This Reminds Me

Archive for October, 2009

Lois – clutching the white teddy bear – is costumed as “Canada.” No, I’m not entirely sure I understand that either.  But she and her goofy friends are taking Julia (the cutest little bat ever)  trick-or-treating, soon to return to the house to roast hotdogs and s’mores on Keith’s fire pit.  An assortment of “Halloween Rubber Ducks” are swimming with the koi in the pond in candle-lit splendor.

Hannah is at a friend’s house extorting candy.  Rachel – bemoaning her first Halloween as a college student is being spent grabbing Kleenex -  is sneezing and snorting and greeting the ghosts and goblins while helping Keith roast pumpkin seeds.

I’m very content to watch “Ghostbusters” and slowly savor nibbles  of my annual Milky Way.

And that, my friends, is what I call a happy evening – and most definitely a treat.

Happy Halloween!

Fright Fest at Fiesta Texas – one of the best things about October!  We enjoy it more every year.  Caramel apples, popcorn, a musical, the rides – and we’re usually not simmering in our own juices, like we do in the summer.

Because yes, we’re cool like this.

Pumpkin-painting. We’re decorating for Lois’ Halloween party next Saturday.

The “clowns” in the other windows were mannequins. Surprise!

Time to wash the drink mugs…put away the Six Flags backpack....and start thinking “Holiday in the Park” next month!

Keith wanted to try an all-day turkey smoking on his Egg, so we did a “dry run” of Thanksgiving tonight.

The turkey – brined for 24 hours – was anything but dry.  Keith boiled Kosher salt, sugar, allspice, cloves, peppercorns and onions in water, plus added herbs from his garden-  rosemary, sage, thyme and oregano – to complete the brine.  That’s butter dotting the skin to give it that lovely golden glow.

This fragrant still-life is entitled, “View of Turkey Through an Egg Vent Hole.”  I keep telling the girls – Marry a man who can cook!

A-well-a Everybody’s Heard About the Bird…but those onions are m-i-n-e.  Forget flowers or chocolates.  Keith romances me with extra onions any time he grills or Eggs meat.   The way to my heart is strewn with 1016′s.

Our favorite Julia Child quote:  “The food was just lovely.  You could tell someone’s hands had been all over it.”

Turkey gravy, made with those luscious drippings, which Hannah described as, “All my hopes and dreams in a pan.”

If you ever suspect I’m dead, wave a serving spoon of Spinach Madeline under my nose.  No response?  Dig a hole.  Judy’s slightly-spicy creamed spinach recipe is an absolute family favorite.   Well, except for Julia – who suffers through the one bite she must ingest.  Here’s the recipe – I’ve never served it or given the recipe to anyone who didn’t rave about it.  Rachel, Lois and Hannah stand at the counter with crackers when we prepare it, eager to scoop any time I’m not looking. I leave plenty clinging to the sides of the huge mixing bowl for my “laborers” to enjoy.

Some of my best recipes are from my sister Judy – and the very, very best ones are given over the phone beginning “Well, I don’t really have a written recipe for that.  I just sort of start with….”

Dinner time!  Monday night is almost always tacos, hamburger stroganoff, red beans and rice, or spaghetti – so turkey, mashed potatoes and Spinach Madeline was really uptown.  Keith built our kitchen table, BTW, about 15 years ago from the red oak floorboards of a friend’s sagging tear-down house.    For Thanksgiving, we break out the china, plate chargers, cloth napkins, etc. but antique Fiestaware (which I bought at garage sales when it was cheap, believe it or not) and Costco paper napkins are in use every day.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll call Lackland Air Force Base and reserve our two airmen trainees for Thanksgiving day, as will our good friends John & Linda, with whom we’ve shared Thanksgiving for several years.   Keith and I will start compiling the menu, and dropping grocery lists into Excel by day/store.  I’ll look around with dismay – figure out how much of the house we have to shovel out – and sigh deeply every evening.

But you know – we do have a house to shovel – and friends – and nearby grocery stores – and jobs so we can shop in them – and a family that is my heart clustered at Keith’s hand-crafted kitchen table.  So I will rinse the plates tonight, and repeat next month.

Because I’m already thankful.

While we were preparing for Julia, Keith and I digested every scrap of information we could read or hear about Russian adoption, older child adoption, etc.    One possibility topped the list of horrifying potential problems – failure to attach.  What if our “new girl” could not accept us as parents, or her sisters as true siblings?   What if we were still a family of five, with an emotionally-unavailable resident alien stapled on as #6?

We knew the consequences – chaos for the entire family.  Damage to our marriage; damage to our original three daughters; physical, emotional, spiritual and financial ruin, as this family is enduring with their soon to be disrupted five-year-old son.

I talked to so many adoptive families, I got to where I could tell in the first two minutes if I was going to hear a success story (success = attachment) or a horror (horror = no attachment).  I sorted through the myriad of variables and realized the books were right.  You could increase your odds of a successful adoption, but you couldn’t guarantee it.  And love was never Never NEVER enough.

Parenting a post-institutionalized child – particularly an older child – required different techniques and strategies than I used with homegrown Rachel, Lois and Hannah.   To help her attach, we practiced the “holding therapy” in Russia when she treated me badly.  We regressed her to a bottle at bedtime when she was first home at age 6.  When she first walked into her new “dom” (house), there were pictures of her in every room.    We had family pictures made very soon after she came home, and a framed copy went in her room and on the fireplace mantle.  When she was tired, listless or just seemed distant, I spoon-fed her, forcing eye contact.   When close friends came over, they knew to praise me loudly and repeatedly, showing her I was a person worthy of respect.  Holding her, rocking her, singing to her – making that eye contact – was a priority for Keith and me.   The summer of 2006 was “the summer we stayed home,” because we knew Julia needed to simply learn “home” and family.”

And how do you know when they’re attached?  They don’t look up from breakfast and say, “Please pass the butter, Mom, and oh, by the way, I’m feeling attached now.”

Keith thinks it was earlier, but I think the books were right and she attached after about 18 months at home.  I don’t mean she “began to fit in” or “finally started obeying” or anything like that.  I  mean “attached” where I knew with certainty she really and truly looked at us as her parents.

We had attached to her much earlier, but that’s the kicker with older child adoptions.  It’s a choice for everyone.  The child has to choose, too.

There’s no high drama around attachment – at least not for us.  There was no single magic moment with a big “ah-ha!”  No angels singing with fireworks filling the air.  Just little things, over time.  And little things mean a lot.

I had a difficult day Monday and came home exhausted.  Everybody knew it.  Rachel, Lois and Hannah suggested a game of Scrabble after dinner.  I love Scrabble!  Just thinking of it cheered me.  As soon as we got Julia in bed, we broke out the game.  Had a ball playing.

Julia must have heard us, though, because last night she came to me with a serious expression.

Julia:  “Mom, you played ‘Apples to Apples’ without me last night.”  (Julia loves that game.)

Me:  “No, baby.  We played Scrabble. ”

Julia:  “Can I play Scrabble next time?”

Me:  “Well, it’s a hard word game.  When you’re older, you can play.  But right now, I don’t think you’d enjoy it.”

Long pause.

Julia:  “I like it when you play games with me.”

Attachment isn’t a game.  But when they want to play one with you – everybody’s a winner.