Near and Far

Here's what Christmas was like when I was a child in Australia: presents in the morning around our family Christmas tree, then over to our grandparents' house to spend the day with extended family. We would eat too much food (obviously) and get overexcited and have a fantastic time with our cousins. Every year when I was small my Grandma would give us a new swimming costume and we would pull it on gleefully after lunch and spend the afternoon in the pool.

These are my memories, anyway. The only drama I can really recall was how painful it was waiting after lunch for an hour before we were allowed to go in the water. In my memory, I'm perpetually something like eight years old and the day stretches out, clear and perfect. My Grandma had gift-giving superpowers and she would always pile us with a ton of things that we didn't know we needed but were completely fabulous. She gave me a ginormous stuffed toucan, one year, along with the swimming costume and no doubt an entire armful of other things that she bought throughout the year because she thought I would like them. I did like them, of course. She did this for all of us, all of her grandchildren, and we absolutely loved it. Any time anybody talks about how children don't need lots of presents and how it's a terrible mistake to load them with stuff they don't need, I think about my Grandma and I know that they are wrong. It was one of the (many) ways she showed us her love, and she did a great job of it.

I wish I could say that I still have the stuffed toucan, but I don't. I mean, who needs a stuffed toucan, right?

Here's what Christmas is like now that I'm an adult in England: well, nothing like any of that above. We always spend it with J's family, because they are here and so are we. So I'm an entire hemisphere away from my family of origin, every year. I've been folded into someone else's family, someone else's traditions. And while they're nice, they don't feel like mine.

Also it's cold.

Of course there are good things about being here at this time of year. Number one, it's my home now, number two, husband children etcetera, number three winter and Christmas really do go well together. And I find that I forget that some things that feel normal now weren't always part of my Christmas. Bacon-wrapped mini sausages, for example. Yumorama! Why doesn't everybody eat those every day? Cinnamon-scented anything. Love it! Smells like Christmas. And mulled wine, too. Didn't we always do that in Australia? I wonder.  No, it turns out, and that was a terrible mistake, because mulled wine is more delicious than I can possibly explain, and makes winter bearable.

But some things still feel weird. Every year, here, after a gigantic lunch of turkey and brussels sprouts (let's not talk about brussels sprouts - who decided they were a good Christmas tradition?) Jay's family all sit around for a while then reconvene around the table to have cake for tea. And I'm all why are we eating cake for tea? I did the weird mini cabbages and the trifle and so on but I do not want to eat cake for dinner. It just doesn't feel right. But I do it of course, because I'm a guest and hello: manners.

But sometimes, I want to be back in Australia, with the hot weather and the swimming and my own cake-free family Christmas so badly that it feels like a physical pain. Instead I'm here, belonging, but sometimes not quite belonging, still, after fifteen years.

This year, I asked J's mum what I could bring to her house for Christmas. I was thinking maybe a side dish, but no. Cake, she said. Bring some cake for tea. 

Now, it doesn't take much to trigger an existential immigrant crisis in me at any time of year, but December is particularly bad. The cake request definitely brought one on. It kind of summed up every reason that I wanted to be somewhere else, half a world away, wearing a bikini and making summery pina coladas rather than stupid cake. (My family don't actually drink. But I do. So there would be pina coladas if I was there, right? And the bikini is there because in this fantasy I'm tanned and also much thinner). These existential immigrant crises don't happen too often, but when they happen, they really happen. I think that loving me means accepting that once a year (okay, at least once a year) I'm going to totally lose my shizzle over the fact that I'm so far away from my family.

So today it was time to bake a cake, and I was having my crisis. I had no idea what to bake and then thought - I know, I'll make my mother's honey gingerbread loaf. That will make me feel better, if it doesn't make me feel much much worse. I know honey gingerbread doesn't sound that delicious, but believe me, it totally is. We used to eat this all the time, pretty much every time we had visitors, but I hadn't thought about it for years.

I called my mum. Can I have that recipe? I asked, and she said yes, of course, and told me that it had actually been Grandma's recipe, which I hadn't known. Don't forget to line the tin, she told me. If you don't line the tin, you'll lose half the cake when you take it out. Also, it's really hard to tell when it's actually cooked, because the batter is so dark. And that reminds me, don't burn it. It's very easy to burn. And sometimes it overflows the tin. You should definitely do a test batch before you serve it to anybody else. It's very, very easy to mess it up.  Now that I come to think of it, it's not a very good recipe. 

In my memory, I was basically raised on this stuff, and I don't remember my mother ever messing up a batch. Maybe what she meant was that it would be easy for me to mess it up, and hey, that much is probably true.

Jay took the children to the park so that I could get on with the baking. I downloaded the recipe she emailed me and strangely, it didn't look familiar at all. It's hilariously minimalist (bake until cooked? Thanks!) and I don't feel any of the recognition I expected. Surely I made this as a child when we had guests over? On the other hand, maybe not; I wasn't a very helpful child.

I mixed it all together, everything still feeling unfamiliar. Why was there boiling water? I certainly didn't remember that. Even the way of putting it together felt wrong - Australian recipes, like American, use cup measures and I'm now totally used to baking by weight. Don't tell me to lightly pack a half cup of brown sugar, just give me the weight! Why can't everybody just buy a pair of scales? It's so much simpler. But I measured out my cups and as the ingredients combined in the final step, the smell of ground ginger and hot honey smacked me in the face and suddenly there I was, eight years old, my mother making it in the kitchen and the three of us kids hanging around to lick the bowl. Or maybe it would have been my sister making the cake because she was a helpful child. Either way, that was it, this incredibly familiar and nostalgic smell, delicious and painful and happy and sad all in one.

Why am I making this on my own?  I asked myself. My own children were coiled tight with excitement today and were in no fit state to have a mummy-and-me baking session, so that's not what I meant. But why aren't I going to share this with someone else who has memories of eating it as a child? Why can't I do anything with someone who was with me as a child? I put the cake in the oven and my stomach hurt with an intense other-side-of-the-world missing that I can only describe as loneliness.

This is what people don't tell you about a happy childhood: it puts a lot of pressure on your adulthood.

Thing is, I'm under no illusions about what it would be like if I was really back there. My grandmother is no longer alive, and everyone who still is alive is getting old and going crazy, myself included, obviously. It would be hot (way too hot) on Christmas day and I'd be complaining about that, and I wouldn't be in the pool, I'd be in the kitchen. And anyway, that pool is no longer in the family - my grandfather sold the family house after my grandmother died, and he now lives alone on the fifth floor of a retirement complex. Not quite the same.

Perhaps I don't really miss a place. Maybe what I really miss is a time. Maybe what I really want is to be eight years old again, for someone else to be in charge and only to have to worry about what I'm going to do to fill the sixty minutes between turkey and swimming.

I had forgotten how intensely wonderful this cake smells as it's baking. It's got a much more powerful aroma than I remember and the spicy ginger and sugar really do smell like Christmas. My mother never baked this at Christmas but suddenly it smells so appropriate and right for this time of year, here, in a cold climate. The postman comes the door and he's never really spoken to me before but he asks What are you baking? That smells amazing! And I tell him that it's honey gingerbread, and add, unnecessarily, that it's my mother's recipe. It smells great, he says again. Merry Christmas! 

The children come home and Blue - who pretty much hates all food - says what is that yummy smell? It smells like I really want to taste it! 

In that instant I decide that I am going to make this every year from now.

And maybe this is it. Maybe this is how we start our own traditions. Maybe I really will make this every Christmas from here on, and my own daughter in law will have to remember to be polite about that awful cake her husband likes so much.

Or maybe I won't, and we'll have to think of something else.

The cake turned out perfectly, by the way. I made two batches, cooked them for different amounts of time (by accident) and they were both perfectly moist in the middle, spicy and sweet and a little bit caramelised on the outside. I remembered what my mother used to do, before she got into eating healthily, and spread each slice with a smear of salty butter. Despite the spice, both children loved it and it tasted exactly the same as I remember from twenty years ago, and thirty.

doesn't look like much, but smells like what heaven must smell like

And of course, then I realised - maybe as time goes on, I will get to share this with people who remember eating this as children. As my children. It doesn't make the pain of being far away from my family go away, but I think it's going to have to do.

*************

In case you ever want your house to smell like an expensive bakery, here's the recipe.


HONEY GINGERBREAD

½ cup honey (or mixture of honey and golden syrup)

½ cup boiling water

½ cup lightly packed brown sugar

1 cup plain flour

½ cup S.R. Flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

3 heaped tsps ground gingerbread

125g (4oz) butter

****************************

Grease a loaf tin, and line with paper.

Preheat oven to moderate.

Mix honey and boiling water in large bowl.

Mix in sifted dry ingredients.

Melt the butter and beat into the mixture.

Bake in moderate oven until cooked (seems to take 50-60 minutes).

Test with a skewer.

Turn out on a wire rack to cool.

Help

So after calling our adoption agency and asking for some help, we've been plugging into some local post-adoption support.  We've been having some assessment sessions with an attachment-focused therapist, and getting regular calls from a social worker.

"Do you want to come along to a twelve-week attachment parenting course?" she asked me. And I didn't want to- of course I didn't - but I said yes anyway, because I'm starting to suspect that we're on some kind of List Of Troubled Families, and people on that list need to take all the help that's offered to them, right? You know, just in case it ever comes up in court.

I'm joking.

(I'm not entirely joking).

Anyway. It's not that I don't think attachment parenting is important. I do, of course, and that's why I've already read a ton about it, talked a lot about it, used a lot of the techniques. I don't do it perfectly, of course, but I do know the basics and then some. So does Jay. "We don't need to go on a course," I said. "It's not that we don't know this stuff. It's just..."

Just what? Was it really just that I thought I already knew it all? No, it wasn't that. I sat there on the first night of the twelve, brittle with tension, staring at the leaders and wanting to be anywhere else. Fifteen of us sat around a table, drinking tea from an urn and eating supermarket cookies. The leaders - let's call them Anne and Brenda - ran through the list of what we would cover during the course and yep, that was all stuff we had heard before. Brain development. Connection.  Trauma. Attunement. Etcetera.

We started talking. Even at the start, in the first session, I could tell that A and B were full of ideas, but the ideas made me kind of angry. I could barely even hear what they were saying without my subconscious leaping up and objecting.

Make sure your child has had enough food / That's difficult if he won't eat
Make sure your child is getting enough sleep / He already gets plenty of sleep. That's not the problem.
Don't overschedule your child / is three meals a day overscheduling? Because otherwise we're golden
Try reducing conflict / I'm not the one who is neurologically addicted to conflict.
Try being more playful and joking around / Is THAT a joke?

I got mad when they mentioned stuff we were already doing - because I already knew it didn't work - and I got mad when they mentioned stuff that we weren't doing - because how could I possibly, possibly do anything more than I was doing ?

It felt to me like I was walking into that room with my arms already full, already carrying more than I could manage. You know, things like my son is five and I can't go to the bathroom alone, things like he needs two hundred percent of me and I'm empty, things like what is wrong with me? Why can't I manage, and the related they made me go on a freaking parenting course.

it's really amazing what a talented artiste I am. 

And then, they were trying to hand me bright ideas, shiny new tools for fixing our situation. But it just felt like more things to carry.

And I couldn't carry any more things.  So I let the bright ideas bounce off me instead. Not because they were no good, but because I couldn't, psychically- in fact, almost physically - let anything else in. The last few months - okay, years - have felt like a test of endurance - a marathon. Except the finish line keeps on getting moved, or something - this mixed metaphor is getting a little confusing - and the only way to keep going is to keep on giving everything in a way that I really didn't know was possible. Your stress levels are in the clinical zone, said the psychologist a few weeks ago and I thought well, duh. 

This is why I didn't want to even think about the new tools. After all, it's not like I'm not trying. I'm giving this thing everything I have. I'm carrying as much as I possibly can. 

And so I felt Do not give me any more things. I cannot possibly carry any more things. I am already carrying all of the things. 

But we continued to go to the course, of course, because we liked A and B, and the other couples were nice too, and we'd said we would and we still think we're on the List Of Troubled Families. 

We got homework, and it was do something nice just for yourself. So I went to see the Rembrandt exhibition at the National Gallery and it was fantastic. 

I felt a little lighter for doing it. I appreciated the push. And the more sessions we went to, the more I realised that these people really knew what they were talking about. They weren't trying to give us advice in a vacuum. And the other people around the table were going through things that were similar to what we were facing. 

And after a few more sessions, I found that I was willing - and able - to take on some of the new ideas. It wasn't that these ideas were any better than the ones they told me first - in fact, many of them were exactly the same - but something important had happened. Without ever being explicit about it, A and B (and the group) had managed to take away some of the things I had been carrying. After some time talking and thinking and brainstorming and sharing and workshopping, it was as if they had said here, let me take that away from you. 

And of course, once I lost some of my big bundle of Things, I found I had some space in my hands. Space to try picking up some new tools and trying some new things. Things like trying different ways to be playful, like trying different language for conflict resolution, for implementing new structures in the deadly hours between 4 and 7pm. 

We all need help sometimes. 

And if you are the helpee - well, learning to be the helpee is not easy, especially when it's being an official helpee like we are right now. The hardest thing for me, maybe - I had to trust these people before I could hand them any of my stuff. They were probably willing to take it off me at the door, but I couldn't see it. If you are carrying around all of the things, it's very difficult to think straight, sometimes. All the blood that your arms are using to carry things takes away what your brain could really use, and that can make a person panicky or prickly. Or maybe that's just me. 

I'm glad I trusted them. They have been trustworthy, and I'm extremely grateful.  

I think there's some stuff I want to remember here next time I'm the helper, too. 

If you're the helper, sometimes new tools are not the first thing that people need, no matter how shiny and wonderful they are, no matter how many things they would fix.  Especially if it's family stuff. That mother is a person, not just the Family Fixing Mechanic. Sometimes, you have to take away some of what they are already carrying before they can even pick up that tool. And people who aren't willing to do that probably aren't going to be any help at all. 

(Sidebar 1 - sometimes it's enough to just notice that they are carrying it. I find that when someone says that looks heavy I already feel like things are a little lighter). 

(Sidebar 2 - On reflection, I think, actually, this is why drive-by advice is So. Very. Annoying, especially if you are in crisis mode. Giving advice without offering to carry any of the things that the person is already carrying is like someone has coming along and saying "Catch!" and tossing an armload of stuff at someone who already has their arms full. It doesn't matter how great the stuff is; I can't catch it. Which is just another way of saying that there's no point telling someone how to improve their life if you aren't already busy being their friend). 

That's it, really. 

I I've been gone for a while, and I intended to write about some of what we've actually been learning, about some of the help we've actually been getting. But I could never quite do it,and I think it's because I had to learn some of this stuff first. 

Breaking News

So this happened today.

We are taking this very seriously

Although we are still pretty freakin' pleased with ourselves

but possibly not quite as pleased as Mummy. 

Honestly, it just seems like yesterday they were like this: 

Oh, that's right, NO IT DOESN'T. (Although of course it does, sort of). 

Seriously, though, did you ever see a cuter pair head off to school? No, you didn't. You did not. What you can't see is that they also insisted on taking matching Frozen lunchboxes (of course). It was adorable. Although after I took these photos, we got in the car and Blue asked me "Mummy, what does adorable mean?" so I may have overused that word a little bit today. But what could make me happier than a day on my own sending two excited, totally ready children to school in matching uniforms? Nothing, that's what. 

Pink told me yesterday that "When I go to school, Mummy, do you realise you are going to have to do ALL of the jobs around the house?" I managed not to say HAHAHAHAHAHA in her face, which took a great deal of self control. When she asked me about it again this afternoon, I told her that so far, I'm coping fine.

Apparently the day went well and they coped fine too. Afterwards they totally crashed, in every way, which was not a problem because I was expecting it, it was totally normal and reasonable and I'd had five hours of silence to prepare. They were in bed by 6.30 and asleep by 6.35, which officially makes this the best day ever. 

In other breaking news, I found out this afternoon, after school, that apparently the cat sat on the mat, whilst wearing a hat. Who knew, right? I'm extremely lucky to five-year-olds to tell me these things.  If a dog gets stuck in a bog and finds a log, I'll be sure to let you all know. In the meantime: CHAMPAGNE. 

A note from the edge of the trench

(I tried to add a photo to this post but for some reason I can't.)


“How was your summer?" people have been asking me, and I say "awful," because I've decided to stop lying about stuff like that. I'm finding that this is not a socially acceptable answer. The correct answer is "great," of course, although "fun" is also permitted. Summer is meant to be a time when you enjoy yourself, whether you frinking well want to or not.

I, however, am on my fourth week of medication for what turns out to be a multi-antibiotic-resistant infection. That has not been fun. Some people have told me that at least I live in a country where I have access to medicine! Yes, I know. However, neither good access to medication - nor even free healthcare, which I also have - technically makes summer fun.

The real issue, of course, is that I've been looking after two children, one of whom is currently highly dysregulated. Doing that while well is a challenge, and doing it recently has felt impossible. Even before I got sick things felt really hard. I’m not going to rehash all of that again; just take my word for it.

We've been parenting these twins for (almost) the last five years. Apart from the first year, when I was home full time, Jay and I have shared the childcare and the working – him working three days per week, and me working two, and both of us caring for the children on our other days. We haven’t had any daycare or preschool or any of the sort of help that might have kept me – and Jay – a little bit closer to sanity. (Given our time again, would we do it the same way? Probably, although maybe not, and I’d happily discuss our choices over a coffee with you sometime. The point is that this has been what we’ve been doing, week in and week out, year in, year out).

But on Monday they go to school. SCHOOL. For five and a half hours every day.

If parenting little kids is being in the trenches, I feel like I’m standing on the very edge of this particular one, about to run over the top into – well, who knows what. Another trench, almost certainly, with its own troubles and joys and (for me, undoubtedly) reasons to complain.

But standing here, on the edge of this trench, this is what I want to say. This is what I want to remind myself of, when I’m older, when the children are no longer cute and I think it was so fun when they were small.

It is not always fun, I promise.

*****
On the morning of Wednesday, my last day on my own with the children, we had to go to town to buy school uniforms. I should have bought them a month ago, I guess, but I like to live on the edge. They were excited – they’ve been asking about their uniforms for months – and as we walked along the path to the railway station Blue began to bounce and before long he was skipping, properly skipping with joy, like a baby lamb. It was adorable and my heart nearly beat out of my chest as I thought how many more days like this? None. Except every weekend and all of the school holidays, I guess, but this is the last time they will be solely mine, before their lives are taken up with teachers and friends and all the other shrapnel that comes with growing up. I have adored seeing them change from tiny babies into healthy, strong kids who can skip (both of them) and click (just him) and make up songs (mostly her) and do all the other things a pair of just-five-year-olds should be able to do. I’m so proud of who they are, of what they are becoming.

So yes, of course sometimes it’s really fun, or at least heart-warming, which sort of looks like fun from a distance.

****

But recently, a friend who is quite a lot older than me said to me “How are you? At the moment, you always seem really… frazzled.” I said that might be true, and she asked why. I said that I was struggling with the children. We were having a hard time, I said, and I was feeling exhausted and discouraged. (By the way, for those of you who don’t go to church, ‘discouraged’ is Christian code for ‘I want to stab somebody with a fork’). She asked me why I was discouraged, and I said that I was finding it really hard that I was getting no respite from the children, none at all. We’d looked into a few things over summer but they had all fallen through and I’d reached the point where I was too tired to even keep looking. I was feeling a bit emotional, talking about it, and said that at times like these, I really feel the distance from my family. I said I wished they were closer; that I could trade childcare with my sister; that I could phone my mother on a bad day and demand that she drive over immediately. “I’m really struggling,” I said. “I’m finding things very hard and I need more support.”
“Oh, right,” she said. “Being a long way from your family must be tough. I can see why you’re finding that hard.”
And that was it. But I didn't want sympathy. I wanted her to say “So how could I help you?” or, much better, skip the chit chat and just say “So can I take the kids for the morning on Tuesday?”

I think she had forgotten what it is like to be in the trenches.

I think a lot of people forget what it is like, actually, how when you’re in the middle of it sometimes you really can’t see out the other side. I try not to tell other people what they should do, generally, but I’m going to make an exception here. Older women – empty nesters – retirees – I wish you would step up. I wish you would step up and help those of us who are struggling with our young children. We’re not hard to find, I promise. Take our kids for an afternoon. Do it often, if you can bear to.
Once you've got them, do whatever you like with them – stick them in front of the TV for four hours if you want to, or let them play with power tools. Feed them all the refined sugar they can fit in their sticky little hands. That’s fine. Just help. Lots of us don’t have anyone we can really count on to do that and sometimes it makes it really hard to breathe. The adorable moments don't erase the difficult days.

****

So we went to buy their school uniforms. One of the really great things that's happened recently is that Blue's eating - a huge, huge issue around here - has suddenly got easier. He's eating sausages, now, and fish, oddly enough, and he no longer cries when he sees an egg. Mealtimes still aren't easy but that pressure has eased a little. He has even eased up on his lunch restrictions. For years (seriously, years) he would only eat raspberry jam sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off. Now, he will happily eat raspberry jam sandwiches on white bread with the crusts still on, and he's even broadened his horizons to try a croissant for lunch once when we were out, and a cheese sandwich another time. This is a really good thing, because the uniform shopping was taking longer than I expected and they were really needing lunch. How wonderful, I thought, that I can now take these kids out for a simple meal if we get stuck. This could never have happened a year ago. And I said "Kids, I think we're all getting hungry. Let's go and get a sandwich at Starbucks."

Cue howling from the boy. We back and forthed a little - I thought it was because he wanted cake, not a sandwich, and I said that he could still get a cake if he liked, and then he lifted up his voice and said "But lunch in a cafe is a new thing and I DO NOT LIKE NEW THINGS!"

Well, score one for self-awareness, I guess, but zero for actually getting any food into him. One step forward, two steps back.

And yes, I do know that school is a new thing.

*****

Yet it’s kind of embarrassing to admit just how fervently I’ve been looking forward to them starting school. I’ve got a to-do list as long as my arm, with everything on it from organising five years’ worth of photos to editing my novel to finally getting that pesky smear test done. Every time I see the doctor (which is a lot recently) there’s obviously some kind of flag on my record which makes them say “So when are you going to come for your test, Mrs Chapman?” and I gesture at the children, who are always with me, and say “Really?” and they say “Uh, okay, I can see your point. So when do they start school?” and I say “September!” and then the doctor says “So I’ll see you then,” and I say “I can’t wait!” and they give me a funny look, and as I walk out I realise that they thought I was talking about the smear test.

But honestly, the thought of some time on my own is almost more than I can bear. A few nights ago, I dreamed that I died suddenly (and hopefully painlessly). I'm not sure how it all happened, but I could see all my friends and relatives clustered, crying, around my hospital bed. One of them was wailing and said “I can’t believe she died now! It’s so unfair!” and another one said “I know! JUST AS HER CHILDREN WERE ABOUT TO START SCHOOL!” In my dream, it’s obvious THAT was the real tragedy.

I’m not making that up, I promise.

*******

We were walking through uniform-shop number eleven (it felt like) when a little girl lurched towards us. She was about twelve months old, I think, and just walking. She was dimply and curly and unbelievably cute. I saw her coming straight at us and laughed at the adorableness of it all. Blue, who was holding my hand, pulled my arm sharply towards him and said MUMMY! YOU MUST STOP LAUGHING AT THAT BABY!

I had forgotten. For ten seconds, I had forgotten that he would feel threatened and angry if I smiled at another child.

******

Probably, this explains the fighting, or at least some of it. If I had to pick one reason why I need a break, not that anybody has ever asked me to do that, I would say it's definitely the fighting. I've never really written much about the fighting that goes on in our house because it's too hard to put the awfulness into words. It started when they were about thirteen months old and I have no idea when it's going to end. These days, there are moments when they aren't fighting each other but when they are tired or bored and I leave the room, they start immediately. He is the main instigator, but she is hardly innocent. Right now he has bite marks on his tiny little torso from where she actually tore his flesh a few weeks ago. I know that lots of kids fight, but this is pathological. I know a few other boy-girl twins who do the same thing, including one adult pair who apparently came out of the womb clawing at each other and now, aged, forty, are still doing it. Managing this is... unspeakably hard. When they are with other kids, the two of them make a great team, but when it's just the two of them, the twin-unit turns inward and attempts to devour itself.

I'd try to solve this by having lots of visitors come and play, but Blue gets hugely upset and threatened when we have people to our house. He just cannot understand why, when they have come to see us, it really is absolutely necessary that I talk to them. We've had a few good friends over recently - people he really likes - but he still spends the spent the first hour (at least) saying MUMMY! STOP TALKING TO THESE PEOPLE!

Mostly it just seems easier to deal with the fighting.

Recently I've instituted 'fighting fifty', whereby every time they fight they have to go and sit in opposite corners and count to fifty. Then they have to apologise to each other, and then they have to apologise to me. It does help, somewhat, because it gives them a bit of cooling off time in between bouts, and also, since they have to do it so often, it's really excellent for their numeracy. Silver linings, folks, silver linings.

*****
So we were heading home, jam-sandwich-ward, from our uniform excursion, and as we approached the railway bridge - a route I walk pretty much every day - I saw a white woman pushing brown-skinned baby boy-girl twins in a pram. I've never seen that before in our town - except for me, obviously - and it was the strangest, strongest feeling of deja vu. She was clearly a little bit lost - looking around, trying to get her bearings - and I stopped and asked if I could help her find her  way. Good citizen, yes, but mostly I just wanted to see it was real. It felt so very, very odd that I would see this for the first time ever on the last day of this phase of my life. It was as if destiny was giving me the chance to hand on the baton of adorable tiny transracial twin-mother-dom to this stranger.

She thanked me for stopping, and told me where she wanted to go. I pointed her in the right direction, and then she looked at my two children and smiled. "Are they twins?" she asked, and I said "Yes. How old are yours?" and she told me they were fourteen months. "Does it get easier?" she asked, and I said "No," because I've decided to stop lying to people about that one, too. She laughed nervously, and said "really? We're only just keeping our heads above water."
I felt bad. "Well, are yours fighters?" I asked. "Mine are fighters, and that's what's made it difficult." I looked at my two, one of whom had the other in a headlock.
She relaxed. "Oh no, not really," she said. "Mine are really close. When our boy cries, she crawls over and wipes his tears away."
It was my turn to laugh nervously. "That's great," I said, as I prised my children apart. We said goodbye. No baton for you, lady, I thought, as I walked away. You and I clearly have nothing in common.

*****

That's the strangest thing about parenthood, isn't it. Having kids is this near-universal experience, but my experience of it and yours can still be worlds apart. Some friends of mine seem to be nowhere near breaking point while I feel like my rubber band is about to snap. And who knows? Is my rubber band not stretchy enough, or is it just being stretched further than theirs? I have one friend who complained about how hard motherhood was because her two year old (then an only child) 'couldn't entertain herself for more than twenty minutes at a time.' I don't think she knew the meaning of being stretched. But then other friends of mine happily manage a minivan full of children with significant challenges and I know that if I was stretched that far, I would definitely break.

I guess what I mean is just because you and I both have children doesn't mean that we have any idea what it is like to have each other's children.

****
Later that day Blue got stuck in a tree. Actually, he wasn't stuck, he just refused to come down. He was on a teeny tiny twig that was bending badly, even under his tiny weight. I asked him to come down and he refused and I couldn't reach him to lift him down. He was high and he was defiant and that is a toxic combination.

The defiance terrifies me. When he's angry, he has no sense of danger. I'm pretty relaxed about letting my kids do stuff, but I don't let them scoot on the road with trucks and I don't let them run away down a road where I can't see them and I don't let them fall from fifteen feet, either. They are so precious, and when they won't come when I say You. Need. To. Come. Here. Now. in my scary voice it makes me absolutely furious. After I got him down from the tree he had a tantrum all the way home and I was so mad about the tree and the tantrum and the danger (there was real danger) and the onlookers (because yes, there were onlookers) that I just couldn't form a coherent sentence. I have to have five minutes on my own before I can talk to you about this I said, because I really did, and as I sat in the bathroom and did some deep breathing I kept thinking if one more person tells me to enjoy these fleeting days I will have to kill them.

I calmed down, he apologised and order was restored. But I was exhausted and in that moment it wasn’t a day I was upset about, it was every bad day. This was our last day of this phase of our lives and I wanted it to be good. Not perfect, but good.

It wasn’t good.

When I write all of this down, none of it seems like a big deal at all. If I would only be better organised, and bring his sandwiches, if I would only remember to make him the focus of my attention, if I could only be calmer and more patient, things wouldn’t be hard. Life was easy then, I can hear myself saying. I don’t know why I didn’t just enjoy it more.

But these days are hard, and I want to remember that.

Between finishing this post and publishing it, I’ve just checked my email, and it turns out I was wrong about something.

School doesn’t start on Monday after all. It starts on Tuesday.

TEN

Tomorrow, Jay and I will have been married for ten years. Ten years! I could write something meaningful - or attempt to write something meaningful - about marriage and love and family, but I'm far too tired for that. Instead I'll give you this Spot-The-Difference: Jay-And-Claudia-Have-Been-Married-For-A-Decade-Edition. 

THEN

NOW

Can you tell what's changed? Just in case you need a little help: 

I could never, ever have guessed what the last decade would hold. I can't imagine what might happen in the decade ahead. But - excuse me while I get sentimental for a moment - there is nobody on earth I would rather have with me through all this - for better; for worse. Here's to the next ten, baby. 

For the first time ever, and somewhat against my better judgement

For the first time ever, and somewhat against my better judgement, I'm going to post and respond to a comment I got yesterday. Here is the comment and then here are the things that I wanted to say. 

But no boundaries, let the kid get away with murder, claiming you've somehow acquired "secondary trauma" from the horrors of parenting kids you spent years and years and countless thousands if dollars to acquire from overseas?

As opposed to actually setting boundaries + dealing with it you've managed to pathologise your kid's behavior.
And other upper middle class white women with no backbone and expensive foreign kids praise you for your "bravery"? 
It might just be worth doing a quick google search regarding folks who TRULY survived trauma (worse than letting their bratty kid get away with murder) and came out the other side without need of "post adoption therapists". You know, Holocost survivors. Folks who escaped civil wars. Military vets. Folks who don't have the luxury of falling apart -- with the expectation that others exist to help put you back together! 

Thing the zeroth: 

I'm not actually particularly upset or offended by this comment. I already knew that some people thought this way, so I'm going to use this as a chance to respond frankly to a very, errr, frank comment. So. 

Thing the first: 

My kids have boundaries; a ton of boundaries actually. I totally laughed my head off at the idea that my kids might not have boundaries. There are so many boundaries in our house that it might as well be an atlas. I'm far from a perfect parent, but believe me, we have boundaries. Also, to the best of my knowledge, my kids have not yet tried to murder anybody. 

Okay, that one was easy. Next. 

Thing the second: 

It's interesting that you see a contradiction between spending years and years in the adoption process and then struggling post-adoption. You're not alone! It's funny (except, obviously, not) how commonly the 'you picked this, so shut up' attitude surfaces in talking about the hard parts of adoption.  Are only the parents who got there biologically allowed to struggle with parenting? Because that doesn't seem like it makes sense to me, not at all. Parenting my kids is not 'horror', no way, but it is pretty tough sometimes and that isn't magically untrue because the adoption process was also tough. 

Seriously, I hate it when people expect adopted kids to 'shut up and be grateful'. Family is hard, right? And sometimes it's harder for families who weren't formed the easy way. So it doesn't make any sense to just expect adoptive parents to shut up and be grateful either. Okay, moving on. 

Thing the third: 

I totally agree that pathologising kids' behaviour is not cool. In fact, that's the very question I kept asking myself for months- are we just pathologising this? That's probably one of the reasons why it took us quite a while to seek any kind of professional help. I hated the idea of getting some kind of unnecessary label on my kid. Nobody (okay, almost nobody) wants to get their kids a diagnosis that they don't need, or isn't warranted. We went to seek help after getting opinions from people like teachers and nurses and a speech pathologist - yep, they all said, you should definitely get some support. So we did - that's not pathologising. 

And hey - there's plenty of shame out there for those of us who need to get help for our kids - totally inappropriate shame, in my opinion. Maybe, sometimes, there are parents who are looking for 'help' when what they actually need is a kick in the pants. But I don't think that's me and Jay, and I don't think that's the majority of people who find themselves  asking for post-adoption support. After all, I kind of hated being scrutinised when we were in the middle of our homestudy; there is no way on earth I would voluntarily put myself back through that kind of thing if I didn't think it was something that would really help our precious kids. It was a big deal to swallow my pride and go there, to say hey, we could benefit from some outside help. I would hate to think that other people who need help would come up against attitudes like this and feel shamed into putting the phone back down and not making that call. Pathologising is not cool, but shaming people is not cool either, just so you know. 

Thing the fourth: 

I totally take your point about me and my upper middle class white friends reinforcing each other's choices. In fact, I think that's one of the biggest things that those of us in these kind of situations need to be really, really wary of. After all, if I decided that what my kids really needed was chicken therapy, or trapeze therapy, I'm sure I'd be able to find a group of women, somewhere, who would applaud my choices and suck me into spending hours on whether bantam hens are more or less therapeutic than fancy ornamentals.

(I'd say go for the ornamentals, wouldn't you? These upper middle class white chickens could totally kick trauma in the butt). 

I am aware that the internet is not the only - and probably should not be the primary - source of information on how to parent kids from hard places.  That's why I think that getting help - or at least advice - from professionals is actually a really good idea, if you think you might need it. Diagnosing our own kids at home is probably not an entirely brilliant plan, and while I value (more than I can say) the support I get from my friends on the internet, a facebook group is no substitute for six years of training in clinical psychology. Although it is a lot cheaper. 

While I'm on this topic, I've been thinking a lot recently about how the whole 'adoption trauma' thing is such a very closed system, if that is the right word. You know - a 'theory of everything'. I've been thinking about the way that it really can be used to explain absolutely everything, and if we aren't careful it's definitely a risk that we as parents can miss the wood for the trees occasionally. As in - sometimes it's trauma, sometimes it's a bad night's sleep. (And then sometimes it's a bad nights' sleep BECAUSE of trauma anxiety and then which one is the chicken and which one is the egg in that little situation, hmmmm?) 

I've been thinking about this because I've been connecting a lot with friends - real life friends-  who have kids with various special needs, and when they describe some of the behaviour challenges they face, I think I could totally come up with a trauma explanation for that behaviour. Even though, obviously, that's not the issue in their case. We definitely do need to be careful that we don't see the world so much through one lens that we ignore all the other factors. There are more lenses than just trauma that all sorts of parents use to explain / modify behaviour, obviously - some parents get very focused on nutrition / lifestyle / food dyes, some people focus on sleep, some on exercise, some on particular types of schooling. Some people (not naming any names, cough cough) think everything comes down to how the parents parent. And once you are committed to one 'thing' as your explanation for everything, it's very easy to forget that there are other factors at play too. 

Just so you're aware, I haven't forgotten. Have you? 

Thing the fifth: 

I'm going to pass on over the 'no backbone' thing, because seriously, whatever, and I'm trying to talk about this like adults. Same goes for the bit about not having the luxury of falling apart. I have a job and two kids and no childcare. Believe me, I don't have that luxury either. So let's move on. 

Thing the sixth: 

Here's the biggie, I think. All that stuff about what constitutes 'real trauma.' Well, you know what? Life is not the pain olympics. Not even a little bit. I'm not saying that what my kids have experienced is as bad as the holocaust - obviously it's not - but it's not nothing, either. I don't talk about details here because woah - privacy - but believe me, it's not nothing. 

I guess what I mean is: If you had, say a broken ankle, and I had a broken leg, then my broken leg wouldn't stop your broken ankle being real. And if you were saying hey! I have a broken ankle, and it really hurts! I hope that nobody would say to you I spit upon your broken ankle. Don't talk to me about broken ankles when Claudia over there has a broken leg. That's what a REAL broken bone looks like, lady. What I hope they would say is this: so sorry about your broken ankle. I know it's not the same thing, but my friend Claudia had a broken leg once. Maybe she has some good tips for walking on crutches. Want me to put you in touch?  And I would totally share my tips with you because hey, pain is pain, whichever one of us is suffering the most. 

On a  related note, thing the seventh (and finalth): 

You sound really angry and upset, and I'm sorry if anything that I've written makes you feel that way. (Although something else I read recently makes me think that you're leaving this comment for more people than just me). I don't know what your background is - but I'm guessing that this kind of anger at someone you don't know is probably because you're hurting in some way.  I'm sorry about that, but even when you're hurting, it's not okay to be mean. (See? Boundaries). 

The internet is a funny place, right? Sometimes it seems like everyone is crazy. But it can be wonderful, too, so let's keep it that way. I really am sorry if anything I've written makes you sad. But in the future, I'd be grateful if you could extend a little compassion to people whose struggles are different from yours. Goodness knows there's little enough to go around, most days. Here, I'll give you a little of mine - in fact, I think I just did. And next time you want to say something unkind to someone, perhaps you can take it out of your pocket and give a little back. 

Mapping the Exits

So we went to see the social worker. Two of them, actually, and they were really nice. I know what you mean they kept on saying, while making sympathetic noises. Also That sounds exhausting, (and yes, it is, thanks for noticing).

We talked a bit about parenting strategies - what we could do, what we have done, what we might try. They asked us about all kinds of things, and the words just fell and fell out of me. Usually when I talk about parenting I hedge everything around with disclaimers about how much I love my children, but this time I didn't, really. I didn't feel like I had to apologise to these people for finding things tough, sometimes- these people are in post-adoption support; I presume they already know that adoption can be tough. So let's skip the chit-chat about the cuteness, shall we? Jay talked as well, of course, but not as much as me because the attachment complications we face in our family are very much concentrated along the mother-son axis.

mother and son

I talked about how bad I feel, sometimes, when I realise that my focus on Blue - my need to coach him through the simplest things, sometimes - affects how I parent Pink.  Do you love Blue more than me, Mummy? she asked me, after one particularly hard morning. Her voice was matter-of-fact.  Of course not, I said, trying not to sound as horrified as I felt. I adore both of you. (This happens to be true). Then why do you always cuddle him so much? she asked. Because his attachment issues manifest themselves in physical clinginess,  I might have said, but didn't, of course. Instead I said well, Blue needs a lot of cuddles, honey. She looked at me and said, still matter-of-fact, But mummy, so do I. When she said that, I felt all the air rush out of me. I know you do, honey, I said, and I gave her a hug right then, but of course in ten minutes time I was dealing with him again.

And has all of this affected your marriage? asked the older social worker, and Jay said no  at exactly the same time that I said yes. Make of that what you will. I feel like it has - it must have - affected our marriage, because it affects everything else in life. I feel so profoundly exhausted so much of the time. I have no energy to cook creative meals and light candles for some kind of date night - I just want to sit on the sofa and watch Veronica Mars. I find that I am completely unable to separate out what is normal parental exhaustion (surely, everyone feels this way) from the exhaustion that comes from managing our particular circumstances (nobody else can possibly feel this way, surely?)

I talked and talked. I talked and talked about how my son reacts to certain stimuli - how it seems that his reactions to some things are way outside of what those things warrant. I talked about how I'm trying to work out which things do what, trying to work out how I can manage those reactions. I read this thing I kept on saying and it made me wonder if - there's so much to wonder about. Why the really good days, why the really bad days? What are the uncommon denominators? I have no idea. The hitting seems to have stopped; for now, at least. I'm beyond relieved, but I have no idea how it happened so I wouldn't know how to make it stop again if it were to re-start. So much to read, so much to think about, and still, sometimes, when things go wrong, no freaking clue what to do.

(Have I mentioned that I love my son? Really, I love and adore my son).

The social worker interrupted my flow of words. You said you've done a lot of reading, she said. I nodded. Have you done any reading about secondary trauma? I hadn't. She wrote something down. The way you're describing your own behaviour, she said, it sounds like what you're describing is some hypervigilance. It sounds like your own reactions have become fine tuned so that you are always waiting for something to go wrong, always unable to relax. 

Have you ever played pinball, dear reader? I haven't, but I've seen other people doing it and that moment for me was like when someone makes that perfect shot in pinball. Her words arced into my brain and then bounced for what felt like forever, hitting piece after piece and connecting a whole head full of dots that I didn't even know were there.  One thousand points, I should have told her, you have earned an extra life. I didn't say anything though, because I was too busy feeling stunned. We finished the meeting and went home and I haven't been able to stop thinking about what she said. Hypervigilance and secondary trauma. In me. 

Honestly, I don't really know why this has shaken me up so much, but it really has. I thought I had bought into the whole 'attachment is a family issue' thing, but I guess I hadn't. I guess I really was thinking of myself as a person outside this difficult situation, a person who was trying to deal with it (not always very well) but a person who was fundamentally the same person she was before she found herself in it. I'm not sure that's true any more.  And the more I think about it, the more I think that there is nothing secondary about this trauma. Secondary trauma is something that caregivers experience when they have to process the pain of what their loved one has experienced. But if I'm traumatised, I honestly don't think it's through dealing with what he is suffering; I'm traumatised because of what I've experienced myself in this situation. Dealing with the fighting, the drama, the constant push-pull, the difficulties and the neediness - I've spent the last years on constant high alert and waiting for something to go wrong. It suppose all of this has short-circuited something in my brain. Feels about right, to be honest.

We see hypervigilance in our children and we understand why it's happening but we want it to stop. I have to say, it's been a profoundly humbling experience for me to see that it's happening in my own brain too. Now that she's said it, I see it all the time. I don't want to go places, I dont' want to do things because I'm worried that we're going to have a meltdown or an explosion. And when we do go places and something goes wrong, I catastrophise immediately.  This is the worst meltdown in the history of forever. I can't cope with this. The rest of the day is going to be ruined. Now that this is happened he isn't going to eat. If he doesn't eat he won't sleep. Tomorrow is going to be ruined too. We need to leave immediately. Right, let's go, let's go NOW please honey. Where is the nearest exit? It seems that, even when things are actually going fine, I'm always getting ahead of myself. I'm always mapping the exits.

Does this hypervigilance make me a better parent? Absolutely not, obviously. I've developed it as a coping mechanism, but right now it makes me less able to deal with stressful situations, less able to accurately assess risk, less able to think creatively to solve problems when the do occur. I'm trying to be conscious about this. I'm trying to at least talk to myself in a positive way - what's the worst that can happen? - was something I was using for a while, but actually, sometimes the answer to that question is pretty traumatising in itself. Ha.

It doesn't make me a better parent, but I don't think it makes me a worse person, either. The same way that we can acknowledge - hopefully without judgement -  that our kids' brains have reacted to what they have experienced, I think I have to acknowledge the same thing about myself. I'm still trying to work through how to deal with this.

So what does all this mean? Heck, I don't know. I just found her observation incredibly perceptive - if painful - and I thought it might apply to more people than me. A friend of mine was talking about something similar just yesterday and it made me wonder.

Feel familiar to anybody else?

The House Is Quiet

The house is quiet. For the first time ever, my kids have gone off to do a day of school on their own, leaving me at home. It's going to happen once a week for the rest of the term. This means that I have some time to myself - guilt free, no-strings-attached, not calling in any favours, not owing anybody anything, not relying on babysitters - time to myself for the first time in five years.

Five years.

I'm confused.

Why is nobody yelling at me?

And I thought I could blog about that. I could blog about how strange this is, how quiet the house is, how I feel this strange mix of elation and guilt, how this strange day makes me feel some gut-squeezing grief about the children growing up, and how this strange day makes me feel some other heart-clenching grief about how their time at home wasn't the wall-to-wall halcyon haze of happiness that I assumed it would be and how I'm never going to get a do-over on that now, how a part of me feels unmoored by this sudden gaping chasm of time, how part of me feels 'oh no, now people are going to start expecting me to achieve stuff and I don't have any excuses anymore', and how that makes me realise that I must be sort of addicted to the martyrdom of never having my own time, even though I didn't realise it, how part of me feels like great, I can finally get my novel edited, how part of me feels like great, I can finally do that netflix binge, how part of me feels like great, I guess I'd better clean up this stinking cesspit I've been calling a house, how all of me realises that I've forgotten what to do with proper down time, don't I have somewhere to go, don't I have somewhere to be, don't I have a body part to wipe, doesn't somebody need me right now? How can nobody need me? I'm here. Don't you need me? Who am I if nobody needs me? 

So I thought yeah, I could blog about that. 

And then I thought or I could go to Starbucks and read a book. 

I can smell the coffee already.

I win today; I'm calling it. Score one for mental health; zero for stupid pointless mother-angst.

Make mine a caramel macchiato.

We've been away

thanks, aunty L, for the superhero outfit. 

.... and I'm about to go away again (on my OWN. Can you imagine it? I can't. I've checked in, but I still can't believe I'm really flying without children).  I'll be back soon, I promise.

Icy Family Feud Ends In Court

I'll post about seeing the social worker as soon as I can get my head around the meeting we had - hopefully tomorrow or the day after. Today, a vision of my future, if my children had their way. 


MOTHER LOSES COURT HEARING AS CHILDREN REFUSE TO 'LET IT GO'

A Berkshire mother of two was today sentenced after losing a landmark hearing regarding her children's access to the film Frozen. 

After sentencing, a  tearful Mrs Chapman told the waiting media, "This has all been a terrible misunderstanding. I didn't realise that it was actually The Law that children had to be allowed to watch Frozen at least once per day. Now that I know this, my behaviour will change. I'm going to go home and put this right."

Her sentence included a commitment to learn all the songs on her ukulele - even the boring ones - and play them for impromptu karaoke sessions whenever her children ask. Judge Menzel, presiding, said that her sentencing specifies that "This really does mean whenever she is asked, even if it is nearly bedtime."  In addition, the family laptop will be repurposed to show the film on an infinite loop, and Claudia, 34, will wear her hair in mandatory braids every day for the next year, 'just like Ana'.

Neighbours reported that tensions had been growing in the Chapman household for some time. When interviewed, Pink Chapman (who asked that we refer to her by her preferred name of Elsa) said "It was obvious to everyone that something wasn't right with how our mother was treating us. It's not like she couldn't show us the film; we could see the DVD on the shelf. The problem was that she was restricting access, and children need to watch this film daily. Everybody knows that. Now that she has signed a contract and her probation officer will be checking the house regularly, I'm hopeful that we can all put this episode behind us".

Her brother Blue agreed. "She was only letting us watch it while we were having our hair done, and that just wasn't enough," he said. "It's true that we did watch it four times in one week when it arrived, but that was while she was learning to do cornrows and there was a lot of inconsistent behaviour relating to that, anyway. Four times in one week turned out to be the best it ever got, and that's why we had to get the authorities involved".

When asked why they had decided to litigate, rather than seek a more informal  resolution, he said "Elsa and I love our mother, but there are some things that need to be taken seriously. We called for help, and I'm just grateful that help came in time."

A spokesperson for Berkshire child services said, "We are very pleased with the outcome of this ruling. Obviously, we are working towards a situation where all children have unrestricted access to Frozen at all times, but until that day comes, we think the current one-viewing-per-day laws are adequate, and we are glad they are being properly enforced."

When asked to comment, the children's father, Jay Chapman, said "I have no opinion to give. This whole situation has nothing to do with me; that's why I go to work."

The family have asked for privacy at this difficult time.