About the Troubles...

Got back late yesterday from a week of drilling outside Skagway, Alaska. 

 

VERY weird place; it's like a Gold Rush theme park complete with boatloads of tourists. 

 

I couldn't help thinking how the "gold rush" was awful - guys desperate because the economy sucked, being cheated and fleeced by an army of grifters, and most of them going home broke after a miserable time. 

 

It's like a Disneyland "Great Depression" ride. Who wants that? 

 

Apparently lots of people!

 

Anyway, regarding the troubles.

 

In the 22-plus years we've been married there are times when my Bride sort of...goes away.

 

She retreats within herself, barricades herself behind her tablet reading, doesn't engage. She's not nasty or rude about it, but she withdraws from our marriage more than a bit.

 

The result is that eventually I come to her. Ask her how she's doing. Remind her that it's hard to do things together if we're not, y'know, together. 

 

She always acknowledges what is happening, and slowly re-emerges and we're back together.

 

About a month ago I noticed that she was doing this again. This time the problem was exacerbated by chores from the big remodel that needed "couple" sorts of inputs; paint colors, decor, that sort of thing. So, again, I sat down on a Friday evening, got her attention, reminded her of what she was doing, and asked for her to re-engage with me. She said she needed to think and she'd reply the next day.

 

Saturday morning she and I went down to the Willamette, where she told me that she had looked into herself and could find no more love. No dearness. No "us" there.

 

I asked her if she was sure.

 

She said she was.

 

I was stunned.

 

Before I left I asked Mojo to take the week to consider whether we had a chance at finding a way back together, either rekindling what we had, or finding something new.

 

Last Saturday I couldn't wait; I called and asked for her decision.

 

It was "no". 

 

So we're done.

 

Tomorrow we go see our financial planner to get the bad news. The best I can hope for, frankly, is be able to find a way to not die homeless. We're looking at having to practically double our expenses without increasing our income unless I can find someone who will hire me full- or at least part-time and right now that's not looking promising.

 

I'd like to rage and scream. I'd like to be mad at how unfair this all seems...but the only thing I can really be frustrated with is that Mojo, like my first wife before her, said nothing to let me know that her love for me was dying (or I was helping to kill it and how).

 

With my...well, soon-to-be-FIRST-ex...at least there were priors to explain why; we had very mismatched responses to stress; I got angry, she'd withdraw, and so she kept everything inside until she was just done and past done.

 

But my Bride KNEW that! 

 

And she knew that - had I known what was happening with The First Mrs. Lawes, had I known with Mojo now - I'd have done whatever I could; pretty much made myself over, made our marriage over, done whatever I could to prevent that death of love.

 

Well...it's  too late. It's done now, and all I'm left with is grief. And the hope that I can, at least, endure that grief under a roof somewhere and not under a bridge.

 

Sorry, I know that's bleak. But right now things look pretty bleak.

The Queen of the Little Sea...

 ...is another year older.

How she manages to be so terrific while juggling me and two teenage kids and being Miss Debbie the School Secretary I have no idea. But she does, and does it well.

I loved you then and I love you still.

navigare necesse est; amare est necesse, etiam

Rain on Tin

If I ever get over the bodies of women, I am going to think of the rain,
of waiting under the eaves of an old house
at that moment
when it takes a form like fog.
It makes the mountain vanish.
Then the smell of rain, which is the smell of the earth a plow turns up,
only condensed and refined.

Almost fifty years since thunder rolled
and the nerves woke like secret agents under the skin.
Brazil is where I wanted to live.
The border is not far from here.
Lonely and grateful would be my way to end,
and something for the pain please,
a little purity to sand the rough edges,
a slow downpour from the Dark Ages,
a drizzle from the Pleistocene.

As I dream of the rain’s long body,
I will eliminate from mind all the qualities that rain deletes
and then I will be primed to study rain’s power,
the first drops lightly hallowing,
but now and again a great gallop of the horse of rain
or an explosion of orange-green light.
A simple radiance, it requires no discipline.

Before I knew women, I knew the lonely pleasures of rain.
The mist and then the clearing.
I will listen where the lightning thrills the rooster up a willow,
and my whole life flowing
until I have no choice, only the rain,
and I step into it.

~Rodney Jones

It was ten years ago Saturday (so this is our "tin" anniversary, of all things...) that we signed the ketubah and stepped out from under the canopy of marriage into a world of sunshine and rain.

I cannot imagine walking through those sun-showers without you, my dearest love. You are my East and West, my daily work and my Sunday rest.

May we share another decade together; and may the sunlit hours outshine the inevitable storm and dark that await.

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

~ Sylvia Plath

Ten

I'm here, sweetie.

What was it? Was it a bad dream?

Yes, I hate those, too. Even when you know they're not a really real thing, they're still scary. Here, let me wrap you up a little and I'll sit with you for a while and tell you a story. Would that help?

Okay, well, it's sort of an old story, but it's about you so I think you'll like it.

Ten years ago today your mommy and I were all excited because it was your birthday. Your mom was excited about today that day, but I was excited about tomorrow.

Your mom, who is a very much more sensible and realistic person than your dad, was excited because that day was the day you were going to be born. She'd carried you around for nine long months and she was so ready to have you come out and meet her. Being pregnant with you had been tough for her, and she wanted you to be born. She was ready to be a mom rather than a baby-carrier. She was ready to be YOUR mom.

I was more excited about tomorrow, though. Because I hadn't been able to do anything with you - you were inside your mom's belly and all I could see was the funny shapes you'd make on her tummy when you moved - I was so excited to be able to do stuff with you. Dads are funny like that - we like to do things; tell stories, and tickle-fight, and run and kick footballs, and scare boyfriends, and talk with you.

Yes, you, with that funny look in your bright button eyes, just like I'm talking with you now. That's the sort of thing dads like, and that's what was exciting for me about today-ten-years-ago.

So I went to the hospital all excited about tomorrow.

But tomorrow never came for us, did it, lovey?

Because something happened, and you never woke up like you woke up just now. Somewhere inside your mom's belly you passed from that darkness to another darkness, a true-life scary dream, one that no hugs and no stories could chase away.

So there were no tomorrow kisses, were there, little girl?

No nighttime talks, no bedtime stories, no tears to wipe away, no soccer games, no boyfriends, no tomorrows at all. Ten years of no tomorrows.

All that remains of you are gray ashes in the little urn beside my bed and this, these sorrowful nights when I dream that you sit up in the bed you never had, your dark hair all atousle from your pillow, your skinny little-girl arms wound around your knees and your eyes shining in the darkness as I tell you about the dreams I had that, as dreams often do, faded into formless nothings in the light of day.

Are you sleepy now, lovie? Are you ready to go back to sleep?

Of course you can give me a hug. No, no, I'm not crying. Just something in my eye.

Snuggle down now.

There. Alright, goodnight, sweetie.

Happy tenth birthday.

Sleep tight, lovie.

Goodnight.

Goodbye.

Bryn Rose Gellar 3/1/02-3/2/02

Wuss

There were Two Little Bears who lived in a Wood,
And one of them was Bad and the other was Good.
Good Bear learnt his Twice Times One -
But Bad Bear left all his buttons undone.

I think I've mentioned once or twice that parenting is one of those things that are not for the fainthearted.

I'm not really thinking of the physical sort of issues that greenlighting the Kid Project will raise, although between back pain, frequent urination, night sweats, and stretch marks the gross physical problems begin early and continue right through into childhood. This adorable baby toes you kissed in his cradle will stank right through the sneakers when he's eight. Just sayin'.

Disgorging dinner at midnight, frantic nosebleeds, random incontinence; puke, blood, and shit - as a parent you are and will be expected to deal with every loathsome aspect of our human frailty and do so with the sort of revoltingly cheerful perkiness that you thought was the province of Cherry Ames, the student nurse in the old hospital stories.

They lived in a Tree when the weather was hot,
And one of them was Good, and the other was Not.
Good Bear learnt his Twice Times Two -
But Bad Bear's thingummies were worn right through.

Then there's the time-management aspect of parenting.

Which is; you won't have any when the little eyes are open, from birth to about age fourteen...at which time you'll spend that time worrying about whether the little eyes are looking into a beer bong, or down the barrel of a gun, or at a naked fourteen-year-old promising to love her forever if she just lets him...

Let's not go there.

You will become a warm-blooded entertainment system and jungle gym. You will read a million stories, tickle a thousand tummies, run a hundred races. You will be soccer team, bridge partner, video-game target.

Plus there's the whole "get through the day" question. Sadly, the genetic programming of hairless monkeys does not include the instincts to tie shoes, comb hair, find classrooms, eat lunch, complete homework, pick up clothing, brush teeth, or invent bedtime stories. So you, the Potentially Responsible Party, need to be on hand to make sure that the progeny do not show up at the classroom door looking like a shoeless inbred from Hootin' Holler trailing a scrap of paper and a broken stick.

They lived in a Cave when the weather was cold,
And they Did, and they Didn't Do, what they were told.
Good Bear learnt his Twice Times Three -
But Bad Bear never had his hand-ker-chee.

And this never stops.

I think I've told you the story about asking my mother when she stopped worrying about me (and I was a difficult and fretful child, I should say; there was never an instance when I had the opportunity to do something that I didn't choose the most fraught, difficult, and fatheaded way to go about it and then insist, when advised that there WAS an easier, simpler, less chancy way to do whatever the thing was jam my fingers in my ears and chant "lalalalalala" as I went on my hardheaded and difficult way) and the look that I got in return which would have curdled fresh milk.

We never stop being parents. When our kids are adults we'll STILL be fretting about their choices, just unable to do more than suggest an alternative.

And what seems like the most unkind and unfair part of the transaction is that we don't get the guarantee of a Happy Ending.

They lived in the Wood with a Kind Old Aunt,
And one said "Yes'm," and the other said "Shan't!"
Good Bear learnt his Twice Times Four -
But Bad Bear's knicketies were terrible tore.

I have a friend; a truly brilliant, put-together woman, funny, inventive, just a great woman. She was cursed with a fairly worthless bag of stupid for a husband but put up with him for twenty years to raise two kids. And one of them, the older girl, is a shifty, treacherous grifter. Charming in her way, much like her father with the ability to deploy a certain amiability as long as it doesn't cost her any effort, but an untrustworthy slacker who lied and cheated her way to getting locked out of her own home.

I have another friend whose son has just stopped giving a shit about his schoolwork. He's a great kid; not dangerous, not angry, or mean, or rebellious, but he just stopped caring about his grades. She has been unable to convince him that in three years he's going to have to earn a living and that without a high school diploma that will be somewhere between difficult and nightmarish.

And then quite suddenly (just like Us)
One got Better and the other got Wuss.
Good Bear muddled his Twice Times Three -
But Bad Bear coughed in his hand-ker-chee!

I could go on and on...the ordinary tales of domestic woe that seem to visit every family in some way or another. When you think about it, it's rather amazing that any kid manages to get into young adulthood sane, unmaimed, and without an arrest record.

My littles are, thank Zoroaster, too small yet for me to have those sorts of worries.

And yet, there are always enough troubles in the world to spawn more.

In their cases, I look at them and try to peer down the road towards adolescence to divine who will have an easy puberty, who a hard one? Who will find themselves the narrow road through the mountains of teen age to the broad, sunlit uplands of a happy and prosperous adulthood, who the broad path down to the hell of trouble and pain?

If you'd asked me a year ago I'd have said the Girl was a likely candidate for the former and the Boy the latter.

Good Bear muddled his Twice Times Two -
But Bad Bear's thingummies looked like new.
Good Bear muddled his Twice Times One -
But Bad Bear never left his buttons undone.

Because Missy had the happy, sunny, open, loving sort of personality that lends itself to happiness. People loved her easily, were charmed by her instantly. The black keys of bossiness and touchiness were well hidden as she cheerfully played her preschool arpeggios.

The Boy, at seven, was already showing the kinds of things that made me such a heart-attack for my parents back in the day. Sulky, hard-headed, touchy, easily angered and disappointed, easily frustrated and discouraged. Those two touchstones of school failure; laziness and combativeness.

The negatives tended to outfight the positives for the Peep; his loving, clever, artistic, creative side would just get buried under the weight of the miserable little guy who seemed to lack the facility for happiness.

I dreaded his walking the same road I had, and, yet, seemed unable to do anything about that.But.

(And you knew there was a "but" coming, didn't you?)

Lately the little Bears have been trading places.

Take yesterday.

The Boy and I had a terrific day. We went all around Portland in the truck, spent time together looking through Pokemons and buying a new game at our favorite hobby store, agreed that the line at OMSI was, like, crazy long so went down to the Nickel Arcade and shot the hell out of some Terminators (where the Boy drove home the fact that twenty years of military service doesn't make you a better shot than ten months of playing first-person shooter games) and then stopped off at Burgerville for some fries.

Back home we ran down to his school and had a chilly kickabout under the covered training area where he showed me how to head the ball (grin...) and then out for coffee and cocoa and bowling(!) - the only blip; he didn't do well and was pretty sullen about it.

But then we went home for dinner, a movie, and then a couple of games, which he won with glee and good sportsmanship.

He was a great kid and a good companionWhilst we were about that, The Girl and her mom were having a truly difficult day. They went to our little North Portland consignment craft store, Scrap, where Missy was clingy and sulky, then home, to where she was whiny and cranky. She glumped, fussed, and whined through most of the day, only perking up in the evening to become more like her happy self.

She snarled and complained about being asked to pick up her toys and clothes. She was instantly sullen if she was denied a moment's attention from her mom. She was, more than she had ever been, much as she had been lately, something of a jagged little pill.

There may be a Moral, though some say not;
I think there's a moral, though I don't know what.
But if one gets better, as the other gets wuss,
These Two Little Bears are just like Us.

So I think I've come all this way just to settle upon another Hazard of Parenting they don't tell you about in "What To Expect When You're Expecting"; the uncertainty of it all.

Not only can they not promise you the happy ending, I'm starting to think there's no real way to figure out where the damn thing is, or how to get there, or to feel confident you'll know when you have arrived, or even whether you've already achieved it and are coasting into the winner's circle.

In short, we're back where we started; parenting is a contact sport, and anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.

For Christopher remembers up to Twice Times Ten ...
But I keep forgetting where I put my pen.*

*So I have had to write this one in pencil.

~ A.A. Milne

Oh, and the last picture? That's the church where Mojo and I were married ten years ago this October.

Full circle.

Or, let's hope, at least halfway.

I Am a Camera: Sunny Black Friday

Nothing profound. Just had some nice snapshots of this past week.

We had our first frost last Saturday morning. I wanted to capture some of the images.
Love the delicate frost tracery on the grass. But this sort of thing is terribly ephemeral here - by ten o'clock it was raining again and all the fragile beauty was gone.
Last bit of frost-art, this one from "Lake Amherst", the low spot in the curb where the rainwater pools up.
The Peep took this on the way down Hawthorne from Grand Central Bakery. That's the "Bluebird of Death" hanging from the mirror, by the way.
a very Portland sort of November - stone and rain and fallen leaves.
Missy loves her some ginkoes. "They come from China, like me!" she enthuses;
This is another of Missy's snaps, and a good one to close with; our shadows toddling companionably along the street towards a sunny day together...
Hope you and yours are also enjoying this time together.

Full-contact Birthdays

Not for the faint of heart.But eight years ago today a little guy came onto the scene and changed our world. He's gone through Elmos and Thomas Trains and Star Wars and now he's a fierce soldier fighting the cyberwars of otherwhere. But he's still my beloved Peep, and he and his little sister still rock my world.Your feet go so quickly now, and your strides are longer every evening. Every morning I wake and find that time has stolen away the little ones I put to bed the night before and replaced them with a bigger girl and older boy, a little taller, a little wiser, a little further from the soft, warm babies I held to be enfolded in the sweet baby smells and to touch the soft baby skin.

I love you both, my little hostages to Fortune. May tomorrow and tomorrow see us safe abed and all well.

Cool Things in North Portland: Aging Drummer Boy

The Peep and I went to the U.S. Open Cup match tonight at University of Portland's Merlo Field.That doesn't sound like a great event, until you looked up at the lowering sky and felt the cold wind whip the rain down the back of your neck. It was a nasty night, a night for true supporters only, and I wasn't sure if the Boy was really ready for all that the match would entail. My bride, whose passion for soccer is of a passionately tepid nature, eagerly passed the ticket I intended for her to our son. I was a bit nervous. Would he be enough of a true supporter to brave the cold and rain for two hours?

He was.He stood with the Timbers Army and cheered the team, cursed the gormless linesman, jeered at the visiting Chivas USA thuggery. He drank a ginormous soda pop and ate a third of a hot dog, and ran about in the rain, staring up at the sky.

"They're like little snowdrops!" he commented at the fine rainy mist sheeting through the field lights. He was right; they were like small snowflakes twisting in the night wind.

He kept hoping and cheering all through the long, scoreless match until the 84th minute when Timbers midfielder Jack Jewsbury put us up 1-0, and again two minutes later when defender Eric Brunner made it 2-0.And then he hopped in puddles and skipped home through the shining streets, talking about everything we had seen and done, marveling at the shiny white gravel and the lost lacrosse ball he found, tumbled into the house with happy babble, and then into bed with yawning cheerfulness.

It seems that he is following the drumbeat of his dad's passion for the Beautiful Game. That gives me a small, secret smile; I don't know if I've ever passed one of my affections on to him before.

I came in to "check on him" to find him lying back still awake. He told me a very odd little story he had created from an incident from the televised game we watched two weeks ago, and then gave me a hug.

I hugged him back and kissed his soft, little-boy-smelling hair, and tucked his fleece blanket more tightly around him, and with that left him to running fleetly on the floodlit night pitch, the stormwater flying from his boots as he ran on to score the limitless goals that seven-and-a-half can gift you in your dreams.

Tradition!

Big Boy came home this week with something called "Thanksgiving Homework" from his second grade class.

This consisted of a two-page (double-sided) sheet with some fairly incursive questions about what he had done for T-giving and things like his personal favorite sights, smells, sounds, and tastes of the holiday. Oh, and he had to draw a family tree.The question that stumped us, though, was regarding "family traditions".

Because, you see, we're the very worst sort of rootless, mongrel Americans. Homogenized, pasteurized, bland...our families got to this continent and dropped their old customs and mores like a live grenade.

And we have so far successfully resisted the late trend for "re-traditionalizing" families and holidays. We gesture towards the occasion, but, really, I am an utter pagan and Mojo, who does randomly lurch towards some sort of holiday spirit now and then, is really too slothful to complete the effort.

So we sat there, the three of us; the Boy poised with his pencil and his shining evening face looking for parental guidance, and my bride and I, utterly clueless. Bereft. Vacant of inspiration. Utterly gobsmacked.We could not think of a single, solitary family "tradition" - for Thanksgiving, or for any other holiday, for that matter. We were adrift in a sea of postmodern American anomie; we had no traditions.

Finally, in the way my mind always works, it drifted from trying to think of a family tradition to the notion of tradition in general and from there to historic quotes regarding tradition, and from there to Winston Churchill. And that's where I came upon a suggestion for the Peep.

"Rum, buggery, and the lash?"

Mojo and I were forcibly struck by the likely reaction of Peep's very dignified second-grade teacher confronted by this as a family tradition, and spent the next four minutes or so snorting and giggling.

The Peep was NOT amused. He had no idea what the three things were, but he knew that his parents were being irresponsible, and refused to write it down. I think he settled for "Eating Thanksgiving dinner with family".Smart boy.

I suspect that if one of our children turns out to be a serial murderer or a Wikileaker no one at the elementary school will be surprised. We're such bad parents.

Missy's Annunciation

Kiddos are funny little creatures. Our little one, for example, has become fascinated lately by her parents' anniversary (which was last Wednesday, BTW).

This has manifested itself in several ways, including repeated requests to look at the wedding pictures, conversations about the day, and, most recently, several pictures by the young artist celebrating the wedding and showing her parents in various guises.This was her work from the actual anniversary morning. In case the symbology is hard to understand, I have included an annotated version below. The figure on the left is Mommy, with bridal crown and flower "because it's pretty". You will note that her big brother is present in utero, since an essential part of the story is his presence at the wedding in Mommy's tummy.Daddy is on the left, with his hair standing out like he is licking an electrical outlet. The curlique at my neck is a combination of a bowtie, which she has seen in the pictures, and a ribbon, "because it's pretty".

Overhead Missy herself descends like an angel in a Renaissance painting, complete with widespread dress at the bottom, which I understand is a tutu.At any rate, I thought you'd enjoy this glimpse into the Little Girl's mind. She loved drawing it, and considers it among the finest Western artwork.

I tend to agree.

But I might be biased, mind you.

...and the bronze medal goes to...

...my bride, and I.

It was eight years ago today that we gave in and became a legally recognized domestic partnership in the State of Oregon. Since then there have been Chinese orphans, diverticulitis, cat yack, about a cubic kilometer of filthy diapers, and hard choices about music and where everything goes in the china cabinet.

But through it all, you have ever been my strong arm, my clear voice, my encompassing mind, my open heart. What I am, as good a man, as loving a husband, as giving a father, I owe to you as much or more than to myself.

These have been good years.

In the words we spoke on our wedding day, Donne's words,

"Now, as in Tullia's tomb, one lamp burnt clear,
Unchanged for fifteen hundred year,
May these love-lamps we here enshrine,
In warmth, light, lasting, equal the divine.
Fire ever doth aspire,
And makes all like itself, turns all to fire,
But ends in ashes ; which these cannot do,
For none of these is fuel, but fire too.

This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong arts
Make of so noble individual parts
One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts."Happy Anniversary, love.

Blogrolling: Seven Shades of Awesome

This blog caught my eye while searching for some stock pictures from the film "How To Train Your Dragon".

Speaking of "dragon", have you seen this flick yet? Little man and I caught it today at Lloyd Center. Fun, exciting and visually interesting...although Big Peep was very scared when the title character Toothless the Dragon is in danger. The action is typically hyperkinetic (is there an action/adventure film made now that doesn't go into warp speed when the bullets/axes/arrows/kung-fu starts flying?) and that had the little guy pretty frightened. Plus he's a little softie, my Peep, and didn't want the nice dragon to get hurt. The happy ending didn't placate him - he was still sniffling in the parking lot.Anyway, HTTYD is worth a look, especially if your kiddos are action movie fans or like dragons and let's face it, who doesn't like dragons? The voice talent is good (tho I kept wondering why all the adult Vikings - it's set in some sort of Scandinavian neverland - talked like Fat Bastard) and the script is entertaining enough to prevent adults from drowning themselves in their movie popcorn ($6 for a small popcorn? WTF!?! Six bucks for popcorn isn't a snack, it's a fucking investment! Jesus wept!).

Anyway, blogrolling. The blog is "7 Shades of Awesome" and the artist, a gentleman from Brisbane, has a nice, clean streamlined sort of semi-manga style I really like. And anyone who draws Sun WuKung is jake by me.

Joe Bob says check him out.

I should tell you that Mojo and I had a wonderful weekend; we got out Saturday night to take in the Rose City Rollers roller derby down at the Oak Park Hangar - good fun, and the derby was...interesting. Usually when we go one team, or one skater for one team, is head-and-shoulders (and sometimes even all the way down to the bustier) better than the other(s).

This was NOT the case last night. The two teams - both from the four local groups that make up the Rollers - were fairly even, and there was no real standout skater although this woman, who skates under the wonderful name of "Licker N Split", was among the better for the "Breakneck Betties" as her rival "Cadillac" was for the "Guns n' Rollers"

The one-sided bouts make for an exciting show, as the skater or skaters slide, weave and dive past their opponents on the way to victory. Last night was more like a real bout. Both teams were about evenly matched, and there was a lot of tactical skating going on; several jams ended without points, as the two teams fought for advantage but never got it, and finally one or the other called off the jam to prevent the other from scoring. It was "tactical derby", if you will, and if you like that sort of thing. I do, and did.

Then we went out with some friends, had good talk and good drink taken until the late evening when we retreated to the Heron Haus, the lovely little B&B we stayed at on our honeymoon night. It was a secluded, pretty and languid as we remembered, and we drifted home just before noon feeling very well rested.Delightful weekend, and hope you enjoyed yours, as well.

Eight

I had a hard day today.

Because, you see, all the cherry trees are budding out. The willow catkins are full, the star magnolia we planted for her is exploding with blooms. Early spring is pushing itself forward all across the Northwest, just as it did this day eight years ago.

It's fortunately hard to remember exactly how I felt that day, the First of March, 2002. Exhausted. Confused. Bereft. Hopeless.

The passing years have softened the hard edge of the pain and loss. I don't feel the same aching emptiness I felt that day. And I've come to understand a little about myself and my grief for my daughter.

I never felt the connection that Mojo had with Bryn the infant; I couldn't. My bride lived with that little life inside her for three-quarters of a year. Feeling her move, changing as she grew. Bryn was an immediacy to her that she never could be to me.

To me, our little girl was a future. So what I lost, when the tiny stars went out inside her head, was our future together.

And every year, this day, I want to just sit on the sand and tell sad stories of the giggles we never shared, of the tears we never wept, of the games we never played and the fights we never had. Of her grubby soccer cleats that are not on her floor, her Transformers backpack or princess lunchbox that are missing from their places. That her place at the table, in the bed, in our lives, is empty.

My hands are lost without you. My throat is dry with tearless weeping but I cannot stay you; you passed us so quickly, my dear little girl, that all I can do is stand and all I can say is goodbye.

I never knew you, never had the chance to know you, but I miss you so today that my heart pinches with the loss of it. You were the future we never had, and never will have. If there is no death where the spirit lives, you will live as long as I do. Goodbye, love. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Bryn Rose Gellar 3/1/02-3/2/02

Freshly Fresh and Newly New

I thought I'd throw out some snapshots of what's new here at the Fire Direction Center. Here's little Miss, in one of her new ballerina dresses. Her smile is always new as a sunrise, that girl.Meanwhile, in the yard lots of new growth outside. February or no, the Northwest is seldom anything if not green.One of the newest family members came home with me from IKEA; that's the Peep's new pal "Sharkey". He's kind of a Mega Shark. Only not THAT Mega Shark.That's me, and I'm not new, of course. The other new member of the household is on the desk in the left foreground. That's the second IKEA stuffed "friend", Missy's little rat "Nibbles". Though he's a rat, in his defense, he IS very soft.This is NOT a good thing, although it and its bretheren are relatively new. Enlarge the photo and note the elongate ovoid in the center. We appear to have some sort of small moth infestation, and every night these grubs crawl down from the attic and infest the kitchen ceiling. Nasty.I fear that I'm going to have to call in an alpha strike with one of those noxious bug bombs in the attic. Ugh.

Here's something nicer - the new growth that suddenly awoke from the front yard garden bed this week. Not sure what they are - I know two kinds of plants, one's a fern and the other isn't - but they are bloody leaping from the ground like Cadmus men.The morning is new, and I need to get some sleep before it gets any older - g'night!

I'm Rubber, You're Glue.

Read an interesting post today at an adoptive-parents blog.Yeah, I know. There'd a blog for everything, isn't there? There's probably a blog for people afraid of scary clowns, probably another for folks with a plumbing fetish, tons (I suspect) for plushies, shoe fanciers, barbershop singers and Trekkies (sorry...TrekkERs.)

Well, this ain't no adoption blog. Yes, my little girl was born in China. But where this blog is about her it's about HER. Her past, her birthparents, our adoption, that's all part of her. But, honestly? When I think of her, the first thing that jumps into my mind is "giggly". Or "cute". Or "happy". Or "energetic". Somewhere in there is "Chinese-American" and "cleft" and "adopted". But they're definitely behind "Barbie girl", "loves to sing" and "tell me a story about me and Dora the Explorer" in the Missy queue.

What we don't think much about are the things that many adoptive parents talk about (and worry about, stress over and, I suspect, look for).Things like "attachment issues" and maladaptive behaviors that you're supposed to be concerned with as an adoptive parent. The stresses we have and had (and we did have a tough time; go back a skip through my entries for the autumn and winter of 2007 and spring 2008 if you doubt me) were, as much as not, the stresses of having two kids instead of one. The fact that the little one had sleeping problems sucked, but it didn't suck any worse than the sleeping problems that the big kid had when he was her age. The fact that little wanted to be carried everywhere was an additional stress, not a unique one - although in retrospect, I'm sure it was an attachment thing...

Anyway, we have bumbled along for two years and change now with the two little peeps hardly distinguishable in their fears and loves, in their tantrumy gusts and their sudden flurries of hugs and kisses. I won't say we don't see the differences between them. But we see the similarities much more.And over that time, we've lost a lot of our contact with other adoptive parents.

We returned from China with another family that, over time, cut us dead. The young woman we knew through our "adoption group" drifted away after never really bonding with us. I'm still in touch with some friends from an on-line adoptive parents group through Facebook, but often as not we talk about food or movies and anything but adoption.

We just don't seem to have the adoptive parent magic. One evening back in '08 Mojo was hanging out with the other two women I mentioned above (the younger was still awaiting her referral) and was laughingly describing how Little Girl was chewing on us; in her view (and mine) it was a kid thing, the same sort of thing that the Peeper went through when he was two. She finished the story, chuckling, and looked up into two very, very concerned faces."Have you considered the possibility that this may be the sign of an attachment problem?" asked the young adoptive-mom-to-be.

Mojo thinks about that for a moment.

"No," she says, "honestly, I haven't. I just think she's two and she likes to bite people. After all, we're tasty."

I think she lost some points for that.

Is that why the other adoptive parents backed away? Is it us? Are we being terrible parents? The blogging adoptive mom wrote that her bond with other adoptive parents "was magically strong, like superglue." Are we - am I - just not right for superglue, covered in emotional teflon or PVC or whatever it is that superglue won't stick to?I don't feel that way. But perhaps teflon never does...