Uncertainty

For awhile, despite small detours here and there, the framework of my life seemed clear, made sense; it was all about healing and helping others heal, about changing lives and, with them, taking at least small cracks in the larger systems that caused the suffering in those lives. It was about a depth of love (and, yes, sacrifice, too) that nourished me, energized me.

I was raising this amazing child, watching her take one step back, two steps forward, over and over again. I had a rewarding job through which I was able to do the same kind of mentoring for my students. I had time to work on my writing; I was happy simply being at the page, sending things out when the mood struck me or when something seemed a good fit, keeping up this blog, sharing my work with people who most needed it. My relationships with family and friends were the strongest they had ever been, and those that weren't perfect no longer plagued me, because my life had such meaning, such purpose. I was happy--the happiest I've ever been in my life, in fact. Even though nothing was in my control, really--there were, daily, new challenges in parenting and in my work--the framework seemed clear to me.

And then, I got the news--my father has cancer. I can't sort out how serious it is; I probably won't know for sure until I am able to see him, and I don't know when that will be. I want to be able to pour myself into helping him sort out all the details in the way I did the last time he was sick (that time, a serious mental illness that had caused him to stop eating and, eventually, led to his losing everything), but I can't--I do not have the time or the resources now that I have my own family. I am doing what I can from afar, but he is a stubborn man, and there isn't much I can do.

The last time, he landed on his feet, and now, he's happier than he's ever been--closer to me and my sister than ever before, in love with a woman who is perfect for him. It seems unfair somehow that he would end up sick at this time in his life, when he's finally got his mental illness under his control and is so, so happy. But life is not fair, does not always make sense, and, of course, I know this. It's just that for so long, probably for the longest period in my life up to this point, everything was making sense--so facing this uncertainty again is difficult, to say the least.

Meanwhile, S. has decided she's an atheist. I am not particularly alarmed by this; I have been an atheist at different times in my life, and nearly all my friends are atheists. It's startling, but not completely surprising, that she went from being an evangelical Christian to an atheist in six months--after all, she's finally, for the first time, allowed to think for herself, to be her own person. Still, I can't help but remember how, when we watched the Twin Cities Pride Parade together, she was horrified by the atheist contingency--much more so than the half-naked gay men dancing on top of a float to techno music or the drag queens. "It's just--well, it's just that it's a little too much for me," she'd said, and we'd had a long talk about accepting all people's beliefs, about how a loving God couldn't possibly reject a person over what that person believed, about how some of the most ethical people I know are atheists, how I had to believe God wanted us to live ethically and lovingly and cared more about our actions than our beliefs.

S. wants to learn about other religions, to take some time to think about what she believes--but in the meantime, she's OK with believing in nothing. We've talked about Jesus' teachings as teachings rather than some holy script that trumps all other texts; this is basically how I view them most of the time, though I do feel a mystery beyond the words there, a transcendence I can't fully write off--but she's not sure about this, either, until she's looked at other options. I am proud of her; this, like breaking up with her boyfriend, like starting to take her education seriously, shows she's beginning to believe in herself and in this new life.

Strangely, right before I found out about my father, right before S. made her announcement that she no longer wanted to pray together or to go to church, I found myself engaged in a series of deep conversations with friends about uncertainty. Similar conversations have continued into this week, all of them hanging together with this theme, though in the midst of talking, it was not clear that, duh, I was supposed to be paying attention, to be learning something. At least twice I tried to suggest a solution that seemed right, not realizing I was crossing a line until it was too late; the friends who were coming to me needed to be told it was OK to be uncertain, OK not to be sure, OK to...well, to do nothing, to simply wait.

S. has been going through a couple weeks of resistance and anger and frustration and low self-esteem. These emotions and actions have blended together so confusingly that it was not always clear how to respond--should I berate her for not getting her homework done, or should I praise her for how well completed the parts that were completed? When she overate to the point of getting sick one day, should I have focused on the natural consequences, the health risk, or attend to the emotions that were behind the overeating? Should I keep the bar high, insist she is capable of doing well in science, or should I talk to her gently about how it is OK not to be good at everything, give her a break? Should I be mad at the teacher for not challenging her enough, for talking down to her, or mad at her for taking advantage of this? I am never sure. With this most recent "two steps back," so many things that seemed clear to me are no longer clear.

I've also had to come face-to-face with some people I once deeply loved who are no longer in my life. Without going into too much detail, the encounters called into question many of the decisions I've made professionally and personally. And work has been hard; I took on some projects I knew would be professionally and politically challenging, would require careful navigation, and I'm starting to feel the exhaustion from the effort they are taking; I know I'm teetering between either throwing myself into them wholeheartedly, loving the challenge, or pulling away. My heart is fighting itself, and I'm facing self-doubt for the first time in awhile.

This weekend I had the great blessing of spending time with other poets--doing two readings back to back, getting breaks from S. during this challenging time. I loved it, but being with them made me realize how little time I actually spend writing. Just last week, I felt completely at peace about my decision to write more freely, and even felt that my work was the best it's ever been, but that I wanted to hold the poems, the sentences, close for awhile, see how they changed, what they became. A few conversations about the poetry biz and I was feeling inadequate, exhausted, frustrated again. That the work feels like a blessing is, right now, what is most important, even if there's less of it, even if its final resting place is no longer clear--but suddenly, I found myself wondering if I shouldn't be trying harder, setting aside more time, being more aggressive in sending out the work.

So, I've been doubting myself more, and feeling a little less centered. I know there are practical things I can do to get back to myself--writing here is one of them, and working out, and getting time alone--but I felt too exhausted to do them.

And then, today, everything changed.

For eight years now I've been leading a service-learning project at a nursing home. Students plan activities for the elders each week, record what happened, write a series of papers and found poems about the experience. The project matters to me; it is, as they say, my baby, but I'd gotten so busy administering it that it has been a long time since I've let myself simply sit in on a session. Today, I did. This was the first session with this new group of students. It was almost painful to watch them muddle through, shyly ask questions, to see the elders regard them with confusion and politeness--and then, in the end, something opened up.

Just before we left, one of the most resistant and quietest residents grabbed a John Deere tractor model and began to roll it around on the table, making tractor sounds, laughing at herself, at us. As we wheeled her back to her room, she said she couldn't wait for us to come back.

I thought about how the last two weeks have been like the first 30 minutes at the beginning of that session. I felt, suddenly, profoundly, out of sorts in my own body, my own home, my own life. I was sitting in a familiar room with familiar people--I knew these students, these elders, but somehow the conversation wasn't right, was stilted or stifled or--well, unnatural. My daughter was regressing, I was saying the wrong things to people who were seeking my help, I was having to face people with whom I had unfinished business. All the things I'd come to peace about--old breakups, old friendships, my writing, my teaching, my relationship with my father--were suddenly up for grabs again, no longer clearly planted in a framework that made sense. And then, suddenly, something turned--Doris began wheeling a little John Deere around the table, rediscovering some part of herself that was silly (and resilient), and there was a little laughter, a little lightness, and everything looked different.

I had a series of difficult meetings after that session, but the image of that toy tractor weaving in and out of our other props, zig zagging across the table, stayed with me. When I got home, S. and I walked the dog as usual, but I felt energized by the new chill in the air, the leaves turning, the bright sun. Home again, S's science tutor showed up only to learn that S. had not brought home her notes, would not be able to study for this test, didn't even know what the test was on. I felt my heart sinking--we'd had this battle over the weekend, I'd written to her teachers, her special education advocate--but somehow in the last 24 hours nothing had been resolved. Nobody knew where her paraprofessional's notes were, where her notes were. Nobody could tell me, or her, what the test was on. I was tired of being an advocate--I felt myself sinking into a funk when her tutor said, "We'll review what we did last time. Going over those concepts have got to help her somehow on this new test." And, of course, she was right. Two and 1/2 hours later, S. was ecstatic; she was finally getting it, she even remembered a little about what they'd covered in the last week! (I thought for a second, dejectedly, but she's two tests behind--but then I stopped myself. She was getting it! Maybe she would not fail after all! I felt the lightness again, the toy tractor's zig-zag path). When her tutor left, S. went right to her other homework, not complaining. She said, "I'm getting my confidence back."

Then I left for an hour to be there for a friend, and S. lost her motivation, didn't finish the last homework of the night; I got back and found her in the bathtub, where she'd been for over an hour, reading horse books. I got mad, she got mad, but in the end I said to her, "Let's stop here. You had a breakthrough in science. You got your chores done. Let's just...stop."

"I'll get up early and finish," she promised. She may not; another 0 in another class may cost her a solid C; but I need to teach her that sometimes we sacrifice one victory for another defeat, one priority for another one.

After tucking her in, I realized I was happy again. My life is back in its framework. I have the energy to write this. I can face the challenges.

Jesus once told a parable about two sons. Their father asked the first to do something for him, and he said yes, gladly, but didn't do it. The other said no at first, but eventually had a change of heart, completed the task. "Which one did what the father asked?" Jesus asks his listeners, a group of Pharisees who are trying to trap him with his own words. It is, of course, a rhetorical question, and the lesson seems obvious at first. Of course it's better to hesitate, then act out of integrity, than it is to claim a desire to act but never follow through.

But then, Jesus finishes the parable like this: "I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you." He was so tired of the Pharisees' lives, all words, no actions, about the way they avoided living squarely in the world, that he could barely contain his anger.

A friend of mine, when I was in the midst of the most uncertain time in my life--leaving a six-year relationship, starting over--gave me a magnet that says, "When you're going through hell, keep going." It's still on my refrigerator. I don't think I'm in hell exactly--just in a dark patch on an otherwise well-lit road. Sometimes I need to sit down and look around for awhile, get my bearings, stop hurrying. Sometimes I have to push through.

Seeing my father through this illness, seeing my child through her inconsistent motivation, her uncertain beliefs, is not going to be easy. But a commitment to a life that matters, that is larger than words, never is. In the end, the words need to reflect the life, and not the other way around, and maybe if I can remember this than all of my self-doubt about my writing, all of my angst about the past, will seem less important than simply sitting by the side of the road, or taking the next (uncertain) step.

Parapono

Sometimes, I can't sleep because I am haunted, suddenly, inexplicably, by an old memory--something I should have done differently, someone I should have treated differently. I will lie in bed and relive every detail--the woman I turned away some twelve years ago who so desperately wanted more than the casual fling we were having; the student who dropped out, the one I hardly noticed in my classes--reserved and detached, not a problem, but also not interesting, so I didn't bother to try to connect; the decision to miss this baptism, that wedding, at times when I felt disconnected from my family; the moment I signed for my first credit card, and the endless debt I grappled with as a result for much of my life. It's strange how real these memories can be, frought with the same emotions I had at the time, as well as the emotionality that would have been there if I'd known then what I know now. In reality, I signed the papers for that first card in the student center of my college without much thought, though I was excited, and a bit relieved, to have some way of getting more of the things I thought at the time I needed--but in the memory, I am trembling with terror and excitement all at once, as if I can see the damage this will do to my life but don't care, sign anyway.

I am having one of those nights. Someone I used to care about a great deal is going to jail for stealing a large sum of money. I helped put him there; although ultimately I didn't end up being called as a witness, I was on the list, I gave the police information; one might say (he would say, and has said) that I betrayed a friend.

This person was not who I believed him to be--and yet, in many ways, he was. I knew from our first conversation behind the closed door of my office, and in other conversations that happened over the next year, that he was broken in some fundamental way. When he talked about the pain of his childhood, he claimed to be "over it, ready to move on," but it was clear that he wasn't. Without going into too much detail, his pain ended up causing a whole lot of pain in a lot of people's lives.

But I never completely believed my instinct, and tonight, as I rehashed the history of our friendship, tossing and turning, I realized why: I see the same darknesses in myself; I am capable of the same dishonesty. No, I've never deceived or hurt people on the level he did, but didn't I, at times, like him, want to be noticed, special, loved, and haven't I done things I shouldn't have done to get those responses from others? Haven't I, at times, used people, cared for them for the wrong reasons and in the wrong ways, or called my feelings caring when they were something else, something much more selfish? I have needed money, desperately, though I've never stolen--but certainly I might have been capable of doing so if, by luck or blessing, I hadn't always fallen somehow back on my feet, even in the periods of my very worst debt. I haven't always been honest, with myself or others, about the truth of my life, the truth of my intentions or my actions.

A friend of mine, a novelist and deeply spiritual person, once said in a public forum that she thinks all of us are capable of the worst of sins, and if we don't believe that about ourselves we can't possibly be writers, can't possibly expect ourselves to love and nurture the dark intentions, the secret feelings, in our characters. At the time, I thought, she is so wrong--I am not capable of rape, or murder, or beating a partner or a child. But haven't we all been pushed to a limit that scared us, and haven't we all wondered what it was that held us back from going just that much further, becoming just that much uglier?

Last night I was drinking with a friend, undoubtedly to escape all of these feelings of guilt and regret and relief at the end of a very long, drawn out process that led eventually to my former friend's conviction. It was a stupid thing to do, but I did it anyway, fully knowing that with this particular friend, this is how the night would go--one bottle of wine, another, way past the limits we should have kept. I wanted to have conversations about nothing, or at least, conversations that had nothing to do with this long, dramatic narrative that kept turning in my head--but instead, the conversation circled somehow to what it meant to each of us to be spiritual, and his response, in no uncertain terms, was that being a person of God meant being humble, recognizing one's place. I disagreed at the time--humility is important, of course, I argued, but love of neighbor is surely what matters most, surely the only thing, in the end, that matters.

But tonight I am wondering if we might not have both been right. I must have expected, on some level, to love the pain out of my friend, that my unconditional friendship would heal this man who couldn't even understand the basic meaning of love of neighbor--don't steal, don't use. But, as with any realization, overthinking this one is terrifying--what does it mean for my daughter, who I know that on some level I'm trying to save, or for the students whose lives in the last month have fallen apart despite my best attempts to help--the ones who left because of unresolved grief, suicide attempts, mental illness? When a student leaves, it usually means that she is far from any influence I could realistically have on her, and that is of course terrifying to me, but only because I truly believe I can have an influence. What makes me so sure?

And so tonight I replayed those early conversations, when something seemed off, and wondered, of course, what would have happened if I had said, you are a dishonest person, so dishonest you can't even understand your own motivations. You need to get help.

Nothing would have changed, you're thinking. One person's intervention is never enough to turn around a life. But sometimes it is--I've been on both sides of that equation, when one conversation has changed me or another person enough to make us believe that there is some good and right force moving in the universe, powerful enough to create hope.

Or what if, later, I'd told him that others had come to me, overwhelmed with the pain that he'd caused them, and that I was angry? Instead, I simply withdrew from him, slowly untangling my life from his, not answering e-mails, not calling him back, not making eye contact when I saw him in town, not asking for his help with housesitting. Even when he tried to open a conversation, I didn't respond. By that point terrified--he was dangerous, he'd hurt people, including young women, and I had a daughter I didn't want him to get near.

So you traded unconditional love for a dishonest, hurtful, hurting person for the safety of your own child, you're thinking. That's what parents do. And you'd be right about that. My house cannot have the same open door it used to have. I have to be more watchful, careful. I have to step outside drama, at least enough so that it does not enter my home.

Oh, but it did. My daughter overheard conversations, arguments. She saw documents. She knew. And she was afraid, and also mesmerized, by him--paying attention always when he was nearby, even attempting to get close to him. She cared for the woman he was dating (and abusing); she wanted to get involved. But she also saw in him, even from afar, what so many hurting young women saw--a confidence, a kindness--the opposite of humility coupled with some strange version of love. It terrified me that my daughter saw this. It terrified me that I, at one time, had also seen it. It terrified me that it would not be hard for him to get her to...to what? To sleep with him? To drink with him? I don't know. Probably those weren't my fears, at least not tangibly. To love someone like him? That's probably closer.

That I once loved someone like him--an abusive woman I was with for about three years--and that I now love a child who has a history not unlike his, if the details of his childhood are true--these things also terrify me. That I misjudged--or at least didn't listen to my instincts--this also terrifies me.

There is a word in Greek that has no translation: parapono. When a person has one, it means she has a complaint--but that's not all there is to it. It is the kind of complaint that gets into the heart and keeps circling back, over and over, throughout one's life, the complaint that haunts, the complaint that seems somehow to color every interaction, every aspect, of one's life. Mine is that I didn't have a mother after age 13, that my father was absent or abusive or angry or suicidally depressed throughout my childhood.

I can say, as my friend did to me, that I am "over it," and in a way, this is true: I live a functional life, I have integrated these losses (with the help of therapy, reflection, etc.) into the whole fabric of my life's story. I know that my propensity to love people who are capable of hurting me deeply is a part of that story, born out of those griefs, and that I have to watch for this. I know that, born of the same grief, is my capacity for loving the innocent hurting, for wanting to help them (my daughter, some of my students) to find a way to integrate the pain of their childhoods into a life story that is hopeful, purposeful, forward-moving. People like me get into abusive relationships and get used and treated badly, but we also become adoptive parents or social workers or teachers of the hardest, least-reachable, least-success-bound students. Or we have ordinary jobs, but we pay attention to the small ways we can help even the most sane people to make their own beautifully, but not perfectly, quilted story. Our parapona circle over and over, and we live within the story.

That is the difference, I suppose: the desire to save the person who does not want to save himself vs. the desire to see, in the person most stuck, most clearly at the crossroads, the path of hope that is possible. Or, put a different way, it is the difference between trying to help the person who wants to BE his parapono vs. the person who is in a complicated, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes painful dance with hers. I understand, for instance, that my daughter's parapono will circle over and back, always new layers of pain, and then healing, with which to grapple. But fundamentally she wants to move forward; fundamentally, even in the moments or days or weeks when she does not, I have made a commitment to remind her of the forward steps she's taken, of her own possibility.

Is it possible that my former friend is stuck in some ugly, slightly more scary, version of his own parapono? I can't say. I do know it is not my place now, if it ever was, to help him find his way. I write that sentence and feel guilt, but it is true: he is stuck, I can't help until he at least turns a new direction, at least moves a new way.

I worry my friend will, upon his release, continue to wreck lives in even more dramatic ways. I think about the people in my daughter's life who did the same, over and over, and still don't feel any remorse, regret. It is hard to be on the receiving end of that kind of callousness--but it's also less satisfying than one might imagine to get a sincere apology. I remember my father giving me one such apology when, after a nervous breakdown, he was lying on the couch, starving himself--he said for the first time words a man with no humility had never said before, that he hadn't been a good father. When it gets to that point, we end up wanting to take it all back, all the anger and resentment and hatred we felt for so many years--or else we want to accept the apology wholeheartedly and just go on. Neither, of course, if truly possible. (My father and I are closer now than we ever were, than I'd ever imagined we'd be, but it was not because of his apology; he has hurt me since, he still lacks humility and judgment and the ability to see the past or present clearly--but I have changed. I have accepted him as he is, found a way to live with that reality. But I can do it only because there is geographic distance between us, because I'm an adult who has been through years of therapy and reflection).

Maybe at some point I'll feel as if this drama, and for that matter, this friend who, in the end, I knew briefly, at least in the scheme of my 37 years of life, doesn't matter so much after all. What is significant in the end is that this drama has made me look again at the way my parapono continues to play out in my life--to doubt myself and my instincts, but also, in the end, now that I've finished writing this, to trust myself. I did what I needed to do to keep my daughter safe, to keep myself safe. I did what I needed to do to have the energy required to be a teacher and parent and mentor to others who were on a different journey, who were working out their parapona in one way or another, grappling with them honestly. I, too, am grappling with mine honestly--and when I am not, I have the dual-tug of humility and love of neighbor and self to remind me of this.

When Jesus said we ought to love our neighbors as ourselves, there was this assumption that we held ourselves in high esteem and cared for ourselves already. And there was also, implicit in his statement, the humility to realize we, ourselves, are never at the center, that we're inextricably connected to everybody else. What we do with those two impulses in our day-to-day lives speaks to our integrity, as well as to our very real human capacity for failure.

I can go to bed now, finally!

Letting Go, Holding On

Today, S. let go of three distinct and important parts of her past all at once: she broke up with her boyfriend; she gave away ten bags of clothing, or 107 individual pieces (yes, we actually counted), all of which had been purchased and worn during and before her four years in foster care; and, she told me confidently and with certainty that she no longer wanted to move back to the state she is from.

Anyone who read that first paragraph is now thinking, “Wow, they had an amazing, life-changing day,” but they’d be wrong—-well, sort of. The day started out in a less-than-stellar way.

Church this morning was a nightmare. When S. came to live with me, I went back to the church I’d attended a year or so earlier, before I'd had a big falling-out with more than half the parishioners about whether the church ought to be open and affirming to GLBT people. (I wrote about this at length on this blog awhile back). It was a hard decision, but she had been attending an Evangelical church and believed that anyone who was pro-choice or believed in evolution was going to hell. I had to do something, and the church, I was confident, despite all its flaws, would at least help her see that there were other ways to be a Christian.

It was painful going back—-I wept through the first two services—-but then it became easy, because I had no expectations. I wasn’t bitter that the minister and parishioners were not reaching out to me in the way my church family might have done as a child; I wasn’t even bitter when the minister stared aghast at S. when she tried to strike up a conversation, when she answered nervously, backing away. In fact, S. and I simply joked about it—-then kept going. I didn’t care anymore if I didn’t agree with every word the minister said—-though to her credit, she did surprise me, talking about GLBT issues from the pulpit the Sunday we returned, posting signs welcoming “families of all shapes and sizes” and “GLBT people.” It was her way, I think, of trying to make things right between us, of telling me we were welcome, even though she couldn’t reach out in a more meaningful way.

Summer came and went, and we took a long, lazy, sleep-in-every-Sunday morning church hiatus. I decided I wasn’t going to push it; we do devotions on our own, and I’m able to teach her my very liberal understanding of the Gospel--but S. expressed an interest in going back this week, and so we did.

As we got out of the car, she was carrying her sketchbook and a pencil. I asked her to put it back, explaining patiently that it might distract others from the service, and that it would be impossible for her to participate with it sight. She responded, and I quote, “fuck you.” It had been a long time since she’d blown up so quickly, so I was taken aback. “What is this about?” I wanted to know, to which she responded, “Why should I have to pay attention? God never did anything for me.”

Well, no shit. If you believe in the God of the Evangelicals, some kind of magic punisher-god who can work miracles but also punishes evildoers with things like AIDS and 9-11, then it’s hard to imagine how that God could possibly allow a kid to be abused as badly as she was without stepping in. “God hates me,” she added, “And I hate him.”

“Well, then, let’s just go home,” I said. “I thought you wanted to come. I don’t need to be here. We can talk about this and God and whatever you want to talk about better at home.”

But she stomped into church, determined to make a scene. An elderly woman I love dearly was greeting everyone at the door. “I thought you’d left us again!” she exclaimed, reaching out to hug us, but S. stomped by her, right up the minister.
“God never did anything for me,” she told the minister, stomping her foot. Now, this minister is a kind woman, but she’s also completely socially inept. One of my many issues with the church is how she couldn’t and wouldn’t reach out to me in the hardest moments of the fight over becoming an “open and affirming” congregation. When I told her about the adoption, she’d asked whether S. had had a hard life and whether she was white-—she is not, shall we say, someone I consider in the top 10 or 30 or even 150 people in my support system. So, I didn’t expect any help, and she didn’t give me any-—she just stared, open-mouthed, while I said to S., “Let’s just go in and sit down and see how things go.”

We sat in back so I could make a quick escape and so that S.’s behavior wouldn’t be distracting to anyone else. But S. spotted her godmother in the front row and went right to her and sat down, glaring back at me. I stayed in my seat until it was time to greet others, at which point I moved, and S. said, loudly, “But I hate you!”

“I know,” I responded, “But you’ll get over it.” A couple people sitting near us giggled, giving me looks that said, we've been through this before. I’d promised myself from the beginning that I was never going to let myself be embarrassed by S., because her former foster family was, frequently, and she used this to her advantage, acting out whenever possible in order to heighten their reaction. I didn’t want to play that game, so I simply relaxed and tried to pay attention.

Which was hard, because for about the first half hour of the service, S. pinched me over and over again, whispered irritating things about how much she hated both me and God into my ear. I ignored her. But by the end of the service, she had her arm around me and was singing with me, leaning into me, swaying side by side. She whispered, “I love you, Mom, I’m sorry,” at one point, and kissed me on the cheek. Perhaps she thought if she became a sweet, loving kid in the last half hour of the service I’d forget everything she’d done.

Of course, I couldn’t let this slip, as much as I secretly wanted to do so. Getting through her consequences this time was frustrating for both of us, to say the least. I asked her to list what she thought she’d done wrong, but she refused. Finally I listed each thing on a different piece of paper and asked her to write in response to four questions: how could she have found a better way to talk about her frustration with God; how could she have controlled her words and actions when she got angry at me; how could she learn to listen when I ask her to do something that is reasonable; how could she treat other people more respectfully. She enjoyed this, writing things like “I could have punched mom instead of just telling her to fuck off” and “I could have stood up in church and given a testimony about how much I hate God,” etc. Finally, after a good half hour of this, she said, “The F’s (her former foster family) just made me copy sentences from the Bible and clean my room. Why does this have to be so HARD?”

“You want to copy sentences?” I said. “I can give you a sentence to copy, if that’s what you’d rather do.” I gave her Proverb 12:1: “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid.” This was a big hit. “You’re calling me STUPID? You’re going to make me copy something that says I’m STUPID? I’m telling the social workers you called me STUPID.”

“Either you can copy this or you can answer the questions seriously this time,” I said, and so she went back to the questions. We then talked for what seemed like forever about each question, went through the entire episode, talked about what she could have done differently at each step of the way. We also talked about being angry at God, and I told her I barely believed there was a God for a good ten years of my life, because how could God have taken my mother, allowed wars and genocide, made my father into the crazy man he was during my childhood? She nodded. I told her I’d come to the conclusion that God loved and trusted us so much that God thought we should run the show—or else God didn’t have as much power as so many people think God does. I didn’t know which, and I didn’t care. “Either way,” I said, “your parents really, really fucked up,” I said, “and sometimes I fuck up, and sometimes you do. And sometimes the fucking up gets so big that we can’t even fathom it, like it is in Iraq right now. And I just think that if there is a God then God is weeping furiously, so sad that this is all happening this way. But also I think God is happy when we do the right thing, make some change, big or small, in this fucked up world.”

“I think that makes sense,” she said. “I just have to figure out if I believe in the same God you do.”

“You can believe whatever you want,” I said, “but one thing I know for sure is I think God can take your anger and disbelief and whatever else you feel. The minister might look a little confused or shocked”—at this she giggled, likely remembering the grey-haired woman who stared at her like she was an alien earlier that morning—“but God doesn’t really care what you believe or how you feel about God. God only cares what you do, and wants you to act in a loving way and to make as many good changes in the world as you can.”

Right after that, S. cleaned out her closet, getting rid of ten garbage bags of clothing and toys she no longer needed. This was huge, because her belongings have perhaps been even more problematic than her long-distance boyfriend. Although she doesn’t need to talk to them at bedtime on the nights I most need my sleep, only to end up weeping in my bedroom, they are always falling to the floor and getting dragged around the house by the animals, a constant reminder of the difference in the values of her previous foster home and our home. Her previous foster parents refused to do family counseling, wouldn’t give her the horse or singing or dancing lessons she wanted, didn’t help her with homework, laughed at her when she said she wanted to try out for the school play and go to college, told her she’d never be brave enough to get on a horse. But they bought her anything she asked for—toys for much younger children, more clothes than any child should have—perhaps in an attempt to show they were using the foster care check for her benefit in some way at least. In contrast, I at least attempt to live simply, and the pleasures I allow myself all have to do with people rather than things (weekends away, dinners out, books—ok, books are things, but you get my point). S. and I argue about consumerism almost every week. It has taken her months to understand that the things art lessons and mentors and horse lessons are more valuable by far.

When I suggested she might give some of her belongings away the first time, soon
after her move, she lamented, “You don’t understand. You didn’t get torn away from everything familiar.” I realized then that she saved everything, horded things, always concerned about what she might lose if she didn’t hold on. But now there are more empty hangers than clothes, and her room is tidy for the first time since she arrived. She can throw away a balloon or an empty bottle of perfume without somehow feeling she’s throwing away a memory, a part of herself. The front entryway is full of garbage bags awaiting their trip to the Salvation Army. Progress.

Soon after the closet-cleaning, we took the dog on a long walk along a bike path that meanders along a river, brushing up against what we jokingly call the suburbs, small allotments of rather large homes that are new and not in the center of town. She confessed that she liked a boy who lived in this neighborhood, pretending to be coy about who he was, but it didn’t take long before I knew every detail, though the story was followed with “but I really don’t want to talk to you about this; I want to talk to J” (her college buddy). I thought about saying, but you already told me everything—but I didn’t.

In the past, her boundaries with boys she liked were confused and confusing to say the least. With at least one boy, she’d bothered him aggressively and inappropriately enough that his mother had called the school to complain. “But I’m not that girl anymore,” she told me when we talked about boundaries, about how to handle this crush in a different way—and she is right, of course.

On that walk, she told me, offhandedly, that she planned to break up with her long-distance boyfriend “once and for all.” It’s not just about this other boy,” she told me. “I just don’t feel it anymore. I’m a different person, more mature. He can’t have a real conversation. All he does is play video games and make jokes about boobs.”

“Yeah, those aren’t good qualities in a guy,” I joked, but she was serious, and a little sad.

“I thought I was going to marry him, Mom,” she said. “I can’t believe I ever thought that.”

I didn’t say anything. The dog sniffed at S.’s ankle, randomly, then leapt forward, and she started to run, shouting, “Where are you taking me, you little mutt?” She slowed down, out of breath, and said, offhandedly, “I love my life here, and I love you. You know how I said I wanted to go back to where I’m from? Well, I don’t anymore. I think I’d rather just go to college here, where I can have a horse.” She was quiet for a minute, then added, “and where I can be close to you, and to my home.”

I wanted to weep, but I didn’t. I was speechless. Finally, I said, “That would make me very happy. It’s convenient when the things that would make me happy also make you happy, isn’t it?”

I didn’t let myself think about how hard it will be for her to get into the college where I teach. I wanted to stay in the moment. As if she could read my mind, she said, “I’m not stupid. I don’t think it would be easy.”

Just as she was getting that sentence out, we passed a man I know as he was carting the last of the garden tomatoes from his garden to the house in a giant, red wheelbarrow. He waved; I waved back. “I need to get home and do the same thing,” I said, and he smiled, nodded.

Suddenly, and randomly, I remembered a speaker at a conference I’d attended this summer for parents and teachers of special needs kids. (The fact that the sight of a red wheelbarrow made me think of this speaker and not of William Carlos Williams is perhaps the most tangible testament to date to the evolution of my primary identity from poet to parent). The speaker was the opening motivational speaker, not one of the theorists or practitioners in the “real” sessions, so I was barely listening at first. But he said something that was hard to forget, perhaps because I tend to think in image and metaphor. (The next day, I shared the story with S). He’d said that parenting, or teaching, was like pushing a wheelbarrow across a thin rope, strung between two buildings, the child’s past and the child’s future. “It would be possible,” he’d insisted, “to walk such a tightrope with a wheelbarrow—that’s what the front wheel is for, for balancing.” And then he talked about kids he knew, kids not unlike S., who’d been knocked out of the wheelbarrow or never gotten into it in the first place. At the end of each story, he’s ask, “Do you have room for John in your wheelbarrow? For Carlos? For Suzette?” and he’d want us, a bunch of timid parent-teacher types, to shout out, “yes!”—which we did, good little students that we all were in our earlier lives, though without much enthusiasm.

All of this ran through my mind quickly. I said nothing to Lisa, just sighed.

Later, as I was putting her to sleep, she showed me a note she was going to give her crush, which included the line, “I really, really like you, more than just a friend, but if you don’t feel the same way I guess I’ll live with it.” Progress, to be sure, but still, not exactly the kind of note I wanted my 15-year-old kid to give another 15-year-old whose last name she wasn’t sure of. I talked her out of giving it to him until she’d learned at least five more significant things about him; I said if she did that, and still decided she wanted to give him the note, then we could talk about it. “That will take only five days,” she promised me, confident, but then she added, “thanks for not letting me make an ass of myself.”

I sang her a Greek song, which is her favorite way of falling asleep. Just before she drifted off, the dog lying beside her, breathing into her face, the cat curled up on her tummy, she said, “I almost fell out of the wheelbarrow today, but you caught me.”

“What made you think of that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“Was it that man we saw in his garden?”

“What man?”

We were quiet for a minute. “We had a bad start, but it was a good day in the end, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.” She turned over, and the dog started and jumped into my arms, and the cat slid off her body lazily and curled against her side. I set the dog down, and we nuzzled against her back.

"I’ll always catch you,” I whispered, running a finger across her forehead.

“I know,” she whispered back.

Wind

Today, on the last official day of summer, S. and I go to the beach. We are two of only about eight people there, and there is a good reason: it is windy. And when I say windy, I'm talking about a kind of wind that people who aren't from the prairie can't fathom.

I lie on the beach, trying to finish a book of poetry, but the sand kicking up against my skin is seriously and strangely painful. I can feel it in my eardrums, in my mouth, against my side, little stinging daggers of pain. The waves are high, and when I try to float on my back, I swallow water, breathe water, squirm to get back up. The water, the wind, reminds me of Ikaria, and for a second I am homesick for that island where I have never lived, and then, I daydream briefly of taking S. there, something we've planned for next year, how it will go, what particular challenges might arise, what it will be like to show her another place, other people, that matter to me. Briefly, I feel grief for all of her places and people that I will never see, never know--foster homes, biological home--I can only imagine these spaces and people as they come to life in stories, most of them painful, tragic.

But today is about celebration. We've cleaned the house, carefully packed her school bag, picked out her first day outfit, talked over her fears about her ninth grade year. And now we're off, driving across the prairie toward a beach we know well in a neighboring town, hoping we won't encounter lake itch signs this time--and we don't.

When sunbathing proves to be too painful, we try sitting in the water and building a castle, but the waves take it, lapping it up the way our hungry dog will eat his dinner. So we dive in, swimming against the current, S. holding onto me out of some kind of primal fear, but I am not afraid of water, of waves. I get her to stand up with me and we link arms and the waves hit us, belly, chest, and she shrieks and laughs, and I try to remember all the stories I know about wind, stories from my own life and stories from the Bible and stories from the old Greek myths we learned as kids in Greek school--but I'm blank, I have only this moment and my daughter's shriek and the pure joy of being in the sun, tanned and sandy.

But before this, last week, there was a hearing that threatened to take her away--it wasn't going to happen, I knew that all along, but her biological mother would be in a room with the three people who had been on her case the longest--attorney, guardian ad litem, social worker--all of them negotiating with a woman who wanted her back. All of them trying to convince her, and the judge, that she shouldn't keep pushing this complaint: that somehow, her daughter had been stolen from her, the story confused, the reasons untrue.

I now know the tug of mother-love. Do I think I'm the perfect parent for S? I wouldn't venture to guess, though if you asked the question another way, is she the perfect daughter for me, the answer is definitely yes. If you asked whether she's better off with me than in any of the places she's been before, that's a yes, also, no doubt. If you ask me what I'd do if someone tried to hurt her, or take her away--the things that come to mind are scary, crazy-scary, so I can't totally write off this abusive woman who made my daughter's life hell during her first ten years of life. I know her story now, too, her losses, the pain of her own childhood, I see how cycles go on and on, how families don't change unless something shakes them up. I also know the capacity of love, broken as it may be, the desire to keep a child close.

My father is awaiting results from mysterious medical tests he can't explain to me that are delaying his return to Ikaria, where he lives for at least half the year with his sweetheart. He's sick, he says, a spot in his lung, some blood, but he can't get into details. Here we are again: four years ago, or was it five?--he had a nervous breakdown, and there was a dance to do, trips to Ohio, conversations with doctors and lawyers who didn't know for sure if they were supposed to be talking to me. Somehow, as always, he survived, reconnected with his high school sweetheart, went on with his life. Somehow, he also managed, in a quiet moment on a drive during one of my visits to see yet another doctor, to tell me he was sorry for all of the years before, for everything he'd done. He didn't have to be specific. I went home more sure of who I was, what I wanted, and for the first time, I thought, maybe I could be a parent. Maybe the fact that I have the father I have doesn't necessarily mean I'll fuck it up.

But I got off topic there: I meant to say that somehow my father evolved from an angry, abusive, massive, scary man to a bone-skinny, weeping, boy-man who lay, suicidal, on the couch in the living room of the home where I grew up--and from that to a potbellied elder living in a low-income apartment, having lost everything--his business, his home--but having found love. He is perhaps happier now than he's ever been.

My father is nothing if not dramatic, but tonight he delivered this news of a potential health threat, of his delayed leave from Ohio, easily, without overwrought emotion. He was simply going to wait to find out what the doctors thought he should do next, and he would let me know.

My friends who adopted three beautiful children out of foster care recently learned their daugher had a new biological sibling. When asked if they wanted this baby, addicted to drugs, in intensive care in the hospital, they said, immediately, yes. They visited regularly, began to receive gifts from friends, the carseat, the high chair; they were ready. And now the tide has turned: this addition to the family may not happen; someone else has stepped forward, claiming a biological connection my friends can't claim. Oh, the grief of it, and yet they go on. Most recently, they sent an e-mail to friends about their children's upcoming first day of school.

My daughter, whom I'd called to the computer to read their blog, not knowing the news we would discover, said, incredulously, "How could they take this baby away and give it to someone in the family? Don't they know that bad families stay bad?" Her tone sounded exactly as it had when, a few days earlier, I'd told her that her biological mother was insisting on continuing to pursue her right to parent S. if S. did not agree to some contact. "But I want to keep my good grades, my good life!" she exclaimed. "I don't want any more of her crazy letters!"

There is plenty of grief and fear in the world. We sit on the sidelines and watch our children get sucked into it all (at best), or, at worst, we watch them slip away from us. The ending to our story is better than my friends', so much so that I hesitated to share our news with them, though of course I did. We agreed to a stupid p.o. box to which S's biological mother can send letters, which S. claims she'll never check, which we can close when S. turns 18. But, she said, "What if I'm tempted to look in it? What makes them think this is a good thing?" The "them" could be anyone--judge, attorneys, the whole social system that had messed up her life. "What makes them think this is a good thing?" she asked again, the question ringing over and over in my mind the rest of the week.

You can read the letters, I tell her, if you want to, when you're ready, when we're sure you're strong enough--but as I say these words I remember how I threw up when reading the letters her biological mother had sent her, pages and pages that added up to "you caused your own abuse" and "don't blame me" and "you're my princess, I love you more than anyone else ever could love you." S. herself would read them, weep, lash out, try to talk to people who didn't want to listen, talk to her therapist, write back (sometimes), get through the days or weeks until the next letter came. This was her life, dictated by these letters, which she longed for and dreaded, the mother-love deeply rooted, deeply flawed. (Even now, I will catch her sometimes re-reading them, or looking at old photos, though she's covered her mother's eyes in some of them, though she says, over and over, "You're the only real mother I've ever had.")

"You have to protect her," my aunt who raised me said. "That's your job." And she's right. But I can't protect this child from the box sitting there, filling with letters, that she'll now be tempted to read. I can't protect her from the past, how it comes back swiftly and painfully, a face, the sound of someone's voice, a book she reads.

Or her fears: rape, beatings, raised voices, tornadoes, pregnancy (longed for and feared, all at once).

But in the end, on Labor Day, almost five months to the day after she moved in with me, she'll lie down in the water and let the waves take her, bouncing her here and there, and I'll do the same, and we'll both laugh hysterically, and the other eight or so people on the beach will stare.

"Don't worry, we're not going to drown!" my daughter shouts out to anyone who's listening. "We're both strong swimmers." Sher turns to me then, adds, "Well, you are, anyway. And I'm right beside you."

Later we rebuild the castle until it's strong enough to stand the waves, and then we leave, go home, have supper, get ready for bed. Take in the day's bad news: the fates of those we love, suddenly unclear. We wonder how to feel about the clarity in our own lives--we can finalize the adoption now that the biological mother has agreed to this settlement; we'll be together forever, in one way or another--but how to process this good news when the people we love are up against such deep uncertainty?

"I sure hope Obama wins," S. says sleepily right after the last kiss goodnight. "I sure hope things get better, especially for kids like me. It's good that he mentioned kids in his speech, and gay people, isn't it, mom? And good that his vice-president wrote that bill against violence."

She's said this before, last night, in fact, but this time, I look her in the eyes and say, more attentively, "Yes, it's a good thing."

"I sure hope Obama wins, and that Papou's OK, and that K and S's baby gets back to them somehow," she adds, drifting off. And then, she stirs: "That wind, that was so..." but there's no word for it, really. "We had fun, didn't we?" she says, but she's asleep before she hears my whispered, "Yes, we did."