Trouble in Paradise

Vitals: OK, so this post will cover the few days before Christmas.  I realize that reading this blog must be like watching Bill and I holding hands and jumping repeatedly over the same cliff.  However, this time it is Roman’s life that hangs by a fragile thread and if you think I am joking, brace yourself. 

So, Roman (who we started calling Roma) and Bill are finally home.  Everything started off reasonably well.  I was busy most of Friday (Dec 17) with Ruslan, recovering from the anesthesia, so I didn’t get much time with Roma or Bill.  They seemed to be doing well for the most part.  Bill did a great double-take on Saturday morning.  He came downstairs and glanced in the living room, glanced again, then he turned to me and said, “I just saw all the kids watching TV and thought to myself, ‘when did the neighbor kids come over?’  Then I realized they were all ours.”   I’ve done the same thing a few times, counting out six plates for dinner instead of eight and wondering how the HECK we can have so many shoes in the hall closet.  It takes some getting used to.

Ruslan was feeling much better.  He had vomited blood all over the couch on Friday, but thankfully, I have all the living room furniture slip-covered (I do get some things right).  It was just as well that I washed them since we had some friends coming for the weekend.  …I know: it was stupid to have company so shortly after Bill got back with a new child, but you must understand, this was  Hilary and her husband and five children (one of which is very small and cute) and they got along great with our kids.  Bill and I knew Hilary from our days in Atlanta when we had volunteered for our church’s youth group.  We had kept in touch with her, prayed for her when her husband was stationed in Iraq, prayed when her kids got hearing aides, prayed when her husband was laid off and now that we are both on Facebook, I pray about things as mundane as her grocery money.  Few things are more wonderful than a visit from someone you have kept track of and prayed for (long distance) over twenty years and confirming for yourself that they are well loved and thriving. 

Hilary wrote to me later and said that they shouldn’t have stayed over the weekend with so much going on in our family.  I probably should have figured this out before she did, but unfortunately for Bill, if I was the kind of person who typically thinks things through, we never would have adopted in the first place.  It’s not that I don’t count the cost, it’s that I don’t NOTICE the cost.  The house could be a total wreck and the kids could be shrieking, “FIRE” right under my nose, but if I am not paying attention (usually) I have no trouble blocking them out.  Therefore, I had a blast with her over the weekend and we basically marinated in each other’s company talking about homeschooling, church, the proper care and feeding of families, and updating each other about our old friends.  Nevertheless, she was probably right.  I am certain it was too much chaos for Bill to handle.  Roma was probably all the more bewildered in his new home with new food, new animals, and new people.  It was a hedonistic, self-indulgent binge and I paid for it well over the next few days. 

I can’t remember too many details about the boys over that weekend.  Since we had eleven kids here total, they were pretty much engulfed in the fray.  Ruslan (boy #1) for his part was doing well.  Once the anesthetic was out of his system, he was fine.  He now knows our routine and had enough English to take care of himself and play with the other kids. 

Roma was a different story.  The more time Bill spent with him in Ukraine, the more it became clear that he has some serious delays.  He is cross eyed, so it was hard to tell for sure, but he didn’t appear to be giving anyone any eye contact.  In fact, he didn’t seek out any human contact at all.  He didn’t use many things appropriately (not even a spoon).  He was obsessed with water and dumping it everywhere all the time (even after two hours playing in a warm tub, he’d still head right for the dog’s water dish and dive in).  He started lunging at us violently and squeezing our arms and trying to head butt us whenever he was told “no.”  He was getting into all the cabinets and taking everything out.  He was putting EVERYTHING in his mouth.  And, worst of all, he wasn’t potty-trained.  He was a huge handful and he wasn’t making the same progress Ruslan made (impossible not to compare), so we were getting worried that beyond the Cerebral Palsy, he had some serious mental problems. 

To make matters worse, Bill who was jet-lagged, operating on little sleep, and trying to catch up on work was getting more and more discouraged about the whole family.  On Sunday morning, he was starting to look strained. He was reserved through dinner Sunday night and by Monday morning, after the company left, I realized that he’d stopped talking to me altogether.  So, I apologized to Bill about the company and state of the house many times over, but unfortunately, the company wasn’t the real problem. 

This was poor timing for a fight.  I had the house to put back together, laundry and dishes to catch up, we still hadn’t gotten a Christmas tree, hadn’t shopped for ANY presents, I hadn’t done any holiday baking and we were all working on getting used to our new family member. 

Monday was really a blur.  The kids had school and it was the first day that Ruslan rode the school bus.  They strap his wheel chair in the bus, so I have to take him to and from the bus stop.  It’s not bad, but it’s an extra step to the morning.  After he left, I shipped our Christmas packages, shopped for gifts, got groceries, and then came home and relieved Bill who had been home with the kids all day.   

Roma was making almost no progress.  He started fighting with Ruslan and one of the fights got out of hand before I got to them so Roma had a long scratch down the side of his face.  Plus, he was newly obsessed with the stairs.  Luckily, ours are carpeted and they turn at a landing half way up, so they aren’t as dangerous as they could be.  Anyway, he kept wanting to walk up and down the stairs which wouldn’t be a problem without the CP, but he had fallen down them twice and had a rug burn on his face to balance the scratch on the other side.   That combined with his emaciated body, blank look, and CP gait made him look like a child out of a war zone.  

Tuesday was a repeat of Monday except that I stayed home and did laundry non-stop.  The best I could do with Roma was try to keep him in the same room with me and at meal times, I cleared off part of the kitchen counter and sat him on it while I cooked.  Bill was still essentially withdrawn in the morning.  By the afternoon he had come out of it enough to comment on what a horrible mistake we had made, how the kids were going to ruin our life, we could never go camping or canoeing or hiking again, and how I could no longer keep up with everything.   He really didn’t want to discuss anything.  He was just in “Complain Mode.”  It was awful.  I decided I was better off when he wasn’t talking to me and we pretty much avoided each other most of the day. 

I really had no idea what to do.  Nothing I said or did made any difference with Bill.  So, I realized it was out of my hands and I decided to fast and pray like crazy that either Bill would snap out of this, or I could find a bloodless, untraceable method to take-him-out.  I hate fasting.  I’m really not all that fond of praying either, truth be told, but I just hate fasting.  However, I couldn’t think of anything else to do.  This was certainly better than non-stop cleaning, and probably better than sitting down with a calculator and figuring what I could get out of him in alimony and child support.  I really wasn’t that hungry anyway.  When we are at odds with each other, everything just seems wrong, wrong,  wrong and the time ticks away SLOWLY.  I spend my waking minutes feeling like I want to vomit and trying to figure out how to get things back to normal.  Everything was totally off kilter.  I couldn’t make it any worse.

Finally, on Wednesday morning, I reminded him that, “eventually, you’re going to have to talk to me.”  So, we had it out and he said that he didn’t want either one of the boys.  Of course, at this point, I was just as tired and grumpy as he was.  I really didn’t agree that things were so terrible with Roma in the family, and it seemed a little radical to throw in the towel already, but in the end, I decided that Bill was essentially right.  I couldn’t reasonably handle the whole family alone and if he was going to withdraw in this way, then the only thing to do was try to find a better family for the boys.   Then, after a bit, I snapped out of it and told him I thought the problem was really Roma.  He was just super hard to manage along with Ruslan so, maybe if we found a home for him, we could deal with Ruslan alone.  I didn’t think any of us could handle saying goodbye to Ruslan.   It’s not possible for a boy to be as annoying as Ruslan is and still LIVE unless we love him deeply. 

I got on the computer and wrote to Amy (our adoption facilitator) and told her we couldn’t deal with both of the boys together and asked if she knew of anyone who would take Roma.   I also wrote to a few other people I knew who were interested in adopting and prayed almost non-stop that God would somehow fix this.  The e-mail was at least enough to get Bill away from his computer for a few minutes, but he still wasn’t too happy with anything.  It was a rough Wednesday.  The kids heard us talking (call me an idiot) and my oldest realized we were thinking of finding a new home for Roma.  Of course, once he knew, they all knew.  None of them freaked out, since Roma had only been with us for a few days, and he’s really a handful, but they weren’t very happy about it either.   In fact, over the next few hours, all of them came to me privately and told me that they wanted to keep Roma.  They all admitted that they didn’t even really like him, but they still wanted him in our family.  It was very sweet and very stressful to have to explain to them why we might be finding another family for him. 

Amy wrote back on Wednesday afternoon that she knew someone who would probably take him.  She asked me for a few photos and sent me a bunch of questions about him.  I wrote back explaining his behaviors and trying to convince the parents-to-be that he was a great kid, even though we didn’t really want him.  (Ha).   Both my cameras were broken during our Ukraine trip, so I asked Bill to get the photos.  We needed one side view, one full head on and some of him doing activities.  This was out of my hands (you’ll remember that I’m not really authorized to touch Bill’s electronics and this was definitely not the moment to bend the rules) so I sent Amy the responses to the questions and told her I’d get back to her with the photos. 

Here’s what is so strange.  As soon as I sent that e-mail, Bill sprang to life.  He totally took over Roma’s care.  Bill sat next to Roma at dinner and fed him, played with him afterwards, got him dessert, took him to the bathroom when he needed it, took care of all his discipline, got him cleaned up and tucked him in bed at about 7:30.  Then he went downstairs and cleaned up the kitchen from dinner. He said later that he felt trapped and that once I told him someone else might take Roma, he could step back and breathe a little bit and deal with the situation better.  All I knew was, I had married a tennis ball.  It was bewildering.  I had no idea what to think.

That night, we watched Despicable Me with the other kids.  It’s a great DVD about a despicable man who adopts three little girls.  Sharon (our seven year old who we adopted when she was three) kept telling me that there was a sad part in the movie and she didn’t want to watch it.  So, I held her on my lap, thinking “how bad can a cartoon be?”  Well, the sad part is when the despicable man sends his three girls back to the orphanage.  Sharon is a very effective cry-er.  She cries silently.  Her little brown eyes well up with tears and then they silently overflow down her cheek and drip, drip, drip on your hand.  This was bad. Very, very bad.   So, I squeezed her tight and told her that she was mine forever, that this would never happen to her and that this was just a cartoon.  In the real world, Mommies and Daddies don’t send their kids back to orphanages.  Then I spent the rest of the movie-night alternating between cracking up (it’s a really funny movie), berating myself for thinking about getting rid of Roma, and wondering what the whole thing will do to my little girl. 

After the older kids were in bed, I reminded Bill that he hadn’t taken the photos of Roma.  I probably should have dropped it, but from where I was standing, Roma was the problem and the sooner we got him out of the family, the sooner things would be back to normal and the easier this would all be on the rest of the kids.  Bill said he would get to the photos in the morning.  We spent the rest of the evening in relative silence, only regarding each other in order to maintain proper distance and being extra careful not to let any of our body parts touch each other once we were in bed. 

The next day, it was more of the same with Bill and Roma.  When Roma woke up, Bill was right there.  He got him dressed, took him to the bathroom, got him breakfast, brushed his teeth and the next time I saw them, they were on the floor together playing with the Fisher Price Farm.  I asked Bill if he was actually planning on taking those photos of Roma so I could send them to Amy.  He looked up at me from the floor with a plastic farmer in one hand and a cow in the other and told me that he was sorry for the way he had been acting, that I didn’t deserve to be treated that way and said that he wanted to wait a week before we decided on Roma. 

This is why I married Bill.  He’s not exactly perfect, but he’s EXTREMELY close and when he screws up, he has the ability to apologize and set things right in the end.  Bill was totally back to normal and then some. 

You might think that I was ecstatic to have my dear husband back to normal, but I was actually …NOT.  Nor was I in the least grateful that God had (coincidentally) answered my prayers.  In fact, I felt somewhat ungracious.  I was actually very annoyed.  What I wanted was closure and what I got was another week in limbo.  I wanted to explode.  I was standing over him struggling between several choices: I could strangle him with my bare hands, I could take that plastic farmer he was holding and ram it down his throat in order to choke him with it, I could go off on an incessant monologue about how difficult all this had been on me and the children and list (in alphabetical order) the 26 reasons why I believe he is a complete lunatic, or I could decide it was safe enough to go have some breakfast. 

Instead, I got on the computer and wrote to Amy.  She was wonderful and wrote back:  “Actually, this is so normal if I had a dime for every time this happened to a family, well I would have about 20 cents from you already.. ;) and be a lot richer...”  She hadn’t said anything to the other family, so it was only my children who were in the unnecessary uproar. 

Thus began Roma’s Probationary Period.