Living Passionately

Image by Paula Scarletta


When I am in good form, and working at the top of my game, I strive always to live passionately. Of course, lately, I have been stunned into silence and even illness by the drama and baggage and heavy feelings surrounding the return of Little A and the short stay of Baby B.

As I sit here drinking water and taking antibiotics and trying to recover from the total shock to my system, I am noticing how down  and low-vibrating this situation has made me feel. I have had zero energy for writing or for making other kinds of art. That spiraled down into a total creative void and finally physical wear and tear. It was like my body just totally went on strike to get me to notice that I had started to live my life in a way that was not going to be consistent with my happiness.

Of course I know that having kids will put a damper on your energy. Especially my kids, because they come from backgrounds that mean they have certain special needs in the parenting department. Well, A does. J has made such progress and I have bonded with him such that he seems easy and the relationship is pretty relaxed most of the time.

I am nowhere near my usual energy level at the moment, but it has forced me to use my time for contemplation. It is going to take me a little bit to rebuild my strength. While I do that I am going to try to remain focused on what really matters, and that is being true to who I really am. Too often I allow the people in the county building tell me how to parent. The fact is that I am a slightly peculiar person and my kids enjoy me more if I can go with it and just be myself.

I'm happier when I am entertaining friends, experiencing and making art, supporting the artists I know, dancing, being in nature, and helping other people. It raises my energy level to do those things. It brings me down to do paperwork, do things out of obligation rather than by choice, and spending time in places that are filled with negative energy and negative people.

I'm not really sure how long we are going to have Little A this time. Things seem pretty uncertain at the moment. But if I am going to enjoy her in her good moments, I need to have enough energy to be awake for it. Little by little, I need to raise the bar for myself and follow those passions where they lead.

Poetry: Fading

Fading

From dizzying heights I watch myself fade.

Falling out of your thoughts like a lost star.

No longer illuminating your world with love

I scarcely have a reason to shine.

You won’t forget me all at once,

But little by little you’ll think of me less

Until one day you’ll stop and wonder

When I last crossed your mind.

Maybe you’ll convince yourself

That I never loved you so fiercely

If I was able to walk away from you.

You might think it, but you’ll be wrong.

Inside my orbit, I burn and inward turn.

Despairing, I am a singularity.

My light can’t reach your lush blue world.

 And I’m forced to admit I no longer exist.

Please don’t believe such slander.

Though I fade in your mind you never leave mine.

My hand still reaches for yours in vain.

To offer safety and strength to you.

I may be  fading now.

I may seem translucent now.

I may seem far away now.

But I’m here, as close as a breath on your cheek.

Stacie Ferrante

6-28-10

Being a Mother

Image: Gustav Klimt: Mother and Child, 1905

Being a mother is a big deal. Not that it shouldn't be, because it is just about the hardest thing there is to do. There are about as many kinds of mothers as there are children to parent. I'm going to be a foster mother again very soon, and that brings up all sorts of feelings. Bear with me while I sort them out in writing.

Yes, being a mother is a big deal. Our culture idolizes mothers to the point where it is generally accepted that being a parent is by default just better than not being one. It is assumed that until you have had a child, you are incapable of feeling or expressing unconditional love or deep empathy or protectiveness for other people. Women who are unable for whatever reason to give birth or choose to not have children are creatures to be pitied.

I'm pretty sure being pitied is one of the worst feelings there is. Being pitied when you have suffered a great loss such as losing a child is so dis-empowering. For as long as people pity you, you are pitiful, no?

We have pictures of Little A all over our house, reminders of when we were her proud parents. She was a beautiful daughter and adding Little J to our family will not make me stop missing her or wondering how she is doing with her family.

I have been not-a-mother yet, a foster mother, a former mother, and now a foster mother-to-be again. While being a mother (and I was that in almost every sense to Little A) taught me many things about myself, it didn't make me better than anyone else. I am proud to say that I already knew about love and empathy before she became part of our family. I am a purposeful person and examine myself and my motives on a regular basis, so there was no big a-ha moment there.

It is a little hard for me, around holidays like Mothers' Day, to not feel a little annoyed at the cult of the Mother around me. That in-club that I have both been included and excluded from. It is a rite of passage to be a parent, and it is almost like I am not considered fully a woman unless I am a frazzled mother.

But having a functioning uterus doesn't make you a woman any more than having a functioning appendix does. All sorts of people have babies that have neither the coping skills nor the interest to parent. As a foster parent, I see that side of it and just can't wrap my head around it.

I will say that I have known people who have suffered illness and loss and personal tragedy, and not one of them would trade places with me for a million dollars. I carry my loss of Little A like a piece of secret shame, even though I lost her due to no wrongdoing of my own, but to a court system that places a higher value on her biological mother's rights than to what was clearly making Little A happy and healthy. I can't tell that story out loud without being like a black raincloud that brings unwanted sadness to anyone who hears it. So most of the time I just gloss over it, or say nothing at all, even though to do so makes me feel like less of a mother, like it was all a dream that ended badly. I'm like the mother that other mothers must not touch for fear of my bad luck rubbing off. I honestly try hard not to touch pregnant women, just in case.

In a few hours I get to meet the little boy who will hopefully be my forever son one day. He is his own person and is not coming into my life to heal my hurts, but to have his own soothed. He has his own issues and cannot bear the burden of my anxiety. I have to teach him that I can be trusted to provide comfort, as if he were a newborn. Today I will start slow, like a first date, hoping for love but not letting a show of it overwhelm. I cannot merely claim him and expect him to fall into my arms in gratitude. In fact, at first, he may reject me for moving him away from his current foster mother or the even more distant figment of the woman he never sees but who gave birth to him.

Being a Mother is a big deal, but not in the ways popular culture would have you believe. It means being a whole person and showing a child how to rise above pain and still have an open heart. It means accepting a child as a person with flaws like any other. And ultimately, it means eventually saying goodbye to that child, hopefully because you have successfully raised them to adulthood and not some other, sadder reason. It means becoming an archetype in the life of another person, expanding beyond yourself into mythic proportions before you even have your morning coffee. It means dead-lifting cars and making healing food that, if you are lucky, will be remembered long after you are ash in the wind.

The Buzz: It's a Boy!

The news on the Ferrante Family front is that we are taking another Flex Family placement of a 2 year old boy. He's not a newborn baby, but he'll be our "baby". For the purposes of the interwebs, I will call him "Little J". His privacy is very important, so I will not be discussing the finer points of the reasons he came into foster care other than to say that it was because of neglect, which has given him a few special needs for which he is receiving therapy services. I also, alas, will not be posting pictures of him on my facebook page or my blog, at least until his legal status is more secure.

Being a Flex family means that we take him as a foster child, and are able to adopt him if that is the way his case plan goes. This is what we did with Little A, and we all know that we ended up on the losing end of that particular gamble. It is scary to venture into this arena again, but with great risk there is potential for great reward, or so I explain to my frazzled nerves.

It's like we are on the county's radar at the moment, because now that we are committed to Little J, we are getting calls for all kinds of situations. I got a phone call yesterday to see if we could take an emergency placement of a 12 month old baby girl. That tugged hard on my heart strings, but we want to take time to get Little J moved in and settled and bonded before we go adding more kids to the family.

If this post sounds all somber and serious, don't let that fool you. I am super freaking excited about it. We are meeting him next week, and will move him in in about a week or two. I'm buying paint for his room today. I know I will feel much more ready after we get things put together in there.

After having a super girly girl for two years, I am now trying to figure out how to raise a son. I have my own ideas, but I am open to suggestion as to what cultural touchstones are important for raising a boy to be freethinking and sort of hip and unconventional. Does he need comic books in his life, which ones? Are ninja movies essential? Any really good books? I'm shaping a person here, and I want him to be someone you can stand to hang out with. I don't want to raise him to be pretentious, but to have discerning tastes.

Oh me and my lofty ideas. A month from now all I will want is some sleep! ;)

Be More Real

Image :  http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/120708/be-more-confident.gif

One of the things I am trying to do with my life, assuming my life is a canvas for art, is to be authentic. What that means from day to day varies, but it mostly has to do with ridding myself of the desire to compare myself with other people and just be myself.

I don't know if that sounds easy or not, but who I am is a constant work-in-progress. I set lofty goals for myself. I work hard. I am my own worst critic. In spite of that, I need to be more real.

When I get into trouble is when I try to be what my perception of a societal role should be. When I try to be what I think a "good wife" or "good mother" or even "good artist", I fall into a trap of trying to be what is expected, rather than taking the time to think about what that means to me. Does it matter if I put honest effort into something that ultimately is not natural to who I am? Doing that just leads to feeling like a failure.

Example: When I was Little A's mom, I did a lot of things with her. I wanted to be a good mom, because I loved her and also because some measure of my self image was wrapped up in that. I kept beating myself up because some of the things about parenting I wasn't so jazzed about, and I felt like if I was a "good mom" I would naturally enjoy them more. For instance, I dreaded bath time. Not mine, hers. I felt like if I was a good mom I would enjoy bathing my child. I would laugh through getting splashed with soapy water, I would be good-natured about getting that slippery kiddo to wash her hair. Tony was way better at it. Frankly I didn't enjoy it.

I also, for some odd reason. didn't enjoy playing on the floor as much as Tony did. Little A always wanted me to play with toys with her on the floor, and I did it, but I also had to make dinner and do laundry, so those moments often felt conflicted for me.

What I did enjoy were the afternoon tea times we had together, when we would have snacks and listen to music (often Mozart), and we would do drawings and color together. We had lovely closeness in those moments. Is that somehow less valuable than playing with a commercially ubiquitous plastic doll with her? I don't think so.

But when we had to reunify Little A with her biological mother, the first thing I noticed was that she played with Little A on the floor a lot. And even though I had my shit together in a lot of ways, I felt some harsh self-judgment feelings. I was glad for Little A that she would get that play time like she wanted, but after she was gone, I missed those more contemplative moments making fridge art the most. I missed most what came most naturally to me.

Little kids and friends and artistic audiences can smell it when you are not giving full commitment to the moment. I got up and read some of my poetry at an open mic recently (my first attempt at such a thing). I was nervous and unable to fully commit and I think as a result I got a tepid response. I had also chosen to read some stuff that I thought would have a broader appeal and be less about my inner persona. In retrospect, I think that was a wrong choice, based on what I thought a "good poet" would read. I made my selections based on what I thought were good representations of my work, instead of pieces that revealed something visceral and real about myself. If (or when) I decide to do it again, I need to not be afraid to show what is real about me. I need to bleed a bit, be a bit more raw. It is scary to do, because what if is isn't accepted? What if it makes people laugh?

But for me to be able to be satisfied with it after the fact, I need to experience being real with other people watching, even if that means I am not understood by everyone. Playing it safe will do me no good. Doing what others expect or worse, what I think others expect, will only prove that I can be superficial and concerned with the opinions of others. I don't even think that kind of art would ultimately resonate with anyone. It might be pretty, but ultimately forgettable.

I don't want to be forgettable. I don't want to blend in. I don't want to be "whatever is in these quotation marks", but the real thing. Even though it takes more energy and involves more risks, I want to be, as much as possible, more real.

Lost Mitten

My house is full of evidence that up until Friday I was a mom. Just little things here and there, art on the fridge, stray puzzle pieces under the sofa, and silky blonde hairs in the bathtub drain. We are still in the process of cleaning the house after moving our foster daughter. There is this stray mitten that I guess I need to throw out, because I never found the mate to it so I could send it with the rest of her stuff.

It is just a little purple mitten. So small. By next winter she probably would have outgrown that pair anyway. But my eyes keep gravitating to it, and it would probably be healthier for my well being to toss it out or put it away, rather than picturing the soft little hand that belongs in it. The hand that fit so well in mine.

Better to discard it lest I do something crazy like sew it on the inside of my coat, so it can lie over my heart, secretly where nobody will see it. Because the rest of the world will become accustomed to my childlessness so much faster than I will. They won't have to think about her every day and wonder how she is doing, worry about whether she is happy. Worry about the unseasonably cold mornings and if she has something to keep her hands warm.

I have an empty mitten, and she has a cold hand. That is how I see it. She hasn't even been gone long enough to miss me, or notice that she isn't coming back. She'll figure it out in her way and probably get the reasons for it all wrong. I am sad for myself, but even more I worry for her. I just want her to be happy.

The county would gladly fill our empty bedroom with another child if we wanted them to. But there is just no way I could take that on right now for lots of reasons, so we are waiting. Need to heal. Need to get through nursing school. I feel like I need to conquer the world a bit and get my confidence back and get out from under the watchful eyes of the gaggle of social workers that in the end don't do any of the heavy lifting that foster parents do.

I don't know how long I will keep this mitten. I guess until I don't need it anymore. Maybe I need the proof that while I had her, I took good care of her.

Bend, but don't Break

I am sorta half decent at yoga, but being emotionally flexible is a bit more challenging.

I’m bending into some unlikely and highly uncomfortable shapes these days. I’m angry. I’m full of sorrow. I’m hurting.

Bending. Bending over backwards and twisting sideways and sometimes inside out. Last night entailed very little sleep, because when Little A can’t sleep, neither can anyone else. But it is understandable because last night we had to tell her that she is moving on Friday. Tomorrow. We told her kindly, somberly, and truthfully. She took it ok, which just means to me that she doesn’t fully understand it.

And the things she says these days! Tearful proclamations that announce her fear of abandonment by us. A fear, I am sorry to say, we are going to have to validate against our will. I wish I could repeat them here, if only to get the plaintive voice out of my head and on paper. Out of my body where it drains me.

I did tell her that this wasn’t our choice. I told her that I will love her forever. I told her that every time she sees the moon in the daytime, smiling at her, that she should remember that I love her. I hope she remembers.

In the meantime my whole body aches. My heart is utterly shattered. If I didn’t know for a fact that my symptoms were a result of extreme stress, I would think I had cancer or some other serious illness. I feel like I am dying. I feel broken.

Little A, you have been a wonderful daughter. I will never have another like you if I live a million more lives after this one.


Image credit:
http://www.pbase.com/britestar/image/66583996

The Peculiar Passage of Time

How is it possible that time is both flying AND dragging? On the 22nd of October, we will have had Little A in our lives for a whole year. She keeps getting bigger and smarter and faster. I think we spent the first four months just stunned from suddenly becoming parents. But the decade-plus wait to be parents seemed to drag on forever.

And the three weeks until the first Termination of Parental Rights hearing is dragging forever, and that hearing is only the beginning really of some complex legal wrangling to seek permanence for this child.

Time is warped for me right now. On the one hand, I can't believe that it is October already, and mid-month I have a slew of midterms. On the other hand, May 2010 (when I graduate) seems so far away as to be effectively forever. I got overwhelmed last night just thinking about all the work that lies before me and how far away that goal feels. I know when it is over I will probably say that the time flew by, but right now looking ahead feels vertiginous. I can't look in front of me for more than about 2 weeks without feeling dizzy. So planning anything after that feels dangerous or even impossible.

And yet I am doing a lot of big picture thinking about what I want out of my life. I am dreaming big. I just haven't figured our the steps in between here and there yet. Even my short term goals are a little on the hefty side.

I wish I could say that time is on my side, but I just don't know. There are some things I wanted for myself that are out of the question now because I am getting too old. I am quietly grieving the fact that I will never experience pregnancy now. I thought I was done with thinking about that, but it has reared its head and demanded my conscious thought lately. Even so, Tony and I are not done building our family, and we are open to adopting again in the future at least one more time, even though the process can be harrowing emotionally. We are still reeling from all the drama we have had over Little A, and that isn't even resolved yet. We are still figuring out how to be married and be parents and be all the other things we want to be. It isn't flowing naturally at all. But I don't feel "done" yet. I would like a second child. I'm not in a hurry, but in the next five years I expect to be a mother of two instead of one.

I used to feel the spirits of my children around me when I was younger. The ones that wanted to be born through me lingered on the edge of my dreams and spoke to me. They have either found other ways to be in my life, or they have given up on me, because those little voices are still now. I don't know when it stopped when I think back, but I realize that I have been sad about it for a while. All the babies that were going to share DNA with me are simply not going to be. They are gone, lost to fickle time and faulty biology. It is almost like they are dead, snuffed out before they ever had a chance. I feel responsible somehow for failing to find a way to give them what they clearly wanted from me.

I'm writing a bit of prose to work through that, but school is keeping me pretty busy at the moment, so processing big life pain might have to wait. Grief doesn't work on timetables, though. Like a shark attack, it takes a bite out of you when it chooses to. I think the fact that I am so open to learning new things right now has put me in a space to learn all kinds of things unrelated to school. So my lessons are moving in on me at top speed. I'm pulling smoking Rockfords in my life and chasing down all kinds of things.

Time flies and time drags. It pools and rushes over cliffs. It eddies in slow trickles and threatens to stagnate just as it spews forth in hot and terrible geysers. Time is an illusion, just like control. While I think I am watching it slide by me, I fail to realize I am in it. My little coracle without a paddle is taking me somewhere. I hope it is somewhere I have tried to plan for, someplace I have manifested for myself in a moment filled with hope instead of dread.

We'll see. In time, all things reveal themselves in truth for what they are. Waiting is hard. I want some little rewards along the way for the ways I am trying to be good. Hear that, Universe? Some cosmic lotto winnings or pleasant little surprises this week would be good. I'm open.

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