Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
I Saw This Boy
There were children sleeping in trees. I saw them myself, riding around Managua after dark with my comadre Christina and our dear sponsor, Miriam, in February 1994. During the day, the kids rushed cars stopped in traffic, crawling up on hoods to squeegee the windshield, hawking gum and cigarettes from trays hanging from their necks just like the old Philip Morris ads but they were in dirty T-shirts and shorts, barefoot. Thin, aggressive, feral. And very young.
At night, they retreated to safety in the trees.
Stop the truck. Roll the window down. “They’re up there.” See the leaves rustling, little glimpses of feet and arms.
I remember feeling guilty. Guilty, conspicuous, rich, and wrong. I remember thinking that the boy washing the windshield knew more than me, was tougher than me. His aura was all necessity and drive. He didn’t ask to wash the windshield. He leapt up on the car and did it — expecting that the shame of not paying him would force the driver to ante up. I remember thinking what the hell is going on in the world when my two sons who look just like the one on the hood of the car are back home in Milwaukee eating Oreos and teasing the dog.
What separates my two boys, adopted in 1986 and 1988 from Managua, Nicaragua, from the boy yelling “Chicle, Chicle” outside the car window? It isn’t me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m dumb to all of this. I just showed up and went where I was pointed. There was no rescue. Heck, I was the one rescued (but that’s a different blog). It was an utterly random slice of luck that culled them from the sea of abandoned children and plopped them in an orphanage.
While they were growing up, we would talk about Nicaragua. But not wanting to make it sound bad, we de-emphasized the poverty. It was and is a beautiful country with a social and political and literary history that makes it unusual and extraordinary and that’s what I wanted them to think about their home country. I didn’t want them to think bad things about home.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t make it sound like Paris. I told them that poverty was a big part of their mothers’ decisions to give them up to the orphanage. But I never told them that the boy on the hood of the car and the boy I bought my Marlboros from made me sad and scared and nervous. That seeing them made me feel wrapped in a blanket of ignorance and selfishness. That I saw them, picked up my daughter, went home to Milwaukee, sent money to relief groups every now and then, and went on with my life.
Until I heard that Anthony Bourdain was going to Nicaragua in his next No Reservations and that he was going to talk to kids rifling through trash at the dump looking for food and I wondered, “Should I have the kids over for dinner and watch it together?”
I just don’t know. I really don’t.
Mistaken Identity
You might have heard — there is a lot of controversy in Wisconsin right now about the collective bargaining rights of public employees. I’m not a public employee but I’ve often been mistaken for one.
Various people have assumed that I was a social worker, child welfare worker, probation officer, and school principal. These cases of mistaken identity occurred when I was with one of my kids, usually at their school. (For the uninitiated, I am white, some say, super white – northern European. My three adopted kids are from Nicaragua.) I’ll never forget standing in the hallway of Milwaukee High School of the Arts having a nice chat with one of my kid’s teachers, walking away and hearing him yank my son back to ask, “Is that your case worker?” “Uh, no, that’s my mom.”
I started thinking it would just be better to be the social worker. Why fight it? Be a social worker. Flash that badge. Get all the info. Talk like an insider. Keep the school professionals from e-nun-ci-a-ting like they tend to do whenever they meet up with mominsweatpants.
If I just go along with being the social worker, I can avoid the story.
Because if I tell a nosy person the story, it will surely be like giving a Moose a Muffin or a Pig a Pancake. If I start with the plain fact that my husband and I adopted from Nicaragua, it will lead to the reason why, then it will lead to making it clear that we didn’t pay a lot of money for our kids, that they were abandoned and without options, that they were sick, because, of course, I would then want the person to know that I’m not a rich white imperialist thinking I can just buy children who belong to another country, and then I’ll have to answer questions about their ‘real parents’ and how they feel about that which I won’t be able to answer because I don’t actually know, and whether they have ever gone back and looked for them, and how much do I know about their past which is practically nothing. And I will feel like apologizing and my child, whichever one it is, will be slinking down the hall wishing he/she had never been born in any country because the big, giant JULY 4TH AUTO SALE spotlight will be shining on them and it just isn’t f**king worth it to explain.
So I just decided to be the damn social worker or probation officer or whatever. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really have an attitude about it. I never really got mad at people who asked questions because I figured it was plenty weird seeing me and my kids. (My husband – different story — he can pass as the Dad. Me, no chance.) Plus I figured that actually having these kids was like the most massive stroke of luck in the universe so I was ok talking about it.
Still. It does really make you feel like you are wearing a bikini at a PTA meeting. Really.
So, anyway, several months ago, I walked into a group home where my CASA (I’m a Court Appointed Special Advocate for a girl in foster care) girl lives and one of the group home girls said, “Is that your grandmother?”
I loved that. I really did.
Joe
Monday was my #2 son’s 24th birthday. When I first met Joe in 1988, I had no idea he would morph into this.
Or this.
I had no idea that the place that he would end up feeling most at home would be on a stage looking out at a full house and waiting for a cue.
All the while he was growing up, the joke about little Joey was that he would run from any group picture. If captured, he’s twist around and turn his back to the camera. No way no how did he want anyone looking at him.
That changed. In a big way.
Joe often says that he needs to find himself. Me, my opinion? For what it’s worth.
I think he already has.
Golly.
Last night I had a dream that featured my balancing on a tall pole holding my 6-year old daughter, discovering that her leg was made of balsa wood, seeing that her leg had burned and needed repair, looking for someone to fix it, meeting Jimmy Carter in the hallway and shaking his hand, trying to stop a rolling car with my hands and finally jumping in it to hit the brakes, worrying about the child I’d left behind, trying to get back to her, riding a bike down a street that turned into the ocean, mucking my way through dead fish, trying to climb a steep, grass-covered wall, and realizing that she had probably gone off with someone else.
I never have dreams that I remember. Never.
This was an adoption dream. I’m sure of it.
Maybe this signals a new period of not being repressed. All hell could break loose now.
Nobody Would Pick Us
On Facebook today, Adoption Resources of Wisconsin posted a link to a young couple’s adoption recruitment site. So I clicked on it, looked at their happy pictures and their essays about what good parents they’d be. They had an 800 number for pregnant women to call. They were advertising themselves basically.
I looked at their info and I wondered how long and hard they must have thought about how to look like they’d be great parents. They’d want to look happy, for sure. And financially secure. With a decent house. Fun-lovers. With a dog. I thought they looked nice. I could see them being my parents or my kids’ parents. They looked like a couple already checking out summer camps and breaking in their mini-van.
I can’t even fathom the amount of acting and stagecraft that would have had to go into our “ad.” We were mismatched as a couple, impulsive, and constantly contradicting each other. We couldn’t have been more different – in looks, values, backgrounds, the food we liked, our accents. Everything about us was enough off to be worrisome to someone looking for a good home for their baby. We had unstable and temporary written all over our foreheads and down the front of our shirts.
Nobody would have picked us.
When we had our home studies, we felt about as exposed as people can feel. Everything about our lives was fair game for questions. The biggest challenge, though, was just keeping a lid on ourselves – to not let the social worker get a full glimpse of the disarray. But these folks — with their beautiful photos and their website and the 800 number — they’ve put themselves right out there.
I really hope somebody picks them.
Just Another Weird Thing
Tomorrow morning, I’ll get up, go downstairs, and make a pot of coffee. I’ll ground beans out of this bag and, like I have dozens of times, I’ll look at the name Zeledon and like it. The name Zeledon. I like it. It’s the birth surname of one of my kids. Zeledon.
Every day, it’s the same. I make the coffee. I look at the name. And I wonder if my Zeledon is related to the coffee farmers.
And then I wonder if he looks at the name on the bag of coffee and wonders if he’s related to the coffee farmers. Oh, we kid about it. We all stand around in the kitchen and talk about how we should go back to Nicaragua and find his rich relatives. But what I wonder is — does he think about it, like I do, every day.
Is there a connection? Who are the coffee Zeledons? Is it just a coincidence or a sign? Is the coffee there to remind us or lead us somewhere? Or is it just coffee. Probably.
After all, there are Snyder Pretzels and that never led my husband anywhere.
It’s hard and not always worth the trouble to sort out what’s weird from what’s meaningful. Even harder to distinguish what would capture my preoccupation if I was an adopted person from what my kids actually worry about. I can’t be in their place or see the world through their eyes no matter how much I read or think or talk to them.
Which is fine. Because they have no idea I’m preoccupied with the coffee. And buy it even though I like Layton Avenue Market’s special blend better. It’s all about the name. Zeledon.
The Cousins
These are my kids’ cousins. Their parents are my in-laws. Not really. But it sure seems that way. Of all the things that we maybe did not so well as adoptive parents, we did one thing really right. Our community – the bunch of families who adopted kids from Rolando Carazo orphanage in Managua, Nicaragua, has stuck together….well, pretty much….we’ve lost some and sadly, because it’s often the families in the most hurt that disappear.
Every year, for the past 24 years, our family has hosted a 3 Kings celebration. And the Nicas come. Sometimes a lot, sometimes not so many. Everyone pretty much brings the same dishes to the potluck, we drink the same drinks, and we have a procession of kids down the stairs to the singing of We Three Kings. When they get downstairs, their shoes are filled with chococate and toy cars and whatever else is on after-Christmas sale. The kids love it — first our own kids and now our kids’ kids — and the night ends with tamale wrappers everywhere, kids racing through the kitchen, adults huddled in corners, and a million hugs – some so badly needed that we drive miles to get them.
I love my kids’ cousins. I am astonished that they are grown – that the babies that were adopted so long ago and lined up on a couch for picture-taking are now adults with beards and jobs and kids. I love it that these kids connect to each other, that they want their own kids to connect, and that they are loyal to our tradition of 3 Kings. I love it that my son, Nelson, can celebrate his birthday with his ‘cousin’ Moises.
And I love how beautiful Ligia, Addie, Becca, and Jhosy are.
And I love how there is a new generation of kids coming down the stairs, singing We Three Kings and looking for cool stuff in their shoes.
We all struggle and fuss our way through the year. The adoptive parents and the adopted kids. None of this is particularly easy.
But it is joyful – at least part of the time. Thank God.
Birthday Boy #1
Nelson Ernesto Bravo Snyder, born January 6, 1985, in Managua, Nicaragua, is 26 years old today. Our Sandinista baby. He’s here because of a chance conversation in the old Wales Wool Store on Downer Avenue when a friend mentioned she was going to a baptism of a child just adopted from Nicaragua which was followed by a crazy meeting with Sallie Pettit where we met her daughter Yami and other newly adopted kids, Moises Price-Neuman and his traveling buddy Mila Holcombe. And we learned that although the new Nicaraguan constitution banned adoptions of Nica kids to families in other countries, the Health and Social Services Ministry was looking for a few homes for kids with serious medical needs — needs that could be met with First World medicine but would doom them in Nicaragua. Sure – we said. We’re interested.
Then there was the phone call a few weeks later. We had just come up from Ottawa Park – sandy, wet. The old yellow wall phone in the kitchen rang. It was Sallie. “There’s an 18-month old boy with a hole in his heart. Will you take him?” Stunned, we told her we would have to talk about it. Ninety seconds later we called back. “Yes.”
What the hell is a hole in the heart? I asked a friend, Fred Tavill, a doctor who had practiced medicine in several third world countries in the 70’s….his response and the words that gave us the confidence to go forward: “If his heart problem was really bad, he’d be dead already in Nicaragua.”
So three months later, Howard went to Nicaragua to fetch our little brave baby. (The story is described in an earlier blog called Orphan Shoe.) He was very sick when he came here – thin, weak, very pale, almost gray. He had surgery 3 months after that and went on to have a healthy, active childhood, lettered in practically every sport, graduated from high school, and is now a weatherization specialist.
This is what he looks like now.
Raising Nelson has not been easy. If there was a Chronicles of Nelson, it would be several volumes, the reading of which would deter from parenthood all but the most determined person. A whole degree program could be developed using Nelson as the case study. Really. No joke.
But I will tell you this. There’s not a time when I’m not glad to see him walk through the door. He’s handsome and funny and loyal. He forgets bad arguments and knows how to crack a joke. He’s fearless and tough. He can put a dress on a Barbie doll for his daughter while talking on the phone and texting. Very skilled guy. And he loves us – which, I guess, is the real miracle here.
At the end of the day (and this isn’t the end of the story because I think the Chronicles of Nelson have a lot more chapters), we’re all lucky. The hole in his heart got fixed and so did ours. That’s pretty good.
Post Game Show
I wanted to wait a day or two to write about Christmas. Holidays for us – always, but especially the last few years – are a little touch and go. Somebody’s absent. Somebody’s a mess. People take turns. You know how some families draw names out of a hat for gifts? We kind of do that to see whose turn it is to be the fruitcake at Christmas.
Only kidding. We don’t do that. Fruitcake designation is totally random.
So because Norman Rockwell skipped our house and went next door to paint his perfect family Christmas, we’ve learned to adapt. We have expectations that are so low that the folks waiting in the funeral home basement for their turn upstairs would pass muster. If there are no sirens, flashing lights or bloodshed, we’re feeling pretty ok.
This Christmas, I would give an A-. A minus only because claiming perfection seems out of character. Here’s why it was so great.
- My kids figured out how to buy presents without borrowing money from me.
- Everyone showed up – well, everyone in Milwaukee, that is. No last minute disputes, flat tires, freeway pile-ups.
- On time. Get out, you’re saying. Yes, they were all on time.
- They laughed. A lot.
- There was a four-year old girl with bangs and pigtails.
- There was some pretty decent food. Thanks Mom (and Sam’s Club).
- We kept it short.
- There were no complicated toys that required DIY assembly.
- People were gracious and grateful.
- We lived in the moment.
Item #10. That’s the takeaway. Living in the moment. The hardest thing to achieve. The best way to live.
Say Again
My two boys started talking pretty late. For a couple of months after they came to the U.S. from Nicaragua, they didn’t even cry much. Mute little munchkins. Tip for adopters: if you adopt a child from an orphanage, they often don’t cry. This can trick you into thinking they’re so content they don’t need to cry but my theory is that they tried crying for a while and it wasn’t productive – as in nobody showed up to pick them up. Humans quit doing what doesn’t pay off, right? More theorizing — both had tons of ear infections in the orphanages. And so one school of thought was that they hadn’t heard enough language or not heard it well enough when they were babies to develop their speech properly.
Note: My little granddaughter didn’t utter a word to me until she was about 3 1/2 and I never thought twice about it, instead deciding that her silence was, in fact, a sign of her utter contentment in my care. 🙂
We were so worried about them not talking that we trucked them off to speech therapy- at UW-M, Curative, and St. Francis. Not sure what the rush was. At that point in our lives with our kids, we were all over issues like not talking, not walking, not picking things up with their little wee fingers. All of it. Everything had to be solved STAT!
Anyway, so when Joe, the younger of our two sons, finally started talking, he quickly developed the habit of repeating the last word in every sentence. Sentence. Yes, exactly like that. That. With a little pause in between. Between.
For a while, we weren’t sure we were hearing him right. But we were. Last word, every sentence. Twice.
Memory: In the car driving to Florida. It’s dark outside. The two boys are in the back playing with their little superhero action figures (remind me to tell you our little anti-sexism campaign…..Action figures are dolls. Dolls are action figures) and we pass a sign for a restaurant.
“We should go to Cracker Barrel. Barrel.”
We cured Joe of this little ticky thing (officially called echolia, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echolalia) before we were able to find a really good echolia therapist (thank God) by thinking it was so cute and funny that we all started talking that way.
Something in his little five-year consciousness decided that “Hey, that ain’t cool. They stole my thing.” It was as if he wouldn’t be caught dead talking the same way as his very uncool parents. So he stopped talking like that.
But we still do and I still think it’s hilarious. Hilarious.
Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
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