Salvation

Sekai asked, Is God dead? No. He asked, Is Jesus dead? He's alive with, resurrection power, and he lives in your heart. He asked, does the devil knows that he loses? He does; that's why he fights so hard. He asked, when will the earth end? I don't know. He lamented, I'm going to hell because I'm so bad. I comforted, You're not bad; you're hurt. And besides, you know Jesus, He knows you, and you've asked to be saved. He smiled and said, I get to go to heaven.

Missed appointment

I am not sure which is worse: that the clinic sent me a text message--a text message!--or that they were calling about a missed appointment.

"I am returning a call. The caller did not leave a name. I did not make any appointments there, did not call there for him"
"Is the child in foster care?"
"The child was." The child. I don't know. Those words just caught me off guard. And so I repeated them.
"Was, or is?"
"The child (repeating the phrase again) was...is...(no, don't say what he is, can't say it)...has....unfortunately passed on."
"Oh. We didn't know. What is his or her name?" Wow. You really don't know anything about him at all, huh? So I give her the name. She puts me on hold. Someone comes to the line again, whether the same woman or a different woman I am neither sure nor concerned.

She asks his name again. (His legal name. Not his family name. He was not adopted yet, and so we still had to use the legal name. This is how he identified them: legal name, family name.) I say it again, the words thick and heavy in my mouth, the sour sting not tasted until the aftertaste hit later.

She pauses. It is clear to me now that she is not asking because she does not know, but because she is double-checking that she is in the correct file before making this new, this last notation.

"I am sorry," she begins. Her words as heavy, as heavily laden sounding to me as saying his name had felt. "He was in the computer for an appointment on July 2. It came up as a missed appointment. We were calling because of the missed appointment. We didn't know. I am sorry..."

I ask her to please make sure the clinic does not call, or text--text!--me again. She agrees. And again she apologizes, she didn't know.

I feel badly for her, I really do. But mostly I just feel bad because she has made me have to explain that which I try repeatedly to forget, to not believe, to will to be different that which I know I need to process, to cope with, to accept.

Chicken nuggets, with a side of sarcasm

(I drafted this a few weeks ago...)

Sekai began mastering the art of sarcasm at the age of two. He had many doctor's appointments even then, and so we were in the car quite a bit after school, and would stop at this or that drive through for (wait...for...it) chicken nuggets.
One evening, he called out from the back seat, "Wendy's!"
Aw, note to self, I need to tell your teacher to change your IFSP, that you do indeed recognize environmental print.
"Do you want to stop for chicken nuggets?"
"No."
Check rear view mirror. Note blank expression. Ponder for a moment.
"Wait...are you being sarcastic?"
Note the *smile*.
Aw, note to self, you have mastered sarcasm, and I need to mention this to your teacher as an indication of your fabulous intellect, and your language ability. I should also remind her that language is not the same as speech.
So needless to say, we stopped for chicken nuggets. When I recounted the story to a friend, he responded without missing a beat, "and I wonder where he got that from?" I actually stopped and thought about it, trying to craft an answer, then it hit me. 1) We are not the only sarcastic people.
2) My son is indeed mine, and so much like me!

A meditation on birthdays, with respect to Sekai

So, I almost skipped my birthday this year. I'm 36, which is a blessing, since I've learned all too well that not everybody makes it that far. But it just seemed wrong to celebrate another year of life when my sweet potato no longer has his and I no longer have him. Plus birthdays upset him. Or at least they did when he came back. Turns out his birthday wasn't really celebrated, so the idea of someone else's birthday was a reminder of something else he had missed, something else that hurt.

Growing up, I always had a birthday party. Always. It was my special day. A day when my mother, my family, my friends took time to celebrate me. Perhaps you had the same experience.

Here's something that just occurred to me, though. Sekai used to say, when the depression hit especially hard, or the memories came fast and furious, that he felt like he shouldn't exist, or that he wished he had never been born.

Celebrating a birthday, acknowledging someone's birthday is like saying, hey, I'm glad you were born. I'm sorry that my boy didn't have that growing up, except on his third and fifteenth birthdays (and in little parties at school). I am grateful that I have had that every year of my life.

Birthday or no birthday, take a moment and let someone know that you are glad they were born. Just a thought.