Reverenda Rosa

Identity

A few weeks ago, LoML began to ask if there's a scrapbook about her.  She is just starting to tiptoe into adolescence and I can tell that deep, almost impenetrable question of "who am I?" is starting to take shape--and shape her.  Funny she asked.  About 4 years ago, I started on one.  I even found scrapbook materials for adoptions and I, who am not particularly into cute, had a ball buying all kinds of really cute stuff for that book.  And then it sat on a shelf for the next 4 years, only the title page and first page completed.

Every day, LoML asked me, "Mami, did you work on my scrapbook"--and finally one day about 2 weeks ago, I got started.  Oh my God, retracing the steps of that journey has been a journey in itself.  Everything is so vivid:  the memories, the pictures, the emotions.  A few things stand out--Spouseman and I were surrounded by our community and his family during those 20 months it took to bring her home.  But there is no picture, no card, nothing that speaks of my family except this:  a few pictures where LoML is wearing the most exquisite dresses imaginable.  Dresses my mother gave her, reaching across brokeness and estrangement in the only way she knew how.  LoML's gotcha day, March 4, 2001, I could hardly wait to get her into one of my mama's dresses.  We were going to stay at the apartment of an acquaintance and we got there while M was out.  I literally changed my little girl into one of the dresses in the hallway.  Her first night home, she slept in a nightgown my mom had given her.  I am both incredibly glad that at least there are those traces, and deeply sad all over again that my mom, my dad, my brothers, my family of origin are so totally absent from that time in my life.

Along with celebrating LoML's gotcha day in a couple of weeks, she and I are leaving a week from Sunday to go to Panama.  My mom has taken another bad turn with the cancer--markers doubling and tripling in weeks instead of months, a lot more pain, a new large tumor on her spinal cord.  During our time with her and my dad, something quite extraordinary is also going to happen:  Ligia, my second mother, is going to be joining us in Panama for a few days.  My daughter will actually get to be in the same space with me and my two mothers, if only for a very brief time.  As soon as she saw me begin to make progress on the scrapbook, she informed me that we needed to take it to Panama.  She can't possibly understand what it does to my heart to think about Abuelita Ligia and Abuelita Nita, LoML, and I sitting together, retracing those steps, passing over from life to death and death to life, all at once. 

LoML on her first night home

Into the Desert

On Sunday morning all the comfortable, familiar ways of doing and being church stopped.  Instead, we gathered to face into the reality that we are in the midst of a serious crisis in our congregation.  The symptom is financial -- we are facing a very significant gap between our operating budget for the year and the results of our annual pledge campaign.  But that is only the symptom.  The really issue--the real question is about commitment.  We are losing the competition for the hearts of our community to soccer practice and regattas, to long mornings drinking Starbucks and reading the New York Times, to all the different choices that a Sunday morning presents for that particular demographic that once sat in the pews of churches like ours.

I am proud that we are facing into the truth and making the hard decisions that our situation is asking of us.  I was able to send out my weekly email to the Vineyard Eucharist families--a small new community I've seen myself helping to midwife into the world.  I talked about us being in the desert and how desert people have so much to teach us; that felt right.  This afternoon, I was the spokesperson for a small group of people who are bringing  the people who can make a difference with affordable dental health care to the Nehemiah Assembly of our new social justice network which we have so proudly named "BOLD Justice"--Broward Organized Leadership Doing Justice. Good outcomes.  I've even made the arrangements so we can sing along with a CD at the Vineyard Eucharist this Sunday since we will have no musician to support us.  All of that was good and important. 

Today, I also made the decision that we must terminate two faithful women who have staffed our nursery for over twelve years, good women who have loved and cared for the smallest among us.  My corporate experience taught me well about the necessity of making really tough decisions like this and the nuts and bolts of how to make it happen.  I worked out some of the details with our finance people and my husband who is rector of the parish.  Negotiated pay for both through the end of the month. Tomorrow I will go to their house and tell them the news. 

But I don't work in a corporation, I work in a church.  So after all that was done, it was safe to stop and simply sob for all that we are losing in order to have life.

Friendship

When your child has behavioral and cognitive limitations/challenges/disabilities--whatever cleaned up version of the language of difference gets used--there are a lot of things that you don't get to celebrate.  The first win at peewee soccer, watching your child master addition or subtraction.  There has to be a special kind of hope when you  start saving for a college fund. I still struggle trying to find just the right guardian for my child when Spouseman and I no longer are here to watch over her.

I have ached watching my child not quite read the cues that are needed to play childhood games.  It no longer hurts when children figure out there's something different about my child and avoid her because they don't know how to deal with the ways in which she is different from them.  But recently, all our hearts broke all over again, when a classmate led a couple of other boys to bully her mercilessly about her appearance--the hair on her arms, her skin color.  It got bad enough that I had to use legal terms to put her school on notice:  "Ms X, bully boy has crossed a line.  He is harassing my daughter and I will not stand for it."  The school was very responsive and for that I am thankful.

Then, I was given another gift.  Light of My Life is in a special ed class with only one other girl.  I'll call her Mountaintop.  That's what her name means in Spanish.  And sweet, strong, incredibly vulnerable Mountaintop has been standing up to the bullies to help my daughter.  How can you ever say thank you for such courage and kindness?  On President's day, the three of us went for pedicures.  It was delicious. I chose pink nailpolish.  Mountaintop silver.  LoML went for flaming, totally out there red.  Her little toenails are miniscule, but that girl has undeniably red toe nails these days. 

Today, LoML and I had a rocky time at the end of the day.  It's a long story how we got there, but close to dinnertime, we were at the supermarket, both of us hungry, tired, stressed.  The warning signs were all there for a major meltdown.  We didn't go there though.  She was able to pull back and keep a handle on her behavior though she was mad as hell.  We came home and had an uneventful dinner.  Then she said, "Mami, can I call Mountaintop?"  And I said yes.  Carefully I read the phone number to her.  Slowly, she punched in each number.  I held my breath while she asked to speak to her friend.  I did everything I could not to giggle when she sat on the sofa, crossed one leg over the other, then lowered her head so her hair formed a curtain over her face and phone.  And just like that, my child was having her first ever phone call with a gal pal.  Just like that.  They talked so long, I finally had to intervene.  "Mountaintop--my mom says wrap it up. I'll talk to you tomorrow."  I never thought I'd get to have this moment.  How did I ever deserve such goodness in my life?

Si Se Puede!

Why?

Early yesterday, on the spur of the moment, Spouseman and I decided that Light of My Life would travel with him to Selma.  Mamasita-in-law is moving into an assisted living facility.  Spouseman was driving to Crawfordville to pick up his son  so today, both of them could help move some of MIL's furniture into her new apartment.  It occurred to both of us that this was a lovely opportunity for LoML to spend time with her big brother and dad.She loves and needs those times of getting in a big pile with family. She would be a blessing to all the grownups. Somehow, it all made sense so in 15 minutes we had her packed and ready to climb into the truck and take off with her dad.

For the second time in less than a year, I find myself going solo for a few days.  Last night, I went out to a nice restaurant with my friend B.  Then I went by myself to see Juno.  I wept almost non-stop.  That stuff about fertility, adoption, motherhood, marriage, parenthood, all jumbled together with a lot of reverence and respect in this sweet little movie really got to me.  After the movie was over I walked out towards my car, passing by the restaurant Spouseman and I go to for special occasions.  People sit at tables by the windows of Canyons and they were there last night.  Strange to be coming out of a movie that is all about relationships and connectedness, walk by the place where that is celebrated and feel so self-contained.  This wasn't about isolation or loneliness--I'd had a warm, lovely meal with a good new friend just a couple of hours before.  But last night I was only responsible for myself and only able to take care of myself. At that moment, the only one watching out for me was me. I don't experience that often.

This morning, after reading the paper and drinking a cup of coffee in bed--something I never do, I got back up to make a simple breakfast of yogurt, strawberries and raw oatmeal.  And decided I'd take it out and eat my meal on the deck.  The picture above is an approximation of what that was like. But it can't capture the special hue of the sunlight early in the morning as it stretches out  over the water at this time of the year.  This is so completely out of the ordinary for me these days, even though this is where I live!   Why?