Category Archives: radical attachment disorder

The Author Begins…

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C’mon, said Cowboy, our favorite show, Truck Pull and Lobster Dance is on.
Honey barely heard him. She was transfixed by the illustrations in the odd little book. It was not immediately apparent who was writing the book or who was the intended audience, other than that both appeared to be parents or adoptive parents of some sort.

The prose swung between terse and floral. One page had a step by step guide to nursing and the next had a lullaby about a mother rocking her child during a storm.

Sometimes it did not seem like either the author or the reader was assumed to be human. There were, after all, ornate illustrations of a dragon in a floral apron with a fat little baby in her stubby forearms. His stubby forearms?

And sometimes the dragon was visited by a nanny goat.

All very strange….

Treasure in the snow

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Cowboy and Honey Bunch trudged through the snow. They had a couple bags of groceries nestled in their arms. HB was still quite rotund with child and chafing for a delivery process that would be a bit more challenging than cable tv.

A bit of gold glinted in the driven snow. Cowboy pulled at the corner of a gilded manuscript. It said Nurturing Sunshine in ornate calligraphy on its cover.

Hey! This looks valuable, he said. I wonder if it got lost or stolen from the university library? Or maybe the Jesuits, mused Honey.

I bet it is valuable. They said together. Jinx! Shouted Honey. Cowboy squinted at her with annoyance until she laughingly said his name. Strange that the big rules of the universe were made to be broken, but jinx was sacrosanct.

Something about the book drew Honey. She knew they needed money, but she did not want to let this book go right away. It looked magical.

It’s so cold, she pouted. I want to go home. Let’s read it first, we can take it to E-Z Cash later.

Cowboy grudgingly agreed.

When they got home and began to unthaw Honey Bunch gingerly opened. The book. It’s lettering was ornate and there were a lot of cherub-y illustrations but the book seemed to be a book of lists interspersed with stories. The stories had intricate little illustrations. The lists seemed surprisingly bossy.

Entertaining Angels

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The sheer mind-bending stress of being your foster mom led to iconic images lodged in my head–

You two sitting across the table from me the first day I met you. Sizing me up over peanut butter sandwiches.

You eyeing your brother suspiciously. A lot.

You waking up one night when he woke up screaming (night terrrors) and looking at him with sleepy exasperation and then flopping down in relief when I scooped him up and took him to another room to ride out the storm–your body language was not my problem, back to sleep.

One night when you were ready for bed in your winter jammies. Your hair curly and adorable. I tickled you and you giggled, for a rare moment of laughter and peace.

You can be angry at me all you want. But you can’t stop love.

Your other mom

Surviving the Perfect Storm

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I went to Cape May once, Atlantic City twice, New York City a handful of times. Places of national iconic memory as well as personal.

I have also survived hurricanes. I know about their massive deadly power, the way they stir the sea. When you are waiting for a hurricane you pray two prayers–God, keep people safe and God, not us.

Most people don’t like to admit to the second one. It is a selfish prayer, a prayer of survival.

I think of the Krims. Their perfect storm was providing kindness to a stranger they thought they knew. The waters will recede, cleanup will restore the streets of New York, but each minute of each day will be a terrible hurricane of loss for an ordinary American family.

My prayers remain, just as I pray for all those who struggle to survive the violence of loss, another kind of fierce and deadly storm.

Super Powers

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Isaiah 27:1 (NIV)
In that day, the Lord will punish with his sword, his fierce, great and powerful sword, Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea.

No, it is the child
Raised in a shambled house
With the dark monsters of uncertainty
Humorless play fellows

I want to say
Promise me
You will not hurt
This living child
This eternal being
Already bound
For sorrow

Politics, truth and what really matters..

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So. I think of myself as one if the 100 most disenfranchised people in the United States. Why? Because I vote.
And because when I have contacted elected officials about our growing need to protect our children they tell me that protecting our children is not their issue

Let me rephrase that: local and national elected officials who have responded to my concern about protecting children from pedophiles have said they won’t help me because it is “not” their “issue”

I used to think it was everyone’s issue.

I keep thinking–this is an election year, shouldn’t someone care?

So the Akin thing forced me to study up on the politics and what I found was interesting.

Akin was wrong–really, really wrong, but to what end?

He was trying to save babies. He meets his political downfall because he crossed a line in trying to prevent murder, mass murder.

The ends do not justify the means. His strong desire to save babies from elective abortion does not make what he said right…

but a bit of contextualization never hurt anyone.

Rape is rape, but the strange wording and semantic crash for Akin came because he was trying to legally address something that is known, practiced and acknowledged in obstetrics–doctors can call a lot of things the way they want to. Many doctors are already allowing or referring for elective abortions to minimize their risk of law suits if parents deem their child imperfect.

Akin is 50 steps ahead of a 50 year old game, but what he was discussing when he got caught out was the notion that a baby would be valuable even if she were the child of a rapist or child molester.

Ironically, another recent flurry of outrage occurred over a pregnant teen in the DR who was not permitted to abort her fetus so she could receive cancer treatment.

I thought it was interesting that no one thought to question why a girl of 13 or 14 was pregnant and how old exactly was the father?

Akin was wrong and he will pay for his verbal gaffe. But we all pay an unacceptable price if we laugh at the “rape rape” without asking how we can help the young victims of rape by providing healing, safety, comfort, advocacy and a voice–not a brutal medical death to a second innocent child when the first has endured too much.

Quotidian

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There is a point in the cycle of loss when people come up for air. The tragedy at the heart of the universe is still there but there is the small hope that words may matter, when so much has been lost.

I tell one child to look up reactive attachment disorder and describe to the other the symptoms of borderline personality disorder.

I am leery of words. How do you describe the damage to a baby or a child of rootlessness and hunger and a world of cold loneliness punctuated by chaos and violence?

I hate what he did to the point of wishing with all my heart that I could unspool his childhood to the day he was born and undo the damage, hold and feed the wee baby to prevent the hours and days and years of pain he will inflict on others.

He has inflicted on us.

Only God can breathe life into the dead.