Brizzle, Brizzle Bum, Shmizz, Moeshy, Shmoe... you know, Eli!

I know most of you also read my mom’s blog so you already know my family, but I figured I would just go through the members and how I relate to them (and the lack of relation at points) since they are all so wonderful and I can’t really think of anything else I want to write about today. We’ll start with littlest.

Don’t be deceived by this ADORABLE little face… this child is a turd. And I mean that in the kindest, most loving way. For real. I love this little man a ton and he is so funny, passionate, and willful. He really loves Thomas the train and makes the cutest “trains” out of cars, animals, silverware, whatever is inspiring him that day. Anyway, it’s super fun to watch him learn new words and activities.

I was actually just thinking the other day about the fact that I probably wouldn’t even be here if it hadn’t been for this little annoying brother. Well, I can’t really say that because I don’t actually know, but he definitely played a big part: You see, when I first met my family, I was working as an LT (essentially a counselor’s helper) at the bible camp that my Dad works at. Eli was just a fat 10 month old baby at the time, and due to my odd absolute love of babies, I always found time to slip away from my cabin group (I was such a prime LTJ) and play with him. Most days of camp that summer were spent looking forward to meal time and the late afternoons when my mom would bring the littles to camp (I wasn’t adopted yet) so I could ditch my responsibilities and go run around like a crazy with the three little boys. Eventually I started becoming friends with Crystal and so it all began... but I totally wouldn’t have given her the time of day if it hadn’t been for that sweet, fat man.  

All that aside, he is definitely the sibling that I fight the most with. I know it is mostly just a great deal of immaturity on my part, but I’m telling you, this kid is evil. He knows what I hate and does it just to drive me crazy… I swear it! J You know that part in Lord of the Rings when Gollum gives that really horrid smile to Sam when Frodo isn’t looking? Eli does that to me all the time. I dish it out pretty thick to him too though… sometimes I just pick on him because it’s legitimately funny. I do try to make it up to him though, I rock him to sleep every now and then and give him candy (the way to every two-year-olds heart). We are usually the last two kids to go to bed so most days there is time at the end of the day for us to hang out… just the two of us. It is one of my favorite times of the day. Even as I write this, he is sitting next to me in our wonderful green chair bobbing his head along to ABBA and eating Ritz crackers. This whole post has been interrupted with “blowing in your face contests” and dance offs, so if it doesn’t flow so well, my bad… but I was just chillaxing with my littlest poopy bro.

On the Subject of Being Home

           I am taking a post to vent. Not about my past or about the things I worry about in the future, but about life now. This post may seem a bit contradictory to my last post, but it isn’t. Both the feelings and beliefs that I state in this post AND the ones I acknowledged in the last are true, however painful the truth may be. I just want to be sure and state at the beginning that I love this family that I live with and I am SO thankful for what they sacrifice for me. Also, I truly view them as my family. But there is half of me that just wants to scream at the world, “ADOPTION SUCKS!” Horrible, I know… and I can’t even believe I am actually writing about this on my blog, especially when there are so many other happy things that I could be talking about, but I just couldn’t get it off my mind… and I feel like sometimes it’s ok to share reality with others.

            Just this morning my mom and I were discussing why it is that I can’t just be content, to the very core of who I am, to view this as my home. Because, to be honest, most days this feels like living with a really nice family for a while, and for ages it has plagued me as to why I couldn’t just make myself feel loved and tucked into a secure family setting. Even now I am at an utter loss as to how I can still yearn so ferociously to actually believe that my mother loves me as her own after all the time and energy she has dumped into me in just the short time I have been here. Yet, for whatever reason, I cannot accept that love.

            After we had finished our conversation this morning, my mom scooped up her baby boy (Eli) who was having some sort of issue and began to care for him as any loving mother would, and I began to watch a common thing in our house: a child being loved. It went something like this:

“Oh baby boy, someday I am actually going to miss these fits of yours, and I’ll say to myself, ‘remember when Eli would throw ridiculous tantrums that could simply be laughed at?’” After some smiles and hugs and kisses and warm gushy feelings, the inevitable reminiscing began:

 “And you just used to be the fattest thing, with all the chubs, look at yourself in that picture; you were only two months old… and soooo little! You were born all skinny, but you just fattened right up because you were the best nurser there. All the nurses were so proud! You just came right out and latched right on like you had been doing it for ages. And you pooped and peed like a pro… all the nurses were so proud, you were just the best baby in the whole hospital, especially because you didn’t even lose any weight, not even an ounce. Your sister Katie lost a whole pound (or something like that)….” And on and on it goes, from one kid to the next, how they did this when they were just a toddler, or how baby-ish Tommi was when he came home and just how big he and Z-man are now. Or even the bad things, how hard it was when someone used to do this or that.

            The worst is when we sometimes look through old pictures on the computer:

  

 “Oh look how skinny Z was!”

“I remember that day… it was such a wonderful summer.”

 “Oh and there is that skirt that Jordan wore every day… I could not get her to take it off.”

 “Look at little Alli… man she was such a baby girl!”

 “And Dan… see those tears running down his cheeks? He was always crying about something.”

 “Look how beautiful my Katie Lady is… man she is so grown up… can you believe how big she is?”

 “Gosh what a runt Tom is… ah but he was so cute, look at his big adorable eyes… he was such a baby!”

 “And my fat baby Eli… oh I love this picture of us!” And on it goes, through hundreds of moments caught in time that I have missed, where my existence meant nothing to those I love most.

            I am by no means saying that I wish my mom would never reminisce about the years gone by, or cuddled up the little ones and oogle over them and how wonderful they were when they were younger. In fact, it is probably good for me to watch how a mother is supposed to love her children, and there are days when it brings a smile to my face. But it hit me so hard today why I can’t settle; why I hate watching this interaction so much: it’s because I have no history here.

    My mother has no idea how I ate when I was born, or whether or not I pooped or peed well. Actually, she was 11 when that happened, and can’t even comprehend how she would have been my mother when I was born… because she couldn’t have been. She has no idea how I acted, the toys I loved most and all the ordinary stuff that mothers know about their children when they are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen. We have missed so many years… and I am supposed to be home?        

          This is my no means the first time that I have struggled with this, or been saddened by the fact, but I somehow find a way to get beyond it… as I will today. I choose to be thankful for the time I have now… and try and learn how to love my family, while they are almost strangers to me. I love them fiercely, and that is why it hurts. But alas, one can’t get hung up on the “what if’s” of life. Sorry if this post came across as wining… it probably was to a certain extent… but I just had to get these thoughts out of my head. And don’t be mistaken, my mother is wonderful… so very wonderful. And I know, somewhere deep down inside, that she really does love me.

                                         

  

Short and Sweet...

Well folks, it's official: I'm just not the blogging sort. But I am not quitting it. I feel as though I have some what of a valid excuse, as my family has been on vacation for the last month or so and the place we are currently staying in has no Internet. I do have stuff I want to post about... but I'm afraid that is just going to have to wait until we get home. We leave next Wednesday and I simply can't wait. It's not that being down here hasn't been lovely, or meeting Craig's family hasn't been interesting, it's more just that I am ready to be home. I miss my Alaska in an amazing way. I miss the mountains that will all be covered in snow by now, and all the naked trees, ready to take on winter. I miss the icy wind that cuts right to your bones as it blows the left-over fall leaves into their respectable ditches; natures way of tidying things up. I especially miss the anticipation of the first snow and watching for the sky to turn that foreboding gray. The first snow of the year is still one of my most favorite things ever, and I may have already missed it! I hope not.
But I am learning an important lesson: I am learning that no matter how homesick I get for the land, I still have the things that matter right with me... my family! As cheesy as it sounds, it is so true. Being the oldest kid and the newest member, along with a whole lot of other crap, certainly provides its challenges, and there are so many days that I find myself focusing on all the things I hate about being here with these annoying siblings of mine. But when it comes right down to it, and I've had to apologise to several people, I am truly over-joyed to be right where I am, with the people that I love.

Tasting Elation

Do you ever feel so deliciously happy that you don’t quite know how to contain yourself? When your heart is so at peace and your very soul is calm with contentment? I don’t really know that I have ever felt this way before. But today, well, today I do. It is a feeling so completely strange to me that I don’t really even know what to do with myself. Usually when I have an onslaught of emotion I sleep, but that doesn’t really satisfy this deliciousness. Am I supposed to run and scream with delight? Do I even admit to feeling like this over events so seemingly small? Nothing too monumental has even happened… yet I feel so strongly that in this moment the world in which I exist is just as it should be. (For the time being)

Allow me to explain: Today I finally received my High School diploma in the mail, just in time to show it off at a small graduation party, at which I received the gift I have so long awaited: A GUN!!! Ever since I can remember I have wanted one and now I dooooo! Plus, I’M GRADUATED! If I could see my birth mom right now I would take great delight in saying, “up yours,” with that particular finger pointed in her face. She told me I could NEVER own a gun and that I wouldn’t graduate if I left when I did. Today, however, both predictions were shattered. I am now the proud owner of both a diploma and a .44 special.

But it doesn’t end there. My mom is home. Do you even know how wonderful this feels? After 17 days in Taiwan, miles and miles away, she is home. It is hard to explain how or even why it was so hard to have her gone, just outside of missing her a great deal, which I did, but I had this impending fear the whole time that she wouldn’t come back, or, even worse, she would but would have nothing to do with me. I understand that to most this may seem a childish perspective on someone leaving for a couple weeks, but that fact didn’t make it any let relevant to me. But for now she is home, and the world is that much more in the right.

All Things Therapeutic

"They" say that survivors of various types of abuse have found animal interaction to be of help. While I have been skeptical of this belief for most of my life, I have also found myself desiring to be with animals for most of my life. Coincidence? I think not! For some reason, I really enjoy being around something that is smelly, can’t talk back verbally, is less intelligent than I am, and has some sort of dependency on my care. However, I am by no stretch of the imagination an “animal lover.” The death of an animal, while being somewhat disturbing, does not have any massive bearing over my general state of emotion. I enjoy being around animals, but I can definitely live without them. This being said, I am actually beginning to think that the reason I enjoy them at all is that they are kinda soothing, but I am pretty picky about which kinds I will hang out with. I love sheep. I helped raise them while I was in pre-school and kindergarten and even though I was really young at the time, I still have very vivid and wonderful memories of playing with and feeding them. Lambing season is just the best! This being the case, and my dad already having several goats, (a vastly inferior specimen) J and, therefore, a good space to house a sheep, I bought a lamb this spring. She is soooooo cute and wonderful! I don’t spend an exorbitant amount of time with her, but I let her out to graze now and then, and walk her occasionally. The current plan is to have her bred in January and potentially try and milk her to make cheese.

The picture above was just taken a couple days ago while I had her out in our back yard, and while it gave me a good chance to introduce her, I posted this picture for a couple reasons. The first has already been covered, but the second is a bit less obvious and very much a diversion from the topic of the therapy of animals. As I was looking at the picture, I began to notice just exactly what I was wearing. A couple people had commented on my outfit for the day, but it was just kinda one of those days where you don’t really get dressed, you more accumulate objects of clothing/any accessories that you wish to wear that day. So I ended up with running shorts, a pj tee, my Xtratuffs, and the cowboy hat from Courtney that I absolutely LOVE. It is admittedly an odd outfit, but I am an (not so admittedly) odd person. And that is way it was so perfect for me. A mixing and matching of several different areas of life… with a result that isn’t too pretty, but grabs the passer-by and makes one stop and stare with an inquisitive sort of look.

While I don’t feel that I have the benefit of saying I’ve had a good life, that the fruit of how I’ve lived is good, the picture that’s being painted is pretty, or the tapestry being sewn is full of right angles and even lines, I do have the consolation that the project isn’t complete. I may be wearing some funky clothes today, but tomorrow I get to wake up and get dressed all over again. Fruit can change. Paint dries and can be painted over. Patchwork quilts are some of the most beautiful quilts sold. But this is where I get stuck. How do I get to that place? How do I go from being someone filled with potential to a person who has reached that potential? How can shattered glass suddenly become a whole, usable vessel?

Getting Started

I'd just like to start this post out by mentioning the fact that I am, for the 80 millionth time in the last year, doing something I said I would never do: blogging. Blogging is something that moms who don't go anywhere, the techy kids at school, photographers, crazy running people, annnnnnnnnd pretty much anyone who has any sort of passion do. I simply am not passionate enough about anything to spend that much energy telling other people about it. Or at least that was my initial objection to doing anything like this, until I discovered this fact: I am passionate about myself. To a ridiculous degree. How many hours, days, weeks, and years do we spend thinking about ourselves? For me it’s been about 18 years… 19 in December. It’s not an abnormal thing, or even a bad thing… it’s just a fact of life, BUT for me it means I have motive to write. It’s about the only thing I can come up with that I won’t get burned out writing about. So here goes.

I thought about giving some background information about myself, but the story is simply too long, and I fear that I would finish and cease to write further…. So I’ll just dive in, and let the details of my life work their way into this blog as they become pertinent to what I happen to be writing about that day.

Today I ran. 9.5 miles to be exact. And while to some that may seem an impossible distance (it was to me at one point) and to others an easy day in their brutal schedules of long distance training, for me it fell somewhere in the kinda hard, but definitely within the realm of possibility area. I never ever considered myself a runner by any stretch of the imagination, but I have always found myself running for some reason or another since I was in first grade. As a kid I did a few track races and ran track for my Middle School in 8^th grade. But in High School I opted for soccer (THE ultimate sport… that I no longer play) and forwent any kind of real running outside of conditioning for soccer. However, when I found myself assigned to work the running camp portion of the bible camp I live at, I was introduced to a world that I am not entirely opposed to. And so, because I don’t completely dislike it, and mostly because my mom loves it, I run from time to time. Usually I run with her, and while she’s kinda slow some days (she used to be really fast, but then she had five kids and adopted three… myself included, and is getting back into it) it’s always a lot of fun just to be together and I definitely get a decent work out most every time. However, my dad and I are currently training for a 16 mile mountain-ish race in August (more to come on that) and so today I ran with him. We started from the school he was coaching basketball at and did a loop that landed us back where we started (as loops so often do). It was pretty much a really wonderful run. I felt kinda tired, but was able to finish at a definite stride-out pace. The only killer thing about it was that it ends on a mile long hill, which just simply sucks. The very best part of the whole thing was the smell of clover. It is in full bloom and has such a wonderful sweet honey smell. There really is nothing like it in the whole world.  It is really hard to describe the sensation of smell, but I was essentially enveloped in the warm, comfortable, safe world that clover lives in. It’s one of the best feelings in the world.

One of the coping mechanisms that I use to get me through long runs like that is to sing (strictly in my head). The song that ran through my mind like a broken record today was that old-ish song by The Byrds that has a lot about seasons and turning. As it so happens, there is also a chapter in the bible that goes like this: “There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven— A time to give birth, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to tear down, and a time to build up. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to throw stones, and a time to gather stone; A time to embrace, and a time to shun embracing. A time to search, and a time to give up as lost; A time to keep, and a time to throw away. A time to tear apart, and a time to sew together; A time to be silent and a time to speak. A time to love, and a time to hate; A time for war, and a time for peace. What profit is there to the worker form that in which he toils? I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. It occurred to me while washing the dried salt off my face in the shower that this happens to be a rather pertinent concept to me at this time in my life. It just so happens that most people my age in our current society are getting ready to head off to college to make something of themselves. Or getting married (everyone seems to be doing that these days). Whatever it is that they choose, most are beginning to merge themselves into the adult world. And I, well… am not. In most ways it is the opposite, I am reestablishing myself as a child. When I turn 19 I will be officially and legally adopted into the family that I already call my own. Yes, I know, strange… but oh so necessary. For a plethora of reasons, I find myself with no High School diploma, no definite plan for my life, but for the first time ever, just barely beginning to walk in this world that we live with ease. However, the whole “not graduated from high school” thing was an area of extreme stress on my part. But I was reminded today that there is a time for everything. God has a plan; a plan that is good, and perfect, and right; a plan with my best in mind. And right now the plan is for me to heal. It is the task with which I am to occupy myself.

So this is a blog about healing: the frustrating parts and the rewarding parts. And the small parts… definitely the small parts, like taking the time to smell the clover on a run.

This is the closest picture I have of me running. It was right after a run with my mom. I'm on the left, she's on the right.