Sunday, October 29, 2017

Dig Deep

Recently someone considered that though I might believe myself to love two children I didn't birth, that in actuality, they know that I don't.

When anyone poses an opinion with such resolve, I can't help but envision myself a student of Socrates.
Well? DO you love them as though you hefted their fetal weight around for 9 months and then upon their first breath, forgot you ever cursed the heavens for their foot in your rib cage?
How do you KNOW that you do?
Should you have to choose between them and your children, would the scales tip even minimally in your biological direction?
Are you sure?
Dig deep. Can you be honest with yourself?

6 years ago I wrote a letter to a little girl on her 1st death anniversary.

I told her about how I met her parents. How I thought her daddy was a woman (you'd have to read the original post), how her momma sat beside her as my world stopped and said:
Pay attention to this sleeping child. Pay attention to this moment in your life.
How she looked to me like a pleading cherub, tiny and delicate, palms open to the heavens and bowed head as she slept off chemo.

You can read in this letter how many times I referred to myself as a selfish heart. Keening with my youngest daughter in my arms thinking, 'it could have been my child!'.

From my very first sight of Jasmine, I loved her. In her there were atoms pulling at mine, reminding me that we all came from stardust and are intertwined in ways we cannot ever entirely fathom. That once we acknowledge and accept this, we cannot help but be anchored to each other for ever. While my mind thought selfishly about how SHE could have been MY child, my heart began to work on teaching me that I loved her as though she WERE my child.

Unfortunately this is a story that in order to imprint its lesson, had to end tragically.
Jasmine Uhl never actually spoke. At two and a half years of age she had more surgeries and hospital stays than most adults will have in an entire lifetime. While At/Rt stole from her the ability to communicate verbally, in no way did it rob her from speaking to those who knew her.
Grunts, facial expressions, screeches, giggles...smiles. She'd pat my face and turn it to her. Jasmine liked to look at you like she could see through you. Without asking, you knew she understood your words.
Somewhere on Facebook there's still a page to commemorate Jasmine. There's her own Facebook page too. I see her tagged now and again by one of the hundreds of people that heard her story or knew her in person. She touched each of them wordlessly.
But she changed me entirely.
She taught me to love things you cannot ever own.

I was nervous meeting Clara and Henry. They were the small children of a man I knew I would never be apart from. Loving him, I would automatically love half of each of his children. They deserved to be loved independently of their father however and I would watch them at their worst and at their best wondering: Can I love them? Am I sure? Dig deep.
Clara, green eyed Clara. She was so shy. She hid from me behind a recliner and her peeking face is still with me to this day. It would take me some time to learn that in her most blunt commentary she was simply genuine.
"Oh I see what you did! Instead of using REAL equipment you used TRASH to make those! It's so creative!" She stated after she saw me curing fondant over (CLEAN!!) pieces of foil and paper towel rolls.
Some days she is grumpy. She's not a morning person. She's not even a night person. Once she's too hungry or tired, she breaks apart pretty fast. I've picked her up and carried her to her bed, laid down and sung her to sleep when she's been too tired to go and too sad to do so alone. She's a lot like my Aeva, sometimes people confuse her. It's like Aeva, and not Iris, has a twin that somehow grew somewhere else in a different time.
Henry is ever joyous and loud and loud (did I mention loud??) and also he is loud! As a daddy's boy I didn't anticipate him being the most difficult of the two when it came to acceptance. He vies for daddy's time and attention like no other. Henry idolizes Ian in the sweetest of ways. Ever the right hand man, if Ian is working you can find Henry right next to him.
Or next to me. Learning Henry meant speaking his language. Letting him help in the kitchen endeared him to me. And perhaps... it endeared me to him. We work together on chores and he never tells me no.
"Some people aren't as lucky to have both a mommy and a daddy---"
"And a Sherlin!"
What began as a conversation about children in the adoption world became one of the sweetest interruptions I might ever know.

Jasmine lived a short short life. With the ending of her life, came the ending of my own phase in life.
A painful and prolonged divorce came on the heels of a vial of Jasmines ashes being placed in my hands. I endured. I let go of what wasn't meant to be.
Invasive surgery robbed me of my ability to walk for 6 horrible months. A year of therapy. Facing my 4th surgery in mere weeks I remember what sustained me during the last: Jasmines strength through all of hers.
The note her mother wrote on behalf of Jasmine that I've kept all these years.
If a child can smile after so many surgeries, why can't I?

And if someone can love a child they adopt, or a child they watch fight for life....
Why can't I love two children who bring me new light?

I've written about Jasmine many times.
Sometimes I go back and re-read the first time I did.

My ex husband abrasively told me to stay away from Jasmine when prognosis was dim.
"Why attach yourself to someone who ISNT going to live? You know it's going to hurt more in the end."
Selfish.
But my own selfish heart refused to let go of hope and it threw itself into the push and pull match of fighting Cancer. It wrung itself out when Hospice came into sight. Even as Jasmine lost the ability to find clarity and slept away her days, my selfish heart hung on to her. I wanted to be there as often as I could so I could gather into my being all the snap shot memories of her little hands and feet, of her wispy curls. I would hold my breath when hers caught and I would return home aching and tired.
Do you want to do this?? Are you sure? Dig deep.
I'd return again each day.
While the time grew shorter, the roots grew deeper.
And the fear grew stronger.
What would the world be without Jasmine? What would her parents do? What would *I* do?
How does someone exist one moment and simply not the next?
Would I want to be there when she left us?
What right did my selfish heart have to ask any of this that didn't belong to ME.
Can I bare to be there when she's gone?
Am I sure?
Dig. Deep.

6 years ago today, in a mere few hours, Jasmine ascended to the heavens while the world crashed around so many of us in that living room.
Someone new broke open in me as I helped her mother wash her scarred and yet tiny body. Brush out sweet curls. Someone who loved Jasmine like she loved the children she carried, watched Jasmines father hold his daughter one last heartbreaking time.

When she was walked out and handed to the morticians, this new person felt as bereft as though she'd given over her own child.

A year ago today I married the man I love more than myself. A man of unprecedented strength, loyalty, gentleness and kindness. I tethered myself, more than willingly, to a life as his wife and a life with his children.
My children.

A child can only have one biological mother. One biological father. There is no way around that.
But a mother, any mother, can have more than one child and love them. She can split her heart up infinitely and each part be as strong as the others. Their atoms stretching and entwining with the children she belongs to.

Do you take this man and his children? Do you promise to love always, in sickness and in health?
Are you sure?
Dig deep.

Yes. For she taught me.