It was Texas-July hot, with no chance of rain when, for reasons beyond the ken of ordinary foster moms, the air was filled with a host of juvenile butterflies. Tender and small, their origami wings beat the air, carrying some insistent message.
Perhaps about how fragile we are
Or how only God knows
how to bring the rain.
Scientists (at least the social ones) love to navel gaze at the belly buttons of the religious.
I get it. We are a messy, heterogeneous bunch. As I get older I get less and less religious but more and more convinced in the power of the God of Love.
Take this week for instance. This week we threw our all at trying to save a litter of kittens from panleukopenia.
Wrenching.
When my children poured out their grief in each loss they said, I just want them to know that I love them. I just want her to know I love her. I just want him to know I love him. Or directly to the dead–
I just want you to know I love you.
When you believe in a compassionate, omnipotent God, getting love notes to kittens is no biggie. He keeps what we have committed to Him against that Day.
Even if the day is Friday.
Even if you thought the last one might make it through.
Even if the patient weighs less than a pound.
Impending demise might make some pragmatic, other it pushes on to say, no matter what
I love you
On earth as it is in heaven.
I believe in regrief. I believe you and I will continue to regrieve the death of your mother. Recently we lost all four of our kittens to a fast moving, devastating affliction. In a week we went from joyful to devastated.
And I regrieved, the way I lost them reminding me of the way I lost you. The pain of one overshadowed by the pain of the other–even after 20 years.
Both griefs were characterized by my naive belief in the authorities in each case–the judge, the caseworkers, the lawyers for the lost daughters, the veterinarians for the kittens.
In your case I discovered that the entire system all the way to the state regulators was riddled with greed, prejudice, and corruption. You and your siblings were sold or bartered in exchange for federal subsidies for your care. Your adopted father had not only abandoned his first family, he had placed all of his assets in your adopted mother’s name to dodge child support. At one point he faced a jail sentence for failure to pay child support for his children. Things which should have hindered his ability to adopt you.
And the kittens?
Their veterinary clinic was indifferent, too busy. They were not seen in time. I could not get them any help until I found another vet, and by that time it was too late.
So in the midst of grieving for the lost kittens, I grieve for you as well–you and your siblings, you and your beautiful mother.
She had no chance in the rigged system. She had no chance but me.
And I was not nearly enough.
Years after I first met M and C a little boy who I love more than the sky read The Cat and the Hat and expressed appropriate alarm over the treatment of Thing One and Thing Two–but they are children! He emoted.
Yes, Darling, there are many things about this story which trouble me also.
The first time I met M and C they burst through the door to the CPS waiting room. M was talking her usual mile-per-minute and both were whirling balls of energy. They went directly to the pastel plastic playhouse in the corner of the room and they reminded me of Thing One and Thing Two.
I wonder if anyone else wonders what happened to Thing One and Thing Two when they were all grown up?
Adopted mom–denizen of the ordinary. Ordinary tea, ordinary clothes, ordinary mulch, overgrown flower beds. Scans the sky for rain. Rattles around in the-used-to-be marveling at how things have not turned out as expected.
To be clear you are all grown up now and living somewhere as I try yet again to excise what you have done to us all from pictures of beautiful children.
You were
You are a dangerous male child
But what you will be
Is mountains told to throw themselves
Into the Sea.
Mark 11:22-23 NIV
[22] “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. [23] “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.
Nine years ago I sat in a ob-gyn office looking at a pamphlet on domestic violence. I thought my partner is not the problem, but I am a domestic violence victim nonetheless.
During that pregnancy my adopted daughter kicked me in the stomach. During those years she subjected me to verbal abuse, kicked, punched, and hit me. We called doctors, the police, mental hospitals. Her anger was explosive and violent, but nothing she has ever done is worse than the things her brother did in secrecy.
Back then I did research. There was no support or process for parents attempting to pursue legal avenues of protection against abusive children.
I persisted. I attempted to get her charged with assault. I asked the police to take pictures of the marks she left.
They told me she was too mentally ill to be incarcerated. They told me to tie her up.
Juvenile court dropped the charges.
When I look back to the long-ago beginnings of my relationship with these two very broken people I see that their violence defined the relationship throughout. When young children with stories of neglect and abuse act out we may think there are solutions for caregivers in consistency, therapy, research, and time.
Maybe.
I never found those solutions. I found that their problems were bigger than us all, that I was lucky to have survived at all. Despite all our good intentions the advice I wish someone had given me twenty years ago—
Run fast, run far.
Over my shoulder I hear the PBS lady tell my sons about blizzards, how they are just snow storms unless the wind is strong and fast. Here in Texas we have driving rain, not driven snow, and it is the percussive light which wakes the dogs in the night. Poised for a fight. Hurricanes have the eyes of Quint’s soulless sharks as they roll across the landscape of childhood and wakefulness I will momentarily regret the home I left in fear. Regret what I did not leave there. Regret what I did, but not the winds. The winds around the eye, the deceptively calm eye, of every storm that changes the landscape
Of who we once were.
This started as a break up but ended with old friend, Wakefulness here in the dark, in the storm
It was a dark and stormy night! But it was the dogs that kept me up
Dogs of the past
Dogs of war
That dog whose name* I can’t remember who re-enacted classics like The Prince and the Pauper.
When names and sleep elude you, there are sheep. They start out chalky, outlined, and two dimensional, but they elaborate
In depth, complexity, and general fluffiness, but also about the weather, dogs barking at night, and all the ways it was and wasn’t my fault this chance we took hurt so much.
*Wishbone
She storms in the kitchen finding bits of things to stop her mouth, wish it could stop the words spilling out. How could so many well-dressed people have their heads so firmly wedged up their
Freezing asses?
Fists should swing toward imaginary foes while the real ones all live among us, work at Walmart, never liked that effing little dog.
Carrying Light 