The school year is winding down for me -- one more Waisman Resource Center project and I am finish until the fall.  This weekend, we are going to Indiana to see Matthew who should be out of the hospital on Thursday and Noah who will be 3.  And spring is finally enveloping Wisconsin.  Well, it may be that late kind of spring that jumps from freezing into the 80’s.  We’ve had two warm days and every flower and tree bud that should have been developing slowly over the past month is straining to show.  I almost fear that we will miss flowers by being gone for 4 days.  And I have ambitious garden plans that I am itching to get started on.  

Julia has lapsed bad into a cycle of inattention again and the morning routine is creeping back to hellishness.  She may need to miss the bus this morning and luckily I am prepared for it.  I’ve also ordered a “potty watch” (http://testkitsathome.com/wobl-vibrating-watch-4-colors-available.aspx) to see if she can learn to “listen to her body” again without verbal cues.  Yes, I am used to a typical child who learns and moves on.  Julia circles back with each change and needs to be taught again.  I have a lot of internal work to do to be okay with this.  Will I be re-potty training her at 30?

We both are sniffling and coughing.  I am sure that mine in seasonal allergies which start with the first dancing dandelion and carry on until some kind of pollen settles.  I don’t know if Julia has a cold or is also slightly effected by the spring, but her nose runs constantly and she is tired.  Dealing with Julia’s runny nose is not just her affair.  Frankly, she doesn’t really care about it.  She will sniff up the snot and she will wipe her nose leaving a trail of snot across her cheek (which, after a few days, gets red and chapped), but she is not fond of blowing and she doesn’t notice until her whole upper lip is covered in snot.  Her teachers no longer put a kleenex up to her nose to blow and when I do it in public, I know we get stares.  It is a hard skill to work on because even when a cold lasts for a week or more, it is not long enough to imprint a skill and then the cycle begins again the next time she gets the sniffles.  

Will I be blowing her nose at 15? 18? 21? Forever?  

On the other hand, she announced to me yesterday that she understand fractions. If the summer goes as planned, I will try to do some fraction work as part of our days, not formally.  She did give me a half of her oreo cookie last night after dinner.  The small half, of course, but then I wouldn’t expect otherwise.  She is a kid, after all.

Still trying to figure out the summer.  The end of June and all of July will be in town and hopefully, we will indulge in the pleasures of Madison -- art, music and theater.  Julia could use some clay time and I want to learn to use a pottery wheel.  August is still a question that I cannot seem to answer.  There is an apartment in Queens, NY, that we sublet reasonably but I am on the fence.  It may just be exhaustion and a few weeks of quiet restful living will reinvigorate me.  I need to be patient.

The retreat was intense, more intense than the previous two.  The work was about acceptance, forgiveness and compassion and I became overwhelmed by what came up during guided meditations.  This is the first time that anything at all has come up during meditation.  At one point in the afternoon, I needed to excuse myself and asked to talk with one of our guides or to make a phone call.  I needed to talk and sob. 

Last week with Marilyn, Julia was able to be much more articulate about her experiences in China and I was filled with such hate, hate that is centered on the man who headed her orphanage.  Now, that she can describe what I only imagined, I could not help but remember how he treated her when we received her compared to a video that I saw of another child’s “gotcha” day with the same man.  To the other child, he was solicitous and caring.  He even held up a kleenex to blow her nose.  Julia was a throw away -- truly.  It was all that he could do to say “mama, baba, jeijei” and push her at us.  The weekend work connected Julia’s life to Jennifer’s which, although physically different, both were grounded in neglect and abuse.  I cannot help but take some blame for Jennifer’s life, but blame with the knowledge that even with best efforts, any attempt to intervene would have been uphill and I may not have been able to do anything at all for Jennifer.  Much like, for all my effort, I may not be able to move Julia into anything near typical adulthood.  Some of this seems to have formed big boulders of blocks on my heart and opening into loving kindness seems impossible.  At least, for now.

When I talked through some of this with our minister, she said that my litany was the making for years of work -- no casual unpacking of boxes but complex surgery that needed time and patience.  She compared it to  sitting in a boat on a lake and throwing a stick of dynamite into the lake and trying to deal with all the dead fish floating to the top.  There was more than the ideas and emotions around Julia and Jennifer, and all of it painful.  Her prescription was more patience and invited me to talk more to her or others when the road was overwhelming.  She is right, of course, and she did take very good care of me.