Thursday 6 September 2012

A letter to our son

Darling son,

Though we can't yet be with you physically, in every other way you are a huge part of our lives. We think about you constantly, talk to you a lot of the time, and have begun to see the world through your eyes. How wonderful a ladybird seems, or a butterfly, or the dog chasing her tail! We imagine you laughing when you see that. And we've seen pictures of your laugh, and can feel it expanding all our cells, opening our hearts with joy. Here is the little altar of things we have been gathering and making whilst we wait, somewhere we can focus on as we dream you into our lives. (At the back there is the 'count-down calendar' until we meet you.) We are busy creating a nest of love for you to come in to, and we can't wait to welcome you.

With love, and more anticipation than I can possibly begin to convey,

Your mum and dad xxxx

Tuesday 4 September 2012

Every day angels

September, September. I love this time of year, the feeling of potential it engenders. As we move towards Autumn Equinox towards the end of the month, the earth's energies are turning inwards, preparing us for the quiet, reflective and still winter months. But I always feel energised and enlivened at this time of year. Perhaps it's something to do with it being the traditional back-to-school time, but I want to embark on new projects, learn something exciting and actively engage with things again. I woke at about 7am this morning to a world shrouded in mist, with a sun earnestly trying to break through. The garden was covered in cobwebs sparkling with dew, something I hadn't seen in a long time. It took my breath away, the natural world on the cusp of change like this, and I welcomed in a new season, a new chapter.

On my drive up the seemingly deserted road, I spotted a woman who we've met a few times through the workshops we hold. She's always bright and bubbly, and I liked her immediately when we first met. This morning she'd come out to take a few photos of the mist hugging the sea. She asked about the adoption, as she'd followed our journey over the last couple of months through our sporadic chats. I explained where we're at, told her about yesterday's debacle, and ended by saying the stock phrase I expect everyone to say; "we'll get there in the end". So many people have said this to me that I had begun saying it myself. "Yes, you will," she smiled. "But in the meantime, it's really really frustrating for you, isn't it?" I wanted to get out of the car and hug her. Sometimes it means so much just to have your feelings validated, not to have someone brush them under the carpet with cliches like "you'll get there in the end", but to really engage with what it might feel like. As I left her with her camera, I glanced in my rearview mirror and smiled and smiled like a loon at her. Thank you, I hope my smile said. Thank you for really being just who I needed to see this morning.

On the subject of every day angels, I wanted to tell a story about my brother-in-law's mum. A few days after I'd written a post about feeling invisible as an adoptive mum, she came up to me when I was on my own in my sister's kitchen. She put her arms around me. "Congratulations, mum-to-be," she said. And those words meant more to me than I can say.

All those every day angels, thank you. And today you have inspired me to try to be an every day angel too.

Monday 3 September 2012

Bring in the lions - the hoop-jumping continues...

After a weekend of manically putting up fencing in the garden and guards on just about everything in the house, we had our health and safety assessment this morning. Bearing in mind this was first done many months ago, and we passed at panel on 11th July, it feels uncannily like we're going backwards now.

Everything was poked and prodded. We were advised to box up all the lower shelves of books and put them in the loft: "toddlers like pulling things off shelves". A further fire guard must be purchased - one that sticks out into the room, all windows and the French doors must be covered in a kind of sticky-back plastic "in case he hits a toy hard against the window". The pantry must be gated off, and the cats and dog are now to have their food behind a gate. The fencing we've put up everywhere in the garden must be another foot higher. And most ludicrously of all, the whole patio must be surrounded by a high fence - "advisable until he's at least 8 or 9".

I struggle with this kind of nanny-state-ism. Our parents or grandparents didn't grow up in these cotton wool kind of environments. Children learn through their environment, they have to be able to assess dangers and risks or they grow up fearful, unable to make decisions for their own safety. One of my favourite parenting books is 'The Continuum Concept' in which Liedloff describes how children in indigenous tribes in the jungle allow their children to be active decision makers and part of society. Yes, we must protect our children, but we can't keep them in a padded cell so that they have no experience of real life. If real-life environments were as dangerous as these social workers were making out, the human race would have died out a long long time ago.

It led me to reflect on some of the greatest adventures of my own childhood, free from parental 'guidance', in a lovely garden called The Chase that belonged to family friends. This vast kingdom was the most wonderful playground, filled with hidden dangers, banks to scramble up or down, different levels, little mildewed steps through overhanging trees, rope swings, and - best of all - an old beaten up truck half hidden by vegetation which my friends and I would delight in climbing all over. Think of some of our favourite children's literature - 'Swallows and Amazons', 'The Secret Seven', 'My Family and Other Animals' etc. etc. (there's so very many) - all of which involve adventuring and assessing risk. We are doing our children a disservice by creating safe, sanitised worlds with no opportunity to explore, to engage with the environment, to make choices. I know children who have been brought up in this kind of way and, without exception, they are all terrified of the natural world. They check over their shoulder to get confirmation from their parents before they try anything. They have no faith in themselves, in their own capabilities.

We discussed further what was going to happen from here. One of the SWs visiting is going to be away on 26th September, so the next matching panel date we might be able to get is 10th October. To be told 12 days before your matching panel date that it is going to be cancelled, and then told it won't be for another month makes the blood boil. Neither R or I want to kick up a stink as we want to keep them on our side but oh! how I wish our SW hadn't had to go on leave. By now we'd have just 11 days until we met our son. Instead, we had his SW telling us today just how much he'd changed - "every time I see him, he's changed so much! He's pushing himself up to crawl and we think he'll probably race through the crawling stage and go right on to walking soon." We want to witness these changes. We just want to bring our son home now or, at the very very least, meet him. Let's hope he gets to come back here before his 1st birthday, they said today. Yes, let's hope, we thought, but hey, the ball's in your court, you've got the power here.

Frustrated. Powerless. And living in a house that vaguely resembles Fort Knox.