The Crab Chronicles

The Man in My Life

I just realized tonight, that I am now living with a MAN. I was pretty startled to come upstairs tonight and find Michael shaving his face. "Getting tired of the chin hair," he explained casually, wielding the razor like an old pro.

"Did Uncle Bruce let you watch him shave?" I asked.

"Yep," was the reply."I don't even cut myself," he said proudly.

In two months my little boy will be 16 years old! This is hard for me to wrap my brain around. You see, I look at Michael and see this little guy:

My little 10 year old "baby" is gone now, though. He has a deep voice, and he's learning to drive, and getting ready to go to high school. Wow. The last 5 years passed in the blink of an eye. Last Sunday, May 7th, was the 5 year anniversary of the day Michael actually landed in America and joined our family.

I told him tonight while he was shaving and I was taking vitamins, "You know, you have to get in the habit of doing some things a man does. When you leave the house you need to get in the habit of taking wallet, keys, and phone."

Those are man habits. He needs to develop them.

I got to thinking, what qualities should Michael have, as a man? What qualities make for a successful man? I don't measure success in terms of money, I measure it in terms of character. Also, some basic life skills.

For instance, a man should know how to turn on a grill [or light a fire] and cook a decent steak.

A man should always be kind to small children and senior citizens.Actually, he should be kind to everyone, but particularly the very old and very young.

So I started thinking, why not go ahead and start a list of characteristics of the man I want to see  Michael become?

I was thinking of the list of traits that Andie McDowell spouts off in the movie Groundhog Day, as how she sees her Perfect Man: he's humble, intelligent, supportive, funny, romantic, courageous, has a good body "but doesn't have to look in the mirror every two minutes," ALSO - kind, sensitive, gentle, likes animals, children, and 'will change poopy diapers." "Oh, and he plays an instrument, and he loves his mother."

Bill Murray replies, "I am REALLY close on this one!" - which is a blatant lie, of course, which is what makes it funny.

I agree with everything on the list except that I don't care if Michael learns to play an instrument.

He has almost all of these characteristics already. He adores his mama and granny, and little Coco. He's courageous, humble, etc.

She left out funny - and Michael is funny. He was cracking jokes in English within a few months of coming here. In fact, I still laugh at how he described the Atlantic ocean the first time he saw it - "Cute" - a word his sister had taught him, with great delight, when he'd been here just a few weeks.

One thing I want to see in him is Confidence. Not arrogance, confidence. Huge difference. I want Michael to not let his missing hand make him shy. I want him to know and accept that he is very, very smart, and be confident with anyone he meets.

I also want him to have a strong faith in God.

A good work ethic.

The ability to admit when he's wrong, and the desire to then make things right.

The ability to truly relax.

And one really important characteristic - the ability to get along with difficult people. He has a teacher he is at odds with, and I've warned him several times, in life you will always encounter people you don't care for, people who may be rude or thoughtless, or snobby or just plain mean. Those people are everywhere. To be successful, you can't let those folks freak you out.We're working on it.

I also want him to have certain life skills, and he's got most of these:

the ability to cook a decent meal for himself [we're working on this one]

the ability to do his own laundry [he can do this]

the ability to manage his money [he has the right instincts in this already]

a concern for the environment [he already has this]

the ability to dress decently and appropriately [working on it]

Pride. I know, it's one of those seven deadly sins, but a certain amount of pride is a good thing. I want him to be proud to be a Kazakh-American. I want him to be proud of his family, his school, his talents in school and on the tennis court. The more proud he is, the more confidence he will develop.

Since I am raising my son without a man in the house, I've thought [and will continue to think] What sort of MAN do I want Michael to be?

I welcome comments about this, especially from guys. What do you think are the most important characteristics/life skills/accomplishments for a successful man?? Please leave me a comment.

"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me."
Steve Jobs

Thinking About Adoption and Teens

I was so delighted to hear that adoptions have opened up again for Kazakhstan and Krgystan. The sad thing is that Kazakhstan is not allowing single moms to adopt right now. Really ticks me off.

In that country, as in so many others, single motherhood is viewed with great suspicion. In case you don't know anything about adoption, in Michael's adoption I had to prove that I was financially stable, get tested for TB and AIDS and every other STD [several times, because they had to be recent tests and there were delays], produce documents proving I was mentally sound, and swear I wasn't gay. I can't recall exactly the requirements when I adopted Alesia because it was 8 years ago, but they were pretty similar to Kazakhstan. Now, requirements for adoptive parents are actually more stringent.

I read somewhere that there are more than 700,000 orphans in Russia. Many of those children are not adoptable, for various reasons. I met several kids when I was adopting Michael that I inquired about advocating for, and I was told they had siblings and would have to be adopted with the older siblings, according to the laws of Kazakhstan. So they never get adopted.

Most people who are interested in adoption want a baby. They won't even consider a child older than a toddler. They certainly don't want an older child with older siblings. It's heartbreaking.

I understand the reluctance to adopt older kids, though. I truly do understand.

My hope is that people who read this blog won't take away a negative view of older child adoption because of what has happened with my daughter. Yes, she dropped out of school and is living with an older man in an unhealthy relationship. I am not happy about it. I cry and pray, and cry some more, all the time. I try not to dwell on the mistakes I made. I try to remember that many kids raised from birth in loving homes rebel and go wild once they turn 18 and can get away from Mom and Dad. It's not uncommon. It is SO hard, though, as a parent.

I don't know how to react to people who say to me "Well, you didn't get her until she was 13. All the damage was done." That implies that my adopting her made no difference in her life, which I know isn't true. It also unnerves me to think those people view me as some sort of naive nitwit.

If you had asked me two years ago, I would've told you I had a beautiful, sweet daughter. We had normal teenage issues, but she was a good girl.

I still think she's a good girl, with a good heart. The difference is that now she has let herself be coerced into doing a lot of unhealthy things, by people I never would've approved of. She also lies to me all the time. She texted me yesterday and said she was "fine."

To me, "fine" means in school and/or working, being healthy, not using illegal substances, not hanging out with unsavory people. To her, it probably means she has a place to sleep and food, and she doesn't have to work. How she is living, I don't know, and I don't really want to know. She won't tell me the truth anyway, so why bother asking?

I couldn't wrap her up and refuse to let her go out in the world once she turned 18, though. I had to let her go. I had no choice.

Most teens at 15 or 16 go through a phase where they are trying out their own identities. Being patient during this time is hard on a parent. It's particularly hard if you don't have the strong bond and shared history you establish by raising a child from birth. I was always terrified that my daughter would turn to drugs and prostitution like so many of the girls from her orphanage.

After she left here and lived apart in the fall of 2010, she came home saying she wanted me to trust her, because she felt like I didn't. She had done several things over the years that made it difficult for me to trust her. When she was living here between November 2010 and June 2011, I made it a point to act like I trusted her. I didn't go in her room unless invited. I told her she could go out at night with friends I didn't know. I paid her for jobs done around the house. I let her use my car. I tried to give her some space, hoping it would engender good choices and good feelings. It didn't work.

I realized later that she had played me. Basically, for her, my house was a place to get some food and shower, and then she was going out to be with friends. She went to school for a while, and tried, but she had a whole other life, a secret life, that I didn't discover until after she had stopped living with me. I knew from her erratic behavior she was probably smoking pot. I knew she was smoking cigarettes. I just had no idea that those things were the tip of the iceberg. 

However, I want to reiterate: there are plenty of kids who are not adopted, who didn't suffer early childhood trauma, who behave the same way.

I actually had people in my general age group contact me privately and say "Dee, I went through a period of teenaged rebellion, too. I dropped out of school. I did a lot of stupid things. Eventually, I turned things around and I am fine now. Just wait. Be patient."

Ah, patience. Not my strong suit.

As any parent will tell you, though, patience is something that is thrust upon you, whether you want to learn it or not. If you are so hard-hearted as to not develop it, you shouldn't even be a parent.

With kids from relatively normal, stable homes, you usually see teens or young folks who learn their lessons. Eventually they realize their parents aren't total idiots.

I rebelled a little bit, but as a 14-16 year old, mostly. I stayed in school, then held down a job successfully, and was never arrested or anything like that. When I was 21 I was preoccupied with establishing a good credit rating, and having a decent career and falling in love.

My daughter has spent years dumping memories of abuse, and thinking of next week as the distant future. She lives in the moment, literally. She thinks she doesn't need to conform to the world. She can do exactly as she pleases. She hasn't learned otherwise, yet.

However, if I were to say her adoption was a mistake I would be lying. God told me quite clearly that she was my daughter. He helped me overcome many obstacles to bring her home. He never promised me that raising her would be easy, though.

I don't actually know anyone who has raised a teenager, biological or adopted, and said it was easy. But is it worth it? Yep.

My daughter is in God's hands, and that's how I sleep at night. Keep praying for her, though. Prayer is the best investment in the world.

What Doesn't Kill Me

There's a pop song right now I hear on Michael's radio station, and the chorus goes "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" - hardly an original sentiment, but it still startles me every time I hear those words blasting out of the radio. I think to myself, Kelly Clarkson, there is no way on earth you could possibly have had the experiences in your short life to really understand that idea. No way.

She's talking about a breakup with a boyfriend.

I mean no disrespect to her. She has a lot of talent. She just doesn't understand a lot of things.

When I was her age I could've sung those words passionately, too, but at my age now I realize how much I had to learn.

I had some encounters in the past week which have caused me to reflect on what hasn't killed me but has caused me a lot of grief.

I had a run-in with a friend last week that made me realize just how little she really understands about life. She's a good person but amazingly immature for someone just a few years younger than me. She's had an easy life. She's never had to quit smoking. She's never had her heart broken by a man she considered the love of her life. She's never watched her father dying of cancer. She's never nursed her mother after being in the hospital and nearly dying. She's never tried to heal a child so traumatized from the past they literally curl into the fetal position on the floor when hearing a raised voice. She's never struggled to pay bills. She's never lost a child to drugs. I bet she's never even doubted she was going to make it through yet another day without sobbing in the car to the point where her eyes were swollen nearly shut.

Those have all been my experiences. They didn't kill me. Have they made me stronger? I guess so. Sometimes I think my strength merely comes from being incapable of not taking care of the people who need me. I would like to say I have unshakable faith. I have a lot of faith. There are lots of times, though, that God seems very far away.

I just finished typing a long email about my daughter to a friend I haven't seen in a while. I shouldn't have said so much but I needed to write it. I can't write in that much detail here because this is a public forum, and there are still a lot of things that must remain private. Writing is how I manage to make it through the day, though.

Perhaps if I were to write a song it would be called "What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Type A Lot."

I realized only recently that the last 6 months or so of 2011 were a time when I operated simply on autopilot. I was so beside myself with worry about my daughter that it was hard to get up each day and keep going. I don't recall most of it, only isolated moments. I had just started a new job and I'm sort of amazed I didn't get fired because I made some stupid mistakes. I didn't bother to take any personal photos and put them on my desk until after Christmas.

Maybe what I should remember is that despite all my ineptitude at my job, at my roles as daughter and mom, at losing weight, at so many things, I am STILL HERE. I am stronger in the broken places.

I can hear sentences like "You're not his real mom," and instead of dissolving in tears I just get pissed off. I KNOW I am Michael's real mom, and he knows it too.

Sometimes when I can't calm down and negative thoughts start to freak me out I just try to repeat this mantra, "God, please take care of us. Take care of everyone I love."

[One thing is for sure - I don't ask him to make me stronger. Not going there. I'm strong enough, Lord, thanks very much... ;-)]

To all my regular readers - thanks for putting up with some inane posts. Some days I just don't feel like writing. Other days I write too much. In either case, the discipline of keeping this blog going is part of what keeps me going. I'm no good at writing eloquently but I can manage honesty.

Maybe that'e enough for now.

Forgiveness

Mike didn't get home at 8 last night as one of the buses broke down in Alabama. He got home at 10:30. So Mother and I had a chance to eat a quiet dinner together, which is uncommon.Usually we just chat about what's going on with us, or perhaps the news. Last night was different though.

We talked about forgiveness.

Mother said she feels like you should forgive for God's sake, not for the person who needs forgiving, and not for your own sake. I'm not sure I agree with that.

I feel like forgiveness has to come about in order for any healing to happen anywhere. The lack of forgiveness seems like a brick wall that blocks all good things.

I find it pretty easy to forgive other people, but I find it very difficult to forgive myself.

I am not a perfect daughter, or mother, or sister, or friend, or employee. I am so far from perfect, it's laughable. I hate that about myself. I feel like I don't have a husband [huge time commitment there] or any small children [another huge time commitment] so I should be able to do a good job of taking care of my mom, Michael, Coco, and the house, if nothing else. I feel like I fall very far short, though, most of the time.

When I am driving, I have gotten in the habit of mulling over what I did wrong with Alesia, trying to figure out where I screwed up so thoroughly that it led to her using drugs, and now wanting now to live in an entirely different place. She texted me the other day and said "I have a new family now."

Those words pierced my heart like a knife.

Rational friends have said to me "Dee, what happened to Alesia before you adopted her is what is controlling her now." I know they are probably right. I know that 13 years of trauma and abuse do bad things to a child. Try as I might, I couldn't love all that away, nor could the therapist do more than scratch the surface.

I also know Alesia is over 18 years old, so I can't make her conform to my morals or values. It just breaks my heart that she chooses to live apart from us, and only contacts me when she wants something.

Did I do my best? This is a question that haunts me.

In our family I was always taught to do my best, to give everything big and small a 100% effort, every time. That way, you don't look back and kick yourself. That way, you live life with honor. It's a good philosophy. I just wonder if I can live up to it.

Mother reminds me all the time that I've done all I can with Alesia, and now it's up to God to take care of her, just like he took care of my brother in Iraq. She's right, of course. It's so hard to do that, though, emotionally.

I also have to forgive myself for being very grumpy lately, and not being too pleasant to be around. Worries about my daughter, about money, about trying to eat right - these worries manifest as scowls and grumbling, and bile. It's not right. Sometimes I just feel overwhelmed, though.

I do better if I just say to myself every day, "OK God, use me to do YOUR will." If I think of myself as a vessel itself, not as the captain of the ship, it works out better. Yesterday, I did a bit better because I tried to consciously banish worried or negative thoughts from my head, and to just hear songs in my head when I had idle moments. I also came home and did some gardening, which is therapeutic.

Maybe those are the baby steps I have to take to get to the Forgiveness place. I hope so. I hope God keeps giving me ideas of how to soldier on and not be a witch.

I can't find the Mother Teresa quote about forgiveness that Mom and I were talking about last night, but I've read thru a lot of quotes of hers.

A lot of quotes attributed to Mother Teresa are inaccurate, I know. However, this is one I think is correct, and it's her most powerful one, to me at least, so I leave you with these powerful words to ponder:

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
Mother Teresa

Lots To Do

It's going to be an interesting weekend. I have a huge To Do list and I imagine I will be exhausted by the end of both days. That's the trouble with being a single mom. Way too much to do, not enough time.

I am having friends over tomorrow night for dinner and I am making lasagna. Great winter meal. Unfortunately, my house is really not clean, and I cannot bear the thought of people seeing it in its current state. So I have to clean. When Alesia lived here she would buzz around and help me. Michael, not without a fight.

I told Michael last night his room needs to be cleaned. He said NO. It was like talking to a toddler. He said he didn't know how to clean it. I pointed to a typewritten set of instructions I printed out about a year ago that is taped to the door of his closet. He still refused. I had to get tough. I didn't yell though. I just said "There will be no privileges until the room is clean. No electronics, no videogames, no iPod, no seeing friends. No getting your tennis racquet re-strung. Nothing."

It's so frustrating because he used to always be sweet and cooperative. Now he's 15 1/2 and he's a typical teenager, except with a bigger dose of stubbornness than most. I'll be honest, in most contests, he wins. I just give up. Not this weekend.

However, I will not be shooting any computers. I initially thought that was a funny video, and good for him for getting a little revenge. I certainly feel the guy's frustration. However, upon further reflection and after reading Cindy's blog, I came to the conclusion that the dad's immaturity is not helpful. Taking her computer away until she apoligized and maybe did some punishment chorres - OK. Pulling out a gun and shooting a laptop, then posting a video on Facebook?! Not healthy. 

PRAYER NEEDS

However, all this pales in comparison with what an old schoolmate of mine from High School is facing - breast cancer. Ever since I saw her note on Facebook last night I've been praying for her. Her name is Amy. Please say a prayer for her.

Another friend of mine is dealing with a child custody crisis, and needs prayers.

Hushpuppies and Ghosts

I feel compelled to blog EVERY DAY come hell or high water, but I cannot always [OK, I'll admit it, I can seldom] compose a coherent essay-type blog post.

I am certainly unable to compose such a brilliant post as my friend Cindy LaJoy, who really should write a book about her beautiful family.

So I decided here to just share some random stuff.

I managed to get a lot done today at work, a few things done at home, but by 6:30 tonight I was ravenously hungry and in no mood to cook. So I sinned. I went to Captain D's. The shame. The terrible shame of it all. As soon as the food came out I was stuffing hushpuppies in my big fat mouth.

Yes, I also got green beans. That doesn't exactly negate the 4 hushpuppes and three pieces of fried fish...

More random stuff...

I often think about things before they happen. I think about a friend, and they call or email me. I was thinking about my daughter on the way home from work, and within an hour she texts me.

I will think about a case at work, and my boss will hand me a letter to go out on the case.

I will think, I wonder how Mother is doing?! And she will call me.

Weird.

I could go into details about many weird psychic episodes, but I do want to maintain shome schred of credibility with folks who don't share my wackiness. Folks who don't watch Ghost Adventures. Folks who don't read their horoscopes every day. Folks who think when someone says they've seen an actual ghost they are C-R-A-Z-Y.

I have seen actual ghosts, though. Not recently. I do think sometimes residual energy stays on earth and manifests as what some people call "ghosts." If such things were completely implausible, who do so many folks believe in ghosts? Hmmm?!

I also believe some people can communicate with the dead.

I believe in prophetic dreams, because I've had them.

I believe in reincarnation, or as we sometimes say in the south, "reinTARnation."

Now, I will concede I cannot prove any of these things exist, but I don't care. I BELIEVE. I have taken leaps of faith.

I bet if you're a Christian you believe in the Holy Spirit, right?

The older I get the more I realize there are a lot of forces at work in the world. There's a lot of energy out there. We are spiritual beings living in a physical place, not the other way around.

As one of my favorite singers [Mary Chapin Carpenter] would say Why Walk When You Can Fly?

Anger and Power

Saw this posted and thought I would share it: "Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Just let it go." - Felice Dunas

I don't know Felice Dunas, but she is right on the money.

I am trying not be angry because somebody called my house this morning with a fax machine. The phone kept ringing and ringing. Freaked Mother out. I don't blame her. I redialed and realized it's a fax machine, and explained to her how those things are programmed to redial every 5 minutes for a while before giving up.

I am trying not to be angry at my daughter for making such poor life choices. It's hard. It's hard to stay calm when I speak to her on the phone. It's hard not to yell and scream and want to pull out my hair, because she is living with an awful man. The good thing is, now I just feel sad more than I feel angry. I am sad that she couldn't stay away from drugs and away from the wrong people. I am sad she continues to make poor choices. I am still praying hard for her.

I am trying not to be angry at some folks about funding for Michael's prosthetic. He has outgrown the current one. He got so frustrated and upset in the car this afternoon because the arm isn't working right. He has simply outgrown it.Poor kid has enough to deal with, between the acne and being short and not being a native English speaker. His English is nearly perfect, but he still gets the words "itch" and "scratch" mixed up, and a few other oddities pop up now and then.

I am trying not to be angry at myself for eating too much today. I didn't eat junk food. I have simply been hungry all.day.long. The normal amount of food isn't cutting it. I think it's hormonal.

I probably have a lot of anger in my body. It's never served me well.

Years ago in Knoxville, I worked with a young woman about my own age who was a legal secretary. She would get spitting mad about 3 times a day. She was smart and funny and we were friends, but her anger was scary. I watched in horror one night at a restaurant as she keyed someone's car because they parked too close to her car, in her estimation. She later became addicted to prescription drugs and her family turned away from her. Of course, that made her extremely angry at them. The last time we spoke, years ago, she sounded beat down by life and depressed. I don't know whatever happened to her.

I currently have a good friend who is very successful in life, but he holds onto his anger in a very unhealthy way. I've listened to him rant and rave for years. He scares me sometimes how angry and bitter he is, and how he can't let it go.

Anger is toxic. It truly is. If you are holding on to anger, please try and let it go. Your body will thank you for it.

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

Below is another great thought...

Epiphanies

As I look out my window on this cold, gray day, I keep going back in my mind to the subject of today's sermon, the Epiphany. Michael and I went to All Saints, where I used to go to church, and we were both listening intently to the sermon.

For those of you not familiar with the word "Epiphany" here's a definition: "A Christian commemoration of the divine nature of Jesus Christ. The homage of the magi to the infant Jesus is honored by some. For others, the Baptism of Jesus is the remembered event."

In a less theological sense, Epiphany is "a divine manifestation -         

a clear appearance; "a manifestation of great emotion"

I remember reading a poem in grad school where that was the meaning. It was about a revelation, a turning point. Funny enough, I am thinking this needs to be a turning point in my life, this Epiphany Sunday. There are so many things I need to do better.

There are some many longings I have for this coming year.

I also like this quote:

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

The hard thing to do is to really make a decision and then stick with it, whether you're talking about quitting smoking, or losing weight, or getting out of an unhealthy relationship, or just small things, like keeping house better.

I am reading a book about weight loss, and the author says the first thing you have to do is commit to not quitting, no matter what the setbacks. That seems like so much WORK, though. Work is not my favorite word.

Going back to the sermon, though, Geoffrey quoted Kahlil Gibran, who said Work is love made visible.

Hmm... so maybe I need to work on myself and perhaps even love myself a bit more. I don't mean to sound spacey and new-agey, but why not? Like most moms, I spend an awful lot of time tending to everyone else and very little time on me.

As I went marching into the ladies' room at All Saints before church, I though back to how I used to primp in there. I had long hair. I wore makeup. I dealt with pantyhose emergencies. I had contacts. I thought I was reasonably cute, most of the time. Now I am a totally different person, and not just in looks. Where did that other Dee go?

Some days, like today, there are simply not enough hours to get everything done. Forget makeup or hair fixing.

Here's how today went for me: wake up, workout, shower, get Michael up, go downstairs and fix breakfast for everyone, go to church, come home and start laundry, take Michael to a baseball team tryout, pick him up, go put gas in the car, pick up more prescriptions at CVS, go to Kroger, run by the ATM for Mother, come home and unload groceries. Now I get to pay bills and make dinner. I also have to finish the laundry and get it folded and put away. As I type this, I am baking a spaghetti squash. Well, the oven is actually baking it, but you get the point.

I still have a long To Do list for this week, and some of it will have to get done tomorrow in the 30 minutes I allot myself for lunch at work.

So, I don't really have any big revelations or conclusions to impart here. I just wanted y'all to know the direction my mind has been going in here the last few days. I mean to make 2012 a better year than 2011. I plan to work hard for the boss, but also for myself.

I will try to remember that ALL work - on myself, on the house, homework, legal work - all of it, should be the manifestation of love.

Doesn't my boy look handsome?!? Wow.

Fear or Faith

I will feel like I have succeeded in life if, when I get to the end of it, I have conquered fear. It's a tough thing to do.

As Franklin Roosevelt said so famously, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

He was right. Roosevelt knew if he couldn't rally his people, that fear would defeat them.They had to get over their fear in order to win the war.

Think about it. How many fear-based decisions in life have we later regretted?

I look back at my young self and I realize, I made a lot of decisions out of fear, and they were bad decisions. Here's just one example. I should've majored in journalism in college. I was afraid of the courses I would've had to take to get my degree in journalism, especially economics. I was terrible at that class in high school. So I feared it.So I majored in Drama instead, which was a fun major, but useless in the real world, I found out.

The hardest thing to do in life is to push past the fear and go after what you really want. Fear holds us back.

I'll admit, sometimes fear is good. I was afraid some of my plants would die, so I moved them into the house this afternoon, and some I moved close to the house. I feared losing them. That's good fear, constructive.

What I am talking about here though is destructive fear.

The hardest thing to try and teach a child is that fear is toxic, and in many situations it's the enemy. The second hardest thing may be teaching them to have faith in God.

I've never understood the phrase "The fear of God." If you're afraid of God, what you feel isn't faith.

I was thinking not long ago how fearful I was of Christmas, because I didn't have the money for gifts. Within a week, I got an unexpected check in the mail. Now it's looking like we will have an OK holiday. Not extravagant, but there will be a few things to wrap and put under the tree.

I am a person of faith, but it's never easy. I still have some anxiety because I don't know if Alesia will come home or not, or what shape she will be in if she does show up. I don't like her boyfriend and I won't let him in the house. She probably knows that. So who knows what she will do.

I am praying about it, though. That's all I can do.

My financial situation is still precarious. Praying about that, too.

Sometimes I feel like I spend half my life trying to pray, and not fret. Sometimes I just shrug and say simply "God, please take care of us."  I really think that's the best thing.

I need to try and clip Coco's hair tomorrow - a very scary thing, given her medical condition. I will call on faith to conquer fear there, definitely. No problem is too big or too small for God.

That's all I really wanted to say, today. Food for thought.

QUOTES I LIKE

Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real.
Unknown

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.  - Bertrand Russell

Feed your faith and your fears will starve to death.  ~Author Unknown

You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt

The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear.
Gandhi

Mad Passionate Love?

I always check out my friend Judy's blog every day, because she also has a child adopted from Kazakhstan, she's a friend, and she's funny. Every once in a while her blog is thought-provoking.

If you click on the link to her blog you will see a pithy quote about Love needing to be mad and passionate or don't bother. Interesting idea. I totally disagree with it.

I guess the first rebuttal that came to mind was that my grandfather loved me very much, but it was a quiet love, and he was so Victorian he couldn't even say the words "I love you." He would hug me and say "You know somethin'?" and I knew what he meant. I would always reply "I love you too, Papa." It wasn't until I was grown and Mother and I talked about it that I realized that even as a tiny child I knew he loved me deeply, and there was no need to tell me in words, but he tried.

There was a fair bit of chaos in my house from ages 1- 9, and Papa was my refuge during those years. My dad worked like a maniac, and he and Mother had a lot of social engagements in Augusta they were required to attend. They were each in and out of the hospital a couple of times. Money was tight. We moved twice. Dad had ulcers. You get the picture.

In the midst of all that, Papa's lap was my safe place. We read Swiss Family Robinson, Heidi, bible stories, et. - over and over. My love of stories probably came from there.

I am more like my dad, unfortunately. Hotheaded and judgmental at times. I love passionately a lot of times, but not well, Shakespeare might say. I haven't had a romantic love in many years and don't look for it to ever happen again. That's fine.

Michael has no trouble saying he loves me, but he more often shows it. I was helping him finish his Math project late yesterday afternoon, and feeling regretful about fussing at him so much about his Science grade, and he came over and put his arms around my neck as I was at the computer typing. I think there are times when he has had a tough day and he needs some mama-ing, even though he may not want to admit it. He is, after all, 15.

I told him the day I met him that I need at least two hugs a day, and I still hold him to that.

I do not believe in letting boys get away with being standoffish as they get older. If you let them get away with it, that's a shame. Boys need hugs.

There's plenty of room in the world for a quiet love.