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| sulky Yosef with Lee in July |
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| Fisseha |
Unhappiness again. Yosef, age 10 (and very cute), provoked Fisseha, age 13 (and very strong), who slugged him. And threatened to hit him again if he kept being a pest. Yosef came weeping and whining to me, and made a great point of showing he feared for his life. All this happened at a lovely Erev Rosh Hashonah dinner at our friends’ elegant and art-filled house. What cranky children. We made it home that night, and everyone dressed up the next morning for synagogue, but rifts deepened. There were any number of people now to whom Yosef was not talking, including Helen, which hurt her feelings. Fisseha & Daniel became jolly pals, by comparison, yukking it up. After services, we went to our traditional First Day Rosh Hashonah lunch at the home of other close friends, trailed by a crew of well-dressed sourpusses. Yosef managed to shake some hands, then descended to the basement rec room to observe ping-pong games. Helen ran upstairs to report that Yosef was hiding, afraid Fisseha was going to hit him again. I drifted upstairs in my friend’s house to visit the bedrooms of her three sons. All young adults now, none was home for the holiday; their bedrooms were immaculate and vacuumed, the beds tightly made. The sports posters and books dated from an earlier era in their lives. I missed these boys, friends of my older sons. I missed the years they were all taping up baseball posters in their bedrooms. I remembered thinking one day, as I dropped off Lee at the Little League park, that baseball must exist because baseball-playing little boys were so adorable to their mothers, and the clackety-clack of their cleats across the parking lot such an endearing noise.
Back home after lunch, hostilities worsened, with Yosef screaming in the backyard that Fisseha was throwing rocks at him.
I was near screaming myself now. I took Fisseha aside and commiserated. “I know it’s hard to have new brothers…”
“Not Daniel,” he said. “Daniel’s not hard.”
“OK, I know Yosef can be a pest, but I need you to stay calm, to be a team-player.” Etc.
He seemed unmoved.
“You don’t have to go to syngagogue tomorrow,” I suddenly told him.
“WHAT??” He was shocked. I felt terrible. We always observe two days of Rosh Hashonah in synagogue.
“I didn’t see you enjoy any part of the holiday,” I said. “You were mad last night at dinner, this thing with Yosef is ruining it for me, you were indifferent today.”
Now I’d hurt his feelings.
I tried to fix it. “I didn’t say you HAD to go to school; I said you COULD go to school.”
He shrugged. “I’ll go to school,” he said.
Azeb, a gentle and kind middle-aged Ethiopian woman who has babysat for us for five years, was giving Yosef a talking-to in the kitchen in Amharic.
I went on a walk. I lingered, stayed away most of an hour, considered how unnecessarily difficult we’d made our lives. What if our older children’s rooms were immaculate and empty, like the bedrooms of our friends’ three sons? What if? Instead, they were crammed and doubly-jammed with extra beds and World Cup soccer posters.
I ran home in a cloudburst. The landscape was suddenly drenched, the trees bending, the gutters flooding. I heard shouts in the backyard. Four of my children—Yosef, Helen, Daniel, and Fisseha—wearing raincoats, were jumping on the trampoline and sliding across its slick surface, crashing into each other with great hilarity. I ran into the house, put apple slices and cookies on a plate, and carried the snacks outside under an umbrella. “Watch!” they yelled, showing me how the rain allowed them to slalom across the trampoline. They devoured the apples and cookies. They were all happy. What wonderful children! How cute and funny! I really must be doing something right after all. They ran in later, dried off, and had a lovely evening. Lily, 15, extraordinarily tolerant and funny, organized board games. This morning they all got up nicely, and got dressed up, and went to synagogue. Such handsome children! So well-dressed and polite! Life is a breeze, when you’re such great parents as Don and I are.
After synagogue, I had a chance to tell Azeb what a lovely surprise I had yesterday afternoon, coming home to find the children peaceful and playful. I tried to relay what wonderful children they really are, how they mended their ways, cheered me up, saved the holiday, and all on their own. I implied that my own kind parenting style had inspired them.
“I told them,” she said. “I told Daniel and Yosef.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them they need to behave," said Azeb. "I told Yosef, 'Five years I work here, I never saw behavior like this.' I asked Yosef, ‘What happened at the foster home, if you acted like this?’ ‘I got hit,’ he said. ‘I know that,’ I said. ‘Your new mother won’t hit you. But I will hit you, just like in Ethiopia, if you don’t behave. Do you want it to be like Ethiopia? Do you want me to hit you?’”
Next thing you knew, the children were all the best of friends, hopping together on their trampoline.
No hitting of children, needless to say, will take place in our family. But I enjoyed the sound of laughter in the backyard far more than the sound of whimpering around the holiday table.
