growing familiarity ? Mother Issues

Last summer, our neighborhood wasn?t yet our neighborhood and we decided to go on the garden tour to get a look at things while we waited to find out whether the bank had gotten its act together and was going to have all the mortgage documents done in time to close on our house as scheduled. So there we were, seeing the beauty of the neighborhood, hopeful that we?d soon be a part of that and terrified that our dreams were about to fall apart.

Not quite a year later, our new (110-year-old) house just keeps getting better and better. We?re gearing up to go on the garden tour with a friend of mine from work and my mother, though Lee and I will also be working the welcome booth since we?re garden club members. I remember the excited stress last year, introducing ourselves at times, holding back in case we didn?t end up able to close on the house. Now, though, we?ve got our own garden and I?m hoping we can be the ?beginner garden? on next year?s tour, though I don?t expect to do anything fancy until Mara?s older and doesn?t use the whole back yard to play. She chose the vegetables she wants and helped pick out what flowers we?d put in. There are two blueberry bushes that won?t bear fruit this year because the dog ate all the unripe berries but should be ready to meet her blueberry needs (which are extensive!) next summer.

This year we?ll be walking around a neighborhood that is and feels like ours. We?ll go past the house where the dog wears little boots when the garden is wet, the block where Alex?s one friend from preschool lives, the house of the other family who adopted from foster care, the blocks where Mara and I deliver the neighborhood newsletter each month. We are part of a community now and it sometimes it shows up in ways I don?t expect or things I take for granted.

This may not be a natural segue, but I pay a lot of attention to how Mara talks about her parents and how that?s evolved. We talked last night about all her names, that she?s got her first name from her dad and his ancestor (though she likes to use the phrase ?first name? as something that flows out of ?first parents? and consists of her whole pre-adoption name with her old last name) and her middle name from her mom in honor of a friend and then her two last names from Lee and me. I don?t currently regret that we dropped the last name she got from her mother, because she absolutely identifies with that part of her identity and with being a part of that family despite not sharing the last name. Her brothers have their dads? last names, so she?s not the only one of the siblings who doesn?t have the family name.

And then there?s the issue of her mom?s name and what to call her. It?s funny because last summer all she wanted to do was talk about her dad and it was easy enough to respond to that with empathy, saying, ?Hmm, maybe your dad does like pizza; lots of people do!? or ?I wish we knew what your dad was doing and I hope we?ll get to find out soon.? I wasn?t sure at the time whether that was because she had good memories of her dad or because missing her mom was too raw and she wasn?t ready to feel it yet, but I?m definitely tending toward the latter interpretation. After the last time we went out with her relatives two weeks ago, she finally called her mom by the nickname (let?s say LuLu) her family uses for the first time . We?d dropped her sister and cousins off and headed off to a festival where Mara could watch some folk dancing and she reached for me and wailed ?I want LuLu? and started sobbing. There is something so primal about this sadness, and I hate that I have to tell her that I?m sorry, that I wish we could see her mom and I hope we will as soon as her mom is ready for that. (Lee has asked me not to go to the projects where I know she hangs out to look for her, and I?m respecting that. If she no longer has my number, and I?m not sure she has the phone I text sometimes to ask, she knows what relatives and caseworkers she could approach if she wanted to get a message to us.)

Mara?s latest major game has been pretending to be a baby koala. This can be annoying from the parental side of things, since koalas want to be held and cuddled at inopportune moments and they also don?t talk. This means you can ask her to do something a few times before she says, ?I?m being a koala!? and then you have to ask if she?s a koala who can talk, which is usually the case once she realizes it makes the game easier. She?ll also say, ?Mommy Koala!? and I have to say, ?Yes, Baby Koala?? before she?ll tell me whatever it is she wants to talk about. She?s started asking me to be LuLu Koala and it?s hard for me to know how to respond to that. Mostly I say, ?What would LuLu Koala do?? because this always ends up being another conversation about mom jobs and I don?t want to minimize the good things her mother did but I also don?t want to pretend that everything was great in their home when Mara was a baby, because that?s clearly not the case. For now, I let her set the tone the same way I did in not trying to invent any stories about what her dad might have done or might be doing. That worked out well, but I have a feeling this won?t be as satisfying for her. Figuring out how she feels about her mom, about all of us who are her moms, is going to be a life-long process. But she?s making progress and I?m so proud of that in her.

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