Blog

I sit in coffee shops and I eat at a kitchen table and I go to sleep at night in a bed that’s in a house, not a bus. In the spaces between those times, and occasionally in a misplaced dream, I think about how on our recent cross-country trip the bus galloped over a bridge or bounced up and down after cresting a wave in the road.

And when the essence of my current life is “wait,” the road sings a Siren’s song. I posted about it on my Facebook page:

“I’ve spent the last few days going back over my blog posts from the trip and trying to figure out what a book about that experience would look like. In other news…I really miss being on the road.”

They are fine reflections, those memories of the miles we crossed. In response, my friend Jason posed an interesting question:

“next blog post: is being on the road a destination or avoidance. or something to that effect.”

I didn’t have to think long. In regards to yesterday’s desire to hit the road, the answer is easy: avoidance. I want to drive away from my worries and my insecurities and this incorrigible waiting. I want to pull into a well-lit Walmart, park the big blue bus we traveled in, and write at the small table with Maile while the kids fall asleep in their bunks. I want to drive on roads I’ve never driven, wind along gorges that make me feel queasy from the sheer drop to either side, and forget this present reality.

Then I saw this quote from John Steinbeck:

“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every states I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move.”

* * * * *

Perhaps there are at least two reasons for traveling: there’s this one that Steinbeck talks about, the one I admit to feeling right now if I’m honest with myself: a wanting to move away, not to something, but away from something. Yet there is another reason to hit the road, one that has perhaps a dash of avoidance but at its heart is so much more.

I know this second reason exists because it is the reason we went on our trip in February – I didn’t feel the need to escape from anything back then. There was no dire financial situation to run from, no grating relationships or unbearable waiting. We were simply in the middle of a good life, and we wanted to take an adventure, and perhaps make life even better. We wanted to prove that we could do it, in spite of being afraid.

And it’s for that reason I am going to Sri Lanka in one week: for the going, not for the avoiding or the not-staying. I want to see things I’ve never seen and meet people I’ve only heard about and taste foods that will knock my socks off. Part of me is terribly afraid – not of the time change or the food or any mosquito-harboring disease I might get. Not of writer’s block or plane crashes.

No, I’m terribly afraid of the change that might be wrought in me. I’m scared of what seeing people in such dire circumstances will do to my world view or my Self.

I wonder. Of all the reasons there are for going, perhaps being terribly afraid is one of the best.

* * * * *

In one week I’ll be leaving for Sri Lanka, and I’ll blog about the trip for World Vision as I witness for myself the way that child sponsorship changes lives. I’d love for you to join me – all you have to do is show up here from August 25th through August 30th.

In the mean time, please consider sponsoring a child through World Vision. For around $30 a month you can change the life of a child and their family. Find out more about child sponsorship (and check out my cool landing page) HERE.

Someone shouted my name last night as we walked the city streets. A thunderstorm rolled in from the west but we kept meandering the alleys and there was that man playing a piano badly in an unlit corner across from the parking garage. I wondered who put it there. I wondered if they ever imagined a homeless man would find such joy in its sad chaos, those sounds of rain and thunder at his fingertips.

The sunlight struggled out from behind the storm clouds but it was too late and too low and we didn’t care enough to pay attention, so it sank behind all the buildings while we ate ice cream and pretended we lived there among the brick and the asphalt, pretended we could come back to that ice cream parlor anytime we wanted. We pretended the city was ours and we could have any house we wanted and that these days would go on, and we would be unchanged.

And then as we left and turned right on Prince Street and walked the broken-toothed sidewalk that runs along the galleries I heard a voice shout my name. You heard it too, because you stopped just like I did and looked west, but no one was there. Just another busy street, and people shouting, but not to me. We both turned reluctantly. We both kept looking over our shoulder.

Without the lights that came on as we left the city there wouldn’t have been any shadows. But they did and there were and we drove through them and they dripped from the car so we turned on our headlights and followed the beams into the country where the sound of cicadas or crickets or the smell of green felt louder than any part of that place we had just left behind. And I think perhaps that when we move there it will not be the noise that keeps us up but the silence.

Still, tonight, with the lights going out and the children going to sleep I can hear the echo of the voice that shouted my name through the city. I can still feel the way both of our bodies turned together, expecting to find someone we knew. Or perhaps someone we wanted to know.

There is something about someone shouting your name in a city that is not easily ignored or forgotten.

Thirteen years ago August 14th was a Saturday, and it came during one of the driest summers on record in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There had been no measurable rainfall for months. Brittle grass crunched under foot like fall leaves. On that day, a young man dressed in a tuxedo stood in a garage.

During the previous week the young man’s aunt had canvassed the surrounding farms, asking them to please not spread manure in the days leading up to the wedding. At night, when no one could see, she defied the local restrictions and watered her flowers. There was going to be a wedding in her back yard. The grass might be scorched, but her flower gardens would at least be presentable.

But at that moment, as the young man stood quietly in the neighboring garage with his best man and ushers and groomsmen, his aunt was in the house with the bride who watched as the guests began to arrive, followed by dark clouds and an uncharacteristically cool breeze that tugged at the table cloths, billowed out the side of the tent, and whipped the leaves of the trees into a thunderous applause.

Then huge drops fell, and the guests who had received an invitation (unlike the storm) ran for the cover of the reception tent or one of the surrounding gazebos. And the bride wept that of all the Saturdays that summer, the rain had decided to come on that one.

They waited ten minutes after the scheduled start time, then twenty. The two mothers consoled one another. The fathers paced. The groom was the only one who didn’t seem to care.

“I’m getting married today,” he said, shrugging. “That’s all that matters to me.”

Then the same fierce wind pushed the clouds past. The sun shone on everything, glistening off the water. The ushers rushed from seat to seat, drying them with fluffy white towels and then seating people. The musicians tuned their instruments again. The guests were seated but their surprise at the sudden weather change sent a murmuring through the crowd.

Smiles all around. The rain had brought with it not only a refreshing coolness but a sense of promise.

The only hitch in the ceremony: a fly drowning in the communion cup. “This life…” Well, there was another hitch, one that would not be discovered for a few weeks, when the couple sat down with the photographer who tried to explain how the camera she had used hadn’t worked, the film was irretrievably damaged, and none of the pictures could be salvaged.

The crowd stayed long into the night, dancing under the glowing gazebo. Eventually their friends evaporated into the shadows, and soon they were saying good-bye to their parents, climbing into an old car and driving away.

* * * * *

August 13th, 2012. The guy who was the groom that day leans across a tiny table towards the girl who was the bride.

“Tomorrow, 13 years,” he says smiling.

“I guess it was a good decision,” she says coyly, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

He laughs.

In the neighboring room, their two youngest children whisper and get out of bed and cause all kinds of chaos, like a summer storm. Upstairs the older two read and become sleepy.

Maile, I mentioned this quote on your birthday, but it seems more applicable in light of our wedding story:

“Being soaked alone is cold. Being soaked with your best friend is an adventure.” ― Emily Wing

Sometimes it feels like we’re getting soaked, but at least we’re doing it together. Happy Anniversary, beautiful co-adventurer.

Once a friend told me of how he and his family moved south. When work didn’t fall into his lap, he spent months preparing to be a realtor. He studied the books, took the tests. But just as he finally reached the point of almost becoming a realtor, something else came along. Something better.

What struck me about this story was his take on it.

“I kind of wonder,” he said slowly, “if God didn’t mean for those three months to be a time of rest for me. If I wouldn’t have tried to take control of where I was going, I could have simply enjoyed those months.”

But instead he spent that time hurrying, striving, moving, and in the end all was for naught. He took three months that could have been a slow grace, and turned them into frantic activity that went no where.

I have done that. I do that.

* * * * *

I sit up with the older two kids in their room as they fall asleep, not because they need me to be here with them, but mostly just because it’s where I want to be right now. There’s a fan roaring white noise. Outside the room, the hall light outlines the almost closed door in a rectangle of yellow.

These are warm, heavy days. August days. In a few weeks the farmers will start to bring down the corn. The hay will be cut one last time and the barns will be full. The nights and mornings will grow cooler. I’ll start to smell woodsmoke in the evening. Stray leaves will blow across the street.

I spend 75% of the year waiting for autumn. It’s been thirteen years since I was last in school, but September still feels more like a new beginning than January. A fresh start. Summer has always felt like the culmination of things, the season when things reach their peak. And then comes Fall, with a return to cooler temperatures, a return to normal life, a return to the things that make me happy.

Waiting for fall.

* * * * *

“One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God.” Oswald Chambers

* * * * *

I have been waiting for quite some time. Or so it feels. In reality, we have only been back from our cross country adventure for two months, the blink of an eye. I have an upcoming trip to Sri Lanka, then the Frederick Fair that we go to every year, and then October. The heart of autumn. By then we will know which way to go, which ways have opened up, which ways perhaps have closed.

And I fight in me an urge to skip to the end. To lay waste to this middle that feels endless, this waiting. But I do not want to miss the small blessings! So tonight I sit in this room, and I peer through the darkness, trying to pay closer attention to my now sleeping children. When I finish typing this I will lay down on the scratchy carpet, in front of the fan, like I used to do as a child. Perhaps I’ll fall asleep there.

Because waiting can be okay, if I let it happen. And this darkness is so temporary. So fleeting. I want to stop pushing so many days aside.

The sun is hot. The air is heavy. I hear the roar of the rear sliding door, like distant thunder. I cross the kitchen, cool linoleum under my feet, and I peek through the small window, past the screen, and into the haze.

My littlest boy stands at attention, a yellow foam baseball bat propped on his shoulder. This is only his fourth summer – he was born in Virginia three days before the fireworks. Most people who can remember me as a three year old say that he is me, but I know better: the fireworks that exploded during his fourth day on earth became part of him. He is fiery and emotive and insistent in ways that I have never been. He is a bottle rocket, an M80, a Roman Candle. He is a one inch Black Match lit by life.

My father tosses a soft, white ball through the heavy air and my son connects with it maybe one in five? One in ten? There is much more reaching and tossing and cheering and leaning than there is hitting, but the two of them go back and forth, their pitches and misses and tosses and hits like an old conversation conducted in letters, occasionally unopened but always answered.

I remember the white of the ball, the torque of the swing, the weight of a hot summer day. I remember the smell of harvested hay and the last billowing waves of massive tobacco plants before the leaves are cut. I remember how hope rose with each big hit, how my dad would laugh and scamper after the ball, pleased that I hit it so far, even if it meant crossing the stone driveway in his bare feet.

Thirty summers have passed. I know so much more than I want to know about everything. I walk away from the window, away from the view of my father and his grandson. Would I return to those days if given the choice? Would I relive the last 30 summers, if by some magical contraption I could go back? What if by some miraculous method this white-haired beard could grow backwards, these moles and marks be washed away, replaced by new skin?

That would be a ridiculous thing to do, circle back and relive a life. It would be silly to start over. What folly! What recklessness!

Still, I’m glad I do not have the choice.

Not too many days ago I was at Angela’s Cafe (where I do a lot of writing), and I came around a corner, only to be (nearly) taken out at the knees by one of the cutest toddlers I’d ever seen. Later that day I got an email message:

“Okay, so I should have introduced myself but I didn’t. That was my daughter that almost impaled you with silverware at Angela’s.”

I guess you never know where a potential guest post might come from.

So today Rebecca Wenrich, mom of the toddler who nearly took me out, gets honest about some of the feelings she’s experienced towards the birth mom of her adopted baby girl. I love the honesty and grace with which she approaches the subject. 

* * * * *

Right after M was born, while we were still out of state waiting for our ICPC clearance, we attended a church service with M’s birth mom (C). She asked if she could hold M during the service. I wish I could say my first thought was how wonderful for her to hold this sweet baby that she may not see again for a long long time.

Nope. Instead my heart began to race at the thought of my daughter being taken. Instantly I saw worst case scenarios in my head where C was fleeing the church with M in her arms, never to be seen again. I am ashamed. All C did was hold baby M, watching wide-eyed as people were baptized, asking if we would do the same with M.

A few months later, a card from C arrived. It was signed “All our love, Mommy and Daddy.” I wish I could say that my first thought was how it must be hard for C to be separated from the child that grew under her heart.

Nope. Instead my heart began to race at the thought of my position being “threatened.” I picked up M and whispered fiercely, “You are MY baby!” And I wrote a carefully worded letter asking what C would like to be called – other than Mommy. I am ashamed. As a fellow adoptive mother said, “If mommies can love more than one child, why can’t a child love more than one mommy?”

As M’s first birthday approached, C expressed some interest in visiting for the birthday party. I wish I could say my first thought was that their family was welcome to stay with us.

Nope. Instead my heart began to race at the thought of having to share my daughter with her birth family in my own home. I told them they were welcome to come and that there are several nice hotels/motels in the area. I am ashamed. They didn’t come. Was it because of my response? I don’t know.

Recently I have thought a lot about how I need to extend grace to M’s birth family instead of focusing on my fears.

Shortly after M’s second birthday, I wrote C a letter. I told her that I love her more than I ever thought possible. No matter what decisions she has made, is making or will make – I could never love her less.

I wish it hadn’t taken me this long to love C so much. I wish that I had not been so selfish and fearful about my role as mommy to this dear girl that C miraculously chose to place with me.

All I can do is pray that going forward I can remember to extend grace to M’s birth family. Over and over. Just like God does for me every day.

Amen.

* * * * *

Please check out Rebecca’s blog HERE.

If you’d like to submit a post telling the story of a poignant moment that occurred during adoption or foster care, please email your 500-word submission to shawnsmucker@yahoo.com. Thanks!

Prior adoption and foster care posts include:

I Saw Our New Son and the Voice Said, “Run Away” – Adoption Stories With Kim Van Brunt
Checking ‘Yes’ to Everything: Adoption Stories With Sonya Judkins
Because Someone Has To: Adoption Stories With Shar Halvorsen
Momma For a Moment: A Foster Care Story, With Tamara Out Loud