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| Helen, Daniel, Lily, Jesse, Fisseha, Seth, Lee, Yosef |
Let it never be said that I mislead people to believe that older-child adoption is easy.
I flew home this past Thursday afternoon, after helping Lee move to Oberlin College, to discover that Yosef was not speaking to Helen and that Fisseha was not speaking to Jesse. The former was due to some perceived insult; the latter was due to the borrowing of shoes without permission. Kids passing in the hall were deliberately bumping meanly into each other. Fisseha took his dinner plate into the livingroom to avoid sitting at the same table with Jesse the Evil Shoe-Borrower. Helen and I took a long look at each other, excused ourselves, went upstairs to my bedroom, fell into each other’s arms, and cried very hard.
“I’m not saying Yosef and Daniel should go back,” she sobbed, “but I just don’t feel close to anyone in the family anymore.”
The next day, the sight of sweet potatoes in a kitchen drawer brought me to tears, because they were there for LEE, and the appearance of SETH'S Crocs on DANIEL's feet made me weepy. (Seth moved to New York City last month for work & graduate school.) (Seth hates those Crocs.)
The departures of the hilarious and playful and sweet older brothers have left all of us bereft. This seems especially unfair since Donny's and my THEORY was that we would AVOID the pain of empty-nest by continuing to FILL the nest.
“This isn’t really working,” I told Donny that night. “We get the pain of watching the older ones leave anyway…”
“And we don’t get to go to Paris,” he finished.
The next morning I typed “HELP” to my across-the-street pal Andrea Sarvady. (I had ridiculed Andy the first time she ever emailed me: “You could open your window and SHOUT and get the news here faster,” I had replied. Now we email constantly, though if I lean back, I can see her house through a window.)
Andy ran over. I wildly gestured and cried to express all that was going wrong. “The older three,” I gasped, “Molly, Seth, Lee, so wonderful, such wonderful people…Lily, Helen, wonderful…”
“Got it,” said Andy, “but right now, the boys are a train-wreck.”
I nodded, couldn’t answer.
“Can I do something here?”
I nodded again. Andy is a middle school teacher and counselor and a nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist (
http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/woman/entries/2007/09/01/are_americans_t.html ) I hoped the help she was offering was not going to include having my family described in “Woman to Woman.” I hoped our household warfare would not figure prominently in the column she was composing about Iraq.. But I was humbly willing to accept anything.
“I’m going to meet with the boys this afternoon,” she said. “I need two things from you. Get a poster-board ready for me. And send me a list of the issues here. We do this at school all the time. Let me take this one.”
I wrote out this list for Andy:
___________________________________________________________
"Unpleasant behaviors include:
--Getting mad at each other over small things
--STAYING mad at each other – bearing grudges for days and days
--Giving each other the silent treatment
--Giving Mom or Dad the silent treatment (this is called “sulking”)
--Eating dinner elsewhere to avoid someone in the family
--Hitting; hurting each other in play, accidentally; hurting each other deliberately.
--Acting annoyed when asked to help clean up, to take the garbage cans out, etc.
--Borrowing something from a sibling -- or taking something from a sibling -- without permission; failing to give it back when it's asked for.
--Refusing to share something for no reason. This is a family; we should share.
--Acting entitled to all the good things – new clothes, bikes, cell phones for the 3 older ones, computers, TVs – without earning it through good citizenship at home.
What we want is:
A house where everyone feels safe.
A house where everyone feels valuable.
A house with a happy and playful mood, not an angry grudging mood.
This is not a playground, it is a house. This is not a free-for-all, it is a family."
__________________________________________________________
At five p.m., Andy breezed back across the street with the erect posture and vigor of a successful woman who has only three children.
“Okay, guys!” she called without preface. “Come on, let’s go!” Bewildered (the new guys barely know her), Fisseha, Jesse, Daniel and Yosef obediently followed Andy downstairs to the rec room. Lily, Helen, and I were banished upstairs. Azeb, our Ethiopian babysitter, joined Andy as translator.
Andy, a master of plain-speaking with middle schoolers, said: “Guys, Team Samuel sucks right now, you know what I mean? If you all are a team, you’re losing. A team of babies could beat Team Samuel right now. You’re not pulling together.”
(She’d told me earlier she wasn’t planning to go near touchy-feely stuff. “I don’t care about their feelings!” she’d laughed. “They don’t love each other--I don’t care! They have to behave. This is strictly behavioral.”)
“Now I’m your mom’s friend,” she said, “and your mom has told me what’s going on here, and I don’t like it. Here’s a list I got from your mom about some of the things happening at home.” Then she read my list.
They slumped back into the sofas, she said, but they didn’t disagree.
“I’m not saying it’s YOU or it’s YOU,” Andy said, pointing at them. “I’m not interested in who is doing what. I’m just saying that THIS is all happening in YOUR FAMILY right now and it doesn’t feel good.”
(Azeb, translating, was less discreet. As she translated my list into Amharic, she added helpful hints like, “Yosef this means you" and "Yosef you know you did this one" and "Yosef, listen closely to Andy."
“Now,” said Andy, pulling out the poster board. “I want some suggestions on how to make Team Samuel work better."
The boys raised their hands! Each had a suggestion. The poster board reads:
_______________________________
TEAM SAMUEL
1. No fighting
2. Don’t do the things on Mom’s list.
3. Talk—don’t just act mad.
4. Don’t be annoying.
__________________________________
I would have loved to see the boys raising their hands.
“I want you all to be GREAT tonight and tomorrow,” Andy said. “I don’t want to hear, ‘But it wasn’t on the list that I couldn’t get up at 4 in the morning and watch TV.’ Just be great – you know what great is. IF you’re great, your mom will take you to the movies tomorrow night. Whoever is not great gets to stay home.”
The boys ran up the basement stairs. Daniel found me first and said, “I’m sorry, Mom.” Jesse said: “I’m sorry, Mom.” Fisseha said: “I’m sorry, Mom.” Yosef said: “I hate Azeb.”
Then they and Helen went outside and played basketball together for an hour until dinner.
They all came running in, sweaty and happy, and Yosef yelled, “Team Samuel!”
After dinner, first Daniel, then Yosef, hugged and kissed me and thanked me for dinner.
The next morning we took children to the Atlanta Ethiopian community soccer practice; Daniel, Fisseha and Yosef were foolishly placed on the same team. That team won 14 to 1. “Team Samuel!” they laughed as we drove home.
They were all great and that night I took them all, plus so many of their friends it required two cars, to the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen in my life: “Balls of Fury.” Idiotic.
They were still great the next day.
By the end of Labor Day weekend last night, there was a bit of chafing. Jesse and Yosef had a bad run-in during a front-yard soccer game, so Yosef acted sad and slept by himself on the sofa last night. But after so many hours of greatness, I was inclined to be lenient.
I’ve learned a few things:
1. The children at home also are missing Seth and Lee and the fun of summer with them.
2. Even without all the younger ones at home, it still would not be appropriate for me to move into the dorm room next-door to Lee at Oberlin, nor the apartment downstairs from Molly in San Francisco, nor the apartment down the hall from Seth in Queens.
3. I miss Molly, Seth, and Lee every day, every hour. Twenty children underfoot at home would not change that.
4. Andy says that the children’s vastly-improved behaviors won’t last.
5. That seminar called “Letting Go” offered to parents during Oberlin’s orientation? that seminar I made fun of? I should have gone to it.
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| Molly & Aunt Mindy |
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| Seth & Lee |
