My Overthinking

Philly Area mom, Life forever changed by adoption

It’s a legitimate question

So, we have an ant problem. Little tiny black ants in my kitchen, on the counter, on the floor, wherever they want to go, openly mocking me as they walk directly over the ant traps I put out for them.

Knowing “tis the season” doesn’t make me hate them any less.

All that prefaces this little snippet…

Lydia: I have a question.

Me: Yes?

Lydia: How do the ants get in our house when they can’t reach the doorknob?

No, there are not any adorable clipart pictures I can find online of a ladder of ants climbing up to open a doorknob and sneak in our house or cute little ants knocking on our door. Instead, I will leave you with this picture of the adorable child who says adorable things and makes my heart just melt with all her cutiepieness.

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Once upon a time until forever – Part 2

There’s a new picture hanging in my kitchen today, a new masterpiece to our mixed media gallery, hanging between Olaf magnets and a flyer from school.

Yesterday was her last Chinese class of the year. Little dark-haired people skitted around the room while soft-spoken Lao Shi tried to shepherd their bodies with seemingly swelling energy. Typically, one of us sits in her class and typically tries to read despite the reason why we’re there. But, with the senioritis that suspiciously attacked even these preschoolers, I was needed.

Lao Shi had brought photocopies for the children to complete and staple together as memory books of the year. Way over the heads of children who can barely write their own names, most of them were scribbling and distracted and alternating between singing Liang Zhi Lao Hu and Let it Go. Lydia clutched a red pen in her little fingers, firmly held it motionless over the ABOUT ME page before her and swung her feet with gusto below her. As the teacher tried to help other kids, I pulled up to her desk to help her, filling in the blanks with the words she supplied to me.

My age: 5.

Where I was born: China.

My parents: Mommy and Daddy.

Brothers & Sisters: Ashlyn, Drew and Evan.

Pets: Mojo and Bebo.

My picture: 

Okay, Lydia. Go ahead. You draw a picture of yourself there.

Pressing hard on the page, she drew her typical person—a round circle for a head, an oval torso, stick arms and legs, eyes and a smile, and some hair around the head. But, then she started intensely working on that torso. I thought she was intent on giving herself a dress that matched the one she was wearing. I watched until she put the pen down with contentment.

That’s a big belly and inside that is a baby that was beautiful called Yue Yue that became Lydia.

It was not a dress she was intensely drawing, it was herself in the womb of her first mother. I smiled and waited for her and for the lump in my throat to dissipate a little. While I waited, she picked up the pen again and went back to her drawing, this time drawing a little body on the chest of the stick figure that was her China mommy.

A doctor helped me to come out of her belly because that’s what doctors do.

Is that your China mommy holding you?

Yup….I don’t know her name.

I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know her name either. I wish we did….

No one stopped to listen. No one there sat with me and marveled at all this little 5 year old girl is processing when she is told to complete a picture appropriate for the title ABOUT ME. This little moment just blended into the energy of the room and class went on without a notice of another step in the journey of a little girl and the woman who is her second mother.

Lydia on swing

 

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Once upon a time until forever

We were just snuggling up in my favorite chair to read together. A few pages into some silly old book about the Jetsons that she dug out from the shelf, I found myself skipping words and wondering how long I’d be sitting there killing time. She joined me in corporate loss of interest and shuffled through a stack of books to find another, landing on one about adoption that I don’t even like and have kept only as an example. Great. I had this book in my own stack of books next to my desk, not with her books, but she found it and now wanted to read it. I decided reading an in-the-moment edited version was better than the message that could be sent if I said no. And so I read, moving quickly, changing words as we went, and closing the cover in record time.

She didn’t seem affected and just nestled in under my arm and chit chatted about seemingly silly things. Sandwiched between observations about the cats and requests for the iPad, she threw this one in with a big smile on her face:

Tell me the story of when I came out of someone’s belly.

You mean your China mommy’s belly?

Yeah, I want to hear the story. Start with Once upon a time…ok?

While Mark was sleeping on the other side of the world, the place where her story began, here I was facing perhaps the most challenging request she’s ever made of me. Sitting comfortably in my favorite chair on the prettiest day of spring yet and being asked to tell my daughter her own story is infinitely harder than all her midnight requests for more water waking me from a sound sleep put together.

I looked right into her eyes, brushing her hair from her forehead and I told her her story, starting with “Once upon a time” just as she had requested. She smiled the whole time as I told her things I know because I just know like how her China mommy’s belly grew and grew and how she felt her kick and twirl inside her because I bet she was a little monkey even then. I moved to what I know universally to the little we know more specifically, giving her what I felt like her little 5-year-old heart needed. She added in a few details she knew herself that she has learned along the way as I’ve looked for opportunities for openness, and I affirmed her as she did.

Oh yes, the lady with a ponytail walked into the room holding you and your eyes were so big and I thought at that moment that I was looking at the most beautiful baby in the whole world.

She told me to keep going when I thought I was finished, urging me to continue until I took that story right up to today, summing up several years in a few sentences that included things like moving from a crib to a big girl bed and then another bed as we made the playroom into her new bedroom. At a loss of something more to say when we got to present day, I paused and wondered if I should tack on a The End or something but feeling like it just wouldn’t be the right words. Instead, she nestled in closer and smiled even bigger and ended my story of her story herself

And they all lived happily ever after.

And, then we just sat for a while, the quiet interrupted occasionally by another funny observation about a stuffed turtle toy or the marble tower she was going to build until she jumped up and bounded onto the next thing.

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