spontaneous delight

so, i spent another day in the emergency room. the pain in my back was so bad last night i could not lay down and did not fall asleep until around 5:15 am. not so bad really except Q came down to the office day bed where i had fallen asleep at 6:15 am. i am making progress. i had an mri. i got more drugs. i’m starting back at work tomorrow and will be in nyc where i can hopefully see a spine specialist. things are looking up! (yes, if you’re wondering, i did just take a valium an hour ago)

so here’s what i’ve been mulling in my mind woe these many hours in medical and not so medical offices…

2009, started for me, in june 2008 when my former boss, a woman i respect and so enjoyed working with, told me that she had lost faith in the company we were working for. that night i went home and sobbed myself to sleep. that was the end of three very happy work years working with a small team of hard working, truly nice people. one more lesson in how quickly life can change. each day after that one has been brutal. no kidding around. every morning i woke to the marathon like job of hanging onto one job (as the financial world rocked, then came to a standstill, than sputtered until our division no longer existed) while i wrote my resume, called 15 headhunters, made appointments with 10 of them and watched the nightly news to hear how many new yorkers were out of work that month (70,000, 50,000 a month!) with that many less jobs to apply for and that many workers hitting the streets. laid awake many a night mulling those odds over and over. interview after interview i heard “oh, you didn’t graduate?” for the first time in my life this became important. employers were having to cull resumes anyway they could. when you get 200 resumes for one job you have to have a way weed out some of them. wake up run the job implode/job hunt marathon get home go to bed and wake the next time to the exact same thing. after three years in a job where we could where jeans and flip flops i had not a single outfit i could even where on a normal workday let alone and interview office. we had money in the bank but were panicked over what was coming and so i spent weekends at the outlet malls looking through the sales racks for fabulous interview clothes that would land me that job. and interview i did. in the city every other day. i went at it like my life depended on it. it did really. had my hair styled every other week. went to bed early, got to each interview early after having a nice meal in a good restaurant so that i would go in looking calm and like money. and at each interview working hard to come off as the girl who had it all together, sunshine and light and all of that, even as my life was in a tail spin. and hardest of all was the phone call to wide horizons. just as our social worker was writing up our home study, just as we had finished all of our interviews. we put our adoption plans on hold. another delay. i was numb. and then one day, as i was making christmas cookies with Q and several neighborhood children we had invited over, i received a call, i was offered a job. the children laughed and ran through the house and i said yes, yes, yes, i would love to come and work for you. luck. i had worked damn hard but so did the ten other top candidates and nothing but luck is really a factor at that level. someone’s gut instinct. they would have been just as right if they chose one of the other ten. this is new york. there are thousands of super talented wonderful people capable of doing the job as well as me.

so there was pressure. and the job was hard. for almost a year i didn’t see Q much and as for Y he was more like a long-suffering college roommate than a spouse, except that he never complained (ok, twice, yes twice in one year he said, while stirring a pot at the stove ‘i hate cooking’ twice. he’s a keeper, that’s all i can say) and he did everything in the house. he did the laundry, the shopping, the field trips the cooking and the dishes. i did none of it. it was necessary. i couldn’t learn the job and come home and do anything. i gained weight. i watched realty tv. i complained. but i was a miserable spouse. around october things started to change. i promoted someone to be my assistant. we finally finished getting our area, command central in running order. i began to leave at 5 pm. i saw Q for breakfast and for story time. 2009 may have started in 2008, but it was put to bed on december 31, 2009. it’s over.

i feel blessed to have gotten that job. we took our adoption plans off of hold. we redid the home study work and have an approved home study. on tuesday we go for our fingerprints and our dossier is almost done (we have to redo half of it because it’s outdated.) we are on much surer footing. we finally have enough money for all of our adoption costs including travel. we have reached a certain place on our journey.
i am deeply grateful for my husband and my son who have handled my extremely stressed out state for a year and a half with grace and wit. i am not worthy of them. they inspire me, literally every day to be someone i am sometimes not sure i can be. the best. they deserve it. and sometimes with their inspiration i feel myself reaching a level of happiness that i have read is somehow close to holiness.

and then there is you. all of you. even you that might be reading spontaneous delight for the first time. this blog has been a magical place in my life. the friendships i have begun as a result of our first conversations via e-mail and comments are as dear to me as friends i have known for decades. i don’t say that lightly. one day last year i received in my e-mail a photo of two children a sister and brother and i burst into tears for joy. sloppy wet snot and all just dripping on my keyboard. valarie’s children. we had not met. and yet the love i felt for her and those children after following her on her journey…there are words perhaps but i will be weaving them for many more years before i began to be able to grasp it. we did meet, because unbeknownst to Val or i for a year or so she lived 10 min from my parents. and so two weeks after valarie brought her children home i got off a plane with Q and called her and said, ‘wine, my moms house, now.’ and there she was and there they were. hugs, and tiara’s and ball. no words from the children, but shy smiles. later they spent an evening at my brothers and W rode a bicycle up and down the drive way for hours, only getting off because he was forced to sit down to eat with the rest of us. a few weeks later valarie and i were on the phone and W got on the phone because he had to tell me (me!) something. this time he had a few english words and some deep emotion and i heard through the receiver the sweetest voice in the world saying to me “bike, bike, bike, i got a bike!!!” oh the joy. the joy. i am blessed.

i met rebekah and her boys (husband included) when she came to my parents cabin in wisconsin (‘oh yes, we live close, we can come in the afternoon!) and then their they are. the sweetest family in the world pouring out of their car. their Quinn the spectacular immediately running up and asking about the irrigation system. oh joy. really spectacular and mathew, toddler wordless, but with feet to travel and that is what he did, up every hill (it’s all hills!) and yet somehow, when my mother took a curtain tie and literally tied him into his chair, he sat. amused at the tie device and we got to eat. and really ya gotta love parents who don’t mind someone’s mother tying to their kid to a chair. i get a nervous feeling in my stomach when i search the blog roll waiting to see THAT post. the one that will tell us all that little sister is coming. and she is coming home to two of the best big brothers in the world and parents who make love look so easy and sweet and true (i mean they camp as a couple and go to cafe’s and he reads the onion to her – ok i am jealous, but i still love them.) and then closer to home, thank goodness, christine and pete and the absolutely divine manny. i need a full post to write of meeting them but let me just say a couple things. we were very late. missed our exit. we live close, closer than we realized and we left christine and manny sitting in their car IN A GAS STATION PARKING LOT for like an hour (could have been more, i’m blocking it out to save myself the trauma) but when we pulled into the gas station they looked like it was all cool. like they weren’t in a hot sweaty car with a preschooler in the back seat but like they were in a cafe, in italy, on vacation, watching the people stroll by and hey, is that you? nice to meet you? really amazing. but even more charming was watching my son respond to this boy who may be the age of the child we adopt. our Q who spent the first twelve months staring at us blankly, we called him buster for buster keaton because his stare was so intense and so dead pan and he never uttered a syllable, unless you call the endless wail of colic a syllable but honestly i don’t think you can…and then at twelve months he just started talking. one day it was dada, the next mama and literally a few weeks later in a cafe he said from his stroller “cappuccino pease!” (OK, yes, i have a caffeine problem) and he has not stopped talking since. he wakes without fail between 5:30 and 6 AM and he starts. he continues until bedtime and has frequently fallen asleep in mid sentence. a few weeks ago he was standing a few inches from my face at 5:15 in the morning. i wear an eye mask to sleep in but i could feel his warm breath on my nose. we have a rule that if you don’t ‘need’ us (no nightmares, or other needs) you should sit in your bed with your books and your buddies (dozens of animals each with a history and a complicated emotional life) until 5:30. but this day it was 5:15 and i knew it wasn’t a night mare or a cuddle he needed because then he just crawls right into bed. a moment after i felt his breath on my nose i feel the corner of my eye mask be pulled up and i see him through one eye, his bright brown eyes totally awake, ready, curious ‘don’t worry,’ he whispers to me ‘i’ll do all the talking.’

and so i wondered how this meeting with manny who i knew was a wordsmith himself would go. and what did i discover for the very first time ever? my boy, my sweet loving, soon to be big brother boy, can listen. not just be quiet but listen, and be charmed, see the charm in a boy younger than himself. while we were lost on the highway Q asked how old manny was. i told him 4. Q replied “oh no. those 4 year olds, they can really talk.”

i have not yet worked through all of my emotions at finding this community in such a way. it is at once so lonely, writing into the night, long after i should be asleep, and yet the next day there you are.
in all of 2009 it was you, all of you, who commented, and e-mailed and in sweet moments of magic, actually changed your plans so that we could meet in person, who wove joy through my life on a daily basis, during one of the most difficult and stressful years of my life. thank you. a million times over. i wish each of you peace. why peace. i’ve been thinking of what to wish every one of you. i’ve decided on peace. because no matter what 2010 brings you i know that peace is possible. i know because you brought it to me in 2009. it is possible.

and my word for the year. joy. and family. i have neglected mine, but i can now look back to them that have rowing this little family forward for a year and i can pick up the ores and join them. tonight i cooked dinner AND cleaned up! this year i concentrate on bringing joy to my life every single day. how is the question. it’s going to be a work in progress, i’ll keep you posted. i’m thinking the Valium is only a short-term solution.

my first attempt is this. i will wake up 15 min early and start the day with a short mediation. just me, on my own. i normally wake at 5 AM, but tomorrow it will be 4:45. i’ll let you know how it goes.

happy new year. peace.