I saw this cartoon in Sunday's paper and was hoping to find it online -- one of my FB friends had done it for me!)
Saturday was one long day. I have pictures so I can blog the definition of ODD in story form, but I don't have time to do that this morning.
Dominyk, Jimmy, Wilson and I left at about 3:30 to go to the Cities. Up until then it was a constant battle from the time the kids got up until we left. I did get to spend a couple hours with Isaac which is always a highlight... But my back was in horrible shape! It was really bugging me to the point that I needed help getting up and out of the van. Dominyk for some reason was feeling very sensitive to my pain and asked me every time we got out of the van if I needed an escort. Then he would come over and help me get out. Not until yesterday did I tell him that an escort also meant a male prostitute. He just said, "Ew mom." I love shocking teenage boys. It's not easy to do. But for some reason that was less than appealing to him. LOL.
Sunday was a good day. Lunch with friends, lots of time to talk with the kids, the packing of a bookshelf of books, dinner date with my husband, time to get some work emails caught up, etc. My back was still bugging me but it seems to be improving by the day. I slept horribly last night, my mind just racing. I was awake from 3:45 to 5:15 with thoughts just spinning round my head.
This morning we are heading to the Cities so Bart can meet with the current pastor of the church and so that we can look at a couple of rental properties. We prefer one over the other from pictures and driving by.... (as Wilson says, we did a drive by Saturday) but we'll see what it looks like.
I realized something Saturday that really stood out to me since I had taught a class on Transracial Adoption the day before. A few of my kids really don't see themselves as kids of color and the media has freaked them out about living in a diverse city. I'm sure I"ll write more about this as we transition, but I am hoping that we can build some bridges that will help them to see that they don't need to be afraid.
I grew up in the inner city. My dad was a pastor in Denver in a very Hispanic neighborhood growing up where drunk guys fell asleep on the church steps (by preschool aged brother always referring to them as the junk men). I grew up knowing the rules of the city -- to keep to yourself, mind your own business, don't draw attention to yourself, leave people alone, don't stare, etc. etc. When I was 16 I was riding the city bus (transferring once) in the evenings to and from work alone and never experienced fear. I've lived in Mexico and gone alone, as an early 30s white woman, on subways in the biggest city in the world, thought then to have about 27,000,000 people, believing that each day I traveled there I had seen a million of them, and really didn't have fear there either.
So I need to work hard to understand my children's fear and help them to adjust to life in the city. Cities are a multi-ethnic hodgepodge of different people of different socio-economic groups and can be a wonderfully rich environment once we get beyond fear....
but isn't that true of any place or any group of people? Life can be wonderfully rich once we get beyond fear.
Wow, that was profound. Speaking of profound, yesterday I was talking to fellow adoptive parents and very cool people at church who mentioned that their young adult daughter hasn't been home in a few days. I remember these times well as they have happened in our home many times. Teenagers avoiding parents and how it feels to be shunned and avoided them. But I told them to take heart (Ok, so I didn't use those words, but you get the idea). I said, "People who love you are like mirrors. When you don't feel good about yourself you want to stay away from them because when you look at them you see yourself."
Profound I'd say. I think I'll put it on Facebook. Might be more brilliant than some of the other things I"ve written there lately.
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