adding insult to injera

I teach in a prison.  Yesterday, a student came up to my desk and showed me the bar code on the back of his notebook.  “You know what this is?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “A UPC symbol.”

“It’s an Ethiopian family portrait.”

My student is a forty year old white guy.  I generally like him because he can’t remember $@# and he knows it; most of his jokes are about his own bad luck.   He considers himself born unlucky because he contracted hepatitis during his years of drug abuse.  When I heard his latest “joke,” however, I didn’t think it was funny.  I was a little stung, obviously, but mostly I had a selfish reaction: ”Who was discussing my business?  Where did this guy overhear something about me?  Why is he saying this to me?” (which is just  the effect of prison own soul–my own paranoia and institutionalization).  But then I decided there was no way he knew my wife and I are adopting from an orphanage in Addis Ababa. 

My next thought was, “You know, Mr. ____, there’s nothing funnier than a three hundred pound guy laughing about mass starvation.”

But I didn’t say anything.  I gave him a pained un-smile and nodded him back to his seat.  The world is full of stupid people and just because they’re stupid doesn’t mean they’re not trying to make you laugh and make the world a better place.  Maybe it was a “teaching moment” and I missed it, but, to be honest, with students like mine, there is a lot to teach and we have many moments.  

 

 

a birthday

Last week, S. and I went through a mild emotional apocalypse.  But today It looks like everything will work out, at least for us.  We are hoping to fly to Ethiopia and meet this little boy and carry him home one day soon.  But I feel bad, still, for our friends who are still waiting for good news and for the children who are waiting for love and milk.  I’d like to think that life is big enough for us all to be happy. 

Anyway, Shasta and I had a quiet birthday celebration for our boy.  We were full of helpless hope and frustration. I think Shasta looks a bit preoccupied and I am a mixture of grim and mopey.  But I like the pictures because I think the house looks like a warm cave, full of love, ready for birthdays. 

 

Court and Sweet

Since we got our court date, I’ve got the worst pre-date anxiety ever.  I can’t shake the fear that we’re going to get stood up somehow.  We’ll be standing on the sidewalk in front of a cosmic movie theater, checking our cell phone, and, despite all the plans, we’ll be seeing that movie alone.  A lot of people don’t make it through court the first time, but I hope we do.

I’ve been kicking away some other negative thoughts lately.  Some of it related to the politics of international adoption (people who think all adoptions should be within a country, not outside) and race (people who think transracial adoptions are naive and doomed) and age (an author who is big on the idea that toddler adoption is filled with attachment issues).

In this huge dogpile of pessimism, the only interesting stuff I’ve heard was in a New York Times article: “An examination by The New York Times of the 2000 census — the first in which information on adoptions was collected — showed that just over 16,000 white households included adopted black children.”

I would have thought this number was way higher. 

Anyway, the article points out the difficulties in transracial families –but I finished the piece and thought, “You know what?  I don’t care.”   

I believe the world is a mystery and good things happen.  It’s easy, it’s so easy, to criticize everything.  And to think of reasons not to love people.  In the end, I love reading and thinking and– to some extent, sometimes, I even love politics.  But adoption is about people, not ideas.  It’s about children who need love.     It’s not naive to believe in transracial adoption.  It’s naive to think that your politics are so right, children need to suffer because of them.   Who would want to grow up in an orphanage?  Who would want to grow up without parents?  What kind of person would wish that on kids just to satisfy a smug and vicious belief system?  

Life is complicated, but we shouldn’t be afraid of it.   People can believe whatever they want, but I prefer to believe that love for a child can’t be the wrong color.  

Anyway, I feel all right these days.  I look at these pictures we’ve gotten and all the nay-saying becomes a quiet, distant noise like a neighbor’s dog.  The photographs (a little boy, teetering back and forth on his tiny legs) remind me that we’re all people and nobody knows what kind of men or women our sons and daughters will become.  But we are made for love anyway.   Shasta and I are ready to fly to Ethiopia and meet this little boy who is getting bigger every day . . .  We can think of nothing else. 

 

Dan in Real Life

S. and I took a few minutes this weekend to try to NOT think about Ethiopia and our family (but we also worked on the nursery)(which looks great). 

Saturday we watched DAN IN REAL LIFE, which our friend Steven had recommended.  I found myself REALLY liking it, probably liking it more than I should.  For one thing, and the only reason I mention it here, it is subtly very adoption-friendly.  It’s all about a big holiday with all the grown-up brothers and sisters bringing their spouses and children to the mother and father’s house –which made S. and I, both only children, very thoughtful –but then, without a word of explanation, one of the kids is Chinese.  No one ever says a word about it, but this little girl is part of the family like everyone else. 

So there’s that going for it.  Also the great Juliette Binoche.  Shasta is a big fan of everything SJP and so we have seen the very similar movie THE FAMILY STONE several times –but, personally, I liked this better.

worth a thousand words

People have been perfectly lovely about emailing us photographs of our son.  I wanted to surprise S. by having some made into prints and giving them to her for Mothers’ Day -so I went to CVS and did their little kiosk (if I’d have been in Columbus, I’d certainly have gone to Tim Cooney’s shop because the prints he made of our referral pictures were terrific.  I’ve been carrying those around everywhere.)(A few nights ago, I met Max’s wife for the first time and found myself crossing the room, saying, “Jennifer, I’ve known you longer than five minutes, so that means I have to show you my pictures”). 

 

Anyway, at CVS, I ordered my prints, then stood around and read magazines while they were processed.  The Indian woman at the counter got busy with another customer, so another cashier came up.  This clerk was black, in her early twenties, and she glanced at the photo machine, saw the prints of my favorite boy, then asked the first clerk what she should do with them.  The Indian woman gestured at me and said to give me my prints.  The second woman looked at the pictures again and then said, “No, what do I do with THESE.” 

The Indian woman said, “They’re his.”

So the second clerk put them into an envelope and rang me up.  I looked them over at the register and said, “Wow, they came out great.  Don’t you think?” 

And the woman smiled and said yes. 

 

FRIDAY

So, Friday, the sky opened up in a gentle, awkward rain and I drove home in it, my heart like a basketball in my chest, all my breathing somewhere far below behind my navel, like somewhere under the ocean, while my head was as big as a planet, full of every thought I think I’ve ever had and yet, really, just one thought because Shasta had called me and said, you’ve got to come home, we got the call.

 

And home, that day, was my hometown home, the house where my parents live and where I celebrated Thanksgivings as a kid.  We were visiting my folks.  I parked under a tree in front of the house and ran in the front door.  Then we were all upstairs at my parents’ computer, looking at pictures of a beautiful little boy. 

 

Our son.

 

And anyway, it’s been a crazy weekend.  Because Shasta and I keep taking these pictures out of our pockets and looking at them.  We’re bumping into things.  We can’t put anything away.  And I’ve gone over each one, pixel by pixel, on my computer screen.  We’ve gotten wonderful emails from everyone we know -thank you, thank you, thank you-and I feel great, but it’s all mixed with a little bit of sadness because I feel sorry for everyone I love, sorry for everyone in the world, really.  Everyone except us, because we are the ones this little boy is coming to join.  Maybe this summer?  He’ll be sleeping down the hall from us. In the little room Shasta’s been preparing.  I feel bad for everyone in the world because you’ve all been so good and kind with us but this kid with enormous brown eyes and sharp thoughtful eyebrows and his worried little mouth -he’s not Santa and can’t be everywhere.  He’s coming to live with us, and I don’t know how you’ll live without him.     

Putting on our Sims Suits

A couple weeks ago, when S. and I were still enjoying SURVIVOR, I got a computer game called The Sims: Castaway Stories.  It’s like a computer dollhouse where make believe people have imaginary adventures on a tropical island.   The fun thing was that I made a little family –and I was so happy to see tiny versions of S. and me holding our baby at last.

 Here is a picture of us NOT holding the baby, but smiling for the camera:

 

 

paper tiger

We are almost done with all the bureaucracy of the adoption, but of course that is like saying we are almost done with air just because we are approaching the mountaintop where it is a bit thinner.

Yesterday we got our new 171 form in the mail from immigration, which is the almost-last piece of the puzzle. Unfortunately, it said that our fingerprints expired a week ago, despite our re-visit last month. Shasta immediately jumped into action, making me scan the letter while she emailed our agency coordinator. Then she jumped up and hit the ceiling with her fist before running out into the yard and tearing a tree from the ground with her bare hands.

Today, we got a post-it note from Immigration, along with a new copy of the 171 with a valid expiration date. The note said, basically, “My bad.”  I haven’t actually SEEN this letter, but Shasta seems satisfied. She has put the letter somewhere I can’t get my dirty hands on it. She somehow has the idea I might mess it up just because I threw yesterday’s letter into the trash before she got home. What can I say? My father taught me not to leave clutter on the kitchen counter and we got a lot of junk mail yesterday . . .

Shasta and I are a great team.

luck, beauty, life

All of the following is true, though it felt like a dream, but that’s how my life always is anyhow . . .

I felt very lucky this week, and also shamed –my friend and co-worker MAX called me on my way home  and asked, “You interested in calling in tomorrow and going to see [a certain political figure]?  My sister got me two tickets for his town hall in Lafayette.” 

“#$@@ yes, I’m interested,” I said.  “I’m in!  I’m in!” 

I was excited as a little kid because S. and I had tried and failed to see this speaker a month before.  We both have been moved by him.  I wouldn’t cross the street to see a celebrity and, in person, I probably wouldn’t recognize 90% of the singers or actors on my little iPod, but I admire this politician for all the obvious reasons.  Because he’s a good man, I think. 

I called S. and told her my plans.  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” she said.  “I had two students offer me tickets today, but I told them that if they couldn’t get two, then I couldn’t go.  You’re going to go without me?” 

“Uh, yes,” I said.   And somehow– because I am so quietly lucky, because, I guess, if there is any design to the universe, apparently I am supposed to be happy– Shasta easily forgave me for being so selfish and wished me well.  Shasta loves me.    

And so, Thursday, MAX and I drove up to Lafayette –actually, he drove us, in his big, tinted-window pick up truck, a dirty soda bottle of tobacco juice on his dash (“You realize,” I said, “you rural-working class-son of a  (*(&*#, that you ARE the demographic everyone’s talking about now.  He’s had the half-race, overeducated, Africa-loving, liberal vote like me for fifteen months.” 

Max and his wife named their son after Abraham Lincoln; despite his rough and unshaven appearance, Max is “country” more like Thomas Jefferson than Toby Keith.  We had a very good afternoon of rain and far horizon talking before the speech started.   Then, I think we were both impressed with how local questions were dealt with.  Max and I both work in the prison, so we are, perhaps, a little impatient with crazy people –but the senator, on the other hand, answered one long, strange, story-question about cataract surgery and student loans and a closed LTD plant– he answered it with a huge heart– and was even better with the nine year old girl who asked about school testing and with the law student who asked about the Supreme Court. 

It was a good moment.  I was glad to feel my life cross, momentarily, with something bigger. 

Which reminds me of something great I read this week.  I will pass it on, for what it’s worth.    

the coming of spring

Yesterday, Shasta and I met Jennifer and Jody in person.  A beautiful almost-spring day –I had to leave a barber shop with my huge and goofy haircut untouched so we could meet Jennifer and Jody at an Ethiopian restaurant near our house. 

I was crabby because I’d wanted to try a new barber shop and after thirty+ minutes in the waiting area, when I got up to leave I looked like I was a pissed off and impatient, but the truth was that I knew Shasta was waiting for me.  I’ll go back on Tuesday though; I liked the place.  I was the only white person and it was fun to see all these other dads with their little boys sitting in different chairs while the barbers turned them all around.  Shasta hates to be late, however, and so we arrived at Abyssinia and looked around the parking lot.  Sunlight on the windows and a strong breeze made the junky parking lot outside the Best Buy strip mall seem playful and bright, but we could barely appreciate all that crappy urban beauty because of TIME.  And then we met Jennifer and Jody.

Jennifer was very funny and smart in an un-lawyerly way, and came into the restaurant with a boxed and ribboned gift for Shasta and me (a lovely children’s book full of great faces and the world).  She and Shasta seem to have a very similar way of preparing for parenthood.  After reading Jennifer’s blog and description of her husband, I was expecting someone good at sports, great at DIY projects, uncomplaining, good at math and science –in other words, a walking Y-chromosome.  Maybe ten feet tall.  Possibly Bigfoot.  But Jody was actually very charming, with the trustworthy good looks of a TV anchorman or a pro golfer.  As a couple, they seemed like a perfect fit.

In one of those strange parallels of similar people, both Jody and I closed our menus, willing to go along with whatever our wives ordered and then these two, after much indecision, ordered exactly the same things.  We ate beef tips and crushed vegetables on the wet enjera bread, talked for a couple hours.  Neither Shasta nor I had a camera, but Jody did and the owner took a picture of us. 

As Shasta and I drove away, we saw the owner walking past the Best Buy.  He was Ethiopian, walking shoulder to shoulder with an older white man we’d seen eating alone in the restaurant.  They seemed like friends.