Real life: Foster care is hard.

Real life: Foster care is hard. It’s hard for reasons no one talks about. Everyone says, “I would love to be a foster parent, but I couldn’t give them back.” But we haven’t even gotten to that part yet. It’s hard during care, and it’s hard to know what care looks like.

 

It’s hard to look at my baby and see the physical signs of neglect. The pile of medications on the counter. The constant addition of diagnoses. The pain and discomfort and physical marks. The knowledge that this is preventable.

 

It’s hard to ask my little boy what he wants for dinner and receive either a blank stare or an echo in response. It’s hard not knowing who he really is.

 

It’s hard knowing that my holding baby is too much: sensory overload. It’s hard putting down a crying baby and accepting that that’s what she needs.

 

It’s hard to walk through the grocery store and not explain to curious and admiring strangers that I’m not the cause of the obvious bruises and scratches on baby’s body.

It’s hard when I’m angry– straight up pissed off–that someone failed these kids.

It’s hard when I understand. When I see that, at no fault of their own, these children are high needs and parenting them is hard. It’s hard knowing that she doesn’t have the same resources I do, and though I can’t bring myself to think that I would make those choices, “but for the grace of God go I.”

It’s hard calling them “my baby” and “my son” and “my littles” when they 100% are and 100% are not. Legally, no. Physically, yes. Biologically, no. In my heart, YES.

It’s hard. So very hard. Hard to understand, hard to guess, hard to manage. But it’s not hard to love. That’s the easy part. So, yes, it will be hard to give them back, but the loving in the interim is the best thing we have going for us.

An Emo Moment

I’m not good with people.

Really.  I teach around a hundred wonderful children, claim a score of loyal friends, and I try to be courteous to cashiers.  At the end of the day, though, I really prefer being alone to being around 14 people in a beach house for a weekend.

I wonder: what does this make me?  A bad person? Self-centered? Depressed? Rude?  Perhaps I am perceived as a cocktail of negative reactions.  It’s not that I dislike people.  Most people are relatively enjoyable, and God loves them all equally.  I don’t feel that I should measure them more harshly than God.  I don’t think the individual matters at all.  When I say, “I’m not good with people,” I mean, “with people… I’m not good.”

With that, I will add to my list of Awesome Things.

#7  A vacation from vacation: I love the beach and eating out and even the ~8 hour drive to the beach, but what really excites me now is not being on vacation.  Thank God for a relatively empty house and my own bed!

Awesome Things #3-6

How many days since I’ve posted my first two awesome things? I’m not sure, but here it is, 11:30pm, and I’m ready to list more awesome things.

3. Going to bed before morning: The time is 11:30pm, and I plan to be in bed within the hour!

4. Leftovers: I ate (that should be read as “inhaled”) some wonderful–no, awesome–leftovers from yesterday’s trip to Tokyo Japanese Steak House. This means: no cooking, minimal cleaning, yummy food. All these things are especially good when one does not leave the dance studio until 9:52pm.

5. A full barre: I have twice the number of Primary 4 dancers this year. I think I may even need to get my first demonstrator for this class. All these chatty little girls are wonderful–I mean awesome, talented, and take up the full length of the ballet barre!

6. Vladimir: Last year, my white-knuckled Intermediate 3 dancers grasped onto the barre too tightly one day, provoking me into lecture them about pas de deux courtesies and how to treat the ballet barre as a partner.  Since then, we have taken to calling the barre in my studio “Vladimir.”  I think it is quite the fitting name for him.  I enjoy personifying a wooden pole.

In other news, I must confess that I have not yet checked to see what other awesome things are being listed on the 1,000 Awesome Things blog. Perhaps my emo tendencies are once again over-powering me. Perhaps I would be more likely to read the aforementioned blog if it were listed on my blog roll. Perhaps the fact that I started a new dance company, planned my parents’ anniversary dinner, and start teaching at a new school this week have prevented me from indulging in that twice-aforementioned blog.

I also just read fmylife… though I don’t “f” my life 🙂

1,000 Awesome Things

When I’m really upset over something–really upset, not just pouting– I can’t sleep.  Ever since my friend (who is 40 years my senior) was diagnosed with ovarian cancer two weeks ago, I’ve had a lot of problems falling asleep.  This has led to my getting my days and nights confused, and I’m basically an insomniac now.

Last Christmas, my husband’s best friend stayed with us and got me hooked on http://www.fmylife.com: it caters to my morbid curiosity, I guess.  But… it’s not at all fulfilling, and it definitely doesn’t help me to think about “whatever things are lovely…true…pure” (Phil 4:8).

Tonight [really it’s morning], I’ve found a host of more positive blogs.  “1,000 Awesome Things” is one of those blogs (www.1000awesomethings.com).  If you visit the blog, check out my favorites (they’re only in the top 400s now):  #473, #467, #462, #455, #456 and #451.
So… I have become inspired.  Inspired to start rebelling against my husband’s calling me “emo” and against my hatred of all things rosy and glass-half-full.

Could I think of 1,000 awesome things?  I don’t know.  I don’t think so…. but I can try.  I could even have repeats and no one would know but me 🙂

Will I post one awesome thing a day? No.  That’d take, like, three years (remember, I’m an English teacher.  I can’t do math!).  Starting now, at 4:05am, I will try to post a few things which I feel are awesome (in no particular order).

[It is now 4:20, and I have erased my list. It was too…. obvious? big? It wasn’t good]

1. There is one full glass of Dr. Pepper in the fridge.
2. Not only was that item true, it was more than “glass-half-full.”

Awesome.

Peanut Butter Sandwiches

Francis just didn’t get it. Spank, drop, step. “Three steps!” I wanted to scream. “How can you *not* get this?” For three months, she just didn’t get it. This eighteen-year-old senior could solve Trig problems, but she couldn’t will her body to repeat three dance steps.

The steps kept evolving. I tried every metaphor and trick I could muster. These aren’t drawbacks. This is a passe that you fall out of. These aren’t drawbacks. This is walking backwards. These aren’t drawbacks. This is scooping peanut butter, closing the lid, putting away the jar. No matter the metaphor, no matter the number of demonstrations, no matter the number of repetitions: Francis would make three steps that never equaled spank, drop, step.

In Modern, the problem wasn’t three steps. The problem was five seconds. Miss Sarah said those five seconds took thirty minutes–thirty unsuccessful minutes.

We stood and vented and worried and compared stories as Terri listened. Terri doesn’t know a plie from a brise’. Terri has never worn ballet shoes, tap shoes, or tights. Terri has never danced across the studio. I don’t know that Terri’s ever walked the entire length of the studio. There are tens of steps on the marley floor where Terri’s feet have never walked. Terri is the reason Francis is making peanut butter sandwiches in tap class.

Today, Francis did not walk into my studio.  She danced into my studio.  Five steps.  She kept repeating five, not-quite-perfect Modern steps.  I could not say for sure, but perhaps Miss Sarah’s five seconds were composed of the five steps I saw Francis dancing.

Thirty minutes later, we reached drawback practice.  Every other student quickly beat out the rhythm of those three steps.  Francis stood next to the ballet barre.  Though everyone else could both complete the steps and balance without aid, she held the barre with her left hand, rose onto the balls of her feet, and lifted her right foot off the floor.  Spank.  Her right foot brushed back against the floor toward her left ankle.  Drop.  Her left heel dropped to the marley floor.  Step.  Her right foot, having been balanced in the air for the duration of one tap step, stepped decidedly to the floor.

I completely erupted into an applause.  After three months of working, Francis completed a drawback on the first try.

But she didn’t stop there.

Every three steps composed a drawback.   Every three steps across a thirty foot studio.  Francis must have completed fifteen drawbacks!

Within five minutes, my three-months-behind student had not only conquered her nemesis-of-a-step, but she was completing a more complicated form of the step.  Every other student had already learned Cincinnaties.  Not three steps, but five: I likened Cincinnaties to making a peanut butter sandwich.  Scoop the peanut butter; close the lid; spread the peanut butter; close the sandwich; take it to the table.

Today, three months of work and years of my on training were left wanting in the face of one woman’s single prayer, and Francis is making peanut butter sandwiches in tap class!

Day 692

“If only there could be an invention… that bottled up a memory, like a scent.  And it never faded, and it never got stale.  And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again… I’d like to keep this moment and never forget it.”
–Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Hours before I was lying in bed reading my just-because present from the Manhattan bookstore, I was sitting in the passenger’s seat of my car.  My hair twirled out of the band and dangled out the window.  My eyes blinked back sun-induced tears.  We were not in Monte Carlo: we were not even in Manhattan.  There were no peasants wandering the streets.  There were no haunting Rebeccas or fat Van Hoppers, thank God.

I thought to myself, “if I could pick a day to live again, I would pick today.  Today: perfect.”

We fell in love, but not today.  We traveled to Gallop, Bryson City, Savannah, and New York City, but not today. We were married in a perfect service on a rainy day, but not today.  Today, I sat by my husband after a trip to the grocery store and a walk around the Forum.  The windows were down;  the sunroof was open;  his favorite music was blaring.

We didn’t talk.  We weren’t, at the moment, holding hands, but I would take the second Mrs. de Winter’s invention and apply it to this moment over all moments.  In this moment, I realized not that I loved my husband but that I loved him more on Day 692 than I did when I told him I loved him on Day 63 or when we married on Day 321.  I think I would keep Day 692 bottled up as if a scent, but I know the scent of Day 693 will be too intoxicating to compare to 692.

A Recovering Pessimist

Once upon a time, there was a girl who believed that the best way to have a happy life was to expect for everything to go horribly awry whenever that something got the chance.  Every test she took, she expected to be marked as an F, though she cried if it received anything under an A-.  Every friend she made, she expected to disappoint her. Every achievement she earned, she expected to be forgotten.  Every boy she dated… wait, that never happened.  Every boy she wanted to date, she imagine that he saw her as a fat blob.

Then one day, that boy she expected to date wanted to date her.

Then things got worse.  Every word he spoke was a comparison, and she failed.  Every place he went was a memory of someone else.  Every plan they made had been done before.  Every feeling she felt, he didn’t feel.

Then things got worse in a different way.  She pined

and pined some more

and pined a pathetic amount of pine-age.

Then, things got better.  She decided to finally play the part of Abraham in the story for which he’s most famous.  He had to kill the thing that had become his life, but she did things a little differently. She decided to, in effect, run away (thus ending her current life).  She applied to a very exclusive program–a 2 year commitment during which time participants couldn’t date or wear fashionable clothes or attend the church of their choice.  Well, perhaps it was assumed that participants would want to attend the required church, but I think that was hardly the case.

Then, things got complicated.  She failed a class.  She didn’t have experience.  She wasn’t Baptist.  She was too thin, which she found hysterical.  She had a bipolar grandfather.  She couldn’t control every aspect of her surroundings.

Then… she saw the ram.

Then, she smiled.

In high school such phenomena were considered almost sacred.  Zach used to sit in front of her–turned around in his desk–and stare/joke/humiliate her into grinning.  At dance, she was always told to relax her forehead and stop scowling.  At home, her parents told her that boys would date her if she would just stop scaring them.

Here at the cross-roads of pessimist and not-quite-so-pessimistic-ist, I find that this girl is me.

It may seem like the strangest thing.  I used to believe that always-smiling people were completely fake and must have an underlying mental or emotional condition that kept them from facing reality.  If people faced reality, they would smile as seldom as I did.

I am not Joel Osteen.  I do not have a smile plastered to my face.  My natural face falls into a expressionless, straight mouthed emoticon, but… Zach no longer has to tell inappropriate jokes to turn up the sides of my mouth.  In fact, I haven’t seen Zach in over 6 years, and I can still smile.

I would call myself a “recovering pessimist” because I am hardly an optimist.  Realism is a seldom praised worldview, but I would claim it over romanticism  any day.  See, realism does not expect the worst; it expects what would or could happen in my world.

In my world, marriage works.  My husband has hurt me, and I have hurt him, BUT neither of us desires to hurt the other person.  Daniel loves me.  Even when he asks me the same question about finances or my choice of clothes for the umpteenth time, he loves me.  He likes me.  He wants the best for me.  He doesn’t cheat.  He doesn’t abuse me.  He seeks God. I am not naive.  I’m honest.  In my world, it would be completely against his character for him to negate those truths.  It’d be like my deciding to love cats or roaches or driving slowly.  Things like that just could not happen.  It’s not realistic.

In my world, God is.  He’s proven His presence.  I have been hurt.  I have hurt myself by living life as an open wound, but even in the hurt and the decay of my life, God is.  He’s been my only friend, my Daddy, my confidant, my sanity, my healer, my assurance, my guidance counselor, my agent, my banker, and my attorney.  Even in the times I let the consequences of sin–mine and others–hurt me, He protected me from becoming the druggy or whore or invalid I could have been.

In my world, life is not rose-colored.  People die.  Things are stolen.  Children are hurt in unspeakable ways.  Tests are failed.  Speeding tickets are issued.  Alarm clocks break.  PMS sucks.  I am alive.  Daniel is beside me.  God is.