be ours, too.

(Sigh of relief)

Stuart Little opened a BIG discussion

Stuart Little...do you remember that book? The movie was a big hit when it came out ten years ago.

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Luci and I watched it a few days ago. It wasn't until we were into it for several minutes that it dawned on me that this is a movie about adoption. (I'm a slow-rememberer!) Tuesday I was all set to take a nap, not be a psycho-therapist.

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After this past year of helping Luci live with the knowledge of her being given up, and finding her way here, and wondering why Daddy wasn't home, I really didn't want to go through a big movie all about adoption/abandonment and the birth-family coming back for the child.

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But it was better to do this with her in my lap than while driving down the road as the kids watch it on the DVD machine in the van. I was able to read her expressions and speak up when needed.

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For those of you who don't know this movie (which started out as a book by EB White), it is about a mouse who is adopted by a human family. The big brother does not accept him right away, the family cat tries to eat him, well-meaning but clue-less family members bring gifts that are definitely not appropriate (like a bowling ball!), and his original family comes to take him back.

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Wow, that scene of the mother and father mouse showing up at the door really frightened Luci.

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She totally understood what they were doing: taking Stuart away from the family that loved him and wanted him desperately.

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Luci begged to turn off the movie. Pleaded. Cried.

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I wouldn't let her stop watching.

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"This has a happy ending, and I want you to see it."

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Turns out the "real" family were not his family at all.

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And during the whole thing, she told me how her own big brothers love her, and have always accepted her (unlike George, Stuart's brother, who took some time to warm up to Stuart) even though sometimes she drives them nuts and vice-versa.

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I reassured her that if anyone came to our door claiming to be her real family, that we would never let them take her away.

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"Even if it's my real China Mommy and Daddy, don't let them take me!"

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I promise! They can live close by and visit whenever you want, but you will always live here with us. They can even live in our basement! But you will be here with Daddy and me.

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As long as she wants to.

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Forever.

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Always.

It's Really Over!

Luci and I made this long chain, draping it around the dining room (which is also our school room, as you can see from the posters on the wall). One link for every day John was gone.

There were 179 links by the time John came home on December 23rd.

I wondered just how long we'd need to keep this chain up. It ran around the dining room and was a pretty, but in-the-way decoration. I followed Luci's lead on this, on just when to take it down. We've dealt with her fear of abandonment all through John's deployment. This was definitely Luci's chain of remembrance, of counting, of longing. So it was up to her to take it down.

I was surprised Saturday morning when Luci said it was time to take the chain down. She wanted to burn it, the way John and the boys burn boxes, as a way to say, "Good Riddance," to a difficult time in her life.

So that's what John and Luci did Saturday morning.

My Daddy is home forever!

I Thought We Had Made Such Progress...

and then today, John took the kids to town so I could have some time to myself. They had Luci's swim lesson at the YMCA, lunch, then perhaps a visit to the park. I left the house when they did, and told the kids I was going to get groceries and come back before they got home. Luci walked away from me, so sad, and then came back to me...she was worried that I would not come back home to her.

I can't remember ever seeing her this upset with me.

Truly a heart-breaking little face.

Something a Little Serious

Luci has been saying to me, "Don't Leave Me."

This happens mostly at night when I am holding her in my lap, getting her to sleep. I tell her every time that "I am your mama forever, I will always be your mama, I will never leave you--except maybe to go get coffee sometimes. But I will always come back." She nods her head and cuddles in. We are pretty much joined at the hip and we are rarely apart.

Last night when she said. "Don't leave me," I asked her if anyone had ever left her. Surely she doesn't remember her China-mama leaving her at 2 days of age. It is possible that there is some physical memory of the director and nannies leaving her with us at age 9 1/2 months. Possible, but I am wondering if that is really likely. (She's 3 years, 3 months old now.) Maybe the sensation of being left. Anyway, her answer to that question was,

"Yes. In China. She left me." Who, baby? "China mama."

At this point, I am trying not to cry.

How much of this is she remembering because she's heard us talking to others? Now I need to quit talking in front of her, and I suppose even quit talking about her story without her permission at any time. It isn't my story to share. It's hers. (so I guess I need to ask her permission to blog it from now on)

I told Luci that I would always be her mama, I will never ever give her away or leave her, and I will always come back from that coffee. She nodded her head about the coffee and hugged me tighter. Later on she relaxed and I said, "I'm your forever mama. I will never leave you."

She crawled up higher in my lap and put her arms around my neck, and said, "Thank you."

I cried then.