Living with a Stranger You Love...

There's a reality of older child adoption that nothing can prepare you for: no matter how good placement and adjustment go, no matter how much you fiercely-to-the-death would protect this human, no matter how much you have dreamed about the laughter of two little girls under the Christmas tree...you end up living with a complete stranger in your home. It sounds harsh to call a child that, but they are. A living breathing being who you have no idea how to anticipate anything out of...

Our daughter has done amazingly well. We still worry (cause that's what I do best, right?!) that it's too good. But I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there, if we get there. We thankfully (isn't that sick) got our first tears the day of Christmas, the day after I got my first kisses...good to see her not being so glib with everything for a change.

But, and I think I feel this magnified with H running around right on A's heels and my unending awareness that A was 6 when H was born...and a little over 6.5 when H was adopted...the awareness that you HAVE to treat the children the same, but they are worlds apart - not only in personality but also in familiarity. The whole "fake it till you make it" thing is totally different when the being that is looking back at you can read you - your face, your body posture, your reactions. You have to be as free loving and strict and silly and serious with the new child as you are with the one who you know down to the cellular level. Which for an over-contemplating, introspective human like me is something that does not come as second nature.

I admit it: It feels really really surreal to kiss a child you don't know and have them stare blankly back at you. You feel presumptious, yet you feel the bud of love in your heart. And you know that no matter the knowledge that it will open and bloom soon, there is no way you can say you really really love the child. You realize how much you don't know that child...at. all.

It's much more akin to learning to live with a spouse...the first morning home, downstairs having a cup of tea - you hear a light bump upstairs...you instantly jump, thinking your child fell out of bed. But it's in a part of the ceiling where she isn't sleeping, because it's not the child that you are used to listening for...this one...will she be up at 4a, or 9a, or will you have to force her to get up? These little things are NOTHING that are of consequence in the scheme of becoming a family in and of themselves, but they add up to a huge lack of knowledge that is EVERYTHING that is standing between the newness changing to the absolute certainty in the feeling of being a family.

Learning the way to get them to calm down and focus, how they like their eggs cooked, that they are more up for practicing English reading in the early morning hours...how to make them feel comfortable at the 18th Drs office visit...that hot chocolate is good, but chocolate cake is too sweet...and carrots are even better...learning that they have great language skills but were never taught critical problem solving...learning that they will pop their own baby teeth out without a blink, but tell them that you don't like people in your face 3 inches away 24/7 and the hurt will flash in a second across their face...learning that they like robots and dolls and pink and RC cars and sparkly clothes...but not anything in their hair other than a band...doing an odd dance of courtship of a being that comes up to your armpit.

Seeing them open up and tell a story about how they used to pick mushrooms in China. Seeing that they desperately want the snuggles and hugs they have never had and act like they don't need and then the next day coming and climbing in your lap after some milestone was reached in their hearts. Seeing them peek in your room and then sneak quietly downstairs cause they know you didn't feel good the night before. Seeing the pride of receiving parental approval when they master a set of English words. Hearing her admit that she would like the picture of her foster mother you offered - letting that shield down to her heart. Laughing at when she takes a Happy Meal box and sticks it on her head to make you smile after a bad conference call with work.

All those things...and a thousand million others...THAT is what makes this stranger slowly and steadily into the child of your dreams. And when the child is 9, you can count those things so much more clearly one by one as they tick by - when you can see them open up and blossom by being able to share the people they were before, when they want you to be part of their whole lives - those lives that were before - their preferences, their memories, their story. Cause this time around, it's much much more about them accepting you into the story that is their life.