March Madness, of a different sort

The snow is melting! (Not fast enough.)

Since January the Northeast has been battered by snowstorm after snowstorm, and freezing day after even more freezing day. I was doing okay with it, I really was. It was Winter; this is what Winter weather is like. Then 2 weeks ago we had one warm and sunny Sunday afternoon. The next morning it was freezing again, and I was done. D.O.N.E. I'd had a taste of comfort and sunshine and Spring and Winter was not welcome here anymore.

Here we are, another sunny and warm Sunday afternoon, and for once the forecast is not for more snow and freezing temps but actual warmth, and sunshine and the possibility that the snow that has been sitting in frozen piles for 3 months might thaw.

And it's disgusting. City snow does not melt attractively. Only the top layer is white. The layers underneath are different shades of gray and black and yellow. As the snow recedes it reveals the frozen garbage, animal feces, stray newspapers and coffee cups and forgotten, forlorn mittens. It's truly horrible, and it can't happen fast enough.

I feel like the melting snow is a good metaphor for my parenting right now... as the frozen Winter slowly slides away it is revealing some yucky stuff- the bad habits we developed while stuck inside. The nasty attitudes and the gripes and the grudges we're holding. We've been stuck inside for several months and we've all had quite enough of each other. My kids miss the park; they miss the freedom to run and choose their own games and socialize out of adult earshot. I miss the quiet that I can find outside on the sidelines of their fun, sitting in a park bench in the sun reading.  My kids' messiness, high energy and joyful loudness seems natural in the playground. Inside my house this Winter those same qualities have been driving me mad.

So here we are on the brink of warmth and freedom. Wearing snow boots and light jackets.  Looking longingly at our still 1/2 frozen backyard. I'm wondering which of our bad habits will shed easily, the way we threw off our jackets and mittens this afternoon? And which will, like the filthy blackened ice patches in the forgotten corners of our yard, I'll have to go at with a shovel and broom. Will we continue to fight so much about Mine Craft once we can all play outdoors? Will we still shout at each other each morning once there aren't quite so many layers to put on?

I live in hope.

How My Garden is Like My Adoption

It's Spring! At Last! Thank God!

This past week or so I've been spending a lot of time working in my garden, and it's gotten me thinking about how my garden is like our adoptive family...

Now, before you roll your eyes and gird your loins for some ridiculous analogy about flowers... let me show you what my "garden" looks like right now:

"Garden"

But before you weep with me over this pitiful pile of rubble, let's revisit my "gardens" of the past...

When we bought the house:

the giant garage

When we renovated the house:

the giant pile of trash

When we finally tore down the garage:

the zombie apocalypse jungle

After we had all the trees and vines removed, and put up a fence:

the snow was so helpful in covering up the rubble and concrete

So, really, there's been significant improvement, even though it is certainly not the garden of my dreams yet, nor really a garden in any proper sense of the word yet.

Which brings me to my adoption analogy.

Growing your family through adoption, especially by adopting an older child, can often feel (and look), like my "garden".  You are not starting with a seed growing in a fertile warm and gentle environment. You are starting with the rubble patch of your child's traumatic past. The ground is rocky, the soil bare, and watch out! there is some broken glass in there. And you are going to have to dig through some pretty tough stuff before you see healthy growth.

But it's not all bad. Nope, there is some treasure there... if you have eyes to see that the shard of old pottery as treasure. Because after raking up all those rocks, and digging through all that clay, and nourishing and turning and watering and feeding your garden, every bud and every leaf will be a a hard won treasure.

Before we started our family, I certainly had some rosy pictures in my silly head about how our life with kids would be. I knew there would be challenges sure, but really I had no idea. (Does anyone really know what it is like to be a parent, before becoming one? I doubt it.)

Growing an adoptive family, like growing a garden from bare rocky soil, takes hard work, imagination, patience and a long view. You have to squint a bit into the future to see how all this trouble might turn out okay. And you've got to not despair when after so much work you are still finding rocks and patches of clay in your life. Trauma, like layers of clay sediment, can lead to some nasty surprises and problems years later... You think you've got it all figured out, everyone is growing well and then BLAM! an anniversary or a change in routine or a transition triggers the heck out of your child.

Broken glass can live for a long time embedded in what looks like perfectly healthy soil.

So even though my arms and back are sore from raking up rubble and digging out old plumbing, dead roots and shards of glass from our backyard, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for this reminder that hard work can yield beautiful rewards. I'm grateful for the reminder of how far our family has come due to our patient tending. Every time my son says, "I love you, Mom", it is a hard won treasure.

Let's talk about renovating your house...

I realized recently (okay, today), that I never really wrote about how our home renovations turned out... and I'm sure that you have all been waiting with bated breath for me to tie up those loose ends! My apologies. I think in the excitement over finally NOT living in a construction site I quickly no longer wanted to think, talk or write about our construction.

Well. One year later the house is in much, much (much, much, much) better shape than when we bought it. (I'll never forget the sad, mournful, regretful look on the inspector's face.)

BUT.

But, it's not done. And it never will be! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

Actually, I'm sure this house will one day be in perfect condition. And that day will be the day that we sell it to someone else and move into a retirement home. Because that's how these things work.

Here are 10 things I've learned in the past 18 months of living in this old house:

1. Home ownership is vastly overrated. Except that yes, it does afford a good deal of long term financial stability, especially in a city where the rent is too damn high. That being said, we have sunk so many gobs of money into this house we may as well have been renting on Central Park West*.

2. You will always have something broken to fix. Or 10 things. Just get used to it, and get a credit card from at least one home improvement store. The time to become handy is now.

3. You will treasure your good plumber, (or electrician, handy-person), and thus be willing to pay them gobs of money because you need to have heat, and it's freezing, and they are willing to stay in your house until the middle of the night until your house feels warm. (This happened to us in November.)

4. You will spend WAY MORE TIME picking out tile than you thought possible. Also, do not go to pick out tile by yourself. Also, take all the measurements for everything with you whenever you go shopping for tile. I went shopping for tile 3 separate times, twice alone, one more time over the phone, and still ending up with tiles I'm not quite sure I like. Next time, we are going with white squares and that's it!

5. Everything takes twice a long and costs twice as much as you can imagine. Except for our fence, which was magically put up in 4 hours by three hard working men on the hottest day of the summer last year. Go figure.

6. It was totally worth it to buy a house with a driveway.

7. You will learn to live with hideous floors or hideous ceilings or hideous wall treatments (or all three!) for way longer than you thought possible.

8. Having a house is a good excuse to have people over. Which means we don't have to go out so often. And also, having people over is a great motivator to finally hang pictures/empty that last box/tidy the basement/put away the holiday-that-was-over-a-month-ago decorations. Etc.

9. If you thought your marriage was tested by having children, try living in at a renovation site together for 4 months without a kitchen. I'm pretty sure my husband said "Pull yourself together!" at least once during that time, and gave me a good dozen exasperated looks which meant: "I can't believe you are having another hissy fit about not having a kitchen." While we ate cereal for dinner out of paper cups.

10. Children are endlessly fascinated by construction and will be pulled towards dangerous work sites like moths to a flame. That both children are still alive after 1/2 our house was basically demolished is a miracle.

* Not really, but it feels like it.

PS- We found out this morning that dirt is really, really expensive. Like, ouch! The things you learn while renovating...