im noguris

I'm tired.

It's a good tired.  This tired comes from a place of absolute concentration on one, specific thing...parenting.

I like this.  It's unusual for me to focus in this way.  In my real life, I teach, write, volunteer, coordinate non-profit services, schedule community conversations, serve on three boards and balance a marriage and parenting.

Right now - just the parenting.

The kids are doing well with a few hiccups here and there.  Tomass was great for the first five days but yesterday we all had flashbacks to last summer.  At bedtime, he was tip-toeing across the edge of the bannister while imitating the, "who-ha-ha-ha" laugh from old vampire movies.  He'd hidden the ipad under his butt when he finally got into bed and, after Kevin took it away, he shot off into the girl's room to steal an old Fanta from under Mairita's bed.  An orange filled-with-corn-syrup-and-sugar Fanta. Yeah, that's what he needed.

Mairita and Lilly are adjusting to one another.  It turns out, the addition of Lasma (Mairita's best friend who is being hosted by our friends Chris and Nancy) has thrown a wrench in the fragile bond that Lilly and Mairita achieved last summer.  Lasma is threatened by Lilly.  She drags Mairita off and they whisper and giggle while Lilly escapes to her room to Facetime with her friends or listen to boy bands. Lilly's not hurt.   She'd rather not try, which is bugging me.  I want my daughter to care more abut Marita's feelings and understand her fear of rejection.  So yesterday, I took Lilly and Mairita to the mall, gave them each twenty bucks and copped a squat on a bench (occasionally nodding off in front of complete strangers.) The girls shopped together, helping one another to choose matching wallets and fashionable tops.  When we got home, they split off into different rooms and Mairita wrote in her journal while Lilly listened to music. Small victories are still victories, right?

Toms is his usual, sweet self.  He helps with Tomass, plays enthusiastically with Casey and finds joy in most of the activities we plan.

This week, Chris suggested that we all pile into our mini-van and drive to a farm to go strawberry picking.  For us, this is a novel, fun activity.  But for the Latvian kids, it was business as usual.   They live on a farm...

Still, Toms and Mairita filled boxes of strawberries so fast that today we will be making jam and yesterday I whipped up four strawberry pies.

So im noguris.  But it's all good.  It's all really good.

Today is the Day

While our kids have mixed feelings about the invasion, Kevin and I can't wait for the kids to arrive today!  Wish us luck as we wrangle, chase and snuggle these amazing children.  And, if you are in the area, stop by and get to know them!

The Children of the Poor

BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS

1

People who have no children can be hard:

Attain a mail of ice and insolence:

Need not pause in the fire, and in no sense

Hesitate in the hurricane to guard.

And when wide world is bitten and bewarred

They perish purely, waving their spirits hence

Without a trace of grace or of offense

To laugh or fail, diffident, wonder-starred.

While through a throttling dark we others hear

The little lifting helplessness, the queer

Whimper-whine; whose unridiculous

Lost softness softly makes a trap for us.

And makes a curse. And makes a sugar of

The malocclusions, the inconditions of love.

2

What shall I give my children? who are poor,

Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land,

Who are my sweetest lepers, who demand

No velvet and no velvety velour;

But who have begged me for a brisk contour,

Crying that they are quasi, contraband

Because unfinished, graven by a hand

Less than angelic, admirable or sure.

My hand is stuffed with mode, design, device.

But I lack access to my proper stone.

And plenitude of plan shall not suffice

Nor grief nor love shall be enough alone

To ratify my little halves who bear

Across an autumn freezing everywhere.

3

And shall I prime my children, pray, to pray?

Mites, come invade most frugal vestibules

Spectered with crusts of penitents’ renewals

And all hysterics arrogant for a day.

Instruct yourselves here is no devil to pay.

Children, confine your lights in jellied rules;

Resemble graves; be metaphysical mules.

Learn Lord will not distort nor leave the fray.

Behind the scurryings of your neat motif

I shall wait, if you wish: revise the psalm

If that should frighten you: sew up belief

If that should tear: turn, singularly calm

At forehead and at fingers rather wise,

Holding the bandage ready for your eyes.

Motivation

 According to Save the Children website:

Two-thirds of the world's 880 million illiterate adults are women. 

Girls are more than 70 percent of the 125 million children who don't have a school to attend. 

Significantly more girls than boys enrolled in the first grade fail to complete the first cycle of primary school.

Social traditions and deep-rooted religious and cultural beliefs are most often the barriers to expanding girls' educational opportunities in undeveloped countries around the world.

What can I do?

Last week Juliet and I got a chance to catch up over the phone. And despite all the things
Juliet does outside of raising her own family and teaching, she still manages to find time host Latvian orphans.(You can donate here.)

I started thinking about children stateside and abroad in need of help, both basic necessities and education. I researched some foundations and non-profit organizations when I came across the information above.

As a writer, as a reader, as a mother, I feel the need to do something.

So, what will I do?

What will you do?

Latvian Orphan Update

Well, we gathered our nerves and created a crowdfunding platform to make the summer visit with Mairita, Toms and Tomas possible and the response has been so heartwarming!  Thanks to family and friends we are so much closer to paying for the entire $10,000.00 expense of having the kids here for five weeks.  It feels uncomfortable asking for help but Kevin keeps pointing out that we are doing the whole it takes a village thing by choosing to love, welcome and provide care for these kids and it's not so terrible to lean on friends and family to help us do it.  I do hope that those who feel imposed upon forgive us and that no one who would harbor resentment, donates.

We are just as grateful to friends and family who choose to donate their time and spend a day at the beach with us while the kids are here this summer, or drop off used clothing - or apples and oranges! We will need to stock up.  The kids go through a bag a day!

I keep checking on Mairita's health and she assures me that she is "Okay, Mama.  I love you."  I'd feel so much better if she were here and I could make sure but thank goodness for FRYPE (the Latvian version of Facebook) where we can exchange short messages and photos.

As for Toms and Tomass, Dace's report that they seemed happy and that little Tomass appeared to be really bonded to the new foster father was so reassuring.

We are also trying to bring Mairita's best friend Lasma over through some wonderful old friends Chris and Nancy.  Unfortunately, the agency isn't having much luck in locating her via the orphan courts though Lasma writes to Chris, Nancy and me on Frype and I have Skyped with her.  She's a lovely young girl, eager to visit America.  When the kids were with us last summer, Lasma and Mairita would Skype and Lasma would call out, "Hello!  Do you know a family who would want me?"  Her English is excellent.  Hopefully, we will be able to bring them all over for an incredible summer visit.

If you would like to donate, please visit our Razoo page where you can watch a video I made of all of us goofing around last summer.

The donation is tax deductible :)

The Orphans Are Coming!

Woo hoo!  I paid the deposit this morning to have the kids back for the summer.  While we still aren't in a financial position to adopt, we know that our hearts are firmly tied to these kids.  Personally, I can't wait to wrap my arms around little Tomass, squeeze skinny Marita's waist and sing bedtime lullabies to sweet Toms.

Bring on the summer!

Today

It's been two weeks since the kids returned to Latvia and their absence consumes us.  I'm writing this at 3am because I can't sleep.  This week, the Project 143 worker told me that the foster home is kicking the children out.  They will be sent to an orphanage.  The worker said that orphanages near Riga can be good but the ones farther out can be terrible.

Then, when Mairita messaged me two mornings ago, she said that the foster parents are not feeding them enough.  They came to us so thin already!  I'd like to try to send them a box of food but I don't have a full address and even when I do, I worry that the family will take the food from the kids when it arrives.

We have been looking into adoption but the costs are overwhelming and even if we could raise the money, we would need more space in our home and less debt to qualify for a homestudy (sigh.)  If, over the next six months, we could somehow get our finances in order to qualify, it would still take six months for the homestudy to be approved and another few months for a dossier to be finalized and sent to Latvia before we could get over there, stay for three weeks under court supervision and take the kids home.

A year.

Then, there would be two additional trips back to Latvia with the kids before an adoption would be processed.  All told, we are talking about a conservative estimate of $50,000.00 and a year to make this happen.  In the meantime, I've been talking to friends, strangers acquaintances - anyone who might know of a family who wants to adopt three fabulous kids.

I'm a fighter, so I won't be giving up on this.  Still, today, I feel discouraged.  This summer, I had the pleasure of attending a reading by and briefly meeting Alice Walker.  Today, I'll take some comfort in an excerpt from one of her poems.

I am telling you

Discouraged one

We will win.

And I will show you why

We are the offspring

Of the ignorantly discarded

We conjure sunrise

with our smiles

and provoke music

out of trash

Who can completely

disappear such genius?

This is why humanity is worth loving.

Fiercely.

Passionately.

Without a moment of holding back...

- Alice Walker

She provides a link to a lovely video on her website after this poem.

Thursday Post

An update of sorts...

Little Natures

Apples, they grab them from the kitchen before I have the chance to wash the wax from their skins.  Tomass cries without tears.  He buries his head in my stomach, moaning, rolling against the warmth of my soft body.  Then, he runs away laughing.  Something or someone has damaged this baby, scratched and battered in places unformed.  Toms nurtures him, proudly carries a plate of white rolls to the table, chooses giant tiger slippers at the zoo and wears them as he walks three blocks to get gelato with the other children.  He is a fair-haired fortune, so skinny his heartbeat shows.  Mairite is the oldest.  Still mysterious, tall and straight boned.  Like my own daughter, she flocks to girlfriends, titters, pretty pink-hues and music.  At the zoo, she drapes her arms around my shoulders but won’t share her covers with the baby.  We are three days in and they all call me “Mom.”  Save me, save us all.  

In loving, we give pieces of ourselves away that can never be recovered, plucked and held out in hesitant offerings.  Hobble ourselves in some human effort to wade through little natures.  Maybe now, I should learn to pray.

Here's Something Weird...

A few months ago I went to lunch with my friend Daina and her mother Dace.   We'd just been to an exercise class together and were digging into our after-workout rabbit meals when Dace mentioned that she was looking for back up families to host orphans from Latvia this summer.  Dace is involved in a program called Project 143, a group whose efforts focus on placements for older orphans.

With my entire family's voices protesting in the back of my head, I said, "I'd be a back up."  Dace explained that we'd only be called on if a placement wasn't working out.  She took my name and information.  For the next few months my friends teased me about how I was going to have Latvian orphans crowding my porch this summer.

Fast forward to yesterday...

My phone rings at about 8:30am.  It's a woman named Maggie.  She's from Project 143.  A placement for three siblings isn't going well.  The kids are in New York but the organization wants them out of the home immediately.  Can we take them?

Oh boy.  When I'd volunteered to be a back up I'd,

1. Never really thought it would happen
2. Pictured one Latvian orphan

If you know me at all, you know that the outcome of this conversation was me saying yes (providing I talk to my husband and kids and they were on board.)  My family is amazing.

So this Friday, I will temporarily (all of the 200 Latvian orphans who are here for the summer program are scheduled to fly back to Latvia on August 11th) become the mother of six kids instead of my usual three.

This should be an adventure!