Letting go (just a little bit)

The Invisalign saga continues. After several days of great fear of ripping the trays every time I tried to pry them from my teeth, I settled into the new world of having plastic trays in my mouth 21/7. I'm now on my third and final set of trays before I see my ortho again, and it's Christmas, which in my world means pajamas and lots of cookies.

So have I been good about keeping them in 21 hours a day? Well, not really. Whereas on Thanksgiving I skipped breakfast in order to buy myself an additional hour in the trays so that I could relax and enjoy a leisurely Thanksgiving lunch, this Saturday when I had friends over, I took the trays out and enjoyed myself. I've got three weeks on this set of trays before I get re-checked, so I figure I've got an extra week to be good.

And my teeth are most definitely moving, especially the lower middle ones, the reason I got the Invisaligns in the first place.

This whole thing has once again reminded me of what a control freak I am. Although I know that the longer I keep the trays in every day, the faster my teeth will move, I also know that if I'm bad for a couple of days here and again, it's not a crisis. I might delay the treatment a little bit, but I waited for 20 years to fix my teeth once they shifted after braces, so what does it really matter if it takes another month or two to finish my treatment?

I've made my life miserable on days when I really wanted to eat a snack before class and chose not to because I'd miss a few minutes in the trays. I'm one of those people who can sit in the dentist chair with a nail poking into my thigh and I can tolerate it for an hour or two simply by dealing with it. I have often thought that aside from the smelling really bad, I'd be a great Survivor player, because I have the patience to withstand a lot of discomfort before I crack. But this ability to sublimate my physical reality in order to make things simpler for other people and to make myself look better (yes, it's a kind of vanity, being the "best patient") creates a controlling monster in my psyche.

So this morning after yoga I went and got a cup of coffee, popped out the trays, and enjoyed it. And yes, I brushed my teeth AGAIN, which is fine, but that coffee sure was wprth it. Did I miss 30 minutes of treatment time? Yup. Did the world stop turning? Nope.

I'm still learning.

Invisalign!

Today was the day. I just returned from the orthodontist with my new Invisalign trays. After a quick REALLY unhealthy lunch (I can't eat until dinner--no snacks, so I wanted to be really bad), I brushed and flossed, and they're in.

Putting them in is a breeze, but taking them out is a nightmare. I did manage to take them out at the orthodontist office, but in the process I broke off one of the little button things on one of my back teeth. The tray is still fitting well, so the ortho said not to worry.

I look like I've been in a fight. My mouth is red and my cheeks swollen from all of the manipulation, but I'm really excited. These lower teeth have been bothering me for over 20 years, and it was time to DO something about them. This way, I can still floss easily, and within six to seven months, I'll be done. No snacking between meals, though, which is freaking me out, since I need them to be in 21 hours a day at least. But I'll get over it.

And the lisp isn't so bad right now. We'll see if I adjust. One thing I know will happen is even more vigilant brushing and flossing on my part. These trays cover the entire tooth, so anything that gets trapped there will be a most uncomfortable and unhealthy state of affairs. And maybe I can break my habit of biting my lips, since I don't have biting edges to my teeth anymore.

Now to distract myself, I need to get back to work!

Birthdays

We are now the proud parents/brother of two new delicious baby monster kittens. They are the sweetest kitties I've ever encountered, bar none. Both of them, and both in different ways, are loving and sweet, curious and playful. Last night Minerva spent many hours in my bed, curled up next to me, her head nuzzling my throat, her little paws kneading my side, purring up a storm. As I type this, little Luna is in my lap, drifting in and out of sleep (I can tell that she's asleep when she stops purring) making it slightly awkward to maintain the proper posture that I'm so anal about maintaining when I'm at my computer. So sweet. We still and always will miss Puff, just like we still reminisce about our our babies, Harriet and Ozzie. But these two monkeys are just what this house and our hearts needed.

This morning, as I was waking, I thought about the birthdays of our girls, and came to a realization.

Our 8-year-old Basset Hound, Angel, was born on June 10, the same day as my adoptive father. Minerva and Luna were born on June 1, the same day my biological father died in Vietnam 42 years ago. Odd.

Yesterday, I attended the surprise birthday party of my grandmother, my biological father's mother, Irene. She turns 88 today, two months after my adoptive mother turned 88. The party was really nice, and she was surprised and very pleased. Four of my six Simpson first cousins were there, one I'd not met, and that was nice but it's always so strange to be around other people who, had things been different, I might have grown up with. There is this automatic intimacy and a total lack of recognition at the same time.

At one point during lunch yesterday, my grandmother's hands were worn out. She has horrible arthritis and has a tough time holding a fork. I was sitting beside her, and she asked me to help her finish her cake. I fed her a few bites, which was a nice feeling, but still, strange. Because even though she is my biological grandmother, I don't know her at all. Buying her a birthday card was a challenge, since all of the grandmother birthday cards said things like, "I remember how you baked me treats when I was a child..." or "Here's to the memories we share."

Fact is, we don't share ANY memories.

I still feel that my head is going to explode at any minute. And things have gone so very well. I don't want to imagine how I'd be if they'd gone badly. My uncle Don's wife asked yesterday how I was coping with all of the discoveries and new relatives, and I said I'm just taking it as it comes, which is true. I am still realizing how very lucky I am, and acknowledging that the bubble that I've always felt surrounds me and keeps me from the worst of harm has done its job once again. Everyone I've met has been someone I would be proud to befriend. The integration of these new people into my heart is tougher than I thought it would be, especially since I believed that I would encounter at least some resistance. Oh, I was ready for that. But this?

Blessings are sometimes hard to accept. But I'm trying. Happy birthday, Grandma Simpson.

Good-bye

On Tuesday, August 25th, 2009, at about 5:45pm, we said good-bye to our dear, sweet Puff. After over two weeks of eating nothing--and I mean NOTHING AT ALL except for about 3ml of food we fed her with a syringe--she was nearing the end. We did the subcutaneous fluids for about six days, along with daily injections of Pepcid, but she never did take a bite of food. She did her famous water dance, as she's done for years, but only took in an ounce or two of water over the course of many days, all of that from her favorite cup that we brought back from Williamsburg. The last three days of her little life found her hiding under the bed and occasionally coming downstairs to soak up some sun in the living room or into the guest room or along the front wall of our bedroom to pee on the floor, something she had never done before.

She purred up until the very end, and when we took her outside those last two days--her first time outside except to go to the vet--she sniffed and listened, her little pegged feet wobbling in the grass as she explored. We took her up into Oren's treehouse, where she sat and smiled and surveyed the back yard, purring up a storm. It was her body that failed her, not her spirit. We buried her under that tree, in an old black shirt that Oren had outgrown. It was his suggestion to bury her in something dark, since her favorite clothing to sleep on or rub against was always dark, better to showcase her beautiful white fur.

We were together, three humans and one kitty, as she took her last breaths in the vet's office. It was horrendously sad and yet peaceful. Rick held her and Oren and I spoke softly to her as the medicine went into her vein and we said our farewells.

What an incredible blessing she was in our lives. Contrary and recalcitrant, she was never a lap kitty. She resisted being held or carried, but would plop down just beyond our reach so that we would have to bend over or change positions to pet her. She went through phases where she would sleep under the bed, on the bed, on my pillow, on the couch, at the top of the stairs, and then she would hide away for hours when we couldn't find her at all. She couldn't tolerate the dog or the vacuum cleaner, and would not swallow a pill unless we were really, really sly about it. Nothing that anyone ever suggested made that process easier, and even toward the end of her life when her energy level was practically nil, putting a pill into her was like fitting a bowling ball into a wiggly sink drain. "Not gonna happen, not now, not ever, so just give it up, Mom!"

The cat-shaped hole in our hearts insists on being re-filled, but we will try to wait a little while so that we might fully grieve our little girl. Her spirit is in the house, her fur still lining the baseboards, still woven into every garment any of us own (especially the black ones!). When the house settles, I think it's Puff walking down the hall. This morning when the tag on my hair dryer moved, I expected the movement to be Puff walking into the bathroom. I swear I can hear her purring as I lie down to sleep at night. For a tiny puff ball of a kitty, she filled up a very big space for her 15 years.

So as this chapter closes, another one opens. We will never find another kitty like Puff, but that's OK. We were privileged to be her humans for so long, and there can never be a creature like her. But, there is another (or maybe more than one...) little fuzzy feline ready to crawl into our hearts, and I look forward to the adventure.

Doing the right thing

Our 15-year-old kitty, Puff the Magic Kitty, hasn't been herself for the last couple of days. She is our oldest baby, about a year older than our son, and we adore her. She is white, medium-hair, with a bobbed tail (an accident at birth, perhaps), and has dark markings on her back and sides that look exactly like a little poodle is riding piggy-back. She is THE most beautiful cat in the universe. Not the most cuddly cat in the world, Puff adores being petted but not carried. She is not a lap kitty, but when I had my foot surgery a couple of years back, she slept beside me every night as long as I was on pain meds, as if to make sure I was still breathing. When Oren was a baby, she and her sister Harriet (who died nine years ago from kidney failure) would crawl into his stroller and sleep, and when Oren was sleeping in his bouncy/vibrating seat, they would watch him, silent sentinels observing the baby human.

Several months ago, we were sure we were losing our Puff. She started throwing up, not just her normal couple-times-a-week purging, but everything in her stomach and then some. She stopped eating and drinking, and then she started wobbling and looking unbalanced and dissheveled. The most distressing symptom was the lack of purring. Puff is a purr box. You look at her, smile, and her engines start humming. But for a day or so, not a purr was to be found. We knew it was the end. We took her to the vet, who couldn't diagnose anything acutely wrong, and then took her back home, prepared to lose her. Rick and I even walked in the yard looking for a good burial plot. I haven't cried that hard since.

And then miraculously, Puff felt just fine, thank you very much. We figure a couple of things happened. First, she probably heard us talking about digging a hole, and snapped out of it. Second, during all of this drama, we completely changed her food from a tiny bit of wet food in the evenings (for her heart meds) and dry the rest of the time to an all-wet diet.

Yeah, she probably played us a little bit...

But regardless, we had our Puff back and we were glad. She gave us another scare a month or so later, but never stopped purring, so we felt like she would be OK. And then day before yesterday, she started throwing up and stopped eating. I cleaned up ten or more puddles of vomit on the floor (this is why we don't have and will never voluntarily have carpet in a house). I had scheduled a nail trim anyway, so yesterday I took her in and had the vet examine her.

Once again, nothing startlingly acute came back, but Puff's kidneys aren't completely healthy, and she may have an infection. Both issues can be helped with meds, but one of them is an oral medication, which scares me to death. Giving a cat a pill or a tincture is a nightmare, and Puff gets so stressed out that I wonder if we'll do more harm than good. There are other things we can do as well, including injections of anti-acid medication and subcutaneous fluids, which we can also administer at home.

But how much is too much? While the notion of giving her an injection or two isn't abhorrent in any way to me (probably because I have no problem with needles and have never thought shots of any kind were all that painful), I wonder how she would feel. Would she start to hide whenever I approached? Or would she feel so much better that it would be worth it? I just don't know.

I want to do the right thing by her, and I feel like she has a lot of life left in her, but she is a kitty and by virtue of her feline status, I believe she deserves to be treated as kindly and humanely as possible, which precludes anything unnecessarily invasive just to make us humans feel better and less guilty.

Yesterday at the vet (thankfully I got the good vet instead of the fresh-out-of-vet-school-vet who wants to do every test and every intervention known to man), I asked Puff if she would please tell me when it is time for her to go. I've never had to put a pet down for old age, so I don't know if I'll recognize the signs. Even the vet said that she didn't think Puff was there yet. Maybe if she stops purring completely we'll recognize it as a sign.

When we thought we were going to lose her back in December, I told Rick that no matter what sort of pain we would experience by her loss, it was worth it as a tiny payment for the enormity of joy that little creature has brought into our world.

This is the price we pay for love.

Ah, dreams...

Last night I had another bizarre dream, but this time it was the resolution that stuck with me.

Remember Shirley Jackson's The Lottery? I remember reading it in school and will never forget how it creeped me out. If you've not read it, you must. It's all about how superstitions can overtake us, how our communal patterns of behavior can supersede all sense of reason. Lifetime television made a sub-par made-for-TV movie out of it, but nothing could ever duplicate the feeling I had when I first read the story.

So in my dream last night, I was in a community, not really a family, but most of the faces seemed familiar. One of the members of this group was one of those sad-sack cases, a person who had been the brunt of life's cruelties from birth onward. I remember him as being blond and small in stature, and maybe there was a little baseball hat or a beanie on his head. He was an older teenager or a young adult, and I just felt sorry for him, as did everyone else present.

In the dream, we were required to determine which one of us would be killed. If you've read The Lottery, take the atmosphere of that story and plant it on this one. No one seemed all that upset about anything, but I was thinking how ridiculous it was that we were going through these time-worn behaviors to do something so cruel. I also thought that there was no way that the group would ever decide to take out the young man who had been so beaten down by life. No way would anyone agree to make him the victim again. The larger group was divided into smaller groups, and wouldn't you know it, I was put in with the young man. We were a small group, maybe six of us, and we sat down around a table.

The choice as to who to eliminate (at this point I figured I was at the elimination table) was to be a random one, although I believed the young man would be excluded from any such selection because of his circumstances. So with six of us there, one probably out of the running, that left five, and a 20% chance of being knocked off was a little too high for me, and at the same time I couldn't fathom actually making that choice or carrying it out against another person.

So I did something that in that circumstance might be considered either foolhardy or heroic. I spoke up.

I explained that what we were about to do was absurd, that the antiquated habits of our predecessors were not only out of touch with our current reality, but were barbaric and needless.

And the table agreed. All it took was one person saying something, and suddenly the threat was gone.

Oh, if life could be that simple.

In the dream, I was genuinely surprised that my words had any effect at all. Before I said anything, the fear of dying was tangible, and I remember feeling physically ill at the prospect. And then I took the step of speaking out, and everything changed.

What is the message I'm to take from that dream? Is there one? Or was the dream just a random collection of things I'd seen and experienced over the last few days? Was it due to the blackberries I ate yesterday? Was the moon in an odd phase? Or should I take something from it, maybe the notion that I need to speak up when I see things that need to be changed? I feel like I do that sometimes, but maybe not enough.

I believe in being open to whatever the universe wants to share, and so I'll tuck this memory away and consider it.

And maybe eat fewer blackberries before bed tonight.

Post-mortem

Michael Jackson's death has stirred up a lot of emotions from a lot of people.

I remember when Elvis died. We were visiting some friends of my parents, and I was with their daughter, several years older than me, when we heard of his passing. She immediately drove us to the nearest shopping center to purchase some of his albums. I don't know how much of his music she already owned, or even IF she owned any, but it was as if she was on a mission to honor him by spending some money. Just a moment ago, I read that MJ's music is flying off the shelves.

Am I missing something? It seems like the last time I heard anything about him, Mr. Jackson was up to his eyeballs in debt and suspicion. I seem to recall that at one point he was living in Saudi Arabia, avoiding the spotlight all together. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but I thought his image had been tarnished by the Neverland allegations and his apparent obsession with altering his appearance.

But now, he is gone, and suddenly none of that seems to matter. I certainly don't know what went on behind the scenes in his life, but I do know that for a time, there were a lot of very angry people accusing him of molesting their children. How are those people feeling, watching the spectacle of a mourning public, some resplendent in white gloves and sequins?

Death is like a big eraser, as if the reel of your life's story is suddenly edited for content. Sins are forgiven, or at least not mentioned, and a haze of gentle sunshine seems to shine on the deceased and his memory. When my father died, I did his eulogy, and even though he had not been a good parent, I found myself doing my best to say as many nice things about him as I could. I remember writing and re-writing that speech, trying to balance the truth with kindness. I was determined to be honest, but to be respectful to his memory, even though my memories of him were anything but good ones.

What is it that makes us perform this ritual? Is it a true desire to forgive and forget, or is it that we hope others will treat us with the same deference when we're gone? I'll be curious to see what happens in the weeks and months to come, as we learn more about MJ's passing.

And as an aside, I am saddened that while her life was just as rich and her story equally poignant, Farrah Fawcett's passing seems to have faded well into the background. Anyone who witnessed the TV special a month ago that documented her fight with cancer can tell you that she was also a remarkable human being with a story to tell.

May we all try to live lives that require a minimum of posthumous re-writing, and when we goof, may we be fortunate enough to have friends and family around that will gladly cut us some slack.

The cure's worse than the disease

I spent last week at the beach with my mom, my husband, son, and my husband's mother. It was a wonderful week, full of rest and recuperation from what has been a watershed year.

In my quest to do no further damage to my already-destroyed skin (from all of those years in the backyard honing the perfect tan), I have been working really hard to stay out of the direct sun for years. I'm trying to undo damage, as well, which means being hypervigilant about sunscreen. And this vacation, I was, emphasis on the "hyper." First, my regular SPF 40, the stuff I normally wear. Then breakfast, then another layer of SPF 65, then another layer of zinc oxide/titanium dioxide for a physical block on top of the two chemical blocks.

Yes, I realize how insane this sounds.

Not surprisingly, I got absolutely no color. None. In fact, I think I'm paler now than before we went. In addition to the triple SPF protection, I also sat under a tent with long sleeves, a hat, and a book in front of my face, partly for entertainment, partly for the blocking effect against any errant UV rays bouncing off of the sand. Oh, and I never sat outside between 11 and 4.

This week I look like I've had the worst sunburn of my life. Not from sunburn, oh no, but from the wear and tear of trying to wash the 3D sunscreen off my face every day. I'm peely and tight, red and sore. On Tuesday, it actually hurt to smile, and my left cheek was so swollen that if I glanced down, I could see it.

A friend said I looked like I'd had a chemical peel. Well, I have. A self-induced one, but a chemical peel nonetheless. Could I be onto something? We'll see after my skin stops sloughing off. I've been diligently putting on Vitamin E oil day and night, and I have a sneaking suspicion that all of my pores are clogging and next week will erupt into a mountainscape of acne. So I'll go from 90-year-0ld skin to 13-year-old skin.

And I complain that I'm stuck in a rut.

Coming through

Today I received a card with a note and some snapshots from our last visit with my birthfather's family, sent to me by my uncle's wife (which I suppose makes her my aunt!). These are the neatest people, and it's an honor to know them and a thrill to be related to them, although our relationship is so very new.

They have embraced me and my family so fully that it makes me even sadder that I will never know my birthfather. Would he have been as warm and welcoming? Would it have been different, since I would have been his own child, not the child of a sibling?

My birthfather died on June 1, 1967. I would have been just over eight months old at the time. What was I doing that day? Could I tell that he was gone? Do children have that sort of connection to their biological parents? I do believe that permanently removing a child from his/her mother's arms and placing him/her in another's does lasting damage to his/her ability to trust and to feel safe again, but how deep is the biological connection? I can't imagine that I didn't feel anything when my birthfather's helicopter crashed, but maybe I didn't. All through my life I've fantasized about finding him, finding the father I dreamed of, the father that would somehow make up for the adoptive father I was given, so there was no instinct that told me he wasn't around anymore, even though he was dead before I spoke my first word.

But his death isn't negotiable, and I have to go from this place and connect with those who are left. And how wonderful that connection has been. I didn't get the outcome I dreamed of, but perhaps I got more than I ever expected. My grandmother told me recently that I've been a real blessing in their lives, since I contacted them last fall. And that makes me feel so good, but it's also true that they have blessed my life. Even as I was braced for the worst (suspicion, rejection), I have been overwhelmed with the best possible reception.

And perhaps that is how the fear and the mistrust that has shadowed me my whole life will finally find another home.

Methinks she doth protest too much...

The discoveries just continue and continue.

In a bag full of memorabilia I received last week, I found a picture of my birthfather with a woman on a beach. This would have been 1966, when I was in utero, and the woman was most definitely NOT my birthmother. I'd heard the story of how when he was confronted with the pregnancy, my birthfather said, "Well, there's nothing I can do about it, and I'm seeing someone else now anyway." Could this be that "someone else?"

On the back of the photo was a name and address. Of course, this was over 40 years ago, so I figured the chances were slim that I could locate this woman, but I googled her and the city she was living in at the time, and BINGO, I found her on a class reunion website! Her last name was different, but when I saw her picture, I knew I'd found her. Another search and I had her current address and phone number. Feeling fly, I dialed.

And there she was, the woman in the picture from so many years ago. Yes, she remembered my birthfather very well, and had he returned from Vietnam, she was SURE they would have married. No, she didn't know about the "girl he left behind" or the pregnancy.

Surprise, surprise.

And then she did something which I've been puzzling over ever since.

"Now, I was a good girl. I wasn't a slut. I was what you would have called a tease," she explained, as if it mattered to me whether or not she'd had sex with my birthfather. Then she went on to say, over and over throughout our conversation, how she was a Christian.

As an aside, I believe that if you feel compelled to tell me and then try to convince me that you're a Christian, you're sort of missing the point, but that's another blog altogether.

There was a part of me that at this point in the conversation desperately wanted to respond to the "I wasn't a slut" comment with, "Oh, you mean you weren't a slut like my birthmother, huh?" Of course, that would have been confrontational and not very helpful, but I do not tolerate holier-than-thou sorts very well and was fairly tempted.

From our talk, she was obviously very much enamoured with my birthfather, and was deeply hurt when he died. She went on to marry twice, and each of her husbands' names were in some way similar to my birthfather's names, which I found quite interesting as did she. She made sure to discount any part of the name deal being superstitious, as she apparently thought that wasn't Christian. Oh, boy.

Why does it matter so much what people think of us, even after four decades?

I did copy and send her the picture of her standing arm-in-arm with my birthfather, along with a couple of other pictures. I wonder if I'll hear from her. I wonder if the ache of losing her 1966 love will creep back into her heart. I wonder if she wishes she hadn't been so good?

Lost letters

I am reminded once again how much kindness matters.

Today I was given a bag full of memorabilia of my birthfather, pictures, newspaper clippings (about his boomerang skills at NC State, for one!), the telegram telling his parents that he had been killed in action in Vietnam, his driver's license, his pipes, and scads of other things that I'm still going through. It is a treasure-trove of blessings for me, and I look forward to spending time with them this weekend.

Among the letters was one written in June of 1967, just after his passing. It was written by a Catholic priest who knew my birthfather and flew with him in his OH-23 helicopter. The letter was written to my birthfather's parents as a letter of condolence.

I'm sure that this priest wrote countless letters such as this, but this is the one I have possession of, and when I read it, I wept. 42 years since his death, this man's words speak to me.

Fortunately, this man is still living, in his early 80s, and I was able to find him online and have written to him. I hope I'll hear back.

In this age of electronic communication, let us never forget the value of the written word. Words on paper have a power that bits and bytes in cyberspace do not.

Rude awakenings

Last night/early this morning, I was yanked from sleep when I saw someone breaking into the house via the basement stairs. The image was so crystal clear, a man pushing his way through the basement door to do who-knows-what sort of destructive mischief. Yes, on the second floor, I had the distinct image of someone coming through the basement to break into the house. Yep, that's the image, that's what I was sure I saw.

When I woke enough (after pacing upstairs considering my options, my heart racing, sweating profusely with fear) to realize that I had been dreaming and that no one was in the house except those who belonged AND realizing that it was physically impossible for me to see through two floors into the basement below, I was able to calm down and go back to sleep.

But this experience, one I've had before, made me stop and consider other images that I have held, some that are just as alarming and unsettling, things that aren't really so.

Sometimes what I think I see and what is really there are two separate things, and it can get me into trouble. For example, the perceived slight from someone who I thought was a friend which turns out to be an oversight or the result of a really rotten migraine. Or the person who seems to have it in for me on the highway, cutting me off at every opportunity, when the real culprit is an urgent need to get to the bedside of a sick parent. Or the snub I feel from someone who I care for but who doesn't seem to return the feeling, when the true story is a deeply held sense of fear or regret that has paralyzed the person from acknowledging true emotions.

Most of the time when I let myself get into such situations where I convince myself that I'm being somehow rejected or abused or neglected, I eventually discover that I am the one being oversensitive and, more importantly, too self-absorbed to see the situation for what it really is.

It's an ongoing issue with me, and I'm working on it, along with a slew of other foibles, but it's an important one. Because when I don't see things for what they truly are, I'm avoiding the truth. And that is never a good way to see the world.

Transition time---again

It was just a few seconds ago that I walked with my son through the halls of what would become his middle school, and now tonight, he'll be going to what will become his high school to gather more information about what courses to take next year.

I remember when he graduated from fifth grade how thrilled I was to be leaving that school and moving forward (notice how I say "I" was thrilled, because as a parent, where your child goes, you go!). His elementary school was a bit, oh how can I say this diplomatically, "precious." You know the kind, where the mothers are in a fashion competition with one another, where the children are spoiled beyond measure (except for the more normal kids who, like the rest of the world, aren't spoon fed from an unending trough of resources), and where the favoritism of certain teachers toward the children of the most involved parents (aka, the non-working mothers) is palpable.

His middle school is made up of a much greater variety of people, which is quite wonderful. But it is a very large school, and in middle school, teachers no longer hold students' hands. Sixth Grade was a challenge, balancing effort with what was expected, but Seventh and Eighth Grades have been incredibly positive. What I was often warned of as being a "tough school" has been anything but. Engaging and interested teachers, committed administration, well-balanced curriculum. Challenging, you bet, but enriching for my son beyond my greatest expectations.

And now high school looms.

I am so very glad that it is not I who will be entering Ninth Grade in the fall. Oh, how I remember my own experience as a high school Freshman. Glasses, braces, crazy skin, absolutely no self-esteem or sense of who I was (no, that's not fair--I knew who I was, I just hadn't come to realize that other people's opinions of me weren't as important as my own).

So as I walk with my son into his soon-to-be new school tonight, I will think of all of the firsts we've experienced since he first entered my world. And I will think of all of the many firsts to come. And I hope that I will always appreciate each one for the gift that it is.

No more tripping!

Oh, joy of joys, today is the day! I've been waiting for this for months now, and couldn't be happier with how things are moving along.
Today I'm getting a new floor in my kitchen. Our kitchen serves as our walk-through about 97% of the time, so it gets a lot of wear. When we bought our house five years ago, the previous owner had installed a blue and white checked floor to match the blue and white striped wallpaper. I have nothing against either, but in a kitchen, anything white on the floor seems a little silly. The day I dropped a scalding hot casserole dish--upside down, naturally--on the floor and burned a hole in it, I decided something needed to be done. I priced my options and as usual, went with the cheapest option, the one I could do at home, peel-&-stick vinyl tiles. I went for a color I knew wouldn't show dirt (you guessed it, "dirt" color), and prepped the existing vinyl to perfection. The tiles laid and the walls painted (Roman Orange, don't you know), the kitchen was finally more me. And for about two years, it was functional and fun. But one day I noticed a big bubble under one of the tiles, and that was the beginning of what turned into a hazardous floor situation. The corners of some of the tiles started lifting, then breaking, and walking across the floor with bare feet was sometimes dangerous and often painful as I would catch myself and trip on the uplifted tiles. I endured this for months and months, called Moon's Flooring and got an estimate, continued to endure it, and finally a couple of weeks ago said ENOUGH!
So now as I type, Moon's Flooring folks are busily installing my new FABulous laminate floor. It is great, and I can't wait to be able to vacuum and mop the thing without catching the mop or picking up the corners of the tiles with the vacuum.
And let me say, Moon's Flooring is the BEST in the area. They did our hardwood refinishing when we moved in, as well as my mother-in-law's floor a couple of years ago. They are professional, prompt, really personable, and great to work with. You know when you have people doing work in your home, and you feel like you can completely trust them? That's how I feel with Moon's.
Now the problem, with the new floor going in, is my countertops don't look so spiffy anymore. That's next on the list.
It's like getting your nose fixed and then noticing your brows need lifting...
Not that I would ever do that, mind you....:-)

Search and find

Boy, it's been a long time since I last posted. I had forgotten my password to log on to blogspot, and had one of those moments of panic trying to remember it. I was lucky and got it on the second try. I have this great fear that one day I'll forget all of my passwords and not exist in cyberspace anymore.
Actually, that's a nice thought. Just think of the time I would save...
This has been a transformative year, a year of self-discovery as well as discovery of long-lost identities and secrets. As an adoptee, I set out this past summer to find my biological family, and from April until December of 2008, I obsessed and worked on finding out information about who I was before I became the person I've always known as Sara.
As adoptees in a closed adoption, we only know who we are in terms of our adoptive history. It is as if we didn't exist until some well-meaning couple took us into their homes. I actually was a living, breathing human being for 4-1/2 months before I had the legal identity I grew up with. My amended birth certificate is a fraud, a fake that was manufactured to foster the pretense that the people I called Mom and Dad were, in fact, my mother and father from birth forward. Of course they were my parents, no question, but I also had a prior set of parents whose identity was unknown to me until this past year.
At the ripe-old age of 41, I realized it was time to do some searching, and began in earnest. Oh, the hours I spent on ancestry.com and the Vietnam War Memorial website, the hours I spent in libraries and looking at microfilm (I think my vision is forever altered by those fun afternoons).
I am one of the lucky ones, because I learned all about my family of origin, both sides, and have met my biological mother and my biological father's brother and his family. My birthfather was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam who lost his life before I turned a year old, so I'll never meet him, but meeting his mother (my first and only grandmother!) and his brother has been the most incredible experience, and I am truly blessed to know them. I am especially blessed to know my family health history, which is one aspect of closed adoptions that people don't consider when they're looking at that tiny healthy baby who has just been born to most likely young, healthy parents.
My biological mother is living, and I've met her once and spoken with her several times on the phone. She is great, and I look forward to getting to know her more in the future. There is a lot of pain and grief to work out when you are a birthmother, and she is still working through all sorts of emotions. It's easier for me. I have no memory of being relinquished, while she remembers all too clearly the wrenching heartache of surrendering her baby. She is a strong woman, and we continue to find things about each other that are so very similar.
Which leads me to my adoptive mother, my mom. I worried about how she would feel when I found my biological family, and didn't mention anything about my searching until I'd completed it and met both sides of my birthfamily. I didn't want her to worry about me, and this was a journey I needed to take by myself without having to consider anyone else's reactions but my own (my own were quite enough to deal with, thank you very much). When I told Mom about meeting my birthfamily, instead of reacting in a threatened way, she was joyous. She immediately phoned her sister, who christened my news "Our Christmas Miracle." I'm sure she has gone through many emotions of her own, but this discovery has reinforced how incredible and resilient my mom is and how much her influence has shaped the person I have become. Being a parent is a complex thing, and you can be a biological parent or a functioning parent, you can be both, you can be one or the other at different times and under different circumstances. The big thing I've learned over and over during this process is how much you can love many different people. It's perfectly acceptable to have several children and love them all, so it makes sense that I could have two mothers, one a biological one, one an adoptive, functional one, and love them both. I am grateful to my birthmother for carrying me and making the sacrifices she had to make to bear and then relinquish me, and I am grateful to my adoptive mother for the sacrifices and the leap of faith she made to take me in and love me as a mother should. I can't imagine being a mother to a child not of my flesh, but she did it and continues to do it. And I love her and always will. She is still the person I call when I need advice or a sympathetic ear, and I don't imagine that will ever change.
My own journey of discovery continues. Now that I know where I come from, where I was born, the circumstances of my birth, my health history, a lot of the mystery of me has melted away. And that is nice, but a little disconcerting. No longer can I fantasize about exotic origins. I come from hard-working, decent people with strong family connections, their share of eccentricities, and really dark eyes. Oh, yeah, name the disease, and I can find it in my family health history, which makes me especially thankful that I've taken reasonably good care of my health most of my life.
Now that I know where I came from, I have come to the conclusion that we are the product of biology, environment, and something else, a spark of identity that transcends any explanation. And that is a very good thing.