The Spread of Fear

I remember the last hug I gave someone outside of my home. I was standing in the hallway of my school, and one of my favorite humans and I did it purposefully, rebelliously, and adamantly. We looked into each other’s eyes and said “I would risk it for a hug from you”.  Being afraid was just creeping in at that point. It wasn’t something that sat just below the surface all the time. The fear of the greatest threat hadn’t infected everyone yet.

 

I am a single woman with a soon to be adopted son. I hug and kiss him every chance I get. He is my germ bubble. I do not take it for granted. I do not waste it. I do not know what I would do without him. Which is also why I am more afraid than I have ever been in my life. What if we get it? What if I get and die? What happens to him? What if he gets it? Will they let me be with him if he is hospitalized for the third time in six months? Will they make him die alone?

 

That is the worst part of this. Ethan Hawke’s character in Reality Bites said everyone dies alone. That is almost always bullshit. Most of us have people who would drive, fly, bike, or walk any distance to sit with us in our last moments, and when we are gone all of the people who loved us gather together and tell the story of us. They hug each other and cry and are not upset when someone gets snot on the shoulder of their best blacks. But this is not what is happening right now. When someone dies of the virus, they spend almost all of their suffering absolutely alone, and their loved ones may get lucky enough to dress in a hazmat suit and never touch the face of their loved one again. Never smell their smell. Nuzzle their neck. Hold them tight. And when they actually go, only the people who bury them get to say goodbye. Their families and friends each sit alone and grieve and grieve and grieve and fear they will lose someone else without saying goodbye or depart without anyone to hold them close.

 

And the people who are still not afraid and hug and dance and hold those not in their germ bubble, you bring each of us a little closer to the loneliest end. You make each of us sit another day longer without getting a dad hug or smelling our mom’s best smell. You keep us from the woman who held our hand the last time we felt loss. You keep us from the man who shares a dessert with us and listens to our deepest darkests. You make us lose time with the people who matter the most. You steal the only thing that has ever mattered: the proximity of love.

 

What has infected every person at this time is the longing to be with someone we love and the fear that we may bring death in on our lips as we say “I love you”. There is no disease more deadly or painful. There is nothing graver than this. Each of us may be a reaper walking, so all we can do is live alone or cause someone we love to die alone.

 

Of Cannibals

There is a story in Cheyenne culture about a Meadowlark who raises the baby of a woman and a star who she finds falling from the sky after the death of his mother. She catches him part way between the sky and the Earth. After many years of raising him with love and strength, she realizes he needs to go back to his own people because she cannot give him what he deserves. Falling Star asked Mother Meadowlark “Why do you want me to leave you. I want to be with you”. She tells him “You must go home now”. She and her husband provide him feathers, and using a great bow, shoot him back to Earth to be with his people. Upon his return, he saves his entire tribe from a monster set on destroying them all. He tricks a great white crow that devours the buffalo everyone relies on and saves his people from starvation. Through the gift of his foster mother allowing him to go, he is able to bring safety and sustenance back to his tribe. He is rewarded with a home and a lifetime of love.

January 24, 2017, my two favorite people were born. Twelve days after my 36^th birthday, I knew nothing of them. Premature, on oxygen, and struggling to survive, they were taken from a mother who did not know herself, a woman without a code to pass along. Her ability to love was taken from her from the very start of her days, and it stopped her from being able to do what was right by them.

On July 28, 2017, they were brought by their foster care caseworker to my door. I knew when they came they were not going to stay. They were Native American babies who deserved their cultures and traditions. They deserved more than I was capable of giving them for their whole lives. I knew this before I said yes. It didn’t change the fact that when I opened the door to look upon their faces, I fell in love. From their first giggles with me and their first crawls and their first steps and their first bites of their one-year-old smash cakes, I threw my heart into enjoying every second with them. The first time they each called me Mama, it was like my whole life was created anew. I was their favorite person too. I was their whole world. We loved each other wholly.

July 28, 2018, I handed them over to their new family. After one beautiful year together, my mom and I drove them to Montana, my home state, and we let them go to their roots that were deeper than mine and as old as the first peoples.

No one really understands how I feel about this choice. I have argued time and again with people who believe I deserved to keep them forever. There were people who said I should be their forever mom. They forget the true job of a mother is to give freely of herself and do what is right for her children. The job of a mother is to love her children more than she loves herself. To keep them would have been for me. My job was to love them. These two boys can love like normal people because I loved them best. Anyone who knows about attachment theory knows that children who experience deep love in their first two years can have healthy relationships for the rest of their lives. Those who don’t, spend their whole lives struggling to be able to let people in, struggling to trust, struggling to hold on tight, struggling to give others the love they deserve. In every love they share with others for the rest of their lives, I am there. My time as their mother is shining through. As Native American author, Louise Erdrich says, “You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.” I have given them the bravery to risk. I have set the foundation for their purpose on earth. I have never loved anyone more. I have never wanted to be with anyone more. I will never see them again. That is what is right.

January 11, 2017, a young man on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Busby, Montana was hit by a semi and died. Seven days later, Baby M and Baby K were born. The young man who died is the son of their new mom. He is the brother they will never know. Their new mom told me she believes her son met them in heaven and sent them to her. In Northern Cheyenne culture, there is an old tradition that said when a mother lost her child; another family would give a child to bring the happiness back. As the mother of these boys who could never really keep them, I knew I had a place in this family legend that honors all of us. I could bring happiness and make right what was destroyed on one day by death and on another by their addicted mother: two broken families made right.

When I gave them over, I believed this. I also know I was giving them what they deserve. I love them enough to give them over to their ancestors and to live each day thanking the creator. They will spend every day of their lives doing cedar ceremonies. They will learn about dog soldiers. They will dance. Drumming will fill them up and send them over the wide-open plains of eastern Montana that belongs to their people. The land is everything to the Northern Cheyenne, and they will have the birthright I could never give. They will get their indigenous name, Buffalo Walking, and they will wear the beautiful beading their new mom created for them: a brown turtle for Baby K, who is of the earth, and a yellow turtle for Baby M, who is of the sun. They will carry inside these turtles the protection that will take them through their lives. The protection I didn’t even know they deserved to have.

I gave these two boys away at what others believe is my own expense because my moral code said it had to be so. Stacked up like a pad of sticky notes, my moral code is layer upon layer of the tiny truths I hold myself to. These are the collection of ideas worth remembering. To go against this seemingly insignificant stack of what matters to me seems inconsequential to those on the outside, but to go against it would be cannibalistic. Every moment after breaking my code would eat at me. It would eat away at the very core of who I am and want to be in the world. I would not know my myself, and what is to be remembered would be gobbled away to nothing.

I am a woman who believes I have my limits. I am a woman who believes the faith of others is sacrosanct. I am a woman who believes in repairing the impacts of colonialism and white supremacy in every way I have control over. I am a woman who believes two brown boys would be better served by having brown men and women showing them how to be. I am a woman who believes our children will save our world, and to take away from a nation of people who deserve heroes, would be the greatest crime. I am a woman that believes holding true to our values is the only way we make it out whole and alive.

I have watched a lot of people choose cowardice or the path of least resistance. I watch it eat away at their very existence. They ignore the stack of beliefs they claim they want to remember. They forget what is essential. They eat away at themselves everyday they live the lie they created for themselves. They are the cannibal kings devouring the ability to ever know who they really are. Those who will break their own codes know nothing about themselves or how they will behave. They forget what is worth remembering and cannot forgive themselves for it later.

January 24, 2019, I sit here alone on my greatest loves’ second birthday knowing they are surrounded by a mother, a father, three older sisters, two older brothers, and another older brother looking down from heaven who brought it all together. 700 hundred miles away, they are with this family because I knew if I fought to keep them, I would never have been able to look them in the face with honor. I would have been eaten away to nothing. I could never have told them about right, or faith, or morality, or love. Love does what is right.

I am strong because I believe it was my job to love those babies for 365 days and let them go where they belong. I, like Mother Meadowlark, am an outsider who knows that arming a small child with love and security and sending them home where they belong is the best I can do by them. They are armed with love. May they slay all the monsters they face and bring sustenance and security back to their people. May they know who they are and their heritage and be guided by it everyday.

How Instant Family Made Me Ugly Cry

July 27, 2018 was the worst day of my life so far, and today, sitting in a darkened theater next to my two favorite girls in the world, I ugly cried as I relived this moment on the big screen. Instant Family laid bare the brutality of the becoming and unbecoming of motherhood and of family when you are building it all on the crumbling foundation of another family. It also shone a light on the best parts of my life: my daughter and her daughter. It reminded me how much our hearts are built to break and bleed and rebuild. How much love we owe each other and how often we have the opportunity to love if we open ourselves up.

A few really dark moments of questioning  graced my door the past 18 months. I loved and lost and loved again. I felt anguish so cutting I didn’t want to wake up. I cried until I puked. I cried until I slept. I didn’t sleep at all. The undeath of losing two children rattles my ribs every time I get a photo of them from my home state with their forever mom and dad. I love those photos while simultaneously feeling shot through with despair with every smile and every centimeter their little Afros grow without my hands to touch them. The night before I let them go forever, I didn’t know anything about foster care, really. I knew I was never going to have them clutch me around the neck and call me mama again. I knew more, as well, but that was the bullet that I thankfully didn’t let define me or my story.

Many people give up on this kind of life. Most refuse to start. Hollywood’s rendition of Rose Byrne telling her entire family to fuck off as they say what they really believe about her choice to foster was like the voice most of us silence in ourselves when we choose to foster. The judgement and naysaying isn’t dealt directly. It comes out in subtle ways. It is every moment that someone is surprised I haven’t been eaten alive. It’s those who treated my last and current kids as temporary. Every person who says something ridiculous about sainthood or looks at me with simultaneous shock and pity. It’s every person who said to me “are you sure?” or “I could never do that.” To a much lesser extent, it is the second go around where the people in my life who loved the twins deeply hold these girls a little further away because of grief. This one I get, even though it’s a dagger. Foster care is a builder of families and shaker of other relationships.

Today is the two month anniversary of the girls coming to live with me and becoming part of my family. I currently feel joy so big, it overflows from every part of me. I was called mom aloud today for the first time. After gripping my daughter to me after the movie and saying “I love you, I love you, I love you,” she awkwardly got in the car with a grin. As we were pulling out of the lot, she called a friend who asked who she was with. She said “My foster mom, I mean my mom.” It’s been five months since I have been mom, and even sideways, it’s something miraculous. 

In the seat next to me today, my daughter cried as hard as I did. After 14 years in the foster care system her heartbreak came out too. Her brutal chasm of loss and pain gushed out. Her fear of her own child’s tenuous position in her life and what could be her future wracked her too. This is all I need to know to know that I didn’t rush taking another placement.

The past two beautiful hard months made me more proud and afraid than I have ever been. For their privacy, I will simply say that we are lucky we all have each other. It is not perfect, but I love it. They are wonderful humans, and while I covered my face and sobbed during the worst part of foster care in the film, I also cried tears of hope when they became a family at the end. I may adopt my girl someday. I may officially become a mom and a grandma on the same day, and as always with foster care, I may not. It doesn’t matter. Just like with the boys, they will always be my family. I will always love them.

I’m sure I know next to nothing about foster care, but I do know that the point isn’t how long you are a mom. The point is that you can step up to be mom when a kid needs it. It’s not for everyone, but I wish more people would give themselves more credit. I wish people would let themselves be called mom or dad or grandma or auntie by a kid who needs it. Every kid deserves it. Heart break be damned, I will do this for as long as I can rebuild without cynicism and fear. No bullshit, it is the best and worst thing I have ever done. For the four kids who have been in my home, it is better than nothing. It is so much better.

Context is Everything

So let’s review for those of you in the back. In May I got the saddest phone call I have received up to this point: my little dudes were moving to Montana. To add insult to injury, I got to sit and marinade in it for three months until they actually left, and for 6 weeks of that they jerked me around about whether it was going to happen. This means the past six months of my life have been the hardest I have ever gone through, ever. I have clawed my way  through it as best I can. I am trying everyday to make a life without my boys feel wonderful and meaningful. I am succeeding and failing in not quite equal measure. I am surviving it. 

At the start of October I welcomed a teen mom and her daughter into my home. It has been mostly wonderful and some parts so sad I can’t even begin to describe. Understanding how much society can mess up one person, and to see them be such a wonderful hearted kid with such an uphill battle is overwhelming sometimes. I have conceded that I will throw what I can against the wall of 19 years and see what sticks. Really, at most, all I can do is love the hell out of them and give them opportunities all kids should have. I don’t know how much repair can be done, but I will do my damndest.

I am struggling at work. I feel desperately overwhelmed by how much we care about arbitrary shit like testing, and I can’t seem to motivate myself to work 60 hour weeks anymore to sustain the kind of “growth” the tests claim to measure. All I do in my class feels negated by numbers, and the only way to maintain those numbers is to be a martyr at work at the expense of happiness and balance at home. I resent what they want of teachers in a way I never have before. I am starting to hate my job. I love my students, but every time there is the slightest problem with them, I can’t help asking what it is all for.

What most people don’t understand about foster care is that it is like parenting on steroids, so balancing it with work anxiety is even more precarious. My week was sweet little Mama’s birthday on Monday, a meeting with a lawyer for little miss on Tuesday after work, Wednesday was Halloween, Thursday was a two hour long IEP meeting after work, Friday I went to bed at 7:30, Saturday we deep cleaned the entire house, and I caught the school play, and picked up little Mama’s girlfriend, today, I worked six hours and burnt my house down because of lice. Amidst the crazy of the week, I also went to a concert, worked out twice, and hung out with a friend so I wouldn’t lose my mind. There was also a continual agony everyday over whether I am loving them enough and doing it right.

Failure feels present when your life vacillates between a lifetime original movie and a sitcom. My two year old peed on the floor in Walgreens because they wouldn’t let us in to use the public restroom. Little mama stole. I hosted a party with a few gang members in my backyard because they are her family. I had a student say my class was a waste of time. I failed to deliver on a promise to little mama’s girlfriend that cost her money she can’t afford. My photographer, who I hired because I didn’t have the time or energy to do research, despite it being a betrayal to one of my best friends, lost his shit on me and took down all pictures of us because I didn’t communicate well. My head is burning because of lice shampoo. All of this was mixed in with the birthdays and the meetings and the cleaning and 50+ hours of work.

You all are probably wondering what in the hell I am thinking. I have brought this on myself. I have chosen this pain. Some days I forget, myself, some days I think I am crazy, but don’t I deserve to raise a family? Don’t I also get to love children and guide them towards adulthood as a parent? Which helps me remember, I have also chosen this love. This week, we also read books and I gave little miss baths and stayed up late talking with little mama about hopes and dreams. There were deeply confiding moments, and we have gotten comfortable enough to joke around. I let little mama push my control freak boundaries and rearrange the living room, and it looks awesome. I took kids in my family trick or treating for the first time in my life. I got called “my Charlie” by a two year old. I got to help draw boundaries to make them both a little safer and happier.

None of the really hard stuff is fixed or even close, but I have so much hope. My foster daughter, in the face of a lice invasion, washed all my sheets and made my bed with fresh bedding and told me thank you for taking care of her and her daughter. She told me thank you for understanding her and texted it to me with a blue heart emoji. And I love her too. And that is why it is getting better, even incrementally. That is why my single foster parent life matters: little blue hearts and people who take care of each other as a family.

Grief

I literally don’t know if I have ever felt grief like this. Atlas has nothing on me. The weight of it is crushing… when they sleep. When they are awake, we read, and laugh, and play, and kiss, and hug, and talk. Their word right now is Mama… mamamamamama. Over and over again. And I smile and burrow my face in their necks and only twice now have I started crying in front of them.

Screw CoCo and “Remember Me”. What fucking sadist of a universe released that song the year my motherhood was made and unmade? When I meet my maker, we are going to have words. Why couldn’t this have happened when fucking Elsa acted like she didn’t give a shit about other people? Sing “I don’t care” instead of “remember me, though I have to say goodbye”. I mean, what kind of God has me get the call that they are taking them while I am listening to my favorite band sing “Oh for once in my life, can just something go right?” And this is why I am angry right now.

I am angry because I am so sad. I am so sad I could and have vomited. I am so sad, I haven’t slept more than four hours for days. I am so sad, I ugly cried into my mango salad at lunch and rejected my friends hug in the moment because I knew I would have to be carried out if I let go too much. I am so sad, I can’t even come up with more examples because it feels like too much work because it is easier being angry.

Which is why I am angry. I am angry because music is out to kill me. I am angry because Donald Trump took kids from their families to make a point. I am angry that there are drugs and poverty and mental illness and there are a lot of mommies and daddies who lose their kids because of these things. I am angry because this is literally the very best and very worst year of my existence. I am angry because I know they are going to a better place for them in the long run and they prove it to me every day by rushing headlong into the terrible twos and the fact everyone is still in one piece is a miracle. I am angry because I also think I could be the best place for them, but colonialism. I am angry that soon I am going to have to come home to an empty house. I am angry that I have to start going back to the gym because it makes me happy, and I won’t have anything to stop me. I am angry because I loved being a mom so much that I will have to try it again because it’s the happiest I have ever been. I am angry that my grief is so overwhelming, I can’t let people see it because it hurts them too much. I am angry that someone else gets to laugh at the rest of the dudes’ damn fart noises and gets to be annoyed as hell when they gag themselves because they think it’s funny. I am angry that I have spent so many nights at the emergency room watching retro Disney for free, and singing the boys every word to every song, and now that shit is over. I am angry that one day soon I am going to find a stray sock or trip over “Mr. Brown Can Moo” and it is going to be incapacitating. I am angry that there is no list that would ever be enough.

I am so sad and angry I feel like I am going to explode and can’t breath. I literally don’t know what to do with myself. There is literally nothing anyone can do for me. I just have to be sad. I just have to let go. I just have to say goodbye to my heart when they go.

Nothing is permanent and pain means you did something right. I don’t want anyone to fix it. I just want time to move me where I need to to be. To open me up to love like this again. To keep loving them forever, no matter how far they go. Love is infinite, and it also is about letting go. It is about knowing that there is nothing more powerful than accepting you have no control and trusting every single one of us can make the most of what we are given.

These two little boys have a whole life that I helped shape in irrevocable ways, and my deep love is ingrained in them. They will use it to make the most of what they are given. I, too, will love the hell out of kids again and make the most of it. An old song that doesn’t make me angry told me “broken hearts hurt, but they make you strong.” Maybe not tonight, but again my strong heart will love some kids in my home while it continues to love the ones who leave it. And if anything will make things better, that will. For now, it’s okay to be crushed by sadness and anger. It’s okay to grieve, because that is how I know I did it right.

This is Fostering

Today, I followed my same routine.

I got ready. I woke two babies up, put them in coordinating jumpers and matching shoes. I put on their soft, gray bear-eared sweaters, and I drove them to school while talking to my mom.

Then I went to work and helped kids write about their lives, so they can get into college. I gave them advice and told them how much I love them. I tried to help one kid find a compass as a fatherless child.

In the afternoon, I watched one of the most difficult groups of seniors I have had limp across the graduation stage after a hard fought battle of a year. I hugged kids who changed my life for the better and wished them luck on their lives, knowing full well I will never see some of their faces again.

I picked up the boys from daycare and held their hands as we walked to the stroller and confirmed they had a visit with their mom today. I loaded them in the car and drove back across town while talking to one of my best people.

I got home, fed them, bathed them, put them in their dog jammies, and read them a story where a dog loves a baby and another where a mom loves a baby. I sang “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You’ll never know dear how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.” 

I will do all of this again tomorrow and the next day until they tell me there are no more days. This is character. This is being an adult. This is living with your choices and seeing them through. This is true, pure love. This is memorizing moments. This is fostering. This is all I can do right now.

And that’s the kind of day it was…

Foster care is the worst. When in training, they tell us we’re going to pick up our children from visits each week, and it’s going to be like doing triage. To people who have older kids and worse family dynamics than mine, you are saints on earth. If you know anyone in the world who is doing foster care of older kids with tough situations, hug them, buy them a bottle of wine, get them massages, make yourself prostrate at their feet and grovel because the kind of constitution they have to go through that each week is for saints. They are beyond human; we mere mortals. 

Two days in a row, every week, my kids have visits with their bio mom who genuinely loves them and does her best. I do not begrudge her wanting every waking moment with them she can get and feeding them high concentrations of food people give their kids on special occasions. If anyone one of us had less than a work day total each week with our children we would be cramming ice cream in their mouths too, most likely.

Tonight, again, I picked them up from visits and they had diarrhea and diaper rash and no nap, and I drove them an hour across town in rush hour traffic while they screamed most of the way from upset stomachs and exhaustion. Eventually, they fell hard asleep. Unloading them into their cribs to nap while I made dinner, I tried to add greens and proteins and fruit to counter the piles of grease and sugars and white flour they consumed. I said a silent prayer that the hour of nap would act as a counter curse. I told myself it was relaxing to have some time to cook in spite of it creeping into the hour and a half I have with them to play each evening before they go to bed. I hoped it would be better than last night.

I woke them from hard sleeps, each of them sweating from still wearing their jackets because I didn’t want to jostle them too much when we first got home. They ate like it was their first meal ever, fistful after fistful, and I tried to ignore the looming glower on one little man’s face. Everything was going well. Everything was going fine.

I took them to their room, turned to grab diapers, and that’s when the screaming started. For any twin parent or parent of two little tinies, it hurts when they cry and you can only comfort them one at a time. Each wanted me to fully wrap my arms around him and soothe him and rub his back and comfort him, but I only have two arms and one nuzzly neck. Pick a baby up while the other one cries, soothe until he stops. Set him down, pick up the other one and start soothing. Other twin commence crying. Repeat. 

I sat on the ground with one calm dude and one inconsolable dude and had to concede I had to set him down to get them both ready for bed. As I started to change the calm one, while the other lay his head on my leg and sobbed, I unleashed a fiery red diaper rashed baby ass on the calm one as he began to scream. Some cream and calm later I wrestled him into his pajamas while the other twin continued to lay his head on my leg and cry. 

I picked up the sad guy and held him and rocked him and talked to him while he heaved against my chest. His brother sitting nearby and worriedly watching. I changed him and unleashed an even redder and angrier butt while he wracked in sobs the entire time. Finally, with diaper rash cream and jammies, he sat red eyed on the floor sucking his thumb long enough for me to comb their hair. 

As we sat there, the calm guy started to reach forward with his arms out towards his brother. Then he leaned forward and lay his head in his brother’s lap. His brother lay his head down and snuggled. Then calm brother sat up and held his brother and rubbed his back as sad brother leaned into him. It was the first time it ever happened that they intentionally hugged. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. 

I did everything I could not to cry because of how lovely it was because I didn’t want to worry them. I sat and complimented their kindness and love for one another. I marveled at one of the best moments of my entire life, and I thought how lucky I am to be part of their little tender hearted lives. 

This all could have been different. If they would have called someone who accepted before me, or I had chosen to say no to something so scary, this could not exist at all. If I let the hard get the best of me and stomped and raged at their hurt the way I want to sometimes, I may ruin their chances to open up into wonderful people. It could be totally different. I am so lucky. Foster care is the best thing in the world.

Of Thumbs

I had a boyfriend who once said that if my dog Lola had thumbs she would have killed herself long ago because of her ever despondent and longing glance into your eyes, as if to say, “this is all just so utterly painful and sad.” His belief that she would erase herself if given the opportunity always made me think of the eternal optimist and pessimist debate over glasses that endlessly seemed to be filled by a lazy bartender. I saw in Lola never ending games of fetch and belly rubs and a tail that shook her whole body. It made me believe that her look was really more about being sad for us: a race of people intent upon erasing all the good and seeing only what is wrong.

As human beings, we pat ourselves on the back for all of our innovation and creation and invention. To make and to take. To make and take. To use our God given physical superiority to rule this world as it is our job to “be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” As humans, we are happy with this arrangement. We live and rule and make and take with impunity. We make decisions about life and death for the world around us because of our innate gifts, our superior gifts.

Only today, I don’t feel superior. I don’t feel lucky. I don’t feel blessed. I have followed the rules, and I have built a life from the ground up. All that God has promised me as a person, I have taken and made to be mine as a ruler of this Earth. In my home, I have my three subdued creatures, that are my best friends and anipals: Norman Maclean, the cat, Arrow who understands The Point, and sweet Lola Bean, my partner in all adventures for the past 15 years.

At 22, I brought Lola, my wild, striped, bundle of fur, into my home and I tamed her. I saved her from poisoning. She saved me from depression. I trained her to do agility courses. She taught me to get off my butt. I showed her how to cuddle against by belly when it was cold. She held me through three broken hearts and the death of another sweet, animal friend. I lead her and guided her and trained her while gripping her leash in my fist that implied I am the boss. She dutifully followed and unconditionally loved me through every change in whim, location, relationship, and mood. My entire adult life is a shadow of woman and beast navigating it all together.

Poet Miller Williams’ has said that our pets “mark the sea changes of our lives,” and it is painful revelation as a human that the death of my dog marks and end of a chapter, which is already written and cannot be undone. To control an animal is a relationship based on obedience and some level of worship of the choices that are being made during whichever phase of life you force the poor creature to submit to be a part of. “At least I can keep this dog alive,” is a congratulations to any early 20s idiot, who really is doing a terrible job at everything. They are even terrible at owning the dog, but the eternal optimism and adoration from the poor beast is like a small beacon that the two of you will get through this mess together. In your thirties, as you start to get gray and round and sore, the dog, too changes their muzzle, gets tired running, and starts to get misshapen and warty. They are beautiful to you, because you love them, but it is really because they still love you. I am in the phase where I approach my forties, and watching a dog age is staring into the future.

There was a last day I don’t remember that was the last time she laid her head on my shoulder in the morning to get a belly rub and then wrestle before we started our day. A routine of over a decade suddenly gone before I knew to hold onto it. There was a day I didn’t know was the last that she crawled under the covers to lay up against my chest for the entire night. Now she refuses, and lays at the foot of the bed like other peoples’ dutiful pets. There was a day when I called her name, and she no longer came to me because voices and sound have ceased for her. There was a day recently that she peed in the house, despite the dog door, because her body and mind have become her enemy in a battle she is losing. There was a day when I reached out to guide her, and instead of snuggling in or dutifully following, she tried to bite my hand.

The moment your beloved no longer sees you as an ally, and you realize they no longer know your heart is brutal. To own an old dog is cruel for both of you. Your life has to keep going and to change and to be something different. When they forget who you are, it is the moment you wonder if it is the dementia, or if they just don’t know the person you have become. To own an old dog is to constantly ponder suffering: theirs and your own. Is it too much for them? Is it time to let them go? The whole time, there is a voice asking if it is too much for you to be forgotten, to be unrecognizable, to be erased.

I am a new mother of twins, who now has the self-righteousness to decide it is time to end the life of my best friend because it is unsanitary for her to pee in the house, because she might bite the babies, because she is no longer right. Because all that separates she and I are my thumbs and a dictum from God that says I am the decider of her fate. A fully developed frontal lobe, a God, and some thumbs will lead to the moment where I will hold her in my lap and ask a doctor to erase the dog she has become because time has erased the dog she was.

While I feel nothing but joy at the life we have made, these terrible powers I have as a human will lead to a moment where she will sadly look into my eyes one last time and know what she has always known: to be human is a terribly sad situation.

 

 

Motherhood

This is the year I became a mom. I became a mom of two foster twins, who I love everyday. I fell into a world that feels in a lot of ways like something my whole life prepared me to take on.

 

The joy I get out of cuddling and laughing with my little guys is pretty much the best thing that has ever happened to me. Watching them snuggle with the dogs, splash in the bath, or hold hands with each other is all the best stuff that people make parenthood out to be. Having one of them lay his head on my shoulder and put his hand around my neck while I huff in all of the baby smells makes me feel shiny and perfect and liquid. Singing a lullaby for the first time, having them place both hands on the side of my cheeks, or hearing their first words “clap, clap” and “dog, dog, dog” makes me think any person who doesn’t immediately fall in love with them or any baby is insane. I’m hooked. Really, really, really hooked. I would do anything in my power to make their lives magical and adventurous and rich in love and learning. They are the most wonderful people I have ever had the privilege of loving.

 

My ability to be there for my boys is not without challenge. I lose my temper. I feel tired. I want to pick up and go to San Francisco just to get my tattoo retouched because I used to be able to do that if I wanted. There are days like today when I drove to Parker to get a new stroller and needed go into Walgreens to get food for them and cash to purchase their new stroller but had unloaded the old stroller for room for the new one and without the old stroller to roll them in or a second set of hands I had to concede to leaving them in the car long enough to grab a cart and then hope the one sitting in the cart wouldn’t get kidnapped while waiting for me to change the other one’s diaper on the front seat and then hoping the one I have set in the basket won’t tip over and smash his face on the medal caging because he is little and shaky… this scenario is just par for the course. I have become a juggler and a manager of chaos and pretty adept wizard at balancing children like a whirling dervish with fine China. It is my day to do day life. I love it and it rarely feels overwhelming. It feels challenging in a good way and rewarding in a way that satisfies strange parts of my personality. The maternal part is definitely digging it, but it is the weirdo part of me that likes being a task-master, planner, and risk taker that really thinks it’s pretty great.

 

I have learned about new parts of myself through this experience. As many of my people know, my mom struggled with a drug addiction when I was little, and it is the reason my dad and grandparents raised me. The strange discovery is that foster care has made me acutely protective of the parents in foster care. I knew I would be sympathetic because my mom raised me to reflect as much as possible on what we don’t know about a person because they may be bearing something big that is making them behave in less than their best way. We did not meet one crabby person or see one crazy speeding driver without my mom giving them the benefit of the doubt as to where their behavior came from. Maybe they were going through a divorce. Maybe their wife was in labor. Maybe we should cut them the slack we would like on our worst days. I was raised to always project the best possible motive onto the actions of others. I think it has made me a good teacher up to this point, but I didn’t know how it would manifest itself as the primary guardian to kids with another parent who is not capable of raising her kids. There is something about showing her kindness that feels something like protecting my own 20-year-old mother. My mom and I have discussed this and she has told me that she owns her mistakes at that age and they are her mistakes to bear, but there is something about helping the boys’ mom that feeds a deep part of me that hopes someone treated my mom like a forgivable person when she was not in the best part of her life. It feels something like loving my own mom when she needed it most.

 

Being a mom has changed my relationships with people. There are good friends who show up on bath night to hold a baby while I load them in and out of the tub and read stories and lay them down to sleep. These friends then sit around and drink a glass of wine with me and talk to me like I am still a person outside of my parenthood. There are friends who bring me bread or stand outside of my car while I run in a place so I don’t have to unload the boys. A friend’s husband hauled baby gear and set up cribs despite having maybe two conversations with me ever. I have had people spend whole days with the boys before daycare was set up and on sick days out of the kindness of their hearts. I have had people who I call frequently who always pick up and listen to me break down all of the new adventures and stressors that have come with this. I know I would never have to make more than three phone calls to get someone to show up and lend a hand if I needed it in a pinch.

 

I have also learned that some people disappear. Not because they are bad, but because kids are not their jam or spending a night in playing games sounds boring or they don’t want to hear about baby vomit or they just don’t know what to say. It makes me sad. It feels like a significant loss, and I keep reaching out to the people who really matter to me. At some point, concession may be the only solution. Not every friend can be your friend in all the stages of your life.

 

Having my own family has made my family even better. My siblings have shown up and become involved and loving and protective in incredible and deeply satisfying ways. My aunt, who doesn’t like babies, loves the hell out of these kids and has shown up to help a million ways over and over while simultaneously trying to get her legs under her in her first year of teaching. Watching my mom be a grandma is all I could hope for, and being a mom has made me understand her in deeply touching ways. I have received handmade gifts from family members that make we well up even just thinking about the time, effort, and love they have put into them. My family never ceases to be wonderful and loving and helpful.

 

Social anxiety is a new friend of mine with people I am not close to because I don’t know how to handle their questions and appraisals of the situation. I have also learned that now that I am mom, that is all I am to some people who don’t really know me, and they are going to ask me questions that are personal and heartbreaking and stressful. No, I don’t know what is going to happen. No, I don’t know if I will keep them. No, I can’t tell you why they are in foster care. No. No. No. No. I want to yell “please stop asking me”, “let’s talk about our job”, “I don’t know you well enough for you to know how to pronounce my name properly, so I’m not going to tell you this”, “My kids are great, but I sure could use a laugh about covfefe or reply all or Melissa McCarthy on SNL”. Going to the copy room at work or a party with strangers is like constantly having a pop quiz where you know none of the answers about your own life.

 

I have also come to brace myself from what I call the “Baby Jesus” conversations. What I am doing is not normal. People don’t know how to wrap their brains around it for reasons I can only project. I have literally had people say that I am their hero or I am a saint. It makes me feel incredibly weird. I am selfish. I wanted to have kids. I decided to do it without the help of another person because I am that arrogant. My arrogance is doubled because I took in two kids without the financial, physical, or emotional support of another person. My two brown boys are being raised by a white mother because I want this. Is it what is best for them? Will I be able to do this justice? Am going to give them the tools they need as two people whose experiences I can only imagine? I feel ashamed when people say anything remotely in the realm of admiration. It feels good when my family or friends who I know say they are proud of how I am handling it, but when people treat me like I am turning water into wine or singlehandedly tending to the lepers in Calcutta, I feel horrible and anxious.

 

This year I became a mom. I became a non-traditional mom who never knows how long it will last or what is right for all of the people involved. I hope in 2018 for stability and answers and a magic wand to deal with weird scenarios. I hope to hold on tight to all of the people who show up all the time in their own ways. I hope to hold on tight to the people who still see me as me and want to laugh about nonsense and talk about work and analyze politics and discuss their dating lives and drink wine with me or play games or get brunch really early in the morning. I want to see my family as much as possible because their part in this is my favorite. I hope my dearest people who haven’t met them yet will sacrifice their time and money to meet them. I want infinite patience or the right retort to answer questions or stave off sainthood. I hope to continue to love them and their mother to the best of my ability each and every time I have the opportunity. I want more than anything to stay their mom as long as possible and strive to be the best person I can be for them every chance I get. In 2018, I just want to do my best and have it be good enough.

Burn Out

I just spent the morning with a good friend who works endlessly for the Denver community, the disenfranchised in the country at large, and for teachers in DPS. One of my biggest takeaways in this interaction is the amount of work that others are willing to put upon the backs of people fighting for them because they are unwilling to stand up and do it themselves.

There are groups of you that don’t have time, resources, or agency to fight. Those are not the people that I am addressing.

I am really thinking more about the endless work that a lot of us do for Denver teachers. Whether it’s countless hours trying to get a good school board member elected or trying to get a fair contract, I find that there are a lot of people who are willing to talk about supporting these things, but they’re not willing to show up and do actual work to better their own lives. They sit in these pools of anger over the situation that they’re stuck in, but they’re not willing to take the time to lift up the mantle of the cause to maybe get something better for themselves.

I know, for the past two years, I have basically been working a part-time job on behalf of Denver public school teachers for no pay, and I’m generally pretty happy to do it. I just get really upset when people are accusatory to me about things that are happening, but they are unwilling to show up and are ignorant of the system at large. They are not helping. They are ready to say that we are not working hard enough for them on their behalf, but they’re unwilling to do anything to make a difference for themselves.

There are veterans who were in my place years ago, who have been worn out and don’t see the benefit of working. To them, I get it. The reason they were burnt out, though, was because everybody else was willing to sit back and let them be worn out.

My good friend I was with this morning is on the verge of that burn out. I’m getting ready to start a family, and am unwilling to work a part-time job on behalf of people who are not willing to work for themselves instead of spending time with my child. I am burning out.

The only way that anything will ever change is if we distribute the work more evenly. We can’t expect people to go on this way without occasionally helping with the burden on their shoulders.

To all my friends who are all talk and no action, it gets really old listening to you complain about things that you are unwilling to do anything about. I used to be you, and I know all of your excuses for not participating are useless and counterproductive and only make you feel more helpless.

To those of you who are working for people who are unwilling to step up for themselves, I appreciate you. I appreciate you are carrying the weight of many on your shoulders with a lot of criticism that you aren’t carrying it right.

I know in society there’s a lot to fight for, and the things I choose to fight for or my friend chooses to fight for may not be your cause. You are fighting for something else that is equally or more important. If you’re one of those people, I’m not addressing you either.

I am addressing the average person who engages in no way in fighting to make the situation better but chooses to sit back and just be pissed that things aren’t working out the way they want them to. If you’re one of those people, shut up or get off your ass. Other people are dedicating their free time and lives to making the situation for you better with only your criticism to motivate them. You are part of the problem. You are one of the people to blame for your circumstances. Your parasitic ways are draining everyone. It is time for you to make a change.