Saturday, June 20, 2009

A Tearful Trip Down Memory Lane

With the house quiet, the laundry caught up (Yes, even every rug and towel! Proud of me??), and not much to do but lounge around eating bon bons and watching Oprah (Yea, right...totally not me.), I decided with the blog update to go ahead and tackle tagging all my old posts so it might be easier for people to find relevant material if they need to look for travel information, RAD, older child adoption related posts, etc. I hadn't realized that I had hit the 450 post mark yesterday, so maybe the blog refresh and changes were long overdue!

It is an arduous task to go back and label each previous post when you have 450 of them, and I am about a third of the way done. In order to accurately label them, I need to skim each post to remind myself of what I wrote and what topics were included as many of the posts contain multiple topics.

I have been writing this blog for 2 1/2 years now, and as I revisited those old posts I realized many things:

A) I am one blessed woman.
B) We have had an astonishing amount of things happen to us in 2 1/2 short years.
C) My own life brings me to tears at moments, and often the more powerful of these are the ones recorded that were the quieter ones...not the big spotlight events.
D) Oh, how I have changed and grown, how we all have.
E) Love is spread everywhere throughout our lives, and not just from those in "real life" but we have been loved very well and fully by those in our "virtual lives" as well.
F) The sacred is everywhere, if you only look for it.
G) I live with the 4 most incredible human beings God ever made, aside from Jesus. Yea, Dominick and the boys beat Socrates and Einstein and Mother Theresa hands down. I know you don't feel that way and might beg to differ, but is there really any other way for a Wife and Mommy to feel?
H) Our life ain't perfect, but it's good enough for me!
I) I am pretty sappy in my writing :-) Why do you read this drivel???

It's an odd thing to do, to go back and read about your life knowing how it all turned out. The fears before we brought Kenny home were very real and rational, and the certainty we felt about the rightness of it all indeed turned out to be well placed.

It is also a great gift to have thought to record things, sometimes fairly well, so that when any of us in our family do read it we can be taken right back to that very moment...the look in the eye, the little comments made that indicated a turning point, the emotions well up so easily! It may not be always be good fodder for public consumption, but in facing this task I am finding myself very glad I have forced myself to sit down and write regularly. Someday when they are all older, my children will know their mom better than most simply by reading what I have written. I acknowledge that may not be a good thing :-) but they will know the depth of my love for all of them, they will understand what makes me tick, they will maybe be able to use some of what they learn to say "Ahhh...THAT'S why she did that!"...even if they disagree with what I did.

I know that for Dominick, the blog has been a way to learn what is going on inside my head when we have been so busy we haven't had time alone for our talk to go deeper than "Who's picking up the boys tonight?" or "What time is the soccer game on Saturday?". And I think, although I may be wrong, that it has helped him get more in touch with his own feelings about all that has happened in our lives as he often will shyly tell me in the morning "Well, you did it again...had me crying reading about my own life!". As often happens, it is the woman who leads the man down the emotional seas of life, steering and helping him navigate when he struggles to find the words. Hopefully, that is what the blog has done for Dominick at moments as we together each do our jobs on the SS LaJoy.

But reading about Kenny's adoption and the emotions leading up to it was very poignant for me as well, especially in light of where we currently sit with our attempts to complete the adoption of our daughters.

I realized that I haven't honestly admitted something in the swirl of all that is going on, in an effort at building those fences around my heart to protect it should things ultimately fall apart.

I want them so much, my heart aches. I yearn to be their mom. I desperately want to experience all the wonder that will come with mothering girls...yes, even the raging hormones, the explosive mommy-bashing in the teen years, the healing that no doubt will be necessary for any older child who has been adopted to move forward to a productive and healthy adult life. I want to take them clothes shopping and gasp at what they want to wear, I want to see their smiles when they have that right of passage of getting their ears pierced, I want to see them in a prom dress. So much will already have been missed that I can only think of the future and not the past.

Actually, I sense it is not so much that I only "want" them, but that I need them in every way. Just as I needed Matthew, Joshua and then Kenny...I can't explain why I need more children, why I need two girls. But I do, and I give up trying to figure it out.

It is funny, as I look back on it. When we first wrapped our mind about the sudden possibility that we might really and truly become the parents of 5 children, I was in a total state of panic. FIVE kids??? Who in the heck does that? Were we going to be one of those families with the back window of our car covered in a foot long string of stick figure representing our family?? Laundry for 7 people??? Are you KIDDING me? How do you manage the logistics of the lives of 7 people? College for 5 kids...forget that, how about even coming up with soccer fees for 5??? Then came even more practical things....we only have a 40 gallon water heater and a septic system to worry about, we will not be able to transport friends AND kids with a standard minivan, we don't even have enough kitchen chairs at our table.

And in the time that it has taken over the past 2 years to get to this place, somehow all of those concerns have fallen by the wayside. It will work itself out, if only we can get them home. I don't fret and stew about laundry or transportation anymore, no instead I finally have my head on straight and am thinking about the most important things...what if we never get the chance to parent them? Somehow, I still manage to hang on to hope, and recognize that the logistics are the least important part of it all...we have Team LaJoy and somehow laundry will get done and kids will get where they need to get even if it is a little hectic. At least it will be a "Happy Hectic".

So I have allowed myself for the moment this afternoon to re-open the door to my heart, to let a little of the stress and desire come to surface, and now I will tuck it away again behind the fences where it will remain until...well...just until...


In the meantime, as I spend my quiet evening labeling posts and reminiscing, I sit here in profound gratitude for the amazing, incredible, not-so-noteworthy-but-perfectly-wonderful life we have led thus far. There will always be more to the story, regardless of what the future holds. No doubt I will shed more tears of both joy and sorrow as we watch our sons mature into men and hopefully watch our daughters grow into amazing young women. That story may never be important to anyone else but us, but as the saying goes:

"Home is where your story begins."







Thanks for visiting our home and hearing our stories.

3 comments:

John said...

"re-open the door to my heart, to let a little of the stress and desire come to surface"

Cindy, I know what you are talking about. For political reasons I had to "sanitize" my blog. This ment that every single post had to be scrutinized... I could not even make it back a couple of weeks before I started becoming overwhelmed... finaly I had to call out for help from my bloging buddies, and Hillary was may saving grace, and went through the past 5 years for me.... That said, if you ever start to question if you are on the right track, a blog review is a great encouragement...

Hope you are feeling better soon. Blessings John

Kimberly said...

Cyndi - thanks for sharing your thoughts! I completely understand the need to protect one's heart during an uncertain waiting process! And I equally understand the need to get real about our heart's desires at times too.
Stand strong sister!
Kimberly

Carrie DeLille said...

Your blog is such a gift to so many, but mostly it will be to your children. Your heart is in it. I wish i could be so open!!