April’s Fool

So I have been trying to figure out what is going on with me…what’s going on in my head.

I feel disconnected – happy to be home, upset to not be in Uganda.  I wanted to leave Uganda.  I wanted to be home.  I wanted this whole process to finally be over.

I feel guilty that I am happy, guilty that I am upset.  I want to cry, but feel like a traitor to my kiddos and husband.  I feel like a traitor to myself – isn’t crying and being upset a lack of faith in God’s will for my life?  Shouldn’t I be rejoicing in what God has in store for me?  I do recognize that His will is better for me than my own desires, but can I mourn what I lost?  Can I mourn what is taking so long, and is so painful to bear?

I feel like I have no direction, as though I am in a holding pattern, or rather, locked in a cage and I am pacing.  Except, I am home, with my beautiful children, and I am not caged.  Finally, I am in a place where I can do whatever I want, eat and drink anything I want.  My bed is immaculate.  I can go out the front door and drive my own car wherever I need, and  go back in the house and I turn on the AC and the lights and I can take a shower and let it pour all over my face and not worry about what I might get or swallow on contract in the process.  My clothes smell amazing and are so soft and I am wearing my own wedding ring again, and I can brush my hair because it is not a nasty unconditioned, swamp water mess (although the sun did bleach it out quite a bit).

So I am thankful.  And I am so lost.

I was supposed to be spending all of this time with Benny – teaching him about cars, and animals, and light switches, and grocery stores, and closets and dressers because he has so many outfits that he needs a dresser.  And toilets in America flush, and showers can be warm and hot and cold, and the pretty lights hanging in the air tell drivers when to go and stop – there are no military police directing traffic, and if someone bumps your car, we call the cops, and motorcycles are not taxis, and they obey traffic laws also (or are supposed to).

So I sit here and discern God’s Will.  What does He want from me?  What is expected of me?  What is my new normal?!?  What the heck am I supposed to be doing?  My focus is gone.  For the past 3 years, my focus has been on a few set things, and now that I am home, I have none of them.  My husband told me to do something that I really enjoy, but I am not sure what that would be.  I fold laundry like a champ.  I can organize files like a pro.  I hate to sweep, and love to clean out the attic….but I did the attic before I left.  I folded 6 loads of laundry yesterday and it is not ready to be folded yet today.  I could get the car washed and detailed, but it is supposed to rain on Thursday and we have a soccer tournament this weekend, so detailing is pointless.  I could plan the kids summer sports camps, but have no idea about Benny so I would hate to put someone throughout normal summer routine of 6 AM swim team, 8 AM Mass, 8-whatever camp, night time summer outdoor soccer schedules.

I look around and see so much that has to be done.  I managed to unpack suitcases yesterday and get them put away, but I kept one packed with what I might need for going back to Uganda.  It is Lent.  I am supposed to be focused on change, and spiritual awakening and reform.  My heart should be focused on eternity, not triviality.  Everything around me will turn to dust – so I should be focused on my children, on souls, because that is what matters.  But I can’t seem to focus on anything. 

I wake up every few hours.  I feel exhausted.  I want to fake smile at the whole world, but people keep hugging me.  Grace was the first hug I got at school.  I wanted to cry because the hug was so random and so perfect.  I was standing outside of the school, feeling like a complete outsider – I had been gone from here for the past 7 weeks, and life goes on without you.   I was not excited about my 6^th grader going to camp, I just wanted to go home with all of my children, and hang out, and have fun and pretend that there are no outside obligations and commitments to attend to.  But off he went with his friends, and there I was, nobody really knowing what to say to me, so not saying anything, and there was dear sweet Grace – marching straight towards me, with a huge hug, and then she marched back to her car before I could cry.  It was perfect.

It was kind of God’s way of saying, “Hey kid, the hurt is there.  It is real.  Your suffering and waiting is real.  You must be in two places at once.  I still have more to teach you, and you still have so much more to learn and grow.  You MUST trust me, or you will go mad – angry, bitter, disenchanted, joyless.”

Yeah, I hear Him.  And I am trying.  Focus would be a nice reprieve – a to do list would be a blessing.  A nap might help the situation, because getting up at 4 AM after tossing and turning all night leaves me feeling yucky all day long.

To make matter’s worse, I got an email from the US embassy in Uganda that says they finally shipped the file, and it should be in Nairobi by next week.  I feel ill.  I was so mad when I was reading the email.  Their definition of why they send files to Nairobi floored me.  I want to call them and scream at them – “What part of my file is suspicious?  Is it because the man who found him was a Catholic priest?  Because Daughters of Mary took care of him?  Because police chiefs and heads of the child protection units were my witnesses?  Is it because he is chronically ill or maybe because advertisements ran in local churches and newspapers for weeks every year with his updated pictures asking if this child looks like anyone they know, or if they knew of someone who was pregnant 3 years ago, but who has no child?  Is it because even after all of this, and all of the paperwork, and all of the due diligence and police investigating, and everything else, nobody has come forward yet, and so white Americans with 5 kids, who certainly do not need another child, especially one with multiple medical conditions, came forward to accept responsibility for this child?  Is that what is suspicious – some crazy, white, scripture quoting, American woman shows up, after spending 3 years and $55,000 fighting her way through red tape and time,  and wants to take home the child that she fought to obtain legal guardianship over?!?  OMG. 

Praise God that I have stopped talking to people right now, because I am not thinking good “Christian” thoughts.  My thoughts are that of an angry mother tiger, ready to rip someone’s throat open.  I take a deep breath in, and breathe out a fake smile, my head cocked to the side, whispering silent prayers to calm my anxious soul.  

I imagine this will have to come on out sooner or later – I have to purge all of this out of me in order to have a clean slate.  I was thinking about maybe doing it tomorrow.  Tomorrow sounds great – kids at school, husband at work, come home and scream bloody murder for 5 minutes?!?  Maybe it will come out as a gut wrenching sob that hurts your soul because you cannot breath or move or talk.  I think I need to do this to get it over with.  As long as I can pick myself up again, and find focus, then maybe losing my image of control might be worth it.  I say 'image' because control is never something attainable, just the thought of it makes us feel good.

Wednesday, the 26th

So there is nothing left to do.  I am just sitting here with Benny on the bed waiting for Fr. Michael to come and get him.

I had wanted to pay Arthur to take care of Benny Michael for me.  I wanted him with someone young and vibrant and firm and creative.  I wanted him in school with other children.  I wanted him with someone I knew, who could access the internet and facebook and post pictures, and message me problems and concerns, and information.  I wanted to have some semblance of control and access to information.  I even considered asking Linda to foster him, but I know that this is her busy time, and a child would not work well into her schedule - especially because she literally just moved a weekend ago.

Father Michael says that he does not need school, that he needs a grandmother to nurture him.  So Father Michael decided that his very own mother should take care of him.  I dread not having any idea what is going on with him, about not having a routine, him not learning or having constant stimulation or socialization.  I packed a huge suitcase of items – everything that I could think of is in Benny’s suitcase – his toys and books, his favorite picture of Jesus, his snacks, towels, bedding, lotions, soaps, a clothing line, toilet paper, diapers, medicines, nebulizer (although she has no idea how to use it – making it completely useless).  It is out of my hands.

When Father arrived, I went over his plans, but what is there to say really?  I grabbed all of his items from the now empty room.  I loaded down Father's trunk with gifts for people in Masaka and Kitovu.  I carefully strapped Benny into the back seat, and handed him his backpack.  He hit the seat next to him, for me to sit down, but I just tried to smile at him.  I squeezed his tiny little cheeks, kissed his forehead and his cheek and whispered good bye in his ear.  “Momma loves you sweet boy.”  I asked Father if he needed anything else from me, and I walked inside.

As a side note, Benny has no idea how to kiss.  My kids always give kisses.  From day one, I would kiss them – their faces, necks, bellies, toes, soles of their feet.  Benny has no idea.  I have a silver and gold 4x4 metal icon that he would always steal from me – Our Lady of Perpetual Help.  I would kiss it at night, and he would put it to his mouth and make a “tsch” noise with his tongue.  He had never been kissed really, no idea how to put his lips, where to put them.  Me kissing him good night was a completely new idea to him, and he would laugh and laugh and laugh.  The same goes for blowing raspberries on his belly.  He thought I was nuts the first time I did it.  It makes me sad just thinking about it.

Once Father got to his mom’s, he decided that Benny should be in school, and there is a school near by that he will take a car or boda boda to.  I gave money to Linda to cover the school for a term, and I will have to wire money for a car.  He had better not go on a boda boda – he is 3 years old.  I saw too many boda boda accidents to ever be happy about that happening – especially at the mental level that Benny is at now. 

I asked Linda to check on him for me.  (She reported this weekend when she dropped off the cash for his school term that he was very quiet, not his normal playful self.  Once she started using my nicknames for him though, he started laughing, and rolling around on the ground.  I am broken.  She also reported that there are 2 other children there as well, a younger one, and one that is maybe 8’ish.  I pray a prayer of protection over him – that he feels safe and secure, that he knows he is loved, that he knows this is temporary.)  Linda will check on him and send me pictures and updates every few weeks, just to help keep me sane.

Even as I do this though, I wonder if it is temporary.  What if the US embassy in Nairobi does not see the case, ignores it, refuses to take it, blows it off, disagrees with the Ugandan government?  The Ugandan government said, “This child was left to die in the grass.  Parents refuse to come forward or be definitively identified as deceased.  Nobody wants this child.  The police released the care to Fr. Michael after 18 months of searching for parents.  Paul and Allison want to adopt him.  They are suitable parents.  They can afford him, will love him, and provide for him.  Therefore Paul and Allison have guardianship over him.  They can adopt him upon returning to the US.”  So what happens if the US government says that I cannot bring a child that I have guardianship of to the US?

Nobody can answer that question for me.  People keep saying it won’t happen.   However, on Sunday night, before my paper filing appointment, I wrote out a worst scenario and best scenario.  And I was rolling through the day 100% in the best case scenario.  And when it suddenly flipped to “horrible”?  Well, let’s just say that this possibility was not even on my radar.  I had no idea that adjudication was a possibility.  I had no idea how to even spell the word to google the meaning.

People asked why I did not stay longer.  Fair question, “because my embassy told me to go home, because there is nothing I can do in Uganda to make this go faster, because I could stay for months longer, and it all still be denied, and then I have to break a 6 month bond with a 4 year old instead of a 1.5 month bond with a 3 year old.” 

I will be headed back to the States in a little bit.  I wanted to shower, and change into clean clothes before sitting on a plane for 24 hours.  It can take 2 hours in traffic to even get to the airport from the capital so I will leave the hotel about 6 PM.  I will land in Atlanta at 3:30 pm on Thursday and be at the baggage claim by 5’ish or even before if all goes well.  I pray that I do not cry the whole way home.  I pray that I can disconnect myself from the reality of not bringing him home.  I pray that the weight of this does not crush me.  I guess we will see.

Accept whatever befalls you.  In crushing misfortune, be patient.

-Sirach 2