As many have noticed (often aloud and in my presence), the blog activity just sorta ended midstream sometime last November. The drop-off in blog entries owes to the following:
- My going back work. I returned to work in early November, just after the "big weekend". And that's pretty much when the blogging stopped. Though the transition to my going to work was a bit rocky, it's now working wonderfully. We have a nanny who comes about 20 hours a week (about 11:30-3:30 on weekdays. I leave shortly after she arrives and get home between 5:30-6. Brent, who leaves at the crack of dawn comes home at 3:30. The schedule works well, though it doesn't leave a whole lot of free time for blogging.
- The story coming to a conclusion. I had the sense when I started that last entry about the "big weekend" that our story was drawing to a close. What was needed, therefore, was some time to gather our thoughts in a conclusion-ary kind of way, and then...
- Not finding the time. Once the holiday season hit it was hopeless. Our first Thanksgiving and Christmas with Jess and Evelyn were wonderful, but very busy. For Thanksgiving, we went to West Lafayette to spend the weekend with Jeff, Janice, Ellie, and Lucy. For Christmas, we went completely mad and decided to take the kids (and half of our house stuffed in luggage and in Jeff and Janice's mini-van) to Colorado for two weeks. I won't lie, it was challenging. But it was also pretty great. When we got back, however, I had to get busy and write a paper that I gave at a conference about a week ago. (It was my first deadline since the kids came home!)
As we look back at where we've been we feel tremendous gratitude. We often say to each other: "we're so lucky!". And we're grateful to Providence for making us lucky in this way. When we look ahead to what's to come we feel hope, trepidation, and mostly (again) gratitude for the great gift we've been given in Jesse Nikita and Evelyn Raisa.
Brent's postscript: I remember when my sister became a part of our family. I remember the crisp weather, the bare trees, walking down the sidewalk to get her with my parents and anticipating for her arrival in the waiting area. But she doesn't remember, and I don't remember when I became a part of my parents' life either. Nobody does. None of us remember much of anything before we were two. Things happen to us that help to shape us, no doubt, into the people we are, but those early years are shrouded in mystery. They are the times about which we hear stories from our parents and grandparents that seem almost like myth or folklore. We take it on faith that they are our experiences, and sometimes even create pictures and memories to go along with the stories once they have been told enough times. In my mind, the time of life before I became a big brother, before I was three, is indistinct, warm, and happy. I can't associate a bad feeling with that time any more than I can actually dredge up a clear memory of it.
These reflections on my own past are not just about me, they are about Jesse and Evie too. Like Jess and Evie, my sister and I were adopted--and by parents who loved their children with all their heart. People often seem to think that the experience of those who have been adopted is somehow fundamentally different from those who were not. The funny thing is, when most people consider what they actually remember about where they came from, how they started life, how they came to be a part of their family, they remember about as much as I do, adopted or not. So my point is just this: how you land in the family you are in makes a great deal less difference than what happens after you get there. We're all a part of the family we landed in, and our parents are those people who have loved us, raised us, and share a history with us. And today, at this watershed point in our family's life with the future looming larger than the past, I am more aware than ever how important being a parent really is. These days, Evie and Jesse run around all day grabbing hold (mostly literally) of any and every part of their world they can get their hands on. When they can't lay their hands on something they indicate to Susan and I emphatically that we should give it to them, even if they have no idea what it really is or whether they should have it. God help us to give them the right things, with love, so that they grow in the right ways.
In short, from last November till just last week, life has been something of a whirlwind. Although the winds are whirling still, this last week marked a special turning point--a kind of anniversary--for us as a family and so makes for a perfect opportunity for reflections and conclusions. I've already said something (in my last, and long-over due post, which was begun in Nov. but not completed till just last week) about the way in which Jess and Evelyn's baptism marked the final chapter of our adoption story. This special anniversary post will serve as the postscript.
