crying

I have been crying a lot over the past three days. Good crying. I've done the whole "I am seriously depressed and un-medicated and can't walk the 4 blocks from my house to office without breaking down in tears". This is different.

It started Tuesday. I left Hayden with the sitter and headed out to have some time to myself. As if the free time wasn't enough to bring tears to my eyes, my shuffle-set ipod decided to play "A Woman's Work", by Kate Bush. You know, the one from that movie where Kevin Bacon knocks someone up... right, this one .
Crying. I am crying - vision blurry, unable to navigate ginormous minivan crying. I have no idea why. I spend the next half hour in a parking lot crying. I then use the rest of my precious free time to sit in a dark theater and watch StepBrothers. (Which was, by the way, supremely what I needed in all its third grade humour glory).

The next day a good friend calls to tell me I've hurt her feelings. I didn't mean to - this is one of my closest friends and I would never purposefully hurt her. It was a misunderstanding. We talk, everything is fine. I hang up and again, bawling.

Finally this morning my mom calls to make sure I know that if anything ever happened to Jeremy and I she and my dad would happily take the kids. I did know that but hearing it from her meant a lot and, surprise, made me cry.

Anything that scratches the surface and causes me to feel emotion has been making me cry and, now that I am medicated, I am not by nature (or by pharmaceuticals at least) a crier.

It's the damn baby! I know most of you probably knew that from the start but I am queen of the delayed reaction. I've been mugged, attacked by Maoist rebels, and hurt in the ways we all get hurt in our lives and it never fails - I'm all grins and "It's fine" "no big deal" and then somewhere between and week and a month later I find myself terribly upset over not being able to find an earring and realize I am just processing what happened way back when. (For further examples see previous posts where I realize as I am about to buy a house in North Carolina that perhaps I don't actually want to move.)

I am so glad I am having these feelings. Since we got the referral for Zeni I have felt detached from it. I've wanted to be excited and teary but it just wasn't happening - something to do with the first referral I'm sure - I was starting to wonder if I was ever going to feel anything and was really scared about the idea of getting on a flight to go get her still not feeling anything.

But here it is - the tears and excitement that you can't fake - the kind that makes your stomach do those jumps. We got an update on her from Gladney today - they report that she is quiet and sweet and happy to eat her fingers. She's gained some weight and is now at a whopping 11 pounds (which surpasses Hayden's birth weight) and is holding her head up when on her belly and turning towards voices and smiling a lot they said she even smiles in her sleep. Although I am still petrified about the whole two kid thing that is now mitigated by true excitement - I'm not sure if it is love yet but it is definetly a feeling of being protective and caring and wanting to have here HERE, NOW. I wish I could post pictures of her!

public spaces

So Hayden and I are at the mall in a crowded bathroom in a stall. I'm peeing, he is grabbing as much toilet paper as possible.

Plop.

Hayden stops.

He speaks:

"Mama! I see your poo poo! It's NASTY mama! It's coming out of your poo poo hole. Nasty mama, nasty!".

niiiiccceeee

Yaks, medivacs and love in the Himalayas

I met Jeremy in 1999 in Kathmandu, Nepal. I had just graduated from college with an ever so useful degree in Sociology, a love for travel and a need to escape a relationship that I couldn't seem to extricate myself from. I landed an amazing job as program coordinator working with Helping Hands (can you tell I just figured out how to put links in?), an organization that brought medical students and physicians to Nepal to volunteer in health clinics. There I am holding what I swear is the fattest baby ever born to a Nepali.

To say I wasn't looking for a relationship would be an understatement. To say I was looking to have fun, find myself, and hook up with as many cute boys as possible along the way would be a smidge more accurate.

I lived in Kathmandu, in that building over there, and traveled all over the country. Jeremy came to volunteer. We hooked up. I thought he was cute. I also noted that he was brilliant, troubled, taken and appealing. He went home.

Then he started calling. From a cell phone. To Nepal!

My parents hadn't even called me - it took a lot of determination to get through, and a lot of spare change to pay the phone bill. I continued my life as usual in Nepal, slightly turned off by his persistence but mostly unconcerned since he was 12 time zones away.

Then he announced that he was coming back. He would be there over my 22nd birthday, and did I want to trek Everest with him. Uh....ok, sure - fun hooking up and all, how's your girlfriend, riigghhhttt.....

Back he came. Slightly intrigued was I, but mostly just interested in fun. We trekked the Everest region which involved flying Buddha Air (I shit you not) to the shortest commercial runway in the world (so short, in fact, that it is sloped up hill just to make sure you stop before slamming into a Himalaya). We had fun, we saw Yaks and avalanches and I got altitude sickness and barfed Power Bar and tuna fish all over Jeremy. We stopped one night in a tea house in Pengboche. That evening we talked with a lovely French couple on vacation from their 3 young kids to trek to Base Camp, which they were on their way down from. Momos and TungBa were had, and then sleep.

In the morning the french woman was coughing as she walked down the stairs into the main eating room. She came in and collapsed - fell to the floor, unconscious. Her husband and Jeremy rushed to her side - "il est un medic" I explained to her husband. "He is a doctor". This was not true. Jeremy was a 4th year med student. Having just graduated college I didn't know anyone who in med school so I didn't understand the different levels of training and also didn't understand that Jeremy's 4th year med student status made him book smart but lacking in direct patient care experience.

Jeremy somehow discerned that she had HAPE, high altitude pulmonary edema, or fluid in her lungs. We needed to get her lower in altitude. Since she was dead weight and we were strapped for resources of any kind we sent one person to the closest village with a phone (about an hour's run) to call for a helicopter and were planning to use a ladder as a gurney to carry her down into the valley below the village. The ladder was acquired and duck tape was ready to secure the still unconscious woman. With Jeremy and I at her head and her husband and another trekker at her feet we lifted her up to place her on the ladder. She bolted up, still unconscious, made a weird groan/coughing sound, flopped back down and stopped breathing.

It all seemed so surreal. Jeremy started CPR which he would continue for the next 2 hours until the helicopter arrived. She was dead. This woman who we had talked with the night before, who had strolled into the breakfast room and who had said nothing to her husband about feeling bad the previous evening, was dead. She had a family at home waiting for her and she was dead. Her husband was yelling and crying and there was nothing any of us could do. There were no drugs to be had (I did go around to all the guest houses to ask if any trekkers were carrying epinephrine - no luck), I didn't know CPR, so I sat with the husband and said nothing. After about an hour of CPR, when the woman's face was white and purple and she was getting stiff, Jeremy asked the husband if he wanted to continue CPR. The husband said yes and so Jeremy did. An hour after that the helicopter arrived. We put her back on the ladder, carried her out, and her husband flew away. I don't even know their names.

Jeremy was amazing. He was calm and in control the whole miorning. He wore himself out doing CPR he knew would have no effect. He assessed the situation quickly and accurately and made all the right decisions. He was kind and compassionate with the husband. He wrote a note to send with the corpse explaining what had happened. Once the helicopter was gone we packed our packs and started trekking. That night we stopped at a village with a monastery and watched the sun set while the monks chanted. We both cried.

I think I fell in love with Jeremy that day. I still wasn't interested in a relationship. And it wasn't one of those "we experienced this intense situation together and that is what bonds us" things, either. It was what I saw in him that day. I saw how deeply he felt things, how brilliant his mind was, how insecure he was. I think that that day I saw Jeremy - who he was in his soul.

In the years that followed (that was 1999 and although we kept in touch and dated on and off we weren't really "serious" until 2002) when we would get in huge fights, when ex girlfriends would show up in the middle of the night, when we would live on opposite coasts, when I would date other people, that knowledge of who Jeremy truly was never left my mind. I saw it in him even when I never wanted to see him again. I still see it in him. It's a little different now - some of the insecurity is gone, the depression has diminished, he is smarter and more able to be open, but basically he is the same person he was at the tea house in Pengboche.

It is an amazing feeling to look at this man with whom I now share a life with and see the same boy I fell in love with that day in the mountains 9 years ago.

Tapaikko.

Court Date!!!

Just a quick adoption update - Mary called today to tell us we have a court date! August 5th. So for those very, very few of you who are interested (there is definitely some grammatical error in that sentence..) here's how it works:

- Our agency has matched us with our daughter (who, by the way, we are thinking we will call "Zeni" - Zeni, like "Zen - e " - it's her birth mom's name - what does everyone think?).

- Once we said yes to the referral, they send our dossier of information (everything from birth certificates to social worker reports to bank statements) to the court.

- The court sets a date to hear our case. We don't have to be at that hearing - in fact, you're not allowed to go. We signed over power of attorney to our adoption agency representative in Eth.

- The court gets all our information, a recommendation from the ministry of Women's Affairs (who has also reviewed our information), the birth mom has to appear to concede that she is not being coerced into putting her child up for adoption (unless you consider life limiting poverty coercion - some would argue it is one of the harshest and most effective ways to control behaviour there is... another blog).

- The court hears and reviews everything and makes a decision - either "yes, you're good to go, she's yours" or (much less often) "We need a few more pieces of information" - i which case they set another hearing date and we make sure they get the information they need.

Assuming they say yes, Zeni is legally ours! Once we pass court we get a date at the US Embassy in Addis. This appointment date determines when we travel to Eth, because we have to be there for that. It sounds like the embassy is a little backed up right now, so it may be another 4 - 6 weeks after we pass court before we travel. But still - that is, like, SOON! Soon enough to shop! Soon enough to really get excited! Soon enough to start to believe that this is real...

I'm not allowed to post pictures of Zeni until she is legally ours, so for your amusement (and because blogs without pictures are so boring!) here's Hayden and my folks on their most recent visit.

Table for 4 please (you may want to put us in the corner by the kitchen door..)

It was Friday morning and Hayden and I were taking a walk and meeting friends at the park. I was marveling over how it is possible to completly forget that the beautiful, flower filled summer-perfect street on which I was strolling was not four months ago covered in a foot of snow and I was ready to move to the south. The phone rang. It was a wierd area code - the iphone (which knows so much more than I do) indicated it was a call from Texas. Wierd. "Hello?" "Hello, Elise? This is Mary. Is Jeremy with you?" A perfectly innocent question. I probaby looked like a lunatic to anyone who was watching as I wheeled the stroller 90 degreese and set off sprinting down the street towards home trying to assure Mary with the little air I had that I would call her back as soon as I got home. "...fi ve minu tes..... Jer emyat ho me...."

Thankfully it was all downhill and I made it home panting, brought Hayden inside explaining over his cries of "I want to go to the park!" that we would watch Clippord for a few minutes and then go to the swings. Jeremy thought I had finally lost my mind or someone had died - he came into the kitchen (with, now that I think about it, a look that could have said "I knew this day was coming, she has really lost it") as I was turning on the TV for Hayden. My sweaty, panting self turned to him: "Mary. We have to call her. She just called me. Ran home. Downhill." I dont think he heard anything past the first sentence.

Mary is our social worker from the adoption agency we are using. She was calling because she had a baby for us!!!! Our beautiful, beautiful daughter was born on April 4th and weighs 10 pounds. Her name, Medhanit, means "medicine", her pictures reflect a beautiful baby with poutty lips and curly hair. The people at the foster care center describe her as "observant" and "sweet" and with a smile that lights everyone up.

We accepted the referal immediatly. I felt dissapointed in my reacton. With our first referal (that we had to say no to) I remember feeling immediatly when I looked at the baby's picture that I was looking at my daughter. I felt immediaty that our family was complete. This time I was more guarded. It took longer for everything to sink in. As I write this on Saturday afternoon however, I am SO GOD DAMN EXCITED I can hardly wait to hold her and hear her breathe and see those little baby expressions and put her in a sling and not let her our until she knows who her mom is...

And then of course there is the other side of the story - the birth mom's side. She dated the the dad for 2 years and he disappeared when she was 2 months pregnant. He is a college student, she does not know his parents. She said she is a "day labourer" - I don't know what that means in Ethiopia but apparently it pays about as well as it does here. There is a intake form that the bio mom fills out with a social worker when she gives the child up for adoption and in it she says she cannot afford to raise her daughter but that she loves her with all her heart, wishes nothing but the best for her, has nursed her for 2 months, and is interested in meeting Jeremy and I when we come to pick up ourher daughter.

I feel connected to this woman. I want her to know that she will always have a place in our daughters life. That she will be remembered, honered, talked about, and that her daughter is now our daughter and that we will love her with that love that only a parent can have for their child. Thank you, Zeni.

Zeni, that's a nice name. Maybe our daughters name? Will talk it over with Jeremy who, if he had his way, would probably give our daughter 6 to 8 names including Hailay, Zelda, and something from a JRR Tolkien book - welcome to your crazy family kid!