The Way Forward

This week has existed in some parallel time, running alternately so slowly as to not be progressing at all, and so quickly that I can scarcely accomplish the simplest task in a day. Breakfast dishes remain on the table, books unread, emails unwritten, showers not taken, as I creep from son up to son down each day. That one small child can engender such chronological disarray is remarkable to me while it is also familiar, although it had been nearly forgotten until now. It is like many of the challenges attendant to raising children, in that if some mysterious working of the mind did not cause these travails to recede from memory soon after their passing, surely the population of the world would wither away.

During this time, I have journeyed further into the heart and soul of this child I now call ‘mine’, although the paperwork to confirm it is still 7 days away, and the bureaucracy to allow him to travel freely in the world of which he is a citizen will impede us for weeks beyond that. He is not the child we thought he was. It is as if he held himself back those weeks we spent with him in the orphanage, unwilling to divulge his true self until he was certain ours was not a passing interest. He resists still to a degree, tipping his head to the side in a gesture that is negative of whatever the current question or request asks of him, broadly denying his willingness to engage, exploring whether that will be enough to distance me from him. Other times (most times) he is happy, playful, walking from room to room singing songs to himself in baby Russian, songs that I cannot join him in.

(The bath water before the bath...)
Regardless of his mood, the child who sat for endless hours on my lap with his thumb planted firmly between his teeth, or quietly playing with toys next to me, hardly looking at us, is gone. He is filled with boundless energy, often undirected and undirectable. Balls are interesting to an extent, but blocks are not, coloring is not, reading only occasionally. He has firmly attached himself to a stuffed dog that another family gave to Habiba at some point, which is also a puppet. It barks with the aid of batteries and mommy’s hand. He wants the dog with him at nearly all times, and will hand it to me saying ‘ah-nee, ah-nee,’ which I am told means nothing in Russian, but distinctly means “I WANT …” in Milan-ese. The biggest fun is for me to chase him around the house with the dog, barking and trying to ‘eat’ him. He will giggle and giggle as he runs to one side of the table and I to the other, trying to get around it quickly enough to catch him before he runs back down the hall to the bedroom, crashing into the bed itself at full speed. He holds up fingers for the doggy to eat, toes, his belly, pulling his shirt up. He is learning the names of his body parts in English by virtue of a hungry toy.

(Making a run for it....)
The most fun though, is getting into stuff. He loves the kitchen, which presents innumerable safety hazards that he does not yet grasp, and so he is banished, locked out of the room he most desires to be in. He has no sense of ‘do’s and don’ts’, as the boundaries imposed upon him in the orphanage were so far removed from those of the real world as to be utterly useless to him now. He will come immediately for a bath, even as he doesn’t want to take one, but touch something deliberately just because he was told not to. He is has the most devilish gleam (illustrated well in the last post in the photo of him not going to sleep), with mama’s ‘no’s’ giving him all the more incentive. With the exposed wiring in the house this is developing into a battleground, a war it is crucial to win and impossible at the same time.

All of this dances around a fundamental question I face. How do you begin to identify with a child in a deeper way, not just in a more elemental way for him but for you? When Jaden was born, we were handed a tiny infant, with no as-of-yet definable personality and with limited needs. I know some adoptive parents will wince at this. It seems many wish to think that something magical happens and suddenly your new child is slotted right in to your life. But the fact is, nothing about this new child is familiar. We have seen him every day for over a month and a half, but it isn’t that. It’s all of the little things that evolve with a new born that don’t come neatly wrapped when you bring an older child into your life. Those hallmarks of familiarity that are beyond intellectualization, those that dwell in the realm of intuition and senses.

(OK, not so bad... )
There is the weight of your child, his heft. How you know just where to grab him around the middle as he tries to run past you giggling to avoid putting on jammies, timed perfectly so that you stop him, but don’t hurt him or yourself. There is the smell of the child, sometimes sweet, sometimes not, but familiar in some reptilian part of the brain. There is the feel of them- the texture of hair, of skin, the way little arms wrap around you or push you away, the way they wiggle squirm. And there is the sight of them, every scar, curve, mark, line. Memorized from the moment they were put into your arms, cataloged with each new addition, and subconsciously inventoried every time you look at them. It isn’t that these things won’t come, it is simply that they don’t come in the instant they become your child. You start out steps behind, reaching to reconcile the notion that this is your child, this unfamiliar being, even as you take them into your heart your other senses do not come around as quickly.

(Playing a quick game of 'hide the shoe')
I am sure the reverse is also true, but I cannot write of Milan’s experience, I can only guess at it. While I imagine what he might feel, I try to be cautious about assigning my suppositions as his truth. Does he throw a fit when I say ‘no’ to something because he is rebelling against the idea that this interloper is now in charge of him, or is it because he is two and he wants what he wants? Does he fight sleep for hours because he wants to stay awake, or because sleep was fraught with risk and peril at the orphanage? Does he resist sitting to eat because he is not hungry, or simply because he can? It wasn’t simple with Jaden at this age, but much more so. I knew his moods, his gestures, what he wanted to communicate, for the most part. It’s as if this child fell from the sky, skin and bones and flesh, sweet and beautiful, but a total stranger. You need not assure me it will change. I have no doubts. The path through it though is a trip to a foreign land, exciting, fascinating, marvelous, and exhausting.