Afraid of Monsters -- Vignettes

1. TK runs pell-mell through the living room, paraphrasing Maurice Sendak in a loud shout: "I AM A WILD THING!" She bares her teeth and wrinkles her nose; she raises both of her little hands in claws. I pretend to be afraid. Ali always jumps up on the couch and mock-screams. Tim shrieks like he's seen a rat. Katie laughs. The Wild Thing, who never goes without her dinner, giggles and then bares her teeth at us again.

***

2. When I turn out the light at 8:32 p.m., TK, after an entire day of being the sweetest girl imaginable, turns into a monster, yelling "NO!" and thrashing around on her bed and screaming "I will NOT go to bed!". I calmly tell her I'm going to the living room until she becomes my sweet girl again; she proceeds to sob uncontrollably and beat her legs and arms against the bed. This continues for ten minutes (while I'm in the living room, trying in vain to have a half-way normal conversation with Tim about the Greek gods).

Then: "Mommy?"

I move to stand in the doorway. "Yes, TK?"

"I'm all done being a monster."

And I snuggle into bed with her, and she nestles close, and I inhale her non-monster scent of olive oil and almond butter lotion, of crayons and cupcake batter.

***

3. I burst through the door of Gold Creek, TK's preschool/daycare, and sweep TK up in my arms. We smile at each other, in love. Then I read the note her teachers have taped to her locker: "Mitike bit another child today." I read it again; I sense TK watching me read it. I meet her eyes. "You are a little girl. NOT a creature. I'm not happy." That's all I say to her, but she bursts into tears, and we walk in silence the entire way home. Her teachers told me the other child was aggressively trying to pull a toy away from TK, that TK -- who is incredibly articulate for her age -- must have panicked and resorted to biting. But I want to teach my daughter never to resort to violence. The silence is serious; it walks between us; TK keeps her little head down. She knows.

At the corner before our house, I stop and lift her up in my arms. I tilt her chin up so her eyes meet mine. Oh, her poor eyes are brimming with tears. "Mitike, my little monster," I say gently, "I love you, no matter what. Okay?"

She nods, and says seriously, "Mommy, next time I'll use my words. I'm so sorry."

We stand in the rain and hug, and then we walk up the hill singing a silly song we learned from a book about a lizard: "Zoli, zoli, zoli, rock is my home, rock is my home, zoli, zoli, zoli." And my little monster looks so happy, singing in the rain, her little arms wrapped around my neck.

***

4. "Mommy! There are monsters on the walls!" TK clutches the covers and points fearfully at the far wall, where her nightlight casts strange shadows.

"Those are just shadows, sweetheart," I mutter sleepily.

"They're bugs! They're bugs, Mommy!" She begins to cry, covering her head.

I stand up and pretend to shoo away bugs. "Go away!" I shout, and then glance back at TK, who is nodding solemnly. I snuggle back into bed with her.

"Sing me a song, Mommy," she murmurs in the shadowy darkness.

***

5. We attend the high school production of "Little Shop of Horrors," which is -- incidentally -- far more horrible than the movie version. I murmured "it's just a puppet, it's just a puppet" into TK's ear the entire show, but she seems a bit shaken when the lights go up at the end (so does our 9-year-old, Tim). "Mommy," she says, her eyes round saucers, "that plant ATE people. That's not okay."

***

6. "Mommy," TK asks me one day as we drive to her daycare, "when you're at work, who keeps YOU safe?"

***

7. TK and I chase each other back and forth across the kitchen and living room, pretending to be monsters, "rawrring each other", as TK calls it. She stops and looks up at me, sudden resolution shining in her dark brown eyes. "Mommy! We just need to stare into their yellow eyes, Mommy," she explains, quoting Sendak again. She grins and grabs the soccer ball. "No more monsters! Want to play this game now?"

Discussions About HAIR (Etc.)

"Can I touch her hair?" the white middle-aged woman wearing only a pink towel asks me in the pool locker room. She stares almost hungrily down at my daughter's spiraling, sproingy black curls. I look at Mitike. "Do you want the lady to touch your hair?" I ask my 2-year-old daughter. Mitike shakes her head. NO. The stranger looks abruptly embarrassed and moves away. I lean in close to TK and whisper, "Remember: you never have to let anyone touch your beautiful hair." She nods solemnly, watching with relief as the lady moves away.

I never knew -- before I became the mother of an Ethiopian girl -- how much attitudes about hair can reveal our culture's attitudes about race. As I google new hair products to make TK's tangles easier to comb through and to make her curls bouncier and shinier, I find a raging debate in the African American community: should black hair be left natural or should it be straightened chemically? Which style shows the most pride in being black? Which style shows submission to dominant white culture? A recent Time magazine article (Sept. 7, 2009) recounts the rampant discussion about Michelle Obama's hair -- the black community argues about what style exhibits the most pride; the white community marvels "How does she change its length and its waviness all the time like that?"

I live in an Alaskan community that, while diverse, has few African or African American people. Mitike's hair is rare, and a curiosity. Other children reach out to touch it; adults behave the way the woman at the pool did. Mitike looks at me with her brow furrowed and says, "Mommy, how about you are the only one who touches my hair?"

But my own fingers barely know what to do. Before TK's curls began to grow long (and tangle), I read and read on blogs and websites -- and even in books (proof of my quest to know!) -- about how to care for African hair. I bought organic products that contained olive oil and honey, shea butter and cocoa butter, lemon grass oil and coconut oil. I followed prescriptions from strangers -- spray with water first, then put some olive oil in, then follow with a leave-in conditioner; wash it with shampoo once a week. I was determined not to be like the white mama of a little African American girl in TK's daycare, who was stopped in the Seattle airport by two well-meaning African American women who shook their heads and said, "You do NOT know what to do with that girl's hair."

I've had moments of pride: a woman in Denver stopped us on the sidewalk (my heart caught) and praised TK's "natural" hair; an Ethiopian woman in Seattle nodded at me with approval and then greeted TK with "Look at your beautiful hair!"; a presenter on racism at an August inservice shook her beautiful dreadlocks and told me her pride in her skin color has come partly from the decision she's made to have natural hair -- she complimented the way I nudge TK in that same direction.

Thank you. But what do I do with the way her curls knot and tangle together when she wears her beloved purple stocking cap all day? And should she cry as much as she does when I do the weekly combing of those lovely curls (with half a bottle of the supposedly magic detangler worked into her hair)? And if I let her hair dread, how do we return to curls eventually -- cut it all off? And what will I do if -- like one of my middle school students, who is also adopted from Ethiopia -- she succumbs to the perceived standard of beautiful hair and begs me to let her straighten those beautiful curls chemically? How can I get support for her hair in a community that doesn't even sell shampoo for her (I have to order everything online and pay to have it shipped to Alaska)? How do I counsel her to believe her hair is beautiful? How can I teach her to respond politely to the people who want to touch it -- even if it's out of well-meaning curiosity?

I know it may seem strange to spend so much time thinking about hair. . . but this white mama is beginning to realize that hair discussions are the surface conversations on a vast ocean of discussion about race. In this community -- a community of "white" hair, Native hair, and Filipino hair -- Mitike's sproingy curls are a beautiful curiosity. In other communities, her unstraightened wild locks shout pride in her African heritage. In still other communities, her unruly black hair represents ugliness or -- worse -- inferiority. The presenter on race -- the one with the beautiful dreadlocks -- smiled at me gently and said, "Her hair will be so important." I'm beginning to understand what she meant.

This morning, as I sprayed TK's hair with water, then worked in organic olive oil leave-in conditioner (made by Africa's Best, sold by Amazon.com for $4.99/bottle), then hydrated the back curls -- the ones always submerged under her stocking cap -- with Olive Oil and Honey Balm (made by Quemet, sold by that company for $14/container), then used TK's favorite dark purple sparkly headband to keep her curls back from her face, I whispered -- as I do every morning -- "Look at those beautiful curls!" She smiled at me, and then bared her teeth and yelled in her best imitation of Maurice Sendak's Max (from "Where the Wild Things Are"), "I'M A WILD THING!" and leapt off the stool.

For now, I think, our conversations about hair will be mostly about what color of sparkly band she wants to wear each morning. I'll guard these deeper topics in my heart -- for when my beautiful-haired little girl is ready.

Two Versions of Morning Hair in Our Family

Belated Reflections on My Sweet Little Pain-in-the-Bum

I've been meaning to sit down and write about August 29, the one-year anniversary of TK's homecoming to Juneau -- but I haven't gotten to it until now. I had planned to write a sentimental, moving reflection on our sweet connection, on her generous and open spirit -- but on August 29, she happened to be a pain-in-the-bum (we don't say "butt" in our house) toddler: tantrums about nothing, screams of "NO!" at every juncture, refusals to apologize, grabbing, etc., etc. I don't even remember now, two weeks later, what we fought our small battles over that day, but at the end of the day, which included a party in which all our friends and their kids came to our house to celebrate Tk with a potluck, I was GLAD when she fell asleep. Most days, I feel a twinge of sadness -- the sense that we don't have enough hours together in the day. Not that day. Monster TK forced Monster Mama to emerge, regardless of the fact that it was the first anniversary of her homecoming from Ethiopia.

It wasn't until a week later, when our family went to Labor Day family camp out in Echo Cove, that I sat down to write after TK had fallen asleep in the cabin. It was evening, and the ocean's gentle rhythm soothed me as I thought about the day. TK had been fully herself, no monster in sight -- it had been a day of her giggling and snuggling with me while we read books on the couch (our Saturday morning ritual), of her traipsing along the path at Twin Lakes and then shouting "THE RED SWING IS STILL HERE!", of her kicking her legs with glee while we ran around the playground chasing Tim and Katie, of her sweet "Find me, Mommy!" in the clothing store, of her absolute joy at the pink milk I made her for naptime. She donned x-Tra Tuffs for our walk out to this cabin -- 2.5 miles -- but rode in the baby carrier most of the way ("Because I need you, Mommy!"). When I handed a grape fruit leather back to her mid-walk, she clapped her hands and exclaimed, "For me? Thank you, Mommy!" That night, at the campfire with the other kids at family camp, she roasted a marshmallow though her eyes looked exhausted, and now she was sweetly asleep, nestled beneath my sleeping bag, dreaming. THIS was my sweet little girl -- the pain-in-the-bum tucked away again.

Does she ever dream of Ethiopia? Of the tukul in which she was born? Of the orphanage? Of the cacophony of sound in the early morning? Of the gentle mist above the rounded green mountains? I dream of our long plane ride to Juneau a year and a week ago, the two of us facing each other in the cramped plane seat, trying to understand each other, inspecting each other. She learned to say "Yay!" first in English because I responded with that word most often when we played together. I learned before the plane landed in Rome that I wanted to hear her laugh again and again and again, my whole life. I never knew a mother-daughter story could be a love story.

What will I tell her about that journey from her birth country to her adoptive country, which my mom (who I cannot thank enough for accompanying me on that journey) and I talk about and talk about, trying to understand it? We stood in line for over an hour at customs in D.C., and I was exhausted -- she clung to me. In a rush before the next line, I knelt on the floor to change her diaper and -- naked -- she peed an impressive arc of liquid straight up into the air and all over my pants. We caught each other's eyes and then laughed until we both cried.

Ali met us just past customs, a purple iris clutched in her hand. TK knew she'd love her other mommy almost immediately -- two or three games of hide-and-seek behind Mommy's shoulder and she was convinced. Later, she'd bang the iris happily on the window until it disintegrated into pieces. She chanted happy syllables that sounded strange to us -- and were probably unintelligible even to an Amharic speaker.

Ali captured TK's actual arrival in Juneau -- August 29, 2008 -- on film: TK in brown pajamas, happily exploring her new house, a Barbie ball (way go go, diversity-sensitive mamas!) clutched in her little hands. What the camera missed was TK's first reaction to the house, the way she scrambled to get down from my arms when we walked through the door (though she'd clung to me for two straight days). Somehow, she knew this was her home.

The truth is, I can't process how much I love this little person, or how lucky I know I am to have her in my life. In a strange way, I appreciated her stinker-face-ness on her homecoming day -- it kept me from dissolving into tears all day, from gathering her close to me and just hugging her, not letting go. How did all of this wonderfulness HAPPEN? How did I receive such a beautiful life? I ask myself that often -- and not just about Mitike.

I had to actually raise my voice at TK on August 29, something that would have horrified the glowing new mommy who held the baby-toddler a year ago on the Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Adaba to Rome to D.C. But that glowing mother was still new; she didn't know more than a glimmer about who sat on her lap during that flight. I know her fully now. Every once in awhile, she's a little monster -- a little pain-in-the-bum -- but MOSTLY, she is an amazing little person, full of laughter, silliness, empathy, generosity, intuition, curiosity, and full deep love. This mommy -- a year and two weeks later -- knows what she's in for. . . and I'm so entirely grateful.

A Year Ago Today: Meeting Mitike for the First Time

August 22, 2008: My mom and I wake at 5 a.m. to the Christian Orthodox call to worship -- the waking sounds of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A half hour later, the muezzin calls the Muslims from the mosque's minaret -- the dogs start barking -- traffic noise begins -- Ethiopian pop music blares from the construction site across from our guesthouse. If I'd been a mere traveler, I'd have soaked all these sounds into my being and reveled in what the rising sun revealed: the gentle roll of distant green mountains, the cacophony of color and shape in the buildings crammed beside ours, the glimpse of a solitary man herding goats down the stone-paved street. But I had come to Ethiopia to be a mother -- to wrap my arms around a little girl whom I would meet for the first time in a few hours. My heart hammered.

August 22, 2009: I wake at 5 a.m. on a rainy morning in Juneau, Alaska, to read and write for awhile before Mitike wakes -- this is my only quiet time, my only time for reflection. I stay up late to plan my lessons and grade papers -- the day in its fullness is entirely Mitike's. I'm jealous of this time. I need it. In just under two hours, a little voice will interrupt my quiet -- "Mommy!" I need this time to reflect right now about this whirlwind year, about the impossibilities that brought me together with the beautiful little person sleeping in the next room right now.

August 22, 2008: The first day, she turned away from me and just cried -- quietly, sadly, desperately. She was 19 months old, clad in a ridiculously frilly dress, white tights and black patent leather shoes -- the orphanage nannies must have felt this was the best presentation. She sat on the carpeted orphanage floor with her legs splayed in a "V", toys gathered protectively in that space. The social worker told me gently that I needed to go slowly -- unlike the other American parents, who had been encouraged to play actively with their children (beside me, one mother tossed her new son in the air; another father pushed a truck back and forth with his new daughter). Mitike observed me from the corner of one eye and began to weep, reaching for the social worker. I sat beside her for hours, making futile efforts at connection: blowing bubbles, building legos, balancing toys on my head. The orphanage was loud -- children crying, screaming, parents over-enthusiastic at their attempts at connection. Mitike just cried -- or tried to move away. The adoption agency videotaped those initial meetings -- I've watched it only once. I look so hopelessly eager! And nothing worked. Mitike refused the connection. Later, in the guesthouse, amid the other parents' excited talk, I cried.

August 22, 2009: She's just woken -- briefly. It's 6 a.m. I rush to her -- she's crying the hiccupy cry of bad dreams, but her sadness is that Bunny has fallen from the bed and the covers have been pulled off. I move her to my bed, where she falls asleep again. Or is it possible that we are so connected now that she feels my re-creation of that first meeting in the Addis Ababa orphanage? She can't remember, but. . . Mitike's brain constantly amazes me. In her 2-year-old way, she's been working through her understanding of adoption lately -- telling the story of how she was crying in her tukul (partially true -- symbolically true) and Mommy and Nana heard her crying and came and got her in the big white airplane. This week, though, she's added a new piece to the story. "One time," she says, "you were little, Mommy, and I was your mommy, and you said, 'I need Mommy!' and I was there." Strange. . . but beautifully accurate in its own way. I didn't grow up until I was Mitike's mommy. I needed her just as much as she needed me.

In that first full day in Addis Ababa, which is a blur of raw emotion to me now (what else did our group do, after we left the orphanage -- our children still there for two more days until the embassy appointments?), I couldn't see past my worry and doubt and sadness to dinner, much less to the future. I couldn't have known that a year later, it would feel like Mitike had always been my daughter, that I had always been her mother. I couldn't have known that she would wake from sleeping to kiss me gently on the cheek and murmur, "You're my friend, Mommy." I couldn't have predicted the absolute joy of parenting her, of how amazing of a little person she is -- pointing out the color purple every time she sees it ("Purple car! Purple sweater! That lady has a purple purse!"), clapping her hands in absolute delight when we blow bubbles outside, writing notes to Nana with great seriousness and concentration, singing the "ABC" song at the top of her lungs or singing "Rain, rain go away, come back another day. If you don't, WE DON'T CARE! We will buy more UNDERWEAR!"

That first day in Addis, I just felt utterly lost. But so did Mitike. And maybe that shared darkness of confusion was the seed for this deep connection we have now. Most mornings, when Mitike wakes up, she declares, "It's LIGHT time!" She and I live in that light time now -- but there's sacredness in remembering what came before. It reminds me to cherish every moment with her now -- even as I savor these last early-morning minutes of quiet. Just a year ago, "Mommy!" never interrupted my mornings. I forget that sometimes. Come, interruption. This is the anniversary of you. . . and I am so utterly grateful.

Clouds: a Poem for Mitike, Iowa and Gram

Gram, who is 93 and both playful and wise,
says your facial expressions are like the fleeting clouds
in the vast blue Iowa summer sky

-- drift -- change -- drift -- change --

the storm arrives in a clash of thunder, flash
of lightning, rain pummeling earth to drowning
and then soft: white, fluffy shapes float
in cool air to become billowing dragons and houses
and cars my sister and I watched once from our farm's lawn;
and when we looked again the sky was a cultivated field
with cloud rows glowing golden in the late afternoon sun.
Later, the clouds themselves would be mirrors for the sun's goodbye:
purple, rose, orange, deep blue, violet, yellow -- then dim --
then stars.
We could see them, still, when we chased fireflies at the corn's edge:
the wisps of cloud wandering the Milky Way's long winding road

-- drift -- change -- drift -- change --

Gram perches on her kitchen stool and tells me the story
of how her father kept bees on their southeastern Iowa farm,
of how sweet the honey tasted. I try to imagine Gram as young as you,
short pudgy legs hidden by the long meadow grass, a purple clover
clutched in tiny hands. Now she sprawls onto her back to delight
in the way the clouds drift across the inverted bowl of sky

just as she delights in your raised and lowered eyebrows,
the flash of frustration, the sudden hearty laugh, the sweet smile,
the wonder of her African great-granddaughter whose laughter
is as sweet as Iowa clover honey

We'll keep our eyes open, and think of Halle Berry

I'll write about race. I'll write about skin, about color, about the way our eyes see. I'll write my understandings and my confusions -- so that, someday, I can help Mitike muddle through her own.

Vignette: Mitike and I are playing at the playground in Vanderveer Park, next to my mom's church in Davenport, Iowa. TK's poised to zoom down one of the slides; I'm laughing at the funny face she's making. She is my little girl; I'm her mommy -- neither of us ever think otherwise anymore. But then I see the graffiti scrawled in black Sharpie across the top of the slide, just above TK's sweet little head: "White people suck." A shout from the other side of the playground distracts me: two teenage boys, both Afrian American, straddle dirt bikes. They stare. I stare back. TK calls impatiently, "Watch me, Mommy! Watch me, my mommy!"

Vignette: Mitike and I sit next to my mom in church. The contemporary band is playing, and TK is clapping happily along, oblivious to what my more grown-up eyes see: hers is the only brown face in the congregation, hers is the face at which the white-blond-haired children in the congregation stare. She and my mom are also the only people clapping, which may be most serious of all.

Vignette, from six months ago: Mitike and I are enjoying our milk and coffee at an outdoor bakery-cafe in Oakland, California, where we're visiting my friend Sarah. A matronly, well-dressed woman approaches us, asks if Mitike is Ethiopian. I'd become accustomed to the question in this neighborhood, which boasts a large Ethiopian population. Sometimes, strangers assume TK is my biological daughter with an African American man, but people who know Ethiopians recognize the unmistakable eyes, the delicate curve of the jawbone, the coffee-with-a-drop-of-cream hue of skin, the looser curl to the hair. I nod. "I thought so," the woman says. She is African American, by the way -- not Ethiopian -- and, though that does not matter in most cases, it does matter to this story, because she goes on to tell me something serious. "She'll have a hard time sometimes in her life," the woman says, nodding, even as she plays with TK's fingers a bit, coaxing her to smile. "I heard an interview with Halle Berry, and she said her mama told her it's OTHER people who tell you you're 'black' and makes it negative, it's not you. You've got to get past what THEY say." The woman looks at TK and then looks deep into my eyes. "She'll get through it, though. You raise her with enough confidence, and she'll get through it."

Vignette: I am holding TK on one hip while we look at the family photos in my grandmother's hallway. Gram displays a photo from every year, starting in the year when my mother, the oldest, was a baby. TK begins to cry sadly. "But where's TK?" I hold her close. "Right here, baby, right here with Mommy." We leave the photos and go downstairs to the living room, where Gram has proudly displayed photographs of her Ethiopian-Alaskan great-granddaughter. TK is smiling now, and then she has rediscovered the wooden train and forgotten photographs entirely. I watch her play, half-amused by her sad insistence that she be present in every photograph (even the ones taken in 1956!) and in every story (". . .and TK!" she insists we add), and half-worried. How can I help her through her sadness when she realizes what it means to be adopted, when she realizes another family lacked the resources to care for her? And how can I guide her through her confusion when she realizes that her different hue of skin color will make some people doubt the depth of our real mother-daughter connection, that it will make some people judge her as less, that it will lead her into whole interactions and discussions and connections and disconnections with which I have had no experience and never will have experience?

How can I instill that confidence in her, how can I teach her to be strong enough to say she loves her color and her heritage, her adoptive family and her birth family -- and believe it?

She's napping right now -- one arm slung across her body, her little chest making the blanket rise and fall. When she wakes up, she always smiles her full smile to see me -- as if I am a gift she receives every time she wakes (every time, I'm overwhelmed, in love). Later, we'll go to the potty and she'll insist we look in the mirror together so she can point out that we both have brown eyes, that we both have a dark brown freckle on our foreheads. Someday, she'll notice we have different hues of skin. I keep reading adoption books to her -- picture books about bears that adopt yellow birds, hippos that adopt frogs, purple mommies who adopt little green children -- hoping she'll internalize the message the way she seems to be internalizing my message about her beautiful hair. "Oh, Purple Dolly," she tells her purple-haired doll, "you have such beautiful hair. I love it. We DO have to comb it, but just one time a week!"

But someday, her eyes will open more and she'll see more of what the world sees -- I can't protect her from that, like Halle Berry's mother could not protect Halle.

I want to be ready. I'm preparing myself, forcing my own eyes open though I sometimes want to close them and just see slides, with no graffiti.