Rory
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…
Monday, November 23rd, 2009 | Connecting the Dots | 1 Comment
I came in from clearing out the garden for winter a few days ago and found Rory–who’d been outside a few minutes before–sobbing at the top of the stairs. Wailing. I ran up–I thought she was hurt–and she took one look at me and ran away, shouting no! No!
Well, that’s never happened before. So I followed her. No! No! I don’t want you!
This is dreadful. Did she come in and feel like she couldn’t find us? Did something happen? I’ve been outside for a while, did she need be and I wasn’t there and now she feels just utterly betrayed?
Meanwhile, Rory is hiding behind a chair. Still screaming.
When I can make myself heard, I try to talk, sitting close. Is she sad? Could she not find me? Did she know I was outside? Does she miss Mama Deena and Baba Mike? NO NO NO NO NOOOOOOO!
What do I do? Get her out from behind the chair and hold her whether she wants it or not? SIt companionably?
About this time I notice she’s eying me a little–I don’t know–appraisingly. And I hear Rob come in. Do you know what’s wrong with Rory?
Oh, yes. What’s wrong with Rory is that she wouldn’t clean the playroom, so she got sent to her room, and then she came down, and then something somehow offended her sense of justice and fair play, and so she went back up and started screaming for Rob.
What’s wrong with Rory is just ordinary, boring, 4-year-old stuff, a little complicated by the incomprehensible, convoluted rules Rory has created within herself for when she will emerge from being sent to her room. What’s going on here is just…nothing.
Rory listens intently as Rob explains, adding that he’s asked her several times to come back down, and that she knows she’s not in trouble. I get up, and Rory throws herself at me. NOW she wants to be held. NOW she wants rocking. Is it that she wanted Rob? I think so–because he was the one who’d offended her, and having me couldn’t fill in that space without him. Or maybe she was playing me. Or maybe both. But what really mattered was that it was just about her, and Rob, and us, and that’s kind of the way it’s been for a while. For the moment, all the cigars are just cigars.
Being means WAY more than acting.
Monday, October 26th, 2009 | Connecting the Dots | Comments Off
There’s been a shift again. Emotion is nothing if not seismic in this family, but this has been a nice, gradual drifting of continents.
Rory likes to perform, but sometimes I have felt that she was putting on a father frantic show for us–a show of happiness, a show of belonging, as if her performing it would convince us all. Sometimes she’d be just sitting there, kind of expressionless, and I’d look at her, and I’d get this frantic grin—not a grin of happiness, more one of desperation.
That”s ebbing away. Today she went upstairs on her own for a while, sat with Daddy in the office, and then went off to poke around, and appeared a few minutes later in a black velvet leotard of Lily’s (a handy down from another friend, actually). She checked to see that I was in the kitchen, then disappeared for a moment, then leaped in. Trick or Treat! Then she did a most elegant little dance (she hasn’t learned to expect candy from those Trick or Treats yet). And then did it again. And again. With plenty of “you got WATCH me, Mommy!” and lots more dancing.
I know that at some point, very early on, I was just begging–when will she act like a normal kid? And then she started to ACT like a normal kid, and that certainly didn’t feel right, either. Today–not all day, but at least for some–she just WAS a normal kid, and that felt great.
As for me, I was rounding them up for bed tonight, and no one was making that key first move towards the stairs (once you get one to go, they all do, and it doesn’t matter which one). It was unusually late, and Rory was resisting passively–rolling into the sofa as if to sleep there, popping in a thumb, eying me, and a little bubble of anger arose–I DO hate being defied, and it doesn’t matter by whom–and then I shrugged and held out my arms. I’ll carry you up, I said, and you will be the very first, and off we happily want.
A New Take on the Temper Tantrum
Friday, October 23rd, 2009 | Connecting the Dots | 4 Comments
Last night was windy–and where we live, that means it sounds like a freight train is coming over the hill. We lay in bed, listening, and began to hear, periodically, another sound: BANG BANG BANG. Or sometimes BANG. Or BANG BANG.
It was not rhythmic, or constant, as you would expect of something the wind was blowing. And it not eventually result in the reappearance of a child, as you would expect from a kid-created noise. It just kept periodically coming. Eventually, and under some pressure (I was reading The Case for God and planning to comment on it for today’s DoubleX) I agreed to investigate.
I found Rory, in her bed, having what can only be called a temper tantrum in her sleep. She was writhing. She was shouting. She was kicking. She was one peeved, sleeping noodle. Because despite all the noise and fuss, Rory was pretty clearly asleep.
I put my arms around her, and eventually she quieted down, woke a little, snuggled a little, and eventually popped her thumb back in her mouth (hallelujah for that habit) and went back to sleep, but it was truly the craziest thing. It was not a nightmare–or if it was, it was the ever-determined, resolute and resilient Rory version of it, because she was NOT acting frightened. She was NOT shrieking in terror. Nope, that kid was pissed. I don’t know what she was dreaming about, but I hope it wasn’t me!
A Solid Guess on Travel Dates
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 | Adopting Devils | Comments Off
Here’s what I think:
I think we’ll head out around 6/11. Here’s the tentative schedule I’ve planned for us:
Day 1: leave
Day 2: Arrive Beijing
Days 3-4: Sightsee in Beijing. Lily tries to throw Wyatt off Great Wall. International incident narrowly averted.
Day 5: Fly to Fuzhou City
Days 6-9 Get used to Rory, one way or another.
Day 10 Fly to Guangzhou
Days 11-13 Various appointments
Day 14 Fly home. I may have the whole date line mixed up, but I think we arrive home pretty much at the exact same time we left.
I’ve been told to be flexible. I think we can handle that, since flexible tends to be pretty much the definition of our travel plans. We’re looking for a little luxury and good tours for those days in Beijing, and planning on letting whatever happens in Fuzhou City happen. (‘Cause what happens in Fuzhou City stays in Fuzhou City. I’m pretty sure that’s their slogan.)
We had plenty of conflicting advice about her name. I popped it up as a question on a board, and the thinking was divided equally into “she’ll adjust and be happy that you gave her a family name” and “you’re a racist, overly-Westernized white devil to even think about changing her name, and btw you used the phrase ‘going off the reservation’ in another post and that’s grossly insensitive too.”
Let’s just say not everyone on the “boards” is fully literate. (For those of you just joining us, our daughter’s name, as given to her in China, not by us, when she was 2 months old, is…Rebecca.)
And the irony of all of this was only highlighted by a piece in today’s Slate: What’s Up with Chinese People Having English Names? An american writer with a chinese name is mocked by his chinese peers for being so out of it as to still be using his original moniker.
In the United States, people tend to view names and identities as absolute things—which explains why I agonized over deciding on an English name—but in China, identities are more amorphous. My friend Sophie flits amongst her Chinese name, English name, MSN screen name, nicknames she uses with her friends, and diminutives that her parents call her. “They’re all me,” she says. “A name is just a dai hao.” Dai hao, or code name, can also refer to a stock’s ticker symbol.
Our decision–well, our partial decision? We’re calling her Rory. As for her formal name, we’re still working that out. I’m a big fan of nicknames, but Rob thinks her official first name ought to be: Rory. So: Rory Claire adjusted-and-yet-not-quite-finalized-chinese-name, or Lorelei Rebecca chinese-name, or possibly Rebecca Rose chinese-name or Rebecca Claire chinese-name who is just called Rory. Or maybe something else. But called Rory. It’s already on her shoe cubby.
Now we just have to get Lily some speech therapy before Wowy comes home.
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