what I’ve learned in three weeks of parenting

I’ve learned that Shasta is a natural Mom –she has a great voice and heart for it and it’s easy to see why Dagim’s eyes blink with happiness when she steps into the room. His arms go up like Superman; he wants to jump up to her kisses. I always thought Shasta would be good at this, but those of you who have only read her blogs about shoe and stroller shopping would not recognize the woman who sits without make up or coffee and just hugs this baby to her chest every morning.

I’ve also learned that a fourteen month old is “kind of a baby” but that he is also a boy. He can be twenty feet away in a matter of seconds. He can still touch his chin with his heel, but he can also shut doors, throw things down staircases, stack cups, open jars, and put the end of a garden hose in his mouth. Shasta has no idea what kind of adventures he and I have in the morning when she’s asleep.

I’ve learned that my family is a very obvious kind of magic. The other day, we found a huge box on our porch and inside was a wooden rocking chair that cousin Richard had when he was little (and after he was big, it went to my cousins Kara, then Keith, and then to cousin Michael for his kids Luke and Sydney, and Michael and Vanessa had sent it to Shasta and me to give Dagim). It’s the only furniture in the house (besides his crib and high chair) that actually fits him. He climbed right up and got it going.

And the Tennessee Yiums took Labor Day weekend to drive up and cover Dagim with a mountain of toys and love. I wasn’t used to being at this end of the Yium hand-me-down line. At one point, I realized that Dagim was wearing some new clothes the Tennessee Yiums had sent him, and we had their stroller on the porch and their pack-n-play upstairs and he was playing with toys and books that Campbell and Casey had picked out for him (“for keeps” as Campbell said). I felt very lucky in my family. I only wished that we could travel through time and float back to Dallas a few years ago, when Uncle Thom assembled everyone and we were all in one room together.

I also have a second family, in a manner of speaking, which is the Groenewolds –who have been my friends since I was I was eight years old. I had the chance to drop by their ancestral home Saturday morning and Mike went on a quiet diaper run with me and I saw how my hometown had changed but then we stood around in his wet grass and handed Dag some apples from a tree and I saw that nothing really had changed and I felt like time was passing but we would all live forever.

But the greatest thing I’ve learned is that my parents are wonderful grandparents. I knew they would be, but sometimes seeing them with Dag makes me remember things, like how much they loved me as a kid and how safe and happy I was with them. I remember that a friend of Antoine de Saint Exupery –the author of The Little Prince– said, “The thing about Antoine is he had a happy childhood and never recovered from it.” When I see my parents with Dag, I feel that way.

I’m not sure how much more of this blog I’m going to write . . . I feel as if the adoption story– the wait, the journey –that’s over.

Now it’s just family, and everyone has family. Some of us are made of Africa. We’re all made of love.

walking the walk

  I had a very nice morning with Dag . . . The two of us walked out of the neighborhood and around the soccer fields.  Actually, I handled most of the walking, but he did his little chimp-walk (elbows out, hands up) for about a block and a half.  At the park, I tried some pull-ups with Dag strapped to my chest and was happy to find that I’m not completely middle-aged yet, despite the predictions of my friend Max.  My cousin Amy, however, observed that even in the airport/homecoming pictures, I no longer look like a globetrotting Bohemian but like a dad, which at one point in my life I would have taken for a great insult but right now makes me feel quietly happy.  Amy is a great woman –and the source of the flowers beside Shasta and Dagim, above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life A.D. (after Dagim)

Today I slipped out while Dagim was sleeping –I caffeinated myself and faxed some papers to work so Dagim could be added to our insurance, and then, driving home, I started crying with happiness. 

These pictures are from the first twenty-four hours, back in Ethiopia.

Close, and several blue cigars

A few hours to go –our friends Jim and Steven coming by soon and then we’ll all go to breakfast and the airport together.  I’m heading to the gym in a few minutes –I want to exhaust myself before this long day of sitting.  I put VAMPIRE WEEKEND on my iPod (recommended by Jana ) so that I can have some new and happy music for the next few hours –and, so, years from now, I can put this album on and remember this entire week). 

Yesterday, my last day at work for a while (I’m taking five weeks off), I was a little sad because I wasn’t going to be handing out cigars or anything as I became a father –so I stopped and bought some doughnuts, brought them in.  And then at noon, we had a staff meeting and all my co-workers, it turned out, had baked a cake and gotten me a box of blue, bubble gum cigars, and they all wished us well . . . I came home and found many wonderful emails (even one from Joan and Nate!), got a phone call or two, looked at the piles of baby toys that Yiums and Fishers and other people have given us –I thought about different babies I’ve known and the baby I was– and I remembered my Uncle Thom, standing in a Texas restaurant before he died, as he described his own father, my grandfather whom I never met– and I don’t feel hysterical, but I do feel full of emotion.  I feel my brain stretched between here and Africa, and I open my eyes in France and Singapore (I’m drinking tea with Sid and Nicola and their wonderful children on their dark bed)(and I’ve never been to Singapore but I know that Tony and Althea are there and so I feel like I am too) and I think about my parents smiling this Thursday when they came up and got Tristan, my little dog-brother, and I think about all the popcorn my dad has made me and all the little books my mother read me– and I think: I’ve got to get on that plane soon, before I fall apart. 

Thank you to everyone. 

Good luck to Jennifer and Jody. 

C

fear and loving

ln less than a week, we’ll be in Addis Ababa, meeting this little boy, this small Dagim.  I can’t even describe how terrified I am.  I deal with rapists and drug dealers and crystal meth makers every day, and none of them scare me like this twenty-two pound boy. 

 

One thing S. and I are both scared of is rejection.  We’ve stored up all this love for this boy, but he’s a toddler now –he will recognize that everything he knows and likes is being taken from him –but he can’t understand language, so we can’t tell him all the things we want to tell him. 

 

I’ve certainly been lonely in my life.  And maybe a lot of only children are a little sensitive to rejection from their peers.  Who knows what shyness is or where it goes?  I’m not shy in the classroom (teaching), but in my personal life, I’ve been accused of a silent and daydreaming detachment. 

 

I know that even if Dagim IS wary of us –he would be a little fool if here weren’t scared of two strangers—I know that over time, we will be everything a family is.  I know how Shasta is when she’s in love with somebody.  That little boy doesn’t stand a chance. 

 

I once heard a recording of Louis Armstrong talking on the stage. 

 

He told the story of being a little boy in Louisiana, and how his mother once sent him down to the river to fetch some water.  He said he got down there, saw an alligator, dropped his bucket and ran home. 

 

His mother stopped him on the porch and he said, “Mama, there’s a gator down there!  He’s big and mean!”

 

And his mother said, “Son, you go down there and get us some water.  Don’t you know that gator’s as scared of you as you are of it?”

 

Louis Armstrong laughed:  “I told her, ‘Mama, if he’s as scared of me as I am of him, that water ain’t fit to drink!”

 

Today is Monday.  Next Monday, we meet Dagim.  I am Louis Armstrong!  

  

 

 

Introducing our son

Shasta really said it all, on her site. 

I’ve really just felt drunk with all these great and lovely valentines we’ve received in the last few days.  So much love in this world, and so close to us . . .

I did have a moment last night . . . Shasta asked me to look over an immigration form she was preparing to fax to Ethiopia.  Where it said, “Father’s Name” and “Father’s birthday,” I thought to myself: “Oh #@$, she’s goofed.  She put my name instead of my dad’s . . .”  And then I realized that I was crossing over to a new part of my life and I was sad and happy at the same time.

Our little boy will be Dagim Grant Huntington.  One name from his birth mother, one from Shasta, one from me.

showered

 

I took her picture before she left.  She is three or four times as pretty in real life, but I’m still new with the camera. 

Yesterday, several of Shasta’s friends made her feel like a lucky sun (warm with love) . . . I dropped her off at Aubrey’s condo in the late morning and picked her up a few hours later.   She sat like Alice at a tea party.

(not a mad one, but colorful and scented with lavender)

(no angry queens or hatters)

(my metaphor completely breaking down)

(I think, from the descriptions I’ve had, it was an un-mad tea party –thrown, not by Lewis Carroll or even Jane Austen, but with a mixture of glamour and wit and magic, like an episode of Sex-in-the-City meets Charmed meets The Gilmore Girls). 

Anyway, Georgia, Christy, Aubrey, Nicole, Steven, Katrina, Victoria, Lexie, Elizabeth, and Erica –thank you for giving Shasta such a beautiful morning.  She was beaming about it afterward.  She could hardly sit down, because of her happiness.

a personal day

This is a picture from a week ago, when our friends Jim and Steven came over for a picnic.  This is just to reassure people that Shasta doesn’t obsess over the adoption twenty four hours a day but actually takes a few seconds each day to smile. 

This weekend, she smiled a lot, chez Jennifer and Jody. We sat by their tiny (five foot, inflatable) swimming pool and ate and drank and talked.  Their lovely little zoo (three chihuahua and two Chinese crested dogs) was so well-behaved, it was like something out of a Disney movie –each dog with his or her own personality but the whole group –I don’t know, Jody and Jennifer like a friendly Shrek and Fiona with a miniature squad of donkeys at their feet.  Well, that is, if Shrek and Fiona were played by two stars from the WB. 

Yesterday at work, I got into a political discussion with some co-workers.  We were discussing gay marriage and one of us said that no matter what most political and religious leaders would have us believe, most people really “don’t care.”  It was not, to his mind, the end-of-the-world issue people make it out to be.  Jennifer said no, she DID care.  She wanted everyone to have the same rights.  I said that I cared, and that it was a fairness issue.  “If you want to get married in a church,” I said, “then you have to play by the rules of the church.  But if two people want to go to city hall, then it should be for any two people.”  I reminded my co-workers that when my parents got married, it wasn’t legal in every state either –because my mother was Chinese-American and my father was white.  Around this time, an older teacher said, “I just can’t do it, I can’t be politically correct any more.  Look, I don’t like gays or towel-heads. There, I’ve said it.” 

By “towel-heads,” he meant not just Arabs, but the Asians who run several local gas stations.

This morning, I got up in my usual pre-dawn dark and thought: I really don’t want to go to work today.  I’m tired of my co-workers, my students, and thinking about adoption.  I’ve still got my health.  I just need to feel healthy. 

So I’m going to take a sick day and go with Shasta to the Y, where we’ll swim and read books.  I’ll climb out of the water and hold my wet face up to the sun.  The big bright afternoon will fill my thinning hair with summer.   Max said the other day, “I can’t wait until you get a kid and can’t work out every other day.  Then you’ll look forty!”

I can’t wait either, brother. But life is still good, all the same.

surprised by something like joy

No real news or great things to say, except that I have been surprised by happiness several times recently.  Shasta has filled our kitchen with wonderful, home-cooked food again.  I’ve had some good laughs at work with the mischievious MAX.  I got an Arts grant that will enable me to take some time off work and write this summer or fall –I hope to combine this with the arrival of our little boy. 

Lately, I’ve felt a little incompetent –very ungifted at daily tasks or grown up life.  I don’t know how to change the brake pads on my car or how to cut and lay tile for a floor.  I should fix things like the broken lawnmower cord.  I’ve asked myself: what can I do instead?  What am I good at instead?  And the answer is, well, I’m not a popular or respected writer or intellectual.  I’m not distinguished in my profession.  I have trouble drawing mouths.  What am I good at?  I have some ability for remembering old Spider-man stories, Arthurian legends, and biographical details of Davy Crockett.  I can listen.  I can do more push-ups than most forty year olds I know.  Not a very practical skill set. 

But it occurred to me recently that these things might be very useful for a father– that, probably, these things can make me a good dad, and somehow, I’ve done something right after all.  My father never showed me how to work on brakes, but he told me about Hercules when I was little.  He taught me not to make fun of people for things they couldn’t change (like the way they look).  He gave me his copy of On the Road.  He insisted I have a dog when I was a little boy.  He taught me to ride a bike.  He pointed to the world and suggested I might fall in love with it, like he did.   

movieland

Yesterday I saw the movie MONGOL, which was kind of like “Walk the Line” for Genghis Khan. 

I loved the first half of the movie, lost interest for a middling fifteen minutes when he was locked outdoors in a cage and his wife came to rescue him -but, overall, I was helpless.  I love this kind of thing.  I’ve already written (in this blog) about how Jack Weatherford’s book about Genghis Khan really shook me up.  I also love movies where the main character is very quiet and guards a deep inner life, a secret identity.  So I’ve got a huge weakness for super-hero movies (and, I think, the reason I didn’t much like HULK was that Bruce Banner is so determined to “cure” himself of his secret identity; he is ashamed of his inner life).  

In MONGOL, the young Temudjin (future Khan) is chased and abused by different enemies throughout his early life, but, at two different priests see his eyes and are scared to death of him –even though he’s chained up like a wild animal and not saying a word.  Anyway, the acting is great (though Genghis Khan does look a little Japanese at times)(and apparently he’s played by a Japanese), the movie is full of beautiful, beautiful sunlit steppes, “Lord of the Rings” style medieval army action, and also several lovely adoption moments.  In the movies at least, Genghis Khan was a terrific father except when he’s away at work (conquering the world). 

The young Temudjin’s wife is stolen from him, almost as soon as he’s married –so he travels to visit a man who has been his “sworn brother” since childhood.  As children, he and this other boy cut their palms and swore to be brothers (love was more important than biology).  As men, the sworn brother is now a powerful chief and he is mystified; he can’t understand why Temudjin would want to go to war over a woman, but agrees as long as Temudjin doesn’t tell anyone why they are going to war.  “In a year,” he says.  “We will go after her in a year.”  Temudjin is not happy with this, but has no choice since he’s accepting a favor.  His brother needs time to gather men and do the politics. 

A year later, they go to war and there is a great and crushing battle with the tribe who attacked Temudjin.  Temudjin finds his wife and she is hugely pregnant.  When his sworn brother finds them moments later, Temudjin is kneeling beside his wife, holding her.  He looks up and says, “My child.”  The brother is confused, about to say something, but then shakes it off as he sees, suddenly, what Temudjin sees: that the biology doesn’t matter at all. 

Also, two weeks ago, I saw KUNG FU PANDA, and liked it for differnent reasons –though also adoption related –the huge clumsy panda’s father is a goose –and, at one point, frustrated and feeling like a disappointment to everyone, the panda says, “Dad, sometimes I feel like I’m not your son.”

The goose leans forward and says, “Son, there’s something I have to tell you.”   I was cringing, thinking he was going to say, “You’re not REALLY my son,” or some bullshit like that, but he doesn’t.  He says the family secret noodle soup recipe, the one he’s been waiting for years to pass on to the panda.  Not really his son?  It’s not even a question for the goose; it’s all love between them.  It’s as if it never even occurs to the goose to say what I was afraid of.

Strangely, I had to see both of these movies without Shasta.  But don’t listen to her!  They were good!  I recommend them both . . .