Say Thank You

75% of the kids and 50% of the grandkids – Mother’s Day 2012

In the adoption world, it’s not cool for a parent to think that her kids should be grateful.  When strangers come up and coo about how lucky your kids are to have you as their mom, you’re supposed to say, “Oh no, I’M the lucky one.” This is a conversation that takes place when adopted kids are really little, typically sitting in the grocery cart in the check-out line, looking so obviously adopted and cute beyond words.  It’s then that the lady in the next line who’s been eyeing you up and down the cereal aisle lets loose with what she’s thinking.  First, it’s “where are they from?’ and then it’s “they’re so lucky to have you.”

At that point, when the kids still fit in the grocery cart, an adoptive mom is grateful beyond all possible words.  In that moment, it’s true that the gratitude flows from her to them.  The adopted children made her a mother or made her more of a mother or fulfilled something, stilled a yearning, made her worthwhile.

When they are little, there’s no question that expecting them to feel gratitude for being adopted is crazy.  They didn’t asked to be orphaned nor did they choose to be adopted.  For my kids, being adopted also meant leaving their country and their culture.  They lost a lot that could never be recovered.

But the equation figures differently now that they’re grown.  And never did I feel that more than on Mother’s Day.  On that day and in conversations at other times, I’ve felt a deep shift in our relationship. Where sometimes I’ve felt their blame, their anger, and their deep unanswerable longing for their original parents – a ‘hunger of memory’ that an adoptive parent cannot satisfy no matter what she does – on Mother’s Day, I felt their gratitude.  And I should.  I earned it.  They should be grateful.  Raising them was really hard.

It makes me happy that we have gotten to the point where we can be grateful to each other.

It changes everything and changes nothing.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Rainbow Lodge After the Fire

There are few things as strange as having your place burn down.  I know this.  It happened to us.  Yesterday, it happened to the people who own Rainbow Lodge, the motel deep in the deep of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the place on the fabled Two-Hearted River where ordinary Joes could feel like Hemingway for a day. The Duck Lake Fire had overcome Rainbow Lodge and it was gone.  Just plain gone.

Today we drove out H-58 east of Grand Marais, MI, to take our dogs for a walk in the forest and we saw the sign for Rainbow Lodge – Rent Canoes on the Big Two-Hearted River – 33 Miles. Every time I see the sign I think of Hemingway’s alter ego Nick Adams getting off the train in Seney and hiking all those miles with his knapsack full of cans of pork and beans.  I don’t think Hemingway really hiked all that way - I think he just liked the name – Two-Hearted River.  I think he really went fishing in the Fox River, but does it matter?

Big Two-Hearted River at Lake Superior

Rainbow Lodge wasn’t fancy.  Don’t think it was a big, beautiful log cabin with stoked fireplaces and glittering candles.  I never stayed there but it looked to me like a typical U.P. place which mostly means neat and clean shelter.  Thin walls, double beds with sensible bedspreads, big, fat TV’s sitting on dressers, and free coffee from the urn in the lobby in the morning.  Its charm was its existence not its ambience.

The aftermath of a fire is indescribable. We were gone when our house in Grand Marais burned down and we didn’t come back for two months because people told us there was nothing to see, nothing to save.  But when we came back, we saw plenty.  We saw shards of the blue dinner plates sticking up through the snow.  We saw the embroidered edge of a pillowcase.  We found whole tiles from the upstairs bathroom.  And we saw nails and glass everywhere from when the house blew apart from the heat.

It was sickening in a strange, archeological kind of way.  It was interesting finding these things and remembering how a few months before they were part of an intact house.  But it was also so awful.  What we had was gone.  There was nothing there but little shards that would fit in a cereal bowl.

So I am sad for the people who own Rainbow Lodge, the folks who kept Two-Hearted River a place people could go and imagine themselves with a knapsack and cans of pork and beans.  I wonder if they are finding the shards of dinner plates that just a few days ago held people’s suppers.  I don’t have to wonder if they are sad because I know they are. I know, too, that folks who drove up from lower Michigan or came from other places are very sad that the place that made summer special and their adventures real is gone.

There is just nothing like it – having your place burn down.  I know.  It happened to us.  We started over.  I hope the Rainbow Lodge owners do the same.

The Six O’Clock Call

At six o’clock she turned down the stove, picked up the receiver of the yellow phone on the kitchen wall and dialed the number of the place her son was living.

She could hear the guy at the desk yell down the hall, telling her son that his mother was on the phone.  “Come and talk to your mother.  Tell her about your day.”

Long minutes passed.  She listened to papers rustling and the distant voices of other boys.  Every night she came to the point of deciding to hang up and call again. Why does it take so long?  Every night I call at the same time.  Wouldn’t he expect me to call?

Finally, her boy came on the phone.  “Hi Ma,” he whispered and she could sense his head bent over the phone and see him looking down at his shoes.  “I was on green all day.”

A green day was better than a yellow one or, certainly, a red one.  Being on green meant that he’d done what was expected, obeyed all the rules, participated in group, agreed to his imprisonment.  He hadn’t struggled like he had on so many other days, the ones when he reported that he was on yellow and gave his story, always of the most minor of infractions, of why his name had the yellow magnet next to it.  If he was on red, he couldn’t tell the story because he wouldn’t be allowed to talk to his mother or anyone else.  He’d be alone in his room.

“That’s good, honey.  I’m proud of you.  Stay on green tomorrow, ok?  I’ll call you tomorrow.  Stay on green.”

She turned up the stove so the water would boil for the pasta.  The sauce, out of a jar, was just starting to simmer.  The night would pick up where it left itself before the call, everyone closing around to fill the hole.

They could sit at the kitchen table now because there was one less person.  The dining room stayed dark most nights.  The little table in the kitchen nook was just fine, symmetrical.  It made dinner cozy and peaceful, protected and safe. And very quiet.

Loading the dishes into the dishwasher, she asked the same question as every night.  By now it had become her secret catechism, “Did we do the right thing?  Yes, we did the right thing. Did we do the right thing? Yes, we did the right thing.”

“Did we do the right thing?”

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This piece was written in response to a Write on Edge prompt to write 400 words relating to a choice or consequence of a choice.

One Kiss

You only need one kiss.  On Mother’s Day.  Or any day.

You don’t need dozens.  Just one.

To kiss or be kissed.  It’s the same.

That’s all you need.  Is one.

What I Wish Mitt Romney Would Say

By now, everyone in the universe is either talking about Mitt Romney or that very weird mom who not only still nurses her 3-year son but is thoughtful enough to give him his own TIME cover as a keepsake.  It’ll look great on his college wall.  I’m going to get to nursing mom but right now I’m stuck on Mitt.

Mitt’s dad, George Romney, was governor of Michigan when I lived there.  He was a smart, aggressive guy and a progressive Republican.  He was Mormon but nobody seemed to care.  He ran a car company – American Motors – and that gave him a lot of currency in my home state.  We loved cars and the people who made them.  So, I liked George and not because my husband thinks I’m a closet Republican.  He was a decent guy, an ethical guy. Rich, but he earned it.

So when his son became governor of Massachusetts and when he created a system of almost universal health care in that state, I thought, well, there’s George’s son. Republican, practical, able to get tough things done.  And then he started running for President and it was all about his hair and his white shirt and the ever-pressed jeans and his constant ‘hey there guys and dolls’ fake demeanor in front of live audiences and completely disowning the innovative Massachusetts health care plan.  My eyes couldn’t stop rolling.

Then this.  The news that he’d chased a kid around Cranbrook (which was THE elite place on my little earth when I was growing up outside Detroit), held him to the ground and CUT OFF his hair, the motivation being so clearly his determination that the kid was gay and therefore fair game.

An adolescent prank, he says, can’t really remember it.  Sorry if I upset someone.  You know how kids are.

Seriously?

This is what I wish he’d say.  This is what I think his father would say (although his father would never have done anything like this).

“It was a terrible thing that I did.  I don’t have a good explanation for why I did it.  It was wrong.  I hurt someone and I’m so sorry.  I’ve been thinking about it for years and wondering why I did it and how I could make it right.  But I just never knew what to do.  I’ve resolved since then to be a kind person and to live out the tenets of my religion to be an honorable man.”

If he had said this, if he had owned what he did and shown remorse and not hid behind his ridiculous hair and white shirt and pressed jeans, I would have forgiven him.  I still wouldn’t vote for him, but I’d forgive him.

People can be awful.  They can do awful things.  They can feel guilt and resolve to do right in the future.  I believe that. I wish Mitt did.

100 Posts and One Little Girl

Every Saturday we take our 6-year old granddaughter to a Rec Department ballet class in a nearby high school.  The class meets in a room used by the special ed program; every week, there are new questions written on the board.  “What will you do after high school?  What is your vocation?” I especially like the random words cut out and pasted to the wall – ambition, goals, income, success – and harbor a secret wish to be 18 again so I could get the true 411 from whomever is teaching this amazing class.  Then my life might not have been such a WTF series of unfolding events.

So back to the ballet class.  The Saturday class draws an interesting bunch of girls.  They all come in their little leotards, some of them have little ballet shoes, some don’t and those girls go sliding around the polished concrete floor.  The parents/g-parents sit and watch since it’s a schlep to drop off and go home.  We read.  I do crossword puzzles.  Every now and then we look up and at least 50% of the time, we’ll see Little Blonde Girl with her hand to her mouth standing against the wall motionless.  Her mom, sitting at a school desk across the room, continues to read her book but I can feel her seeing her daughter standing at the wall.

She looks up at her daughter and I can feel her not wanting to give her daughter any signal that should should run across the room to her. 

The week before she had gotten upset and walked her daughter out of the room and down the hall.  There was stern talking-to going on out there in the hall.  But it was to no avail. Little Blonde Girl came back and took up her place again next to the wall.

Today, I could feel the war going on in this mom’s head. Should she just grab the kid and go home?  Should she act like nothing is out of the ordinary?  Should she be sympathetic or critical?  Should she keep pretending that she’s not really annoyed and embarrassed and exasperated and wondering why her child, the child who begged to take ballet classes and mooned over the $5 leotards and tights and little pink slippers at Walmart, the same kid who prances around the house and wants to read all the little books about that dancing bunny, why is that child standing there while all the other little girls are twirling around and smiling.  I can feel her thinking why is my child so strange?

And I want to go over to her and divulge the fact that I know what she’s thinking and tell her, “Hey, it doesn’t matter. It’s not a test.  Not for her and not for you.  It’s an $18 ballet class in the basement of the high school.  She’ll be ok. We’ve all been there.  All our kids are strange.”

It wasn’t my place to comment.  Just my place to know.

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This is my 100th post on Red’s Wrap.

Dare Double Dare

This piece is written in response to a Write on Edge writing prompt to start with the sentence, “His crossed arms answered her question before she spoke.”  450 word limit with a focus on dialogue and body language. This was painfully difficult since I never write fiction and rarely even write in the third person.  But the point was to try something new.  So I did.

Dare Double Dare

His crossed arms answered her question before she spoke.

She asked anyway.  Better to hear his answer than just suppose it.

“So you’re going to stay here even though…………..”

“Sure.  Where would I go?  It’s my house, too.  I should just move out because you decided to fuck everything up?”

He shifted his weight, still leaning against the stove.  One of the burners started the tick, tick, tick that signaled the flow of unlit gas.

“You’re going to blow the house up, leaning like that.”

“You already took care of that.  Our house is pretty blown up if you ask me.”

He turned to reach for a glass from the cupboard, poured himself a Scotch, sat down on the kitchen stool and waited for the next foray.

She made the motions of starting dinner, taking the old black iron frying pan down from its hook over the radiator, and rummaging in the refrigerator for the chicken breasts she’d bought that afternoon.

“Where’s the olive oil?”

“How the fuck would I know?  You’re in charge of the olive oil, the regular oil, the peanut oil.  There’s an oil, you’re in charge of it.  Isn’t that how it works?  You’re in charge?”

“Jesus, you don’t have to be so mad.  I’m just trying to make dinner here.”

He got off the stool to reach for the bag of Doritos on top of the fridge, a subtle insult to her cooking.

“Is there any way out of this?  Is there any way that you aren’t so mad at me?”

He went back in the refrigerator, getting on his knees so he could look long and hard behind the yogurt, the radishes, and the eggs.  He stood up with a bag of Habanero chilies.

“You want hot?  Here’s hot.  Why don’t you cook these for dinner.”