Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 24

Living Slow

Sometimes life seems like a full-on sprint. I take a deep breath, as I did on Tuesday afternoon last week, and comfort myself that this is the worst a Tuesday is ever going to get, this school year. Or I have a Saturday like this past weekend, in which nothing was scheduled and consequently I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish that was so long, our whole family working together couldn’t have finished it all. Of course I was grumpy and torn. It was a perfect weather day and we had nothing we had to do. And yet I had myself so tied up, it didn’t even occur to me until I sat down to write a blog post 36 hours later:

Why the bleepety-bleep weren’t we all out on the Katy Trail renting bicycles?

A full-on sprint is supposed to be a brief thing. Bolt only had to hold that pace for nine seconds. I, on the other hand—and a ridiculous number of you who are reading these words—keep treating life like a sprint that hits the 26-mile mark and keeps on trucking.

Image via Pixabay

A week ago, we took our kids to the drive-in theater. This theater is about two and a half miles by road—one mile as the crow flies—from the farm where I grew up. And yet I had never once been there, until last weekend.

We watched Pete’s Dragon, which I found underwhelming. But the moon was setting, a pale silver sliver sandwiched between a charcoal-gray cloud and the privacy fence. A fat yellow star (planet?) hung off its starboard bow. And there, sitting on a really uncomfortable surface of gravel with nothing but a flimsy blanket for padding, and nothing for back support except the dusty bumper of my van (if you’ve never spent any time in the country, you have no idea how dusty the back of a vehicle can get in one trip to town), I found myself entranced by the slow, steady shrinking of the distance between that sickle and the fence. First a stretch, then a brush, then a touch and at last a long, slow swallow, until only a silver tip was left. And the next time I looked, it was gone.

I thought of this again this past Saturday afternoon. I ran errands in the morning…seven stops, an hour and forty-five minutes. I came home with a truckload of cedar mulch. Ate lunch. Measured ingredients for three loaves of bread. Then spent two hours transplanting geraniums and lamium, weeding and mulching four flower beds, and mowing the front and sides of the house.

Then I went inside and started folding laundry while watching Netflix. But I could hear the wind blowing through the sycamore trees outside my window, and I thought, Girl! What are you doing? No one needs you right now, and for your slice of time to yourself you pick FOLDING LAUNDRY?

And so, grumpy with all I was leaving undone, I went outside and sat down in the Adirondack swing beneath the weeping willow, and watched the wind flirt with the treetops for a few minutes.

I love the way every tree has its own voice. Pines sigh, or roar when it’s gusty. Sycamore and oak and maple chatter—sycamore being the sound with the crispiest edges. But my adolescent weeping willow is a soft hiss, like velvet on the ear—and the soul. I turned off my mind and practiced my meditation/being-still-in-the-presence-of-God. I watched the crown of that willow tree fling its head in circles, and I had the oddest sensation that I was actually looking at something sentient. And of course, the sycamore trees danced above us.

And I flashed back to that slow moonset. The way the deliberateness of it, and the pace, so slow I couldn’t even see the movement, put the brakes on my heart, too. How it seemed to lift the pressure to do, do, do, and freed me to be, be, be.

The trees did the same thing.

I love the feeling of being.

It’s hard to achieve sometimes.

Um. Almost all the time.

We need more slow living. We were not meant to rush through this world, never recognizing the beauty all around us. We were meant to work and then rest. We don’t need to fill every moment with noise and distraction, blocking out the world. Sometimes we need to embrace that moment of discomfort, of emptiness, when we pull out the ear buds or turn off the smart phone or leave the piles of laundry. Sometimes we need to acknowledge the things we could be doing, and set them aside in order just to slow down, to stop, even, and just, for a few moments…be.

“But I Like You!” and other kid moments

Julianna:

Charming the Golden Girls at the annual Tiger Walk

Julianna’s newest “Julianna-ism” is:

“But I like you!”

As in, “Julianna, it’s your turn to clear the table.”

“But I like you!”

“Julianna, time to get up.”

“But I like you!”

“Yes, I like you, too, but it’s still time to get out of bed.”

Alex

Alex took Benadryl for the first time this week—a desperate attempt to control some combination of allergies and cold. I warned him it would make his nose stop running but he would be really groggy, probably too groggy to do anything useful at all. He wandered around in a daze all afternoon. The next day I asked him about it. “Was your brain all fuzzy?” I asked.

“It was like I didn’t HAVE a brain,” he said. “I was like those proto humans who just went, ‘Want food. Want drink. Want book.'”

Yup, that sounds about right…

Michael

Michael’s son-of-a-singer earworm gene has kicked in. He sings all the time, even when he’s chewing. It’s like a compulsion; he can’t seem to stop himself. And it’s always the same playlist:

1) Star Wars opening (first two phrases only)

2) Imperial March (again, two phrases)

3) Superman

4) Joy To The World

I truly think I might go mad before he goes to kindergarten.

 

And Nicholas?

I could write a novel, but I’ll stick with this: What does it say about my third-born that this is his favorite song?

(Nothing good, I fear!)

Double Standards

Photo by quinn.anya, via Flickr

At the sound of a crash on wood, Christian and I both turned around, gearing up for a Parental Scowl at the offending child. By the time we saw the toy tractor, which had been dropped into our pew by the non-Basi boy in the row behind, I realized it was far too sharp a sound to be a hymnal, which was the only thing our kids had access to. The mother mouthed, Sorry! and I leaned back and chuckle-whispered some insufficient comment about how it wasn’t our kids so we weren’t worried about it. And then realized that did not at all communicate the sentiment I was trying to convey. So at the sign of peace I made the effort to clarify.

What I was trying to say, and never quite got out of my mouth right, was this:

I’ve been a parent for eleven and (almost) a half years, which is more intense than it seems, because during that time I’ve been steadily adding to the number of kids under my care. As a parent, my first rule has been “make sure my children know they are loved.” But close behind it has been “Make sure they don’t bother other people, especially at church and concerts.”

And because I have four kids, three of whom are boys and the fourth of whom has no sense of boundaries, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been the mom mouthing “sorry” to people, who always and inevitably said, “Oh, it’s fine, your kids are so well behaved!”

I know other people have been browbeaten for their kids’ behavior, but it’s never happened to me. (Yet, anyway. I mean, until a month ago nobody had ever threatened to call DFS on me, either.)

Smiling at that woman in church yesterday morning, I realized my first reaction had been to scold my children for something that, now that it wasn’t my kid, I didn’t find the least bit problematic. Why would either of us feel compelled to scold our kids, when the kids clearly were hurting no one and nothing?

It was a rather jarring moment of clarity. We all know, deep down, that as parents we are way, way harder on ourselves than other people are on us—and often, though not always, harder than we are on other parents. But that doesn’t stop us. We set up impossible standards and then run ourselves down for not meeting them. And when a critique is leveled, we recoil inwardly and then set out to Fix It, even when there’s no way to fix it. Like, I swear my family must think we are sick all.the.time, because we have the worst luck with family gatherings. It seems like any time there’s a holiday or get-together, I’m going to have at least one family member who’s sick, and usually more. And the last couple of years it seems like we get the long-incubating, slow-moving, not-that-severe-but-man-they-just-won’t-go-away bugs that crawl through the family over the course of a month.

I’ve always taken a sort of c’est la vie attitude toward illness. I mean, reasonable precautions. If we have a playdate and someone in the house we’re supposed to go to has strep or lice, we stay home. But we have four kids in three schools. Three separate sets of germs to catch, and four candidates to do the catching. The odds (of catching) are ever in our favor.

And yet when the back side of an illness coincides with a family gathering, you can’t imagine the guilt I have about it. And when a kid comes down with a sore throat and fever in the middle of the weekend? Ugh! I feel terrible! Even though, if the illness was coming in from nieces and nephews, I’d be like, “Whatever, it’s not your fault. It is what it is, if we get it, we’ll deal with it.”

Now, why do I give myself permission to self-flagellate for things I can neither control nor would ever dream of holding against anyone else?

I said once before that mercy begins with me. Apparently it’s a lesson I haven’t yet internalized.

For more Mercy on a Monday posts, click here.

 

Stupid Things We Fight About

In honor of our anniversary coming up this weekend, I thought I’d take a look at how far we’ve come.

One Saturday morning, when we had been married for about six months (maybe less), I decided I was going to get up and make breakfast. I figured the noise would wake Christian up and he could start his day with this beautiful gift of love I was making in the form of eggs, sausage, pancakes, I don’t know. Some big breakfast.

But he didn’t wake up. So when I got it all ready, I went in, sat down on the edge of the bed, and shook him awake, telling him I had breakfast ready for him. I think he grunted.

I went back into the kitchen and waited. And waited. And waited. And I got madder…and madder…and madder. Until, with my gift of love stone cold on the table, I stormed back into the room and we had a rip-roaring fight on a Saturday morning.

When I said you couldn’t pay me enough to go back to age twenty-five? This is what I’m thinking of.

Some disagreements, however, are much more long-standing. For instance:

We have been married for seventeen years, and for the past twelve, I think, this has been our vacuum cleaner. And for the past eight, I think, it has not worked properly.

Specifically, it overheats and shuts down after it runs for about five minutes. You let it rest ten and then it’ll do another four. Rest another ten, and you get three more minutes of vacuuming time. You get the idea.

We had such conflict over this vacuum cleaner for so long. See, I grew up with a Kirby.

Ours was the Brigadoon-themed one there in the middle. Image by Master of Telxons, via Flickr

It was deep red and very loud, but by golly that thing had sucking power. And it never stopped working. Ever. I might have hated vacuuming, but at least I knew I was going to get the darned job done in one pass.

I tried to convince Christian to buy a Kirby, but he put his foot down: “We are NOT spending a thousand dollars on a vacuum cleaner! This one is just fine! It just needs the filter cleaned.”

So he’s been cleaning and replacing filters and patching the cord and I don’t know what else—for eight years. Until finally, when my grandmother died, I got her 1970s-era Kirby. I asked Christian to replace the plug, because it was an honest-to-God fire hazard, with fibers sticking out and touching the tines. But now I am a happy woman.

Note the tape around the bottom and the rope around the top. But gosh darn it, the thing WORKS.

And now, at last, we no longer fight about vacuum cleaners. We keep Grandma’s Kirby on the 2nd floor and use the (insert your own descriptor; you’ll just have to imagine mine) Hoover for the living room and basement. (Although I must say, when I cleaned the van earlier this summer, I had to go get the 1970s-era Kirby, because the Hoover bought in the 2000s wouldn’t run long enough to get the job done.)

So, your turn: what stupid things do you fight about?

The Thing About Boys…

The thing about boys is that they’re confusing.

Like my laundry pile. It makes no sense.

On Friday of one week I fold six loads of laundry (I got behind. So sue me), and nine days later, on a Sunday afternoon, I do the next three. And if the laundry pile is to be believed, in that week Preteen wore nothing but six pairs of socks, while Second Grader wore eight uniform shirts. Even though there were only five days of school.

As Miss Clavel said: Something is not right!

The thing about boys is that they sit down with me to watch the Sound of Music and the big 43-year-old boy whines and makes fun of it as much as the 11-year-old one. And somewhere around the wedding scene, when we turn it off for bed, the 11-year-old asks if this is the end, and I say no, everything’s about to fall apart for them, and he lights up and says, “Is there gonna be an explosion? Is somebody gonna DIE?”

And 43-year-old boy goes on a little riff about helicopters exploding in the movies. Talk about collectively ruining the moment.

The thing about boys is that they get wildly excited about Brain Ice.

 

The thing about boys is the way they like to climb up on the barrel of a cannon. (And what’s most telling: the ROTC guys don’t bat an eyelash.)

And then, of course, there are the practical jokes. Because what else would you do when forced to clean the bathrooms?

Perhaps you’d care for a closeup on that one?

Raising boys. It’s a glorious mystery.

The Birthday Post

Photo by Brinks Alo, via Flickr

This is the post I’ve been wanting to write for a couple of years: the post in which I acknowledge the aging process.

But I’m in this weird in-between time when, according to Merriam Webster and everyone who is older than me, I am most certainly NOT middle-aged; I am still a young’un. And yet the opposite is very clear whenever I talk to engaged couples about NFP and realize I have no street cred because I’m too darned old.

And if I step back and shake my head at the ways in which I feel my body changing, people who are older than me make sounds of disgust and set out to educate me about what REAL aging looks like.

It’s kind of annoying, if you want to know the truth.

I’m forty-two today–the meaning of life age. Things are much different than they used to be. I’m beyond pulling out the gray hairs (although I never did that anyway). I can’t sit cross-legged on the floor anymore, at least not for long. It hurts my hips. Two nights ago I laid awake for hours with a low-grade discomfort in my back that I couldn’t alleviate by changing positions. I can’t run around barefoot anymore because my feet hurt due to a mock-plantar fasciitis, and various burning in the foot tendons and tightness in an often-sprained ankle are, though thankfully treatable through massage therapy, still a constant reminder that I’m no longer a young’un, no matter what others may think.

This is not a complaint, but an honest recognition and acknowledgment of the place in my life I’ve reached. Other things are changing, too, things I note with bemusement. My sense of smell is way, way more sensitive than it used to be, for instance. This is both a blessing and a curse, depending. I’ll let you work that one out on your own.

Other side effects of aging are unqualified blessings. Charting cycles for four-plus years without interruption by pregnancy or nursing has clarified much about my body—trends in moods, in weight retention and loss, difficulty or lack thereof in sleeping, the little signs that accompany hormonal shifts and fertility—and I can see them shifting with age. Self-knowledge is a beautiful thing. It makes a girl so comfortable in her own skin.

I embrace the growth in understanding that comes with more years. I’m able to step back and see the way good and bad coexist in various philosophies and perspectives with honesty, without imposing absolutes upon them, and for that reason I’m much, much harder to manipulate. I am capable of greater mental and physical discipline; I’m better able to handle chaos, and I’ve learned how to function in company despite being an introvert. I’m more flexible, and I have gained coping mechanisms and a certain perspective that makes anxiety more an aggravation than a twenty-ton monster these days.

There are often times when I wish I’d had this discipline at a younger age, and times when I feel nostalgic for the simplicity of times when I had fewer responsibilities. But I also know that age and growth in discipline grow together–and you couldn’t pay me enough to be eighteen again. Or twenty-five, for that matter. I am a happier human being now than I was then, more capable of love, more capable of good work, in every sense. And I fully expect that in another twenty years I’ll be happier still, even as my body continues to change in inconvenient, annoying ways.

Bring it on, age.

***

I suppose I should also acknowledge that no, I did not post yesterday, and no, I will not post tomorrow. I’m down-shifting to twice a week, so look for me on Monday and Thursday from here on out.

Funerals and Friendship

Photo by aftab, via Flickr

I spent Saturday at the funeral of a friend.

It is sometimes a strange thing to be a pastoral musician. I have this gift, and I know—because I’ve been told so repeatedly—how much it means to families to offer it to them in the pivotal moments of their lives. It’s an honor and a privilege to sing or play for a funeral, and when it’s the funeral of a friend or loved one, all the more.

And yet frequently the only way I can do it it is by emotionally dissociating. I’m a cryer, see. I cry over movies, books, occasionally even a particularly affecting advertisement. (Though, to keep it real, it has to be a pretty darned good one, and I have to be in the right place in my cycle.) In any case, funerals, especially in the case of an untimely death, are inherently emotional. And you can’t sing when you’re crying.

This woman is the third of my peers to pass away in the last few years. When I got the news, my first reaction was to reach out to my college roommate, through whom I met her. The stupid thing is that my roommate and I live an hour and a half away from each other and routinely pass through each other’s towns, and we haven’t seen each other in, I don’t know. Years. I thought of her often but always forgot to email when I got back to the computer. There were books and songs and blog posts to write, kids to chauffeur and phone calls to return.

We started playing catchup by email and soon progressed to plotting a camping trip. As the signals shot back and forth, I shook my head, smiling as I thought that our mutual friend must be up in Heaven smiling at the way her passing had managed to reconnect two people who have loved each other since we first started practicing across the alcove from each other.

The pianist and I had already started playing when my friend and her family arrived at the church on Saturday, so I could only wave hello. At the Sign of Peace I went over to hug her and it was a shock to my system, how familiar was the feel of love and belonging that sprang from that embrace. It was like no time had passed at all, even though since we saw each other last we’ve both sprouted gray hairs and miniature wrinkles around the eyes.

Everything about that funeral was beautiful. The sanctuary, the acoustics, the music, the people, the family, the love. But most beautiful of all, for me, was spending a few hours with someone who used to be my best friend, and, I discovered, still is. I’ve always said I only have one close friend at a time. I can name them in consecutive order, starting with elementary school.

It is a beautiful thing to realize I’m wrong.

Commando Olympics and other Quick Takes

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The kids have been entranced by the Olympics lately. Michael calls them “Olymp-kicks.”

Image by Rareclass, via Flickr

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I’m so glad I blogged about chicken legs a couple weeks ago. Because now when we call her that, we can’t be accused of copying Allyson Felix.

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Last week my friend Kelley posted this status update on Facebook:

Went for a walk with the kids. Arrived back at the house carrying a bike, a helmet, a guitar, and a pair of shoes. ‪#‎momlympics2016‬

Other moms chimed in with these:

“Thinking the f-word without actually saying it”

“I’m hoping to just place in the “They all ate at least a meat/protein product today (veggies optional)” event.”

“I’d definitely get gold in “Eating secret chocolate.”

I definitely qualified in the semifinals for “carrying everyone else’s crap, you’re welcome”

First seed, for sure. Second seed: the burrows of the Grand Canyon. They ain’t got nothin’ on you.

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What’s my contribution?

Hm.

Well, the thing about having kids who are getting older is they take care of their own dressing routines. Only they aren’t always on top of it all. They sometimes skip steps. Like brushing teeth, and washing hands. And other things. The other day I found myself saying this: “Michael. You wear ONE pair of underpants and ONE pair of shorts. Not two pairs of underpants and shorts. Not pajama pants and shorts. Not shorts with no underpants. ONE pair of underpants. ONE pair of shorts.”

So I guess my contribution to the aforementioned #momolympics2016 is actually #kidolympics2016: Michael takes gold in Going Commando To The First Day Of School.

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He also should at least get an honorable mention in the category Going To School In The Afternoons But Still Needs Nap

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My only actual contribution to the #momolympics2016 is to wash out in the Stay Off The Internet So You Can Get Some Work Done event.

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All joking aside, I’m having serious thoughts about setting aside blogging. Hits are way down and I am wondering if I have said everything I have to say that people want to hear, or whether it’s just that people don’t read blogs anymore. Either way, I am seriously questioning whether it’s a good use of time.

Speaking of Time…it’s Time to get the kids up for school…and mow the lawn…and grocery shop…and figure out where I can carve out an hour or two of writing time today.

Linking up with the ladies at Seven Quick Takes today….Kelly has what looks to be a very moving post about disability that bears looking at!

The Saga of Orthotics, and why it’s important to talk about it during an election year

I hope you’ll bear with me today, because there’s a reason I’m about to tell this story.

Random cute picture to break up the text, and to offer a glimpse, however blurry, of Julianna’s “old” orthotics, known as AFOs (ankle-foot orthotics)

One thing that sometimes accompanies an extra 21st chromosome is “pronation.” This means that due to low muscle tone, the feet turn out. Julianna has fabulous health and good cognitive functioning but her feet are regularly regarded as the worst the experts have ever seen. She’s been in orthotics—shoe inserts—pretty much since she learned to walk.

Up till now, her inserts have carried a price tag of $1400 per pair. For several years this caused no issues because we have great insurance (because my husband is a public employee). But a year ago, our insurance changed and the provider was no longer in network. So we switched providers and went on faith that we just needed to hold the course. Unfortunately, Julianna has spent the last year with blisters (and now callouses) on the inside of her foot, where her body was fighting the insert because it was no longer what she needed. Even more fun? The insurance denied the claim. After six months of Christian beating them up on the phone, the insurance and the provider got their signals straight, but the upshot was nobody paid for the braces—insurance forced the provider to eat the cost.

This year, we went in wiser. We switched back to the provider we had worked with successfully; we called in the doctor for a meticulously-worded prescription; we talked to the local (taxpayer-funded) organization that funds services for people with special needs; and we made sure they were both in contact with insurance. It turns out Julianna needs a far more restrictive brace—one that goes all the way to her knee. Here’s the cost estimate:

This is the pre-auth form; for now, as you see, the insurance provider seems amenable, but after last year we’re not counting our chickens.

I began this process in mid-June, and yesterday after a 1-hour consult, about a dozen phone calls and two more appointments, finally we brought home Julianna’s new braces.

Which is where Part B comes in: Sensory Issues.

Another thing that frequently goes along with special needs in general is sensory issues. Some kids cannot wear clothes with tags. Some kids need particular fabrics. Some kids cannot deal with being touched; others freak out with loud noises. I have long said Julianna’s only sensory issue is oral defensiveness, but I’m realizing I was wrong: any touch that smacks of medical practice makes her lose her ever-loving mind.

Step one: Casting.

They covered her leg with a sock and then wrapped the leg with the foot held in position, using a fast-setting moist, Ace-type bandage. I intended to document the whole process, but this was the best I got:

…because within 10 seconds of taking this shot, both Christian and I were on duty, me holding her body as still as I could and Christian holding her leg in the proper position so the orthotist could do the casting.

The finished casts

The rubber tube goes over the sock to help space so they can cut the cast off after it’s set. Total time at the orthotist’s office: 1 hour 15 minutes.

We came back 10 days later to pick up the braces. But it’s not that simple. See, there’s also padding inside the brace, and that has to be done when you come to pick them up. The brace does the major corrections, the pads do the minor ones. And when we got there last week, the lead orthotist decided the braces weren’t tall enough. They needed to be remade. Total time: 1 hour 15 minutes, with nothing to show for it.

We came back for a third time yesterday, at the end of the first day of school, to find an emergency procedure had set them behind by several hours. So we arrived at 3:40 p.m. and left at 6. And there was much wailing and shrieking and flailing of locked-up muscles, along with the word “No.” Otherwise she lost all verbal capacity. And this is what we came home with:

Notice: knee-length socks, which caused extreme sensory anxiety, and hard plastic outer shell (ditto), soft plastic inner shell, and special shoes.

And we have to go back on Friday to make sure they’re not rubbing her skin wrong…and possibly again in two weeks for followup.

Let me emphasize a few points:

1. This is a process we will go through every single year for the foreseeable future.

2. We will never have a guarantee that these suckers are going to be covered by insurance.

3. We have to do this, because the alternative is that her legs grow crooked and destroy her knees.

4. This is only one example in the array of issues dealt with by families who have loved ones with special needs.

I tell this epic-long story, breaking all my rules about keeping posts short, because I want people to understand that many of the life philosophies we cling to, philosophies that make a great deal of sense IN THEORY, really only hold up under circumstances where everything—or at least most things—go “right.” Small government and self-reliance are praiseworthy goals, but they must be pursued in tandem with a view of the world that is “pastoral,” to borrow a word from Church circles.

In other words, rules and guidelines are good, but people are more important.

My family is really blessed to have amazing insurance as well as advanced degrees and jobs that allow us to spend the time and mental gymnastics to successfully navigate the shoals of coverage/not coverage.

An awful lot of people don’t have those benefits.

An ex-legislator once told me insurance is for extraordinary things, not ordinary things, and that for special needs, things like therapies are ordinary. (And, presumably, $4000 orthotics.)

If I have made any point today, I hope it is that special needs are, by definition, extraordinary. Some problems cannot be solved by the private sector; some problems are too big to be borne by individuals without help. It’s not enough to say, “These kids have a right to be born.” If we’re going to support the right to life of children, we also have to support their right to a healthy existence once they’re born. It’s wrong to tell parents they HAVE to have these kids, and then withhold the support needed to raise them. (In another context we’d call that an “unfunded mandate”.)

I post this because I hope it will provide a needed perspective in this election season. This is one of many quiet, nuanced issues that receives zero attention in an atmosphere charged with shrieking about things that, when it comes right down to it, really don’t have much impact on people’s lives. I hope, at a minimum, our story gives people a perspective they never considered before.

Blind Spots

Sometimes it doesn’t make any sense to add my own words to the clutter in the blogosphere, because other people have said it so well.

“It is Sunday morning, and I am once again late to church but determined to go.  I moved to this new town in east Texas a few months ago, and I know two people.  It’s time to make some friends and find a good church.

As I make my way through the parking lot, I see a young black woman with three boys heading towards the large church door.  The boys are reluctant to go, and I hear her encouraging them to keep moving.  She’s black and about to walk into a church auditorium filled with a 1,000  white people.”

…the rest of this post is mercy in action, and it humbles me.

And in contrast, given my recent experience, this really resonated too (language alert):

“Dear Parents of Well Behaved Children,

I just spent the summer traveling around the country with two spirited children and I have met lots of you. You usually like the idea of us. You start out eager to chat with me at the pool or the park. You ask if my boys are adopted. You tell me you’ve always thought of adopting… later. Someday. You tell me how beautiful they are. They are.

And then my little one gets frustrated with something and shouts, “SHUT UP, YOU FUCK!”

Then my big one does a wild dance that is funny for a minute but goes on a little too long. Then a lot too long. And it starts to seem weird.

Your smile grows forced, your body language uncomfortable. You drift away. You corral your kids in another part of the playground.

Don’t think they don’t notice. Don’t think it doesn’t hurt my kids’ feelings to be rejected and side-eyed. Don’t fool yourself into thinking they are doing anything but their absolute best. They want the exact same thing we all want- to be seen and loved and appreciated for who we are.“

(Click through to read the full posts. They are both amazing.)