The Knower of Hearts

,Adoption.

Since we began our first adoption process, the initial reactions we have been met with, both those we love and those of strangers, have been wildly varied.

Everything from simple curiosity to genuine joy and happiness on our behalf to tentative, resigned acceptance to actual menacing and hostile harassment which I wrote about here for those of you who'd like to read something really crazy: strangers-on-plane.

When it comes to adoption, people want you to explain yourself. Some people want you to excuse yourself. To fall all over yourself saying you're sorry. Some people want to exult your decision to adopt into something almost saintly. Some people are genuinely happy and some are suspicious. Some, obviously insecure people, want to make sure you know that your choice to adopt is inferior to having biological children and some make subtle references to their idea that you will never be a real mother or father. Then again, some say you are even more of a mother or father for how hard you have fought for this child.

My point is, depending on who you talk to, it all varies. There are as many opinions on adoption as there are people. :)

I've been told I've had it so easy. "Imagine just hopping on a plane to a tropical country for a few weeks and coming home with a sweet baby! You sure chose the easy option!" and my mind wandered back through all the months of heartbreak, darkness, self-loathing, not leaving the house, all the prayers that felt like they were wrenched out of my gut, all the despair and thoughts of death, (that by this stage were healed by the joy of our little son in Sri Lanka whose picture I held clutched in my hand), and blinked and ignored the sharp, quick pain in my heart and smiled while my mind reeled from it all being dismissed so blithely. I wasn't offended. It just helped me realize that if you're counting on understanding from people, you are bound to be occasionally disappointed.

After all, who in the world understands adoption? Not a one, I imagine. Not the adoptive parents, not the biological mother, not the people in positions of power who decide a child's fate, no one.

Adoption is beyond comprehension. It has it's good sides and its bad. It has its stories of success and failure. It uproots a child and gives them new roots. Sometimes deep and secure ones. It binds and severs. It causes confusion. Heartbreak. Joy.

I think of this sometimes, maybe especially as we begin the process again. Also because I read a book a while back that said something to the effect of no one is able to understand a mother's love except a mother. A real mother. Not a step-mother or any other sort of mother. But a woman who has actually given birth.

I read that and while again, wasn't really offended as we are all entitled to our opinions, however stupid they may be, it reinforced my own belief that giving birth doesn't always make a mother. There are women who give birth who are incapable of loving a child, who abuse children, etc. Blood ties can certainly bind but they don't always. As for who is a "real" mother, I don't really think anyone can judge that.

As for me, I don't struggle with this question. I don't doubt I am a real mother. I am. No ones opinion can change that.

Second meeting with William.

So as we embark on this second adoption, I think I will choose to remember that people can think whatever they like. When I want understanding, I'll take it to God. He understands what I can not.

People Who Talk About Other People

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss other people." -Eleanor Roosevelt

There is almost nothing I find so tiresome as listening to someone talk about another person. It isn't engaging. It isn't enlightening or attractive. It isn't interesting.

It shows no imagination. No wit. As the above quote says, all it takes to discuss other people is a very small mind.

I don't trust people who continually talk about other people. Even if it isn't outright slander or gossip, I still find it terribly indiscreet to divulge the small details of another persons life to others as though one had the right. Why bother?

It makes me tired. Bored. Silent.

Talk to me about yourself. Tell me what you hope for. Your dreams, your disappointments. Tell me about your childhood, your travels. What you love and hate. What fascinates you. Tell me silly stories, things you've done that make you laugh, times you shocked yourself. Tell me what sort of food you like. Where you go shopping.

Talk to me about religion. Faith. Lack of faith. Talk to me about art and beauty. Chaos and despair. Talk to me about mysteries, the world, science.

Share your own opinions with me. I might not agree with you but I am not threatened by that.

Talk to me honestly, openly. Communicate with me.

So tell me about yourself. The only person you have a right to talk about.

So Terribly Beautiful

Your smile.
I love your smile.
It knocks me out.

Sometimes I try not to smile when you do. Not to laugh when I hear you laugh.
But it never works.
Never.

It's like innocence. Fresh. Powerful. Infinite innocence.
Like play and hope and spring sunshine.
Like dreams and a certain breathless fear and the all the far, far future smiling back at me.

It's love, that smile.
Ease. Mischief. Movement.

Privilege too.
A gift.

To sit on a cold beach in harsh sunlight.
You watch the sand thread through your fingers.
And smile.
The brightest gift.
Shining eyes. Bright with fun.

It's wonder at that moment.
Laughter the next.

Some days your laughter follows me.
Everywhere.
Silliness. A breeze of joy. Whipping around the house.

Water poured over your head in the bathtub and you laugh
So hard it sounds like you're crying.

I look at your wet hair clinging to the back of your chubby neck.
Bent over a toy in the water.

And I feel vulnerable.
Like anything that hurt you would tear right through me too.

Suddenly you don't look as strong as your smile or the sound of your laughter.
Will you be alright someday out there in that big, big, crumbling world?

It alarms me.
The idea that you might not be greeted with love everywhere you go.

And She Spent Her Years In A Convent School

When I was around 13, I decided that I desperately wanted to go to boarding school. I had seen a movie that took place in one. It made me idealize and romanticize life at a convent school. Don't ask me how I managed to romanticize life in an all girls Catholic boarding school taught by Ursuline nuns in the forlorn, somewhat cheerless wilds of the Saskatchewan prairies but you see, I had a great talent for optimism.

My parents wisely encouraged me to work toward this goal and I worked, prayed, saved money, was accepted to St. Angela's Academy and at the age of fourteen found myself on a day long journey by car across the vivid prairies to what was to be my new "home" for the next two years.

While I very quickly came to truly love the people and the life there, I remember feeling homesick the first couple of weeks. I remember the first night in the dorms, (which that year was really just a huge room with a small area partitioned off for each girl). The first night after "lights out" was filled with the muffled sounds of sobbing and crying and I remember not crying but lying there listening to the sounds of loneliness. I called home after a week and then I let myself cry to my mom on the phone. It was harder than I'd expected to be 14 and far from home after all. And really, to be honest, it wasn't terribly romantic either which was quite a let down.:)

Anyway at this time I received two excellent pieces of advice that have remained with me to this day.

The first came from my mother. Her response to my homesickness was "Colleen, after you get off the phone, go and ask one of the girls to go for a coffee with you and ask her all about herself. Her family, her home, her life, everything. The quickest way for you to feel better is to show an interest in someone else."

The second was from the mother of a friend, passed on to me by my own mom. They had met one day and my friend's mom asked how I was doing so far from home. My mom answered "She's alright, a little homesick, maybe finding these first few weeks harder thank she thought but it is what she wanted. It was her choice to go." The response to that was simply "Well, doing what you choose to do is never easy."

Being only fourteen, I puzzled over that for awhile. How could doing what I had willingly chosen for myself not be easy? Finally I understood that doing what we choose to do leaves the burden of responsibility for that choice solely on our own shoulders. How much easier if I could cry to my friends that my parents had forced me to go away, leave home and come to this place, but I couldn't because I wanted it. I worked for it. And if I was unhappy with my decision, I had only myself to blame. And accepting responsibility for your own choice is a difficult lesson to learn.

But I did learn it and within a couple of months, I loved St. Angela's Academy. The weak coffee, the curtained partition that was my room, the gardens of the convent, chapel every morning, studying subjects I loved, the poetry I couldn't stop writing, the desolate countryside and most especially, the girls I was there with. They became my home from the years I was fourteen to sixteen. They became my replacement family and the laughter in my days.

Now I am thirty years old and have time and time again found myself pulling out those simple yet profoundly wise suggestions and truths that helped me grow into the woman I am. They're still good, they still work. :)

Have you ever been a staggering piece of advice that you later appreciated and that you have carried with you through life? Good advice. Not staggeringly bad. Of course, I have been on the receiving end of that sort of advice as well but that's a story for another day.

P.S. Now I may be strangely silent after tomorrow because my husband and I are going on a weekend trip to Aberdeen to browse the book shops and have some time just the two of us.:) Have a lovely week and weekend everybody!

UnlovelyThoughts

I think I used to have a gentler heart.
Used to be more compassionate. Kinder. More generous.
I think I used to be less quick to irritation and far quicker to laugh.
More optimistic. Less grasping.
More willing. Less selfish and self absorbed.
More trusting. Less anxious and concerned.

I think I used to have braver heart.
A warmer heart. A more loving heart.
And a far, far more open heart.

Shouldn't it be the opposite? Shouldn't the words I set down here be words that contemplate my character and spiritual growth? How my heart has become larger and better rather than somewhat colder and better protected? Shouldn't I be able to look back at the laughing girl I was ten years ago and see that ten years have brought me closer...
... more clarity
... more charity?
I don't think I should look back and think that that girl somehow knew more without even knowing she knew.

But I seemed to understand then what it was that made me matter. That showing love to others was the most important goal I could strive for. That it all mattered, especially the little kindnesses.

I want to get back there.
I want.
An unclouded mind.
A purer heart.