On Thursdays I post from the vault. This post is from July 2009.
I’m not a big “cryer“. I usually manage to be pretty stoic, in fact . . . a trait that often belies the junk lying just under the surface. But right now I am insanely sleep deprived, and have a lingering case of The Postpartum Crazy that is, to be blunt, kinda kicking my ass. These two factors have converged today and had me on the brink of tears several times.
I managed not to cry when I picked the kids up from preschool, and Jafta tried to help push Karis’s snap-and-go stroller, upended it, and Karis landed upside-down on the ground, hanging from the straps of her carseat. I managed not to cry when I thought about how, had she not been strapped in with the handle up to act as a bumper, I might have had a newborn with a cracked skull on my hands.
I managed not to cry when I ran to the store on our way home because I realized, just before naptime, that I had no milk, and it was just as disastrous as my previous attempts to buy groceries with the kids. I managed not to cry when Karis and India had simultaneous, ear-piercing meltdowns in aisle 7, while I tried to stifle a suffocating realization that I am overwhelmed by the simplest of tasks right now, and do not feel qualified to leave my house.
And then in aisle 11, out of the blue, Jafta asks me why Keanan is taking so long to come home. I don’t know, I tell him. To which he says: “I think the president in Haiti said no.”
Cue tears.
Cleanup on aisle 11. We’ve got an ugly cry.
I’ve been trying really hard to keep it together about our ever-delayed adoption. I seem to vacillate between total hopelessness, total denial, and total depression about the whole thing. I can remember reading someone’s blog, years ago, who had to wait a few years to bring their child home from Haiti. I remember thinking that the situation was one of the worst things I could imagine someone going through. It is surreal to now be experiencing it. We continue to have no updates and no idea of what is happening with our files in Haiti. I just know that he’s not coming home any time soon, and my feelings about that are deep and complicated and overwhelming at times. Like in the grocery store.
I don’t know where Jafta came up with what he said. I’ve never talked to him about the process, or that fact that we really are getting hung up by presidential approval, but I guess he understands that there are some powers-that-be who aren’t cooperating.
Oh, and if you are reading this and thinking that maybe you could console me by saying something like, “Well, maybe Keanan not being home right now is a mixed blessing, since you are struggling with three . . .” PLEASE do not say that to me. It’s already been said, several times, and clearly I am a hormonal woman on the edge of sanity and may just smack the next person who says it. I would never tell a friend who is having a hard time with their kids to ship one off to an orphanage for a while and call it a blessing. Keanan not being home is one of the very reasons I am overwhelmed. It’s exhausting trying to keep that grief down all day.
.
Blech. This post has taken a turn for the worst and I am depressing even myself. If you are still reading, you should go do a google search for funny pictures of cats in toilets or something,
Okay, in better news:
My sister had a baby today!!
And so did my friend Amy!!!
And India finally put a poop in the potty and got to wear the Tinkerbell costume we’ve been dangling in front of her for three weeks (photo forthcoming)!!!!
And So You Think You Can Dance is a really good show!!! And exclamation points will cancel out all the wallowing drivel I just wrote!!!!
Oh, and India’s grocery store meltdown? Over my refusal to buy her this:
High School Musical cereal. Strategically placed at her eye level, and chock full of red dye, high-fructose corn syrup, and photos of Troy Bolton. Someone at Kellog’s hates me.
