(This is what we get to view off our back porch this time of year. Last week we poured the cement for the hot tub foundation. It is placed with optimal viewing capacity. Oh yeah!)
Thought of a good metaphor to describe our life these days. Take a walk to your window and set your gaze upon one of those newly fallen golden leaves. Watch the breeze pick it up and gracefully glide it through the air, and then watch it take a nose dive, smash to the ground and tumble a bit until the next breeze picks it up again.
This explains the emotions of where we are at with this crazy adoption. A few hours ago we were soaring, and this hour we are getting tossed around (by our thoughts, fears, hopes, dreams). More to come on this another day....
Today this post is about Miss M. With the exception of the 3 people that have followed my blog, I'll give you a quick re-cap. Miss M was adopted from Ethiopia when she was 15. She entered the History class I was co-teaching the week that she came to the states - and the week we submitted our application for Ethiopia. I know... CRAZY!
Fast forward two years and she is a senior and celebrating her 18th birthday tomorrow. She is no longer in my classes, but we have maintained a friendship. Even though she pops her head in to say "Hi" in between classes, I have to do teachery stuff and she has to do socially stuff, so I've had to set a boundary of opening my door after school about 1x/wk for a "chat time". It is usually on Fridays and it's a great way to wrap up my week!
This last week was a not-so-unusual difficult one with a defiant student of mine. This student is easily driving me to burn-out at 100 mph. Our school psychiatrist stopped by to "train me" (aka - train me how to not get myself punched) when he goes, "Well, Mrs. P, the situation we have here with this student is a very tricky one. He has R.A.D, you see, which means Reactive Attachment Disorder. He developed this as a direct result of being adopted at age three..."
Enough said.
My physical and emotional reaction was the immediate drop of my head on to my stack of ungraded papers and to have my fists start pounding my desk. "Nooooo!" I shrieked, "Not that! We are insane! What are we thinking? We could not take that on!" The psychiatrist slowly got up and tip-toed out the door mumbling something along the lines of trying to have a nice weekend. Clearly I am now crazy beyond the realm of a shrink.
A few seconds after he exited, in walked Miss M.
(Attention future/current adopters, just take a moment to ponder this. You are talking scary RAD stuff and then in walks the most amazing ET adopted woman? Please, mind of mine, just help me make sense of it all. I am not really religious ((of the conventional type)), but if someone up there is trying to send me messages, why must they be so mixed?)
Miss M had saved up a lot of exciting things to share. The school counseling department is starting to set her up with financial and scholarship opportunities for university, she talked of her aspirations of getting her nursing degree so she can go and open up "safe houses" for kids in Addis Ababa (yes... she is really THAT amazing), and about the friends she is making in the Ethiopian community that she has now discovered in our own city. She shared music from her favorite African band, talked about a holiday Ethiopia is celebrating this week called Meskel (I think?), and taught me a few new words in Amharic.
She also told me that next year, when she is going to college, she wants me to know that she will be available to call when/if we have troubles with the transition of our child. She can teach me the language, customs, diet, and in general, just ways to assist the bridge our child might face from being there to being here.
Priceless, I know.
My role as a teacher has been interesting. Because I don't really feel it is my place to give her advise on her personal life (re: adoption issues, etc), I have taken on the role of just being an active listener. Honestly, there can be 30 minutes that go by that I don't open my mouth. It has worked out well, though. I just suck in her ET stories like they were more valuable than oxygen. She has taught me to love that country and the plight of the orphan.
Obviously this her-talk/me-listen relationship has served her well, too. Today she told me "Thank you".
"Mrs. P, thank you so much for being a friend to me the last two years. Before I started meeting my ET friends here, I have felt like you have been the only one that I could feel comfortable talking with. You have helped me with things, including helping me realize how important it is to appreciate my opportunities and to be serious with my education"
It took about everything in me to not scramble across the desk to give her a big hug. She is just super cool. So cool, in fact, that she helps me keep this Ethiopian dream alive - and that leaf to keep soaring just a little longer.
