Three Years Home, August 29

On Children
by Kahlil Gibran (early 20th c. Lebanese poet)

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Sinking Roots.

TK's questions, as we garden together, are as much sun and good sustenance to me as I am trying to give our plants.

TK: "Mama? Why are there no mommy-long-legs?"

TK: "Mama? If God put the baby Jesus in Mary, then does God have a penis?" Pause. "I think God has a penis AND a vagina."

TK: "Mama? Are there bad bugs, or are they just making bad choices?"

TK: "Mama? Are the carrots ready to pick NOW?"

Where Home Is

Easter Girl

Easter. Ancient religions -- pre-Christianity -- celebrated the triumph of new life over death at this time of year. Every tradition still whispering in store aisles -- painted eggs, the Easter bunny, chicks, bunches of tulips -- pays homage to joyful pagan rituals that life returns. That's why the Christians chose to celebrate the resurrection at this time of year, but that's for a different blog. This is TK's blog, and so I must say this: I have never met any person who celebrates Easter so fully, in her whole soul. Some glimpses:

1. It is snowing. In April. I am walking grumpily behind TK, who is pedaling her pink and purple bike down the sidewalk. I long for sunshine, blue sky, warmth. Suddenly, I look up and notice that a man walking in the other direction is grinning at TK. A group of teenagers at a bus stop are smiling at her. I throw my grumpiness aside enough to listen. My daughter is singing "Jingle Bells" as she pedals! "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way! Oh what fun it is to ride to bi-i-ike today!" My grumpiness melts like the snowflakes do as they land softly on the sidewalk.

2. It is a rare sunny day in Juneau, and the annual Alaska Folk Fest is on. TK and I are sprawled on the greening brown grass beside other children and parents, listening to musicians jam in small circles, watching as a woman hula-hoops in the center. The sky is blue, and the clouds are luminescent. Along the edges of this music-filled space, purple and yellow crocuses are blooming. TK spreads her arms and legs wide on the grass. "Ah, Mommy," she exclaims, "yay for spring!"

3. Every day that TK's at preschool, I receive a little written report from her teachers. As a harried teacher myself, I'm always amazed that the preschool teachers manage to write these half-page narratives about every child, every day. As a parent, I treasure them. Almost every one of TK's says some version of this: "TK had a blast today," "TK was so joyful today," "TK laughed most of the day today". I work to learn from such a daily decision to live in life's joy.

4. A teenager at the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship jokes to TK, “Easter’s the day we all celebrate when the Easter Bunny rose from the dead!” TK refuses to believe him. She informs him instead that the Easter Bunny didn't die, and if he did, he's coming back, because that's what he DOES. On Easter morning, when she runs out of her room to find a pastel-colored basket, a note from "Osterhar" (the Easter Bunny's German name!) and eggs hidden all over the living room, she nods confidently: "I just KNEW the Easter Bunny would come back. He always does."

5. We wander through the woods, collecting treasures and listening carefully for fairies. "Listen, Mommy!" TK whispers, cupping her small hand around her ear. "I hear the swush-swush of their wings!" We listen together, and then we creep forward along the trail, until we spot a small niche in a hemlock tree -- obviously a fairy house. "We need to leave them craisins," TK pronounces solemnly, and with her mittened hand, she leaves a handful of craisins, an offering, a gift. I believe beside her. The very trees seem to thank her.

6. On Facebook, my mom posts the photos of our March trip to Sitka -- a week from which I'm drawing strength like those crocuses must be drawing strength from the bulbs beneath the ground. In every photo, I look exhausted and worried. I suppose I'm still underground. But not TK. In every photo, TK is grinning -- beside the impressive circumference of a fallen tree in the rainforest, with raspberries on all her fingers, with my mom's glasses on, with her special "water backpack" (a Camelback) on her back. I'm clearly this child's parent, but she reminds me how to taste the world and love it, daily, moment by moment.

7. After a snuggly evening watching a Care Bears movie (remember those little pastel-colored bears with the symbols on their tummies and the moral messages in their stories?), I idly ask TK what kind of Care Bear she thought SHE would be. She doesn't even hesitate. "I'd be Morning Sunshine Bear," she says. I think of the mornings in my life I've woken to sunshine -- the warmth of it, the good grace of it, the hope of it. And I'm sure that's exactly the kind of bear my child already is.

Photo Essay: Orange Tic Tacs (Sitka, Alaska)

Photo Essay: Green TK (Sitka, Alaska)

Saving the World

TK and Nick are superheros today, and I -- merely the mother, after all -- am the office secretary. The game is this: as TK and Nick "work" at play cash registers in their "office" (a Bob-the-Builder tent in the corner of Nick's living room), I am stationed on the couch fielding phone calls from the many imaginary and quite distressed citizens of Juneau who need superheros to save the day.

"Oh! Calling Batman and Super Purple Girl!" I call out. Batman emerges from the Bob-the-Builder tent, his black bat ears askew, his glasses falling down on his nose. Super Purple Girl steps out slowly, concentrating on the sparkly pink lip gloss she is applying to her lips. I clear my throat, ever the good employee. "Downtown Juneau is being attacked by enormous evil butterflies!" I announce. "Will you deal with it?"

Super Purple Girl throws her lip gloss aside, and thrusts her arms into the air. Batman strikes a manly pose with both hands on his hips. "Yes!" they shout together, and they pretend to launch themselves into the air, running pell-mell down the white carpeted hallway toward Nicky's room, where ZAP! and POW! are the sounds of the defeating of evil butterflies.

When they return -- inevitably sporting pretend injuries and exhaustion -- I always breathe out in secretarial amazement: "Oh, wow. You superheros saved the day again!" Nick and TK puff up with pride, and then disappear again into their office until the next phone call. . .

And I perch on the couch, thinking. TK doesn't play superhero with her girl friends. She and her girl friends rock dolls to sleep; they dress up in pink princess crowns; they dance wildly to hiphop music. Actually, TK plays like that with Nick, too. But I'm not just contemplating how special of a friend Nicky is. I'm thinking about superheros, and my daughter's ardent belief in their real ability to save the day.

For about a year, TK has quietly insisted she will grow up to become a teacher or a doctor, and then return to Ethiopia to help people there. Already a girl with a strong sense of justice and empathy, she has recently developed a grown-up look about her when she discusses her birth country: she sets her jaw, and looks out into the distance, announcing that she'll make it better there when she gets older. A few weeks ago, when the two of us were sharing dinner, she brought it up on her own. "Mommy," she said quietly, "in Ethiopia, lots of people don't have enough good water."

I nodded, waiting.

"And lots of people can't get to doctors." Her little brow furrowed. "Like my birth mommy. She couldn't get to a doctor."

I pulled her off her chair and onto my lap and held her close. "Isn't that why you say you want to be a doctor, sweetheart -- and go back there?"

She sat up straight suddenly and lifted her little chin. "Not a doctor, Mommy! I'm going to be a superhero when I grow up, and I'll go to Ethiopia and save the day -- for everyone!" Her deep brown eyes flashed.

I held her closer, wishing superheros were real.

But a week later on another night, the two of us were engaged in a pretend battle between Monster (me) and Super Purple Girl. I tramped into the room, growling and clawing the air, announcing that I wanted to eat little children, when TK leapt off the couch in superhero pose, her hands flipped palm up to me.

"Aaarrrrr!" I growled. "What are your powers, Super Purple Girl? You can NEVER defeat ME!"

"My powers," Super Purple Girl proclaimed in her biggest voice, "are that I LOVE YOU!"

And so the monster melted, and was glad to be defeated and hugged tightly on the couch.

And so TK's dreams of helping Ethiopia are possible, too -- more possible than any mere secretarial mother may be capable of imagining.

I must get back to work, though. The phone is ringing off the hook with distressed citizens, and the superheros will need a snack soon -- and no one can defeat evil butterflies or slime monsters without a little yogurt and some goldfish crackers in their bellies first. . .

Fridays with Nick and TK

Every Friday, at 10 a.m., TK's good friend Nicky joins us for the day. I suppose it's my "job" on Fridays, though it doesn't feel anything like a job, in that it's pure joy most of the day. In fact, Fridays with these two rambunctious, sweet 4-year-olds are a therapeutic time (thus my loose allusion to the popular title "Tuesdays with Morrie") -- advice about how to live and how to see, a model for how to prioritize my time, a reminder that all one really needs is a great imagination, yummy snacks, and a silly and dependable friend.

I'll let them show you a glimpse of our Fridays themselves.



"While we try to teach our children all about life,
Our children teach us what life is all about."
~Angela Schwindt

It Will Be Okay, It Will Be Okay

This week, after days of near-zero temperatures and an evil wind, all the heating pipes in our badly built house froze, then thawed, then burst -- then leaked -- then poured. Buckets of urine-colored water poured from the living room ceiling in multiple places; thick rusty sludge dripped from the ceiling of TK's room and my room. We follow the plumbers' advice and cheerfully place buckets everywhere -- until I notice the rusty drips on TK's white bedspread and burst into tears.

Why did I bring my Ethiopian daughter to live in Juneau, Alaska? It's dark here, and cold, and everything either mildews or molds apart into soggy, saturated pieces. The wind howls outside, and the sidewalks are so icy it's safer to drive to the store than to walk. We live indoor lives in this town; venturing outside is a production of hats and gloves and rainboots and raingear that some of my neighbors seem to find endearing, but that I find tedious. Now outside is inside, running in rivulets and waterfalls from cracks in the ceiling. No escape from the water.

While the plumbers tromp mud up and down the stairs, I stand in TK's room and sob in great gasping breaths, the tears streaming down my face. . . until I feel a little hand patting my hip. I look down. TK is patiently mopping up the drips from the ceiling with a dish towel while she pats me reassuringly with her other hand and shakes her head wisely: "Don't worry about it, now. It's going to be okay. It is going to be okay!"

Two days later, when half of the living room ceiling collapses from water saturation in a thunderous boom (while I watch from the couch, where I lie sick with the stomach flu), I chant TK's reassurance like a prayer. It's going to be okay, it's going to be okay. Don't worry about it, now!

We move her birthday party to a friend's house -- a sweet, sweet friend who decorates doorways and chairs with purple streamers and balloons, planned party games, and bought prizes just so it will feel festive and warm and DRY. How many times does TK smile at me -- as she dishes up the huckleberry ice cream for everyone, as she plays pin-the-tail-on-the-hamster, as she demonstrates dance moves for everyone -- in that reassuring, wise way?

Aren't I the one who should be reassuring HER?

That sweet little person. Today, we decide to begin a new birthday ritual: to watch the videos the adoption agency (Children's Home Society) gave us when we left Ethiopia two and a half years ago. One is an interview of TK's birth father, including footage of the tukul in which she was born and the land that surrounds it. The other is a video account of her three months at the orphanage -- and our first few days together. For an hour, we watch those videos. I push pause when TK asks me to -- because she wants to know why people aren't wearing shoes in the Ethiopian countryside, because she wants to look at the tukul for awhile, because she wants to hear her birth father pronounce her name again. This is the first time TK has ever seen these videos. We talk, and talk -- and laugh at her toddling self, at the way her laugh looks the same on her baby self as it does on her 4-year-old self. She cuddles on my lap. Above us: the gaping hole in the living room ceiling.

What is calamity, really? Broken pipes and a hole in a ceiling in a rambling three-bedroom house in a good, safe neighborhood in a good, safe town with electricity and free public schooling (and shoes) hardly qualifies. Do I forget sometimes? Do I forget to be grateful for shoes, for shelter, for the safety of my body and the education of my child? Yesterday, I was annoyed the grocery store didn't have kale. Tonight, I was grateful for every bite I ate.

What separates us -- those of us here (even in leaky houses) and there in Ethiopia -- is not the grace of any deity, or a reward for any work, but chance. I celebrate my daughter's birthday with her and feel overwhelmed with gratitude -- and with sorrow, because her birth mother, Amarech, died and did not get to know the wonder that is Mitike, because Mitike is growing up so far from her home country and culture and birth family. And I worry: can I give her the life I so want to give her? The life her birth family hoped she would have?

After lunch, TK snuggles into her warm (and dry) bed with me, ready for a nap. I've just told her a story and sung her a song. She's got one arm around Purple Bear and one arm around me. I gaze at her. I cannot believe how much I love this child. My heart aches with it.

And then I remember to be grateful for that: with love, it WILL be okay, even if the world literally crumbles down all around us.

TK and Baby Jesus

It's Christmas time, and 3.5-year-old TK -- the daughter of a lapsed-Lutheran, questioning-Unitarian mother; the granddaughter of two Lutheran ministers; the child, by birth, of a country that has embraced Christianity and Islam and animism in neighboring regions -- is trying to understand Jesus.

Jesus. That little baby born in oh little town of Bethlehem, away in the manger, no crib for a bed. Angels-we-have-heard-on-high sang to him, and we-three-kings brought him gold and oil. The cattle were lowing, and Rudolph won't you guide my sleight tonight? Where's Santa?

Jesus. TK scrunches up her face and studies the nativity scene at her nana's house: the tall slender figures carved out of a dark wood; they look African. She's heard the story; her mama's told her many times, from many different angles. But the shepherd with the long staff bothers her. "He's trying to poke the baby Jesus' eye!" she cries, and moves him to the far end of the table. She gathers the others close around Jesus in the manger. They seem to huddle there, as if guarding each other from the cold of the world outside their circle.

Jesus. In a small Lutheran church in a small Iowan town, TK studies a stained-glass window over her aunt's shoulder, and wants to know if that long-haired person in the white robe is Jesus' mommy. Her mama explains that no, it's Jesus; some people think he had long hair. TK whispers back, "That can't be Jesus. He had brown skin. Like ME." She scans the congregation -- all descended from Scandinavia and Germany.

Jesus. TK leaves a plate of lasagna out for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, a mug of orange juice, a plate of cookies, and a drawing. "Do we leave something for Jesus, too?" She's not trying to cover her bases, to make sure she gets enough presents. She wants to take care of everyone, always. The lasagna is because she worried that Santa might eat too much unhealthy food in his travels across the world.

Jesus. Her mommy doesn't know, really. He might have just been a man, TK. What does "Immanuel" mean? "God is with us." Singing, "Christ the king was born today," she asks, "He was a king?" But her mommy isn't sure.

In the glowing light of the church on Christmas Eve, Grandpa Gerry, who is also Pastor Gerry, reads from John 1:5, "a light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it." TK's eyes sparkle in the flickering candlelight. She has thrown herself into snow angels, she has wrapped her arms around family members, she has jumped and danced and leaped and skipped. She is a light in a too-dark world.

Her mommy tries to be, too.

Jesus. TK wants a story as she falls asleep on Christmas Eve, tired, finally, after listening for reindeer hooves on the roof. "Once, the world was dark. But then a baby was born. . ." The ancient Greeks told the story of Pandora and her box -- and of what remained after sickness and sorrow had screamed into the human world. "Hope -- the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words and never stops -- at all." Light.

Hope.

Whales Singing

I have been dreading this moment all day -- this moment when I have to tell TK that our 46-year-old friend and neighbor -- and a father figure for TK -- has died suddenly in a running accident. My own sadness weighs me down; waves of horror at the randomness -- the unfairness -- of it all pummel me again and again. I feel nauseated.

I'm distracted as she chatters about her day in the pre-K room at Gold Creek -- who she played with, a silly story about the playground. Always, she asks me about my day. Always, she asks some specific question, like an adult would do: "What did a student do that was funny, Mommy?" She skips beside me, listening as I talk.

I can't bring myself to tell her the awful news I am carrying.

Finally, I stop in the middle of the sidewalk. I get down at her level; I look her in the eyes. "I have something sad to tell you. . ." I begin. And when I have told her, her deep brown eyes widen and then she murmurs, "That IS sad." I watch her, waiting for the cry of grief and anger that gripped me when I heard the news. But instead, Mitike furrows her little brow and straightens her back, and pulls from Greek mythology: "Who will go to the Underworld to get him?"

I love her. I love that she is nearly four and can barely understand the difference between imaginative story and reality. I love that -- if it were possible to trace Orpheus' path -- TK would volunteer the two of us in a moment. I gather her into my arms and murmur something about mythology and how our friend is actually, really gone.

None of us can comprehend that. The grown-ups in TK's life wander blindly through their days, stunned. Someone healthy -- and that GOOD -- can just. . .die? Someone with two young children, someone who was working to conserve forests, someone who was a good and kind neighbor and friend and father to everyone he met? Gone?

On the second day after we hear the news, TK's questions turn to the literal: Where is his body? Who will bury his body? What will happen to his body? I find these questions painful to answer, and I don't understand why. I grieve.

On the third day, TK calls from her perch on the potty in a restaurant bathroom stall, "Mommy, is he with Jesus?" I have no idea where she's heard that idea, though she claims she heard it from Nana.

"Some people believe that," I say, nodding.

"Do YOU believe that?" she asks, wrapping toilet paper around and around her little hand.

"I'm not sure," I answer.

"Is Jesus in the Underworld?" she asks.

On the fourth day, we discover our pet hamster has died. Normally, Katie and TK would be devastated; in context, the hamster seems even to them like a mere small animal -- and an old one, at that. I break the news to TK as we walk home from school, and she raises her arms to be lifted up. She's silent for a moment, gazing up at the mountains and the spruce and hemlock forests. "Mommy," she murmurs, "EVERYTHING dies." I hold her close, the tears rising in my eyes. "EVERYTHING. Even the trees."

Our friend worked to conserve trees. I've just written a poem about him in which I compared him to a rare yellow cedar tree. Tears begin to roll down my cheeks.

"Even the trees die, Mommy," TK murmurs again.

She doesn't ask more questions after that. She takes action, as only a nearly-four-year-old can take action. When our friend's 2-year-old son arrives in our house, TK wraps him in her small arms and good-naturedly vrooms his truck back and forth across the carpet with him, though she does not normally play with construction equipment. She works hard to make her little friend laugh, and when he announces -- out of nowhere -- his dad's name, Mitike nods encouragingly. She knows, somehow, how to listen -- and how to be gentle -- and how to love.

The morning after the memorial service, I am sitting alone on the couch in our living room, sipping coffee and remembering -- especially the moment I chose to share at the memorial, the moment about our friend's family and our family camping on Eagle Beach and listening to the humpback whales singing beneath the water's surface. I close my eyes. Often, I repeat to myself, "GONE." I still can't understand the word.

Mitike emerges from her bedroom, Purple Bear clutched close to her chest with one hand, and Horton the Elephant swinging from the other. She climbs onto the couch and cuddles close to me.

"What did you dream about, sweet girl?" I ask her.

"Whales," she says sleepily. "They were singing, remember, Mommy?"

No one is ever gone completely. That's why we hold our memories so tightly; that's why we tell stories, again and again. I do not know where our friend is -- but I believe in the human soul existing beyond our human bodies. Whales singing.

I know that we are not the only ones to have lost someone. I know he will not be the only one we lose. Already, in Mitike's little life, our friend is one among many who have died, including her birth mother -- he is just the first in her memory.

I am afraid of such a random, raw world. I am afraid of the finality of death. I am terrified to lose what I love.

TK cuddles closer, and I wrap my arms around her. "We just have to love each other and LOVE each other," she announces.

And so we do. Oh, we do.

Glimpses of Mitike, Aug.-Oct. 2010

Longings in a Fist-Sized Heart

On a sunny, perfect blue-sky day, Mitike and I are perched on the top of Gold Ridge, eating apple slices and “talking each other”, as TK would phrase it. We lean back on the pillows of our coats and stretch our feet toward a heather-covered precipice that would make TK’s nana nervous. The wind is warm on our faces, and we are both contentedly tired from the arduous hike up here (Mommy may be the most weary, since TK only walked about a third of the way).

And then, suddenly: “Mommy, I wish I grew in your tummy!” and she is sobbing. Great, heaving sobs – tears running down her face. I reach for her and pull her close, my own tears welling in my eyes.

“Oh, but TK, you grew in my heart!”

That used to work. Now, TK just cries harder and holds up her little fist: “But a heart is only THIS big! That’s not enough ROOM!” I immediately regret the science lesson of days ago.

Soon, I distract her with a lollipop I’d hidden in a pocket of my backpack, and she is on my lap, cuddled close. A juvenile eagle banks close to us, his broad brown wings spread in the wind, and TK points, laughing with joy. But my own fist-sized heart still hurts.

Days before, on the two-year anniversary of TK’s arrival home from Ethiopia, I swept her up in my arms and said, “Remember last year we had a party to celebrate your coming-home day? Everyone brought African food. Want to do it again?” And she burst into tears, sobbing, “I’ve ALWAYS been home! I’ve ALWAYS been here!”

We decided together not to have the party. It’s not about Ethiopia. TK’s proud to have been born in Ethiopia – she tells her friends about it often, and she loves to proclaim that Obama’s daddy was born “in the Kenya country next to Ethiopia”. She loves to read about Ethiopia, to practice the Amharic words we learned at Ethiopian Heritage Camp last summer in Wisconsin, to listen to Ethiopian music. But she wants simultaneously to have been with me every second of her life and to be from Ethiopia.

And I can’t give that to her (or to myself).

Know that, normally, my sweet child is the happiest, most spirited little girl imaginable. She is inquisitive and silly, serious and playful, empathetic and loving. She picks a blue and yellow “forgive-me-not” and runs to me, grinning, in love with a world that makes such perfect little flowers. She claps her hands with joy when “hand-sizer” (hand sanitizer) comes out in foam on her little hands. “Swing me higher!” she yells on the playground. “Mommy, Mommy, isn’t it GOOD to work time-part?” she asks me as we walk together in the woods on one of our new “stay-at-home” days. She laughs when her friend Nicky shows her a slimy stick on the beach. She swings her hips and claps her hands in time to her older sister Katie’s hiphop music.

She’s a happy girl – and a girl who carries sadness and longing deep in her little heart. What can I do, other than hold her close and remind her we’re together now? What can I do, other than stand with her on the mountaintop and be glad we’ve reached THIS place, hand in hand?

The Baby Duck and the Cat -- and Other Moments

Summer Glimpses of Mitike:

1. On a trip to Miss Effie's Flower Farm near my mom's Dewitt, Iowa, home, Mitike falls in love with a sweet little baby duck, which the flower farm owner is keeping as a sort of pet. Miss Effie has carefully extracted the baby duck -- whose name is Waldo -- from its cage and has let TK and I hold it, now she has carefully put the duck back where it will be safe from the farm's cats. My mom and I then happily wander into the flower gardens to begin filling our plastic milk jugs. Suddenly, we hear a panicked "MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!" I drop my milk jug and shears and run -- I've never heard panic like that in my child's voice. When I round the corner of the shed, I behold my child, gripping her curls with her hands, her brown eyes wide and following the chaos at her feet: a sleek black farm cat chasing Waldo (the baby duck) with obviously evil intentions. Somehow, I catch the cat with one hand and the duck with the other, and then return the duck gently to its cage. I feel a small hand in mine. "Oh, Mommy," Mitike says solemnly. "That cat opened the cage! The cat opened the cage and the duck got out." Her eyes well with tears. I nod, understanding she already feels bad enough. "That is an amazing cat," I say. TK sighs, "Yes."

2. Ali and I are talking in the front seat of the parked car, sharing a quiet moment before we get out to unload the groceries. From the car seat in the back: "Mommy? Aye-Ay?" One of us holds up a hand to tell her we'll be with her in just a moment. Our conversation is the intimate, beloved talk of two people who have been away from each other too long. Again, from the car seat in the back: "Mommy and Aye-Ay? Are you talking?" We aren't anymore. My hand's on her arm; she leans toward me to kiss me. From the car seat in the back: "Mommy and Aye-Ay? Are you loving?"

3. ME: TK, I'm so glad you're my child.
TK: Mommy, I'm so glad you're my mommy.
ME: Almost two years ago, I traveled all the way to Ethiopia to bring you home.
TK: I'm hungry. Could I please have a go-gurt?

4. Mitike examines her belly-button. "What is this for?" she asks. I explain about babies that grow in wombs, about cords that connect those babies to their mothers, about how once Mitike was connected to her birthmother -- to Amarech. "But not to you?" Mitike wants to know. I shake my head, and then wait. "Mommy, you never had a baby grow in you." "No," I tell her, "I knew I wanted to be YOUR mommy, and you were in Ethiopia." "Okay, Mommy. Want to see me bounce on this ball?"

5. We're suddenly far from Iowa, after visiting for almost three weeks. We're far from Colorado, after visiting there for two weeks. Now -- today -- TK and I sit on the edge of a glacial river, gazing up at Herbert Glacier. The rest of our family is exploring the edges of the forest here at the end of the Herbert Glacier bike trail. The two of us are eating almonds and resting. "Mommy," TK says suddenly, "Nana and Gerry could be here. And Aunt Katie and Adam. And everyone!" What does she mean? That we could share huckleberry ice cream right here, that we could cuddle close and listen to Nana's reading voice right here, that we could hear Aunt Katie's laugh and watch Uncle Adam walk barefoot through this glacial mud right here, that we could ask Gram to identify the purple flower growing here, that Grandfather could name the bird that just flew over our heads? I feel full and empty, all at once. I glance down at my child. "Mommy, glaciers are blue," she says.

"Where are you from, anyway?"

TK and I are in Iowa. Every summer, we travel to Colorado and then to Iowa to visit family. Every summer, our travel gets me thinking about home -- about where I'm from and where TK is from. Tonight, I sit on the stairs of my mom's deck in Iowa's hot humidity after everyone has gone to bed, watching the blackened sky flash with lightning, and I write to understand.

I am from this place. Iowa. I am from purple coneflowers, black-eyed susans, queen anne's lace, tiger lilies. I am from acres of undulating green corn and neatly rowed soybeans. I am from red barns and grazing cows, from green tractors with their enormous black rubber wheels. I am from brown-water rivers, toads in the mud, climb-able oak trees. I am from "Come in for supper!" and basketball games. I am from thunderstorms, billowing clouds, tornado winds.

No matter where I live in my life, no matter what experiences I add to this self, I am from Iowa. I grew here, from this dark brown soil, from these expanses of sky.

But what will my daughter say when someone asks, "Where are YOU from?" She was born in south-central Ethiopia, in the state of the SNNPR -- in a tukul shadowed by tall green false banana plants (enset). In her conscious memory, she is a southeast Alaskan girl from the temperate rainforest -- she dons her Xtra-Tuff rainboots and tromps through the forest searching for blueberries. In the summers, she is part Rocky Mountain girl, striding out up a rocky trail, collecting rose quartz, squatting to admire a paintbrush flower. She is also part Iowa girl, paddling at the front of a canoe on the Upper Iowa with a tiny paddle, munching on an immature ear of field corn, clapping at the "BOOM!" of thunder in a storm.

What other places will shape her? We may not always live in Juneau. Ali and I plan to teach abroad someday. In TK's heart, where will "home" be for her?

Last week, I stood in Gram's kitchen -- in Iowa -- stir-frying pork for dinner while TK perched on the counter beside me, concentrating hard on an avocado she was trying to chop with a butter knife. Mom and Gram sat in the next room in the rocking chairs, talking about the various homes in which they had lived when Mom was growing up. Suddenly my mom asked, "Sarah? What's your first response when you hear the question, 'Where is home for you?'" My emotions got tangled in my throat. I've been struggling to answer that question recently. All I could do -- in a true first response -- was gesture to Gram's kitchen. Here. Here is home.

But I didn't really mean that. If Gram sold her house today, it would be Gram who would still be "home" for me, just as it was my other grandmother -- not the farmhouse she traded for a condo -- who was "home" for me. My mother is "home", no matter what house -- or what city -- I need to go to find her. I'm from people, mostly -- more than places. I'm from Gram's full hugs, I'm from Grandma's sense of humor, I'm from Dad's observant eyes, I'm from Mom's listening ears.

I return from a walk along the cornfields' edge with my mom tonight, and TK (who had been playing with her grandpa Gerry) throws her arms around me in a sweet, full hug, "Mommy! You're home!" More than anything, I hope that is one way she answers when someone asks her adult self, "TK, where are you from, anyway?"

And maybe she will also say, "Ethiopia." Probably, she will also say, "Alaska." And maybe -- just maybe -- she will inhale and catch a whiff of Colorado sage; she will stretch her arms and sense the open promise of an Iowa sky.

Ethics 3.5

Mitike and I have come to the Juneau Arts and Humanities Center to watch her friend Carmen dance in the JDU dance recital. We settle ourselves excitedly into our seats, and we wait for the lights to dim and the show to begin. TK and Carmen are good friends in preschool; in her little hand, TK clutches a special toy she picked out to give Carmen after the show. But when it's time for Carmen's dance -- when all the little 4- and 5-year-old girls come twirling out in their black leotards and their blue clouds of tutus, my child begins to glower in the seat next to me. Anger rises from her like heat.

I lean over. "Are you okay?"

She mutters through clenched teeth: "Those blue dresses are UGLY!"

I'm so shocked I can't respond for a moment. My child never speaks this way. She's so empathetic, so kind, so loving. And the blue dresses are quite beautiful. I frown to myself, and then react with a stern whisper: "That is NOT okay, TK! That's your friend!"

TK tries to squirm out of her chair and begins to wail. I'm embarrassed. Why is she acting this way? I pull her firmly onto my lap, and prepare to mutter another stern whisper in her ear, when my Mama sense finally kicks in. On the stage, Carmen and the other little girls flutter around like blue butterflies.

"Sweet girl," I whisper to my daughter, "do you wish YOU had a blue dress like that? Do you wish YOU were on stage?"

And then she begins to sob -- great big tears rolling down her round little cheeks. "I want a beautiful blue dress!" she cries. "It's not FAIR that Carmen is four and I'm not!"

I hold her close, and we watch the show, and we even manage to congratulate Carmen at the end and hand her the toy. Carmen's mom and I quietly equalize everything by handing the girls identical frosted cupcakes, too, which fixes most problems. But I keep thinking about fairness -- about justice -- about ethics as my three-and-a-half-year-old struggles to understand them. . .

Like most preschoolers I know (and I know quite a few), TK believes everything in the world should be "fair". Out hiking in the woods, she wonders, "Mommy, wolves only eat bad rabbits, right?" On Memorial Day, when I try to explain all the U.S. flags on the veterans' graves in the cemetery, TK asks solemnly, "But they were all good guys, right?" When Easter rolls into our lives and TK wants to know why, I tell her the story of Jesus' death. "But that's not FAIR that they killed him!" she exclaims. "He was so GOOD!" (She is very satisfied by the justice of Jesus' resurrection). And one night at dinner, after listening as we discuss the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, TK asks, "Were the people who spilled the oil bad? Who did it? Will Obama put them in jail?"

Don't we all want glowing, absolute answers to those questions? Don't we all long for fairness -- for wars to be fought for just causes, for martyrs to die at the ends of truly evil people, for environmental disasters to happen because identifiable people committed identifiably heinous acts for which they can be punished?

Everyone above a certain age (possible three-and-a-half) knows: the world is not fair. Sometimes, you do have to wait until you're four so you can be in the dance class. Sometimes, deep-water oil rigs do break and millions of barrels of oil do spill out into the ocean.

But some of us believe the world IS capable of a little more fairness -- a little more justice. We fight for it, determined. I want to nurture that struggle within TK. I refuse to be the parent who merely shrugs and says, "Well, life isn't fair."

Last week, as Ali and I led a preschool storytelling class at Juneau's Fine Arts Camp, I attempted to narrate the story of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Ali played the ostracized reindeer with the weird nose; the ten preschool-age girls were supposed to be playing the other reindeer. But while their peers happily turned their backs on poor Rudolph and refused to let him join in any reindeer games, TK and another little girl refused. They cheerfully sabotaged my story's plot, extended their little hands to Ali, and pulled her into the circle.

Now THAT'S fair.

I just hope my child would have included an ostracized reindeer wearing a blue-cloud tutu, too.

Empathy Girl

Mitike loves the Winnie the Pooh stories. She loves Piglet's timidity, she loves Tigger's unbridled energy, she loves Eyeore's wry humor, she loves Pooh's eternal optimism -- and she loves the way Kanga nurtures everyone. For all these reasons -- and because she loves to go to plays -- TK was excited to attend the high school's production of "Winnie the Pooh" last night. But as we watched, my daughter's brow became more and more furrowed. The high school actors had chosen to portray Pooh as depressed, Eyeore as bitter and -- worst of all -- Kanga as an aggressive, tough-love kind of mama who yelled to get others' attention. At one point in the play, Kanga actually hit Pooh over the head multiple times.

"Oh, Mommy," TK whispered in my ear, "that Kanga is so MEAN. The real Kanga doesn't do THAT!" She couldn't stop talking about it. On the walk home from the play, as her brother imitated Tigger's bounce and her sister talked excitedly about hugging the actress who played Piglet, TK kept asking why "the pretend Kanga" had been so mean. Finally, I scooped her up and hugged her close. "I love you, my sweet empathetic little girl," I whispered.

I think I used to think empathy could be taught. I think I imagined a parent -- or a teacher, or a pastor -- could model empathy for others and then guide children to emulate the model. But I did not teach my child to have this large of a heart. Even when she was barely talking -- just home from Ethiopia -- she sensed when others needed comfort. At a friend's house when TK was barely 2, the friend's voice caught as she told a difficult story, and TK climbed down from my lap onto hers. She knew.

At Gram's last year, TK's uncle Adam needed a nap after the 12-hour drive from Colorado, so he laid down in his room. He said he heard the pitter-patter of little feet, and opened his eyes just enough to see that TK had come into the room and settled in a chair next to his bed. She wasn't waiting for him to play (though she adores him); she just wanted to "keep him safe", she told me later.

Who is this child, who looks at me so lovingly sometimes that my heart catches in my throat? When we receive a wedding shower invitation for Aunt Katie and Uncle Adam in the mail, TK asks if she can take it into the kitchen. I follow her, wondering, and find that she is hard at work with her purple-handled scissors, cutting out the photo of Katie and Adam. She taped it to her wall in her room, "so they won't be lonely". When I show TK the photo of my mom's friend Lori, next to the news story of Lori helping build a playground for kids who didn't have one, TK rests her chin on her hands and gazes at Lori's picture for several minutes. "I'm so glad she's here, Mommy," she says finally.

At bedtime every night, TK pretends that her "friends" -- the stuffed animals with whom she sleeps -- are crying. Each night, she asks me to make up little stories about why the friends are sad, and then we work to help the friends resolve those problems. This is TK's favorite part of our bedtime ritual: she teaches Purple Bear that he has to share his toys with Dumbo; she explains gently to Monkey that it's okay that Sally's small, and that it's not okay to make fun of her; she asks Soft Bear to please let Purple have a turn sitting on her lap. Always, TK ends the little talk with each "friend" with a hug and a reminder that she loves them. I know I've modeled that for her, but I'm still amazed: how lucky are those stuffed animals!

She has an innate sense of justice, I think. I wondered why she was taking a different stuffed animal to preschool each day, curious about whether she felt a strong attachment to any of them. "Oh," she said seriously, "I want them to feel special, so I'm giving them turns."

Her empathy extends -- possibly most importantly, in these days of enormous discovery about herself -- to herself. TK has struggled lately as she's begun to realize that her skin color and hair are not like mine. She's especially begun to struggle with the dawning realization that she did not, in fact, grow in my womb, but in the womb of her birthmother in Ethiopia. We talk about it often, trying to understand. One night, TK sighed an enormous sigh and then said, "Mommy, I understand. But. . . I think I'm going to tell myself a stretcher and say I grew in your tummy."

Denial? Maybe. But I think the real Kanga would agree that everyone needs a little comfort sometimes -- especially those special people who spend so much energy comforting everyone else.

TK the BICYCLIST!

TK got her first "big girl" bike today. . . She biked all the way from home to library and back -- exactly one mile!

In the Grumpy TK's Brain

TK: "Mommy, I missed you when I was being grumpy."

ME: "I missed you! Where WAS the nice TK?"

TK: "Oh, she was hiding in Grumpy TK's brain."

ME: "Why?"

TK: "She was kind of tired. But -- she's back now!"

Sillinesses

Who is this beautiful, wonderful child? How did I stumble upon a life in which this amazing little person slips her hand into mine and yells "Yay! It's a beautiful day!" She's weird and silly, serious and attentive, observant and absolutely given to the world of imagination.

She is a poet. She tells her her hands are kissing each other in her sweatshirt pocket. She gazes up at the kite we are flying and tells me the birds will be happier now. She cups my face in her two hands and gazes lovingly into my eyes -- with a grown-up kind of wisdom -- and says, "I love you, my mommy. I DO."

Her imagination is a whole world. I bask in the innocence of it, the intensity of it. She tests out ideas: "Maybe, when we catch the leprechaun," (her older brother and sister were making a leprechaun trap the night before St. Patrick's Day), "we can cut him up and eat him?" She consoles herself: when Ali shows up at the dentist, where TK is trembling in the chair because the dentist holds a drill and is talking about getting rid of the brown spot on TK's teeth, TK lets herself fall entirely into Ali's story that this dentist appointment is actually for Purple (TK's beloved little stuffed creature, who has just two prominent and very yellow teeth). In an attempt to make Purple feel better, TK agrees to let the dentist drill. Ali dutifully pretends to drill Purple's tooth.

For a sensible, rule-following little girl, TK's imagination knows few boundaries. She asks sometimes, "But is it REAL?", but she whole-heartedly believes in fairies, in gods and goddesses, in monsters, in the ability of her stuffed animals to talk and feel and listen, in magic. I revel in her widened eyes. I love to tell her stories at night -- I love the way she follows the narrative (better than many of my middle schoolers, better than some adults), the way she wants to talk about it afterwards. One night, I told her a story about a magic door that let us into my grandma's house, where TK got to meet my grandma (who died several years ago). The next morning, TK asked, "When the magic door opens again, we could have a cookie, right?"

Each morning, we talk to the "friends" -- the crowd of stuffed animals TK gathers close to her at night, carries out with her when she wakes in the morning, puts to bed at night. Each night, a different friend has a sorrow -- we are doctor and assistant, interviewing the small stuffed animal, delving into his/her issues (I do all the voices). When we go out during the day -- to school, or for a walk, or to the store -- TK tells me what the friends are doing -- why they can't come, too. Today, they were watching a movie; sometimes they are at the pool.

I'm not capturing her essence in these words. My words fail me. She laughs, and I think I have never heard a sweeter sound. She tells rambling, random stories -- attempting the narrative structure of her older siblings and of her two mothers -- and I love every silly word. "We are full of sillinesses!" she proclaims, and I want to just hug her close and love her and be amazed forever. She reminds me to imagine more, to laugh more, to spread my arms more to the world and proclaim its beauty.