Crossroads blues

This blog and I have had a bit of a distant relationship lately. The family has been away a lot, first with friends and then with my parents. Sometimes writing needs to take second place to life!

I’ve also reached a point where it’s difficult to decide what to do next. The blog has grown beyond what it was originally meant to be – the simple diary of a [simple] stay-at-home dad – to cover a lot of other subjects. Now there are almost too many ways to go, eg:

• More cute stories about S- [the straight ahead road]
• More about adoption and perhaps even on the potential relationship G-, I and S- herself may have with S-’s birth parents [the torturous route]
• Something more serious, eg on child development or adoption politics [the right fork], or more comedic [the left-hand turn]

For the straight ahead road I think most people already get the picture: how many more times can you say something before it becomes a turn off?

For the torturous route I’m not sure I have the right to talk about people I don’t know and whom S- is likely to come to have strong feelings about. And anyway mining recent history is hardly going to be of interest to anyone other than G- and I – and possibly S- in the future.

The other options seem to require a significant change to my approach and committment – a re-think, if you like, of my on-line identity.

Hmmm.

Actually I’ve also been getting through quite a few books recently. I’ve just finished reading Born on a blue day, the memoir of a guy growing up with Asperger’s syndrome. It’s a fascinating book and I found it personally relevant in a number of interesting and surprising ways [no, I'm not claiming to have an An extraordinary mind!].

Now I’m just about to start re-reading Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, a book I first read in my early teens.

When I picked up Zen in the bookshop last week I got the strong sense that here was a book with a function. There was something within the pages that demanded to be said, and for reasons other than simple authorial cartharsis.

Mirror man

On the way back from S-’s foster parents I pulled over and stopped the car outside a service station. It was nearly lunchtime and S- was getting crochety, and to be frank I needed to spend a bit of time with my daughter.

This had been our first visit back to D- and D-’s since we’d taken S- away, almost a year previously.

But if I had been worried about how it might affect her I needn’t have bothered. S- seemed if not perfectly at home at least safe and confident, and it was great to see her going to foster mum D- for a cuddle and to look out of the window for birds just like she used to, before we first met her.

Still a large part of me wanted to claim her back, to let her know that she belongs with G- and me. That we’re her family now.

So we had a small picnic, squashed on the back seat of the car where we shared bits of a chicken sandwich and a blueberry muffin. Then we got out of the car and walked a few paces over the small patch of greenery that you often get at these places. S- chased a bumble bee and I watched a long-tailed tit flit through the branches of a sycamore.

Later I found myself in a brown study as I sat in her room and watched her playing with her books and jigsaws.

There are times when I realise, as if with a start, that S-and I look very dissimilar. It’s a recognition that does not affect in any way how I feel about her, but there’s a peculiar, disjunctive quality to the experience that I find hard to describe.

In his book Blue-eyed son the British TV presenter Nicky Campbell describes meeting his birth mother for the first time and the existential puzzlement that overwelms him when he catches sight of himself in the mirror afterwards.

Is that what S- will have to learn to cope with as she grows older: this occasional dissociation between how she feels and what she sees?

You can see her own sense of identity forming every day. The other night, before bed, she initiated the faces game where she touches my ears, mouth, eyes and nose [actually she often doesn't just the touch the latter: she gives it a skillful, subtle twist, which can be quite painful, thanks] and then the corresponding parts of her own cranial anatomy.

And she’s fascinated with her own image, running into our bedroom at every opportunity to stand in front of the glass and stare at herself, giggling.

All we can do is our best to make sure S- knows her lineage, her history, and that she’s proud of it.

[Picture nicked from http://www.digiscoped.com/]

Last Christmas

One of the strange things about writing a blog is watching it develop a life of its own. That might not always be so comfortable for you, the writer, and there often seems to come a time where you end up re-evaluating the worth of what you’re doing.

I sometimes wonder what S- will make of this blog in the future when she’s old enough to read it. Or when she’s old enough to understand it – which is a different thing altogether.

This train of thought always makes me re-question my motives. I’ve previously discussed my unease at the mining of other people’s lives for the purposes of bloggery [see About this site].

Would S- actually like what’s here? What would she expect to see? A diary of all her doings, all our adventures? Would she want pictures of herself, like you can find in other parenting blogs?

Somehow neither of these alternatives seem right. I can’t be sure whether I think this because S- is adopted and her confidentiality is therefore more important than most kids, or because of my own reserve. Perhaps a mixture of both.

When I started this blog I intended it to be the diary of a new stay-at-home dad. There was, I knew, this extra twist in that our child came to us through adoption.

Now I think it’s all a bit more complicated than that. You can’t separate out all the  important facets that seem to appear when I write things down here: the adoption, S- herself, and my/our experiences. All these things are mixed in together and can only be expressed in that mixed-up way.

It’ll be the same for S- in the future: she’ll have to make sense not only of herself but also about her feelings about G- and I, and in the light of her complex history. We can only do our best and only be as honest as possible.

The above is simply a long-winded way of trying to explain why I feel that a blow-by-blow acount of our first Christmas together would be both unnecessary and wrong – not to mention dull. Instead I want to remember three things.

The initial look of bewilderment on S-’s face when she was surrounded by an absolute mountain of presents from all her new relatives. Other parents, both adoptive and non-adoptive, have since told me that their kids reacted in a similar way. But, yes, I did worry at the time that it was too much for her, that everybody was overdoing it.

The second memory comes from New Year’s Eve. We spent the evening at a friend’s place, and S- slept in a travel cot in a spare bedroom. G- and I crept upstairs at 1.30 in the morning, picked S- up gently and quickly threw all our things together. But it was no use: S- was awake. G- rolled her eyes in mock despair.

‘Mama?’ came a little voice.

‘Yes darling,’ said G-.

‘Da-da?’

‘Yes darling,’ I said.

Knowing that we were there obviously satisfied her, because she gave a funny, contented little chuckle from behind her dummy [soother], waved ‘hello’ at us and settled into G- as we went downstairs, where our friends were waiting to say goodbye. S- peered at L- and R- over G-s shoulder, smiled a shy smile and then waved at them, too. At which point we all broke out into hushed giggles.

The third thing I want to record is not so much a memory as an impression. While we’re together S- and I have a good time, I like to think. But watching G- and S- really made me appreciate my limitations. The talking, the games, the laughter and the natural bonding that go on between my wife and daughter make my efforts pale. The activities I set out on always seem a bit regimented, a bit static, in comparison with the fun and joy that G- and S- share.

I think I understand ‘in my bones’ now why children need a mother [it's easy to say we understand, to think it in our heads]. Kids need a dad, too, of course they do. But the mother is the primary, the centre. How can it be otherwise?