Now I have grown fond of her over the years.  She is a patron of ‘lost causes,’ officially, because so many seemingly impossible things happened to her during her lifetime.  Unofficially, I kind of consider her a patron saint of marriages and persevering during rocky times.  Her husband was a rough tough man, reportedly mean and ill-tempered; involved in all sorts of sketchy dealings and questionable conduct.  Through Rita’s constant prayer and kindness, she eventually “converted her cruel husband from his wicked ways, making their home a peaceful sanctuary of holy bliss.” (from a bio).  So, she must also have had some real inner strength and savvy on knowing how to stand her ground and be strong and assertive but in a loving manner…which we all need to work on, right?

Marriage and living a holy life is a challenge, every day.  St Rita gives us a patron who ‘gets it.”  I’m sure she is a great intercessor, for marriages, for challenges, for those impossible causes.  She ultimately entered religious life; surely  her skills at conflict resolution and mediation and strength in prayer was an asset in the convent too.  So, I like her.  You might too, she’s an old saint, but a goodie.  If you have any ‘lost causes’ or struggles, she might be a good one to hit up for a little extra prayer on your behalf.

St Rita, pray for us!

Yes, I got a little teary…just a little.  But, it was, ever again, one of those frozen in time moments.  Something about First Communion: the sweetness, the wild loud kids dressed in their best ever, trying so hard to find some decorum, sometimes failing.  The juxtaposition of their still flashing bright nature with the hovering pause before the consecration and them each approaching the altar….it makes me blink hard and hold my breath.  I smile as I see those wiggly boys just not quite be able to contain those wiggles or those distractions.  I gasp a little to see those sweet girls look like angels – old fashioned, maybe – but oh their sweet shining faces, glowing with the excitement of the afternoon and the fuss and hubub of veils and standing just so.

It’s a beautiful sacrament, one of the core foundations of our faith and our, ok – MY, strength and essential need.  These kids are old enough to “get it” and young enough to not be too jaded to care.  They really do embody the heart and flame of the love in this sacrament, to use Hopkins’ better words {one of my fav poems}, “like shining from shook foil.”

No wonder all of us parents and older folks stand around gaping and snuffling and grinning.  I’m so happy for my Little Man.  This sacrament is pure gift.

It was a sweet, happy day.

That’s me. The mom, I mean.

I know this isn’t a groundbreaking idea. The old adage “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy” is still circulating for good reason. But as I’ve been stuck in the quicksand of diva drama lately, the image of the canary has been occurring to me repeatedly. I am a canary. And yes, sometimes in the deep dark murk of a coal mine.

The swirling moods of teen girls, the reverberations and wafting spread of the gaseous poisonous presence of those same moods on any given day can be toxic to us all. As mom it’s my job to offset those moods; yes, to redirect and reframe and temper and sooth and ignore (often all within minutes). It’s up to me to keep my equanimity (a favorite turn of phrase of the dad in the house) and to carry on and muddle through.

But, there’s more. It’s my job to be the marker. I have a hyper-vigilant daughter who gauges many of her reactions based on mine. Yeah, talk about pressure, eh? Or, on a good day: opportunity. It can really swing either way, based on my sleep deprivation, sugar levels, weather, you get the idea. And of course, sometimes, no matter my reaction or cheer or calm, she can’t maintain. But, sure as shootin’ (as they say here in the south) she will look to me first, to gauge my reaction/mood/approach to whatever is happening that has any volatile twinge to it. Sister late to be ready for school? Marta’s eyes are upon me, watching if I am cool and can smile and give an eye roll of “no big deal, all’s well” or “big sis is so busted” so Marta can be angry too. Seriously. Since Marta IS hyper vigilant and hates having anything off routine or mark (leaving at 7:10 NOT 7:11, 12 or 15….) her anxiety is just looking for a reason to overflow. She watches to see if the canary is choking or singing. Me.

The others too, however, all of them, also check the canary gauge/cage. If I’m busy and flitting around, maybe chirping about this or that or even handing out directions then life is puttering along just like it’s supposed to. But if I get sick, then the crews stop and stare, wondering what to do. Worse, if I start choking in frustration and toxic fumes of mood (mine or others) and falling with ruffled feathers….well, everyone else will, swiftly, too.

So, instead of putting pressure on myself to only sit on my perch (in the kitchen, of course) and keep a beady eye on the toxicity in my house…….I am deciding that this gives me a power of influence that I shouldn’t waste.

I want to, I choose to, sing.

…and to cook. Always. {Sunday brunch}

My girl.  Can’t see  her face well enough to suit me, but I still like hearing her sing….

{production note: the girl playing violin is her friend  Jacqui Ramos, a very talented musician and nice girl.  This was the school talent show at end of March….but it seems that there was a production glitch in the upload and the song plays twice though.  So, if you love it, by all means, listen twice; otherwise, it’s only actually 5-ish mins long, not 10, don’t panic}

Yeah, I know.  And it’s not because life in the coffeehouse has been slow, though part of me desires to cultivate that intentional slowness.  No, no.  Rather, life has been way too fast.  It’s not even been way too fast due to a pile of graduations or events…no, no.  Rather, life has been way too fast and full of the shifting moods and emotions and…wait for it…yes, DRAMA, of having four teen girls in the house.

The Drama-rama has become a blog blockade.

This picture actually sums it up well: a herd of sheep, jostling for position, bleating and scowling, occasionally moving aside in a kind gesture, other times shoving through, leaving a mess behind them.  Teen girls.  The drama might put me under.  Add to the fact the complications of adoption and attachement issues, older child adoption transition issues (yes, still, ever?), special needs, intellectual disability and developmental delays, standard sibling rivalry, pressure cooker schools and just, oh, our modern culture and our desire to swim against the tide to a fair degree (as Catholics)…and well…you’ve got a blockade of drama that it most impressive.

Add to that my own circular thoughts on whether or not I should or shall continue blogging…some days I absolutely want to keep on because I process my swirling thoughts by typing; and some days I think, you know, the blog-o-sphere doesn’t need another whiny mom throwing  her opinions up on the net.  Go quiet.  You’re busy.  And then my practical side reminds me that I’m also losing my memory and I’ll never remember these moments or thoughts unless i document them on blog.  So, I’m dithering too.  Adding to the bleating noisy sheep up in that roadblock.

Lovely aren’t they? But, oh, a handful!

So, this is just a once again too long short post to say, I’m still here.  Just kind of slamming busy being mom to four teen girls (and four busy boys to boot)…and it keeps my days and nights in OVERDRIVE.  But for now, please bear with me and don’t disappear entirely (though I understand if you do).  Because the thing that keeps me tethered here, is, ultimately, the community that I have found on this blog and the many others that I read and cheer onward.  That’s the best of it all….but you already know all that….. So for now, I’m not quitting.  I’m just on diva delay……..

As we all should, it’s the month to tell your mom you love her and to just give her a break and treat each other well.  So, to that end, we have the annual video put out by the May Feelings folks, drawn from the witness of Pope John Paul II and his encouragement to youth the world over to go out and be a light in this world.

We are all so connected, more than we realize, even with the pervasive reach of social media.  We need each other, it’s our greatest gift: connection, caring.  Mind your mom:

So, given that, how do you build trust in older child adoption? Well, that right there is the million dollar question.  And if I had the short answer and the sure fire key, I’d be a buying a house on the Big Island.  But, I don’t.  I don’t have any pat answers.

When you adopt an older child, trust is the huge issue.  It is the elephant in the room.  It is a barrier like the Berlin Wall, some days.  I wonder if it is a bigger problem or issue corresponding to the aging up of a child.  As we adopted a teen, we find it a big prickly deal; a frequent barrier.  Big.   So, part of me wonders if the younger a child is at placement, the easier it might be to build trust again? But, I’m sure that’s naive and it’s also a bit of “grass is greener’ thinking, so don’t flame me.  I know it must be also dependent upon their prior history and background and trauma and attachment and on and on.  But even so, TRUST.  It’s the holy grail in so many ways for us adoptive families, isn’t it?

Trust, or the lack of it, is such a barrier.  We each tiptoe to the wall of it and peek over the side now and then….sometimes we wave.  But it is still there, sharp and solid between us, all too often.  She doesn’t trust us.  Not yet.  At almost three years home, not yet.   Oh she trusts that I will have dinner each night and that we will drive her to events and I will get her new socks and wash the dirty ones.  But the big stuff, or even new small stuff? No.  On the flip side of that coin, I need to trust her, fully, too.  And, I don’t.  Not deeply to the core.  (Shame on me? Perhaps. Indeed.) OH, I can give her the benefit of the doubt…but even trust on my side has a ways to go to be fully rooted. (And, really, when you’re talking about teens in general…I think the motto needs to be “trust, but verify.” So we’re already in a caution/hazard zone to begin with.)  For you folks who have a relatively recent adoption of an older child, take note.  Things take longer than most presume.

It’s a funny thing about Trust.  It cannot be GIVEN.  If so, I would have heaped it upon my hypervigilent teen daughter, and had her soak in vats of it in order to have it seep into her pores and bones, and heart and mind.  I would wrap it around her to tamp down her anxieties.  Heck, I would weave a shawl from it and keep it wrapped around ME; for my own trust issues.  However, it cannot be given.  It must be EARNED.  And it has to be EARNED in each direction.  I have to earn her trust; she has to earn mine.  Mine for her is further along, I understand her very well now and can anticipate most of her behaviors, even as some frustrate and wear on me.  Her trust for me, for us?  Well…that’s a thing that might very well be a LONG time coming.  And of course, I hate that.  She cannot understand so much of this new world and culture and family.  Her disabilities make this so terribly much more difficult, she cannot understand always the steps we take or what we say/do when we are working for her good. Her trauma background, the hypervigilence and anxiety that result just  throw fuel on the fire of her fretting suspicions.

So  how to earn trust? I don’t know.  Truly, I don’t.  Other than just walking the walk and putting in the time and proving to her, again and again and again – in the small things and the big ones –  that we always work for her best good.  Showing her that we mean what we say and we say what we  mean.  ”An elephant’s word is 100%“ 

How do you moms ALL deal with these trust issues? I’d love to hear how they are handled.  Right now, I suspect the best answer is simple: “Time.”  But, as an impatient mom, I want to pull a Ronnie Reagan and say, “{Mr. Gorbachev}, tear down this wall!“

Certainly, it’s been depicted so many countless time in art. Letter writing. Letter reading.

This year, we have gotten to enjoy learning, all over again, this art. This year, our main communication between my eldest, Brother Peter Joseph, and home has been the letter. This felt like a forced discipline in some ways, at the beginning. Maybe discipline is too harsh a word, though I think it’s actually most precise. However, certainly at the beginning, it felt like a forced…separation. And that, it was. It is. And now, after much of this year has passed, I can say that “I get it.” I do.

We live in a world of utter immediacy, but to a fault. To my fault, really. Because I, personally, LOVE LOVE LOVE the immediacy of our modern communications era. I love being able to get hold of the person I want or need right away; by texting, emailing, calling. It’s immediate gratification. The blessing and/or curse of the impatient person. Me. My father used to tease me that I wanted immediate gratification on…everything. And so I did. And still, really, do. So, for me, one of the very most difficult things of Chris entering the Novitiate was his distance. Not his distance in miles but his distance, enforced, in simple communication. No longer could we call or email or text him. No tweeting (not that we did, but still, the possibity….). No facebook, no skype. It felt like we were “going dark.” That was a daunting prospect.

That very prospect, that ‘going dark;’ by which I mean no longer communicating by the glowing light of the electronic hubub net…is precisely what the novice needs. In order to hear God’s voice well, there must be more silence. The beeps and tweets and blips of our post modern clang has to be muted. I think it must be kind of like going out into the desert to escape the glare of the city lights, so you can really, finally, see the stars.

Now that is all quite apt for him. But, of course, on my end, that change in mode led to a possible void…of connection. A fear of a loss of connection. Perhaps a minor panic attack even, but I’m not saying…. We were expected and agreed to wait for his calls to us (unless there was an emergency) and we were encouraged to write.

To write! To actually, really, write….using real pens and pencils and paper. How quaint, no? Old fashioned! Daunting even….as my hands are older and cramp, literally, with the gripping of the pens. My scrawl is…well, a scrawl: practically unreadable. But I knew, it was the way to stay connected to my son. And so, I did.

In picking up the pen for the first time I discovered a few things:

First, my hands did ache and so I quickly switched to modern techno after all, but chose a lovely script font. Call me a slacker, I don’t care. I did write a few letters in my own hand, but I wrote more and easier by typing it out and printing, with goofy notes handwritten in the margins. Second, there IS an art to the letter. Sure, there is the format taught in grade school of how to structure a ‘proper letter.” But, as you write many letters, over time, to the same person that structure lifts and disappears and an art to it does take place. It is dependent upon the mood and the day, of course, but there is a space and place for, somehow….MORE. There is more “there” there.

I don’t mean to get too esoteric in writing about this, but I must say that there is such a gift to the continued correspondence of letters. There is an intimacy and a space for jokes and references that can be savored. To send a letter to my son is to send a piece of myself, complete with my own scrawled notes and signature, by doodles in the margines, and sometime the cookie crumbs from the accompanying goodies. It is a gift of self. The art of the letter I believe is in the gift of self that is folded into that envelope. It is the gift, ever, of connection and the time and care put into it. The intimacy that chosen words and stories are read in due time by far away eyes and tucked between those mom and kid hearts..or read aloud to other loved ones as well. When we receive a letter from Peter Joseph, we all read it to each other, with a smile and a hug of happiness.

That experience, that tangible joy and that pause of expectation when the letter is found in the mailbox is something that cannot be replicated in the warp speed bling of net communication. The instantaneous satisfaction is gone. But what is left is the anticipation and the lingering smile of a letter received, as well as one sent.

Now I know why so many artists have painted about letters. It is an art unto itself, truly. We have all grown up with that old adage in our heads, on every Hallmark sign. But, I have learned over this year that it is true. And so…. will I email Peter Joseph once his email is restored, perhaps in late August? Of course. My true impatient nature will out, always. But, I hope, I continue to write my son letters. I save all of his. This discipline of the novitiate was to allow the novices to step away from the hubub, to hear and think more clearly. In so doing, it has allowed me to embrace a new mode as well. The act of writing, sending and reading letters has become a new craft. I can see a few more stars, myself.

The Octave of Easter...glorious