Writing My Wrongs

chiunque?

"The whole value of solitude depends upon one's self; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it” - John Lubbock

I was dropped off at the hospital a little after 8 a.m. I  kissed my sons goodbye and told them I would see them later. 

Having spent a fair amount of time in the hospital as a child, I was not the least bit anxious. Childhood surgeries, three pregnancies, laparoscopies, you name it. I was a pro at surgery. As a child, I actually liked being in the hospital. It was the only time I got undivided attention and people gushed over me.

Admitting:
Is there no one with you?

Me:
No.

Admitting:
Well, you cannot go home alone. Who is picking you up?

Me:
(Mumbles an answer that seems to be acceptable)

I am soon directed by a volunteer. A Jamaican young man takes me one floor up and instructs me in my attire, my locker, key, where to go. Before he leaves, he asks:

“Is there anyone with you?”

I tell him the same thing I told admitting. I am beginning to get annoyed.

I change my clothes, lock up my belongings, slide on the grey furry booties and enter the pre op waiting area. The room is filled with ten or so patients and three nurses.  Every patient (except for me) is accompanied by a child, a parent, a grandparent or boyfriend. I scan the room and take a seat in a far corner.

My name is soon called and I go into another room with a nurse.

“Is there anyone with you?”

I fight to urge to snap back at her. I respond by telling there is no one. She takes my vitals, inserts an IV line into my left arm, and questions me about my right hand. She asks if I can remove my nose piercing. I indicate I cannot. That was a little white lie. Truth was I did not want to. It’s a bitch to put back in. It is so small. They aren’t operating on my face. Just deal with it. She covers the piercing with a small piece of tape.

She leaves and the nurse anesthetist joins me.

More questions about my health history, my surgery, a belated birthday wish and then the question:

“Is there anyone with you?”

I am boiling now. Jesus H. No for god sakes, do you SEE anyone? Trust me, I don’t have Stuart Little in my pocket. Caspar the Friendly Ghost is not in the chair next to me.

Back I go out to the holding tank to sit amongst the patients and all their Anyones.  I am sans anyone. I sit alone.

An hour later the anesthesiologist arrives. Shakes my hand, mumbles something in heavily accented English. I shake my head. Before he leaves me, the usual:

“Is there anyone with you?”.

“No”. I state firmly. Other patients turn to look at me. I realize I was a bit rude. I manage a weak smile.

I decide to hide behind my sheath of red bangs. I look down at my lap and swing my feet.

“Scuse me, Suz, are you okay?” a voice questions.

I look up. It’s the first nurse. Linda. I assure her I am fine. She tells me a male doctor walked by and saw me with my face down and worried that since I was alone I might be upset.

I sigh.

Moments later I am escorted to the OR. As I enter the sterile room and see all the machines, lights and medical personnel I get a flash of anxiety. I suddenly feel terribly alone.

I remember this feeling. I have flashbacks. I scoot up onto the table and my anxiety arrives in full force.

I lay back and the anesthesiologist starts the line. Just as I begin to feel woozy, I start to cry.

I see my eighteen year old self about to give birth. I was alone then too.

Only then, no one, not a single soul cared that I was alone. No one asked me how I was, who was picking me up or how I was feeling. They barely talked to me or looked at me. They weren’t interested in me. They were interested in the high priced commodity I would expunge from my womb.

Seems it acceptable to give birth to your first child, alone, one thousand miles from home, in the company of strangers but it’s not acceptable to get a four inch slice cut into your hand to relieve carpal tunnel pressure.

What do I expect?

"Expecting the world to treat you fairly
because you are a good person
is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you
because you are a vegetarian." - Dennis Wholey

She reminds me a lot of my daughter in many ways. I have enjoyed getting to know her and while she can be a bit bristly at times, I don’t mind. As I told another friend, I believe anyone who has been torched by adoption has the right to be supremely pissed off at any given moment. I don’t mind anger. It’s obvious. I despise passive aggressive behavior or thinly disguised contempt. That is harder to deal with. You are never really sure where you are at with someone who is pretending to feel or be something they are not.

But I digress.

This friend recently said this to me:

“this fear that I will find out what my birthmother wants from me and I will learn that I'm not living up to her standards…”

This really struck me, deeply.  I recall my daughter telling me years ago that I had all these expectations of her and she was not going to be able to live up to them and that was always going to be a problem.

Huh? How does she determine out of one or two emails that I have “all these expectations of her”.

This stumped me in a major way when she said it. It was totally off and in the context of our relationship at the time it was completely well, unfounded. . It made no sense to me. I filed it away in my head for future rumination.  I figured it would make sense to me at some point.

Now that yet another adoptee has alluded to the same thing it makes me think yet again.

What do I want from my daughter? Why would she think I “want” anything at all? Why would she think I expect anything from her? What could I possibly expect?

Why do so many adoptees feel they have to be something, or live up to something, or whatever?

My daughter doesn’t owe me anything. Being a mother does not mean your children owe you anything. Maybe that is just me. It’s just the mother I am. Even to the child I did not raise. My children are not here on this earth to make me happier, me better, me safer or anything. That is my job for them – not the reverse.

Am I the only one that feels that way? 

As I thought more about it, I was reminded of yet another adoptee friend. She told me she always felt like a dancing bear. That she was adopted to make her mother feel like a mother, like a whole woman, a fertile woman. She told me she was told she was adopted to fix her aparents failing marriage. She told me she always felt like she never belonged  but forced herself to pretend like she belonged so her amother could be happy. Her life was always about making her amother happy and not herself. If she was sad, she was never sad around her amother. That might make her amother sad and it was her job, as the adopted child, to keep her amother happy.

Holy sheet.  Yeah, it might now make sense to me.

My daughter MAY feel that she has to live up to the ghost child, the child her parents could never have. She MAY be projecting feelings she has towards her parents on to me.  My other friend might be doing the same.

How do we, as mothers in reunion, reassure our children that they don’t have to be anything but their glorious wonderful selves?

I don’t want anything from my daughter. It is not her job to “fix” me, to heal me, to make me feel better. That is my job. Any sadness, pain and torment in my life related to adoption was NOT caused by her. It was caused by society, by Seymour Kurtz, by my parents, even my own ignorance, but never her.

What do I expect of her?

Guh. I don’t know. To be a decent human being? To not savagely kill kittens in her spare time? To be kind to the elderly and the handicapped? I don’t know. .

It’s not really about expectations or demands. It’s more about hopes and dreams.

I hope she is happy.
I hope she finds her emotional voice
I hope she finds a job she loves.
I hope she finds a partner – male or female – that she loves and one that loves her back
I hope she is healthy.
I hope she laughs often.
I hope she has awesome, thrilling life experiences.
I hope she gets all she wants and more.
I hope she is able to someday find a way to work through her adoption trauma.
I hope someday her aparents are able to love and appreciate her for her who she is, not who they want her to be.
I hope and I hope some more.

Are those expectations? I don’t think so. She may be my child but she is not a child. I can expect my 5 year old to act a certain way because he is being raised by me and he is well, five.

I just expect her to be HER. Whoever she is. Whatever she is. It’s why I have not pushed meeting, or demands, or anything. I don’t want an unnatural relationship with her. I don’t want her doing anything out of some perceived obligation. I don’t want a hostile witness. If she wants to know me, meet me, etc. I want her to do it because SHE wants to. Because it suits her, not me.

This is so critical to me as I know all to well what it is like to give up a part of yourself (or your child) for someone else’s happiness. I won’t do it to my children.

I just want her to be real and happy and herself.

That is all I “expect”.

Two Years

“Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.” - Victor Hugo

Over 20 years ago I lost my daughter to the adoption machine via a baby broker named Kurtz.

Two years ago today, I found her.

I wrote her.

She wrote me back.

She shared pictures with me and bits of her life.

She personally fulfilled the broken promises made to me by the agency and her adopters. She gave me the proof that she was alive. She sent me the pictures that had been promised for twenty years but never came.

It’s been a challenging two years. I don’t regret it one bit but I would be lying if I said it was easy. It’s very tough wanting to mother someone that doesn’t consider you her mother. It’s hard to be a friend when you are a mother. Its hard to respect boundaries that were set by others.  Unnatural boundaries that were set by the laws of man not mother nature. The ties that bind are indeed ties and they do bind.

I entered reunion with very little expectation. It was all about her and finding her and telling her she was always wanted, always loved, always missed. It was about healing as much of her primal wound as I could. It was about telling her she was welcome in our lives and her sibling’s lives and has never ever been a secret.

As reunion progressed it became more about me. Each time I looked into her beautiful face/photo, I was in pain. I would hunger to rock my child. To hold her. To run my fingers through her hair. To sit with her during a thunderstorm and assure her that mommy was here and that those flashers and boomers couldn’t hurt her. Each time I saw her amended name, the mother in me cried out in defiance. Each time she referred to her adopted mother as her mother, the mothers heart in me bled a bit more.

Seeing her face, talking about her, sharing her, was the first time I was acknowledged (by myself and others) as her mother. It has been hard. I swallowed that adoption koolaid by the gallons all those years ago. I told myself I did not matter. I believed what they told me that I could be replaced and any woman could be a mother. Vomitting the koolaid has not been  pleasant. With the vomit comes the true, deep realizations of what was done to me, what was done to my daughter and what continues to be done to mothers and children world wide. In the vomit, like alphabet soup, were the words:

Mothers don’t matter.

They were wrong.

My daily life, my subsequent children and more are proof of that. The price that infertiles will pay and the lengths they will go to are further proof. If mothers dont matter, why do so many do such outrageous things to become one?

I don’t know what the future holds for me and my daughter. I try hard not to plan, control or over think it. I try to live in the moment and bask in the wonder of her. Her beauty, her brains, her talents, those fabulous eyes that she got from me and no one else.

Fretting about what tomorrow will bring takes away from what today offers. I waited long for today with her. Even if it’s only glimpses in cyberpace, an email here or there, its more than I had yesterday and I must enjoy it today.

I admit that I do hope someday she is emotionally strong enough to meet me, to tell me her feelings, to be mad at me, to punch me and kick me, whatever she might need to do. I hope she can trust me and believe deep in her soul that I never wanted for us to part. I hope she will feel in every cell of her being that her mother has always loved her and always will.

For now, I relish today. And look forward to tomorrow.

Happy Anniversary baby. I love you.

Dolllars and No Sense

"When  money speaks, the truth keeps silent. -  Russian Proverb"

An adoption "agency" in Illinois is sending letters to known adoptive family's encouraging them to adopt again.  Perhaps they have a back log (I doubt it) or perhaps they just want to make some money (highly likely). I wonder if the letter has a coupon in it? Perhaps a quantity discount? Maybe a "white sale" in January? 

For the small price of $50,000 they promise a  healthy infant in relatively short order.

Fifty thousand dollars.

Hmph. I am offended.

My daughter and adoptees like her in the 80s only cost between $15 and $25 thousand. Are todays babies more valuable? Why they appreciation? Do they have extra bells and whistles? Maybe a few extra appendages? Do they dance when they are born? Talk and walk? Maybe come equipped with a guaranteed IQ? Maybe they are one of the 4400 and have special powers?

Has the cost of a home study increased that much? Are the courts that much more expensive? 

My mother likes to  joke that my car cost more than the house she lives in. She bought it in the 1970s for $14K . My car cost over $20k. Imagine being told  YOU cost more than the family car?

And I still say its ugly and nasty and you cannot put a price on our children or the pain caused by separating them from us.

Roles and Trolls

" It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do. - Jean Baptiste Molliere

What exactly does one say to a comment like this?

“Can you accept YOUR responsibility in that? Worry about your own role before you go blaming others. There would have been no baby to purchase if she didn't come out of you, and if you didn't hand her over and sign the papers. Countless women have been victims of coercion, my own mother included.....but they don't all give in.”

My role? Which role would that be? The role of eighteen year old girl who had sex with a man she loved and got pregnant? Or is the role of same eighteen year old girl who chose not to abort her child but rather looked for ways to keep, house and feed that child? Is it that role you speak of?

Or perhaps they mean my role as eighteen year old that was housed in a maternity home, one thousand miles from home, with my only contact support coming from the agency that stood to profit form the sale of my child?

Do they mean my role of ignorant young woman who had the legal workings of the adoption system kept from her? Or the role of the honor student, president of student of government, college accepted “high potential” girl who was convinced adoption was better for her child than she was?

Which role are we talking about?

My role in having unprotected sex?  Not that my sex life is anyones business, but I have taken ownership of that. Even the unprotected part. My daughter was conceived in a deep love. Yup.  I understand that role. I don’t regret it. She was meant to be born and she is amazing and beautiful and makes this world a better place.

Ignorance of the damaging affects of adoption and baby brokering? Check. I took responsibility – perhaps too much – for that too.

The fact that she “came out of me” as the commenter so crudely noted? I gladly take responsibility for that. Since she was in me, she had to come out of me. Not sure it could have been done any other way.

Yes, this commenter was an adoptive parent. Yes, I deleted their comment. It was just too crude and offensive to leave (but I still have it in my email). But it did get me thinking about my role. What more can I seriously do? Clearly giving my baby away to someone else isn’t enough? This role business sounds awfully punishing and holier than thou. Didn’t I appease the gods and society at large by surrendering my child? Isn’t that enough?

I have made my story available for legislators. I work with them to change the laws in the State most diseased by this network of agencies.

I have assisted over twenty adoptees and mothers reunite. I pay for search services, look ups, site fees out of my own pocket.

I found my daughter and have welcomed her into my life. I have respected her boundaries.

I have been transparent and open to the internet to help educate others on the trauma of adoption. I have put myself out there to interesting comments so that others can learn and hopefully we can make change.

What more can I do with my “role” ? I am open to suggestions – provided they are constructive, supportive and respectful.

For now, I am chalking that comment up to the source. And I am considering it.

The Price of 8 Pounds of Flesh

"If people only understand money, then they have lost sight of the larger project of Humanity" - Unknown

Many adoptive parents I know greatly object to referring to their adopted children as having been bought or sold.  I struggle with their struggle because, in my case and the case of anyone who obtained a child through the Kurtz network of agencies, the children were indeed sold by the agencies.

The definition of to sell, is to agree to transfer goods or provide services in exchange for money.  How hard is that to grasp?  The goods are the children. You give money to the baby broker in exchange for the child.  In some cases, services are provided to the expectant mother thereby implying a purchase arrangement. We give you this, you give us that.

Sold and  often to the highest bidder.

The network of agencies I lost my daughter to would discount babies. Children of color cost less. Boys cost less. Adopters could turn down a placement and wait for a better model much like you could a new car. Don’t want this year’s male model?  Okeedokee. Just wait a little longer a girl will come down the assembly line soon. Adopters who could not afford the purchase price could negotiate. Cannot afford the white female baby from the Midwest?  How about a Mexican child? They come with the added benefit of having records that are even HARDER to find in the future.  Oh, no, no charge for that extra feature. Parents in NY were charged one price for a baby girl while parents in NJ were charged a different price. Why the price gauging? Did the NJ parents have more money to spend and were therfeore charged more?

How is that not selling?

My own daughter refers to herself as a purchased child. It’s ugly, yes, but its reality.

I know adoptive parents who came into some money before they adopted and told their child that as a result they were able to “buy a house and buy a baby”. 

Buy sell arrangement.

Sold.

Now there is that technicality that the majority, if not all of adopters who worked with the agencies that sold my daughter had no idea what was going on. They were lied to. They were manipulated and used. I get that. I really do.

I know adopters who mortgaged their homes, took out high interest loans, to pay for their children. But even still, if you are obtaining funds to obtain a child – that is a sale. No?

The adopters who obtained their children via Kurtz were told their funds were going to “help” the natural mother and that they were paying for housing, medical bills, counseling and job skills training. This can make me laugh so hard I can sometimes wet my pants.

The adoptive parents were lied to.  They were handing their funds over to a FOR PROFIT agency that was putting the money in their own pockets. I can line up over twenty women who lost their children to these agencies. Promises like semi-open and open adoptions were made to the mothers as kickers.  Promises of pictures and updates and contact were made.

Guess what? There was no post relinquishment counseling. There was no job skills’ training. There were no funds to help them get on their feet.   

There were however police escorts to county lines, air tickets out of the state, and a whole bunch of unanswered letters and phone calls. All promises were broken.

Sold!

Why all the ranting?

Because I despise our children being sold.

I despise money in adoption. It objectifies and commoditizes our children.

When, oh when, will this billion dollar industry be regulated?

When will we stop separating mothers and children in the name of the almighty dollar?

Who do you hold reponsible? Those selling or those buying?

Jenna, I did it!

"Too much time on my hands, its ticking away with my sanity - Styxx'

So, home from work today. My son woke up with a mysterious body rash that  prompted me to call the doctor and get him an appointment. Working from home with older kids is hard. Fine when they are small enough to sit in a pack and play. Not fine when they want food, fun, outside time.

I managed to get them outside, did some work, surfed too much, viewed some pictures of my daughter, and when I got really really bored I decided to practice Jenna's facial expression.  After many hours of trying, I finally got it. Least I think I did. Only Jenna can be the real judge.

Yes, I had too  much time on my hands today. 3 blog posts and silly pictures with my sons and I.

I don't look nearly as cute as Jenna and her daughter. In fact, I think I look like I got hit with a shovel or something. Or beat with the ugly stick. It aint purty but hey, I did it.

And my sons  weird rash is gone. It was either the benadryl allergy or his mothers face. You be the judge.

Seriously, stare at that picture for a bit. I guarantee you will have nightmares.

Joss

"...While there have been legal gains to open records in many countries for the adults adopted as infants, to enable them to locate their natural mothers and through them, their fathers, the mothers themselves remain locked into the pain of what is a terrible, irresolvable grief, into reunion and often beyond.

The mothers of the children taken into what is now seen as a form of slavery, whereby an infant is stripped of all its legal rights to identity, including the loss of its entire genealogy through falsified birth records, continue to suffer. Even in reunion, the symptoms of the various psychiatric conditions directly caused by forced adoption haunt the mother whose 'cure' depends on the resilience of herself and her now grown infant, to forge a healthy relationship based on the mutual trust and affection that has been denied them since before the birth itself.

But even in the 'best case scenario' where there is a successfully bonded reunion, those lost years and that lost infant can never be regained. Both are gone forever. This is crazy making stuff for the mother.

There is no doubt that many, many adopted people suffer too - from a lack of identity, from a lack of a feeling of belonging in the 'right' family i.e. their natural family, from a feeling of 'unnaturalness' caused by being in a substitute home, often based on a lack of the attachment that was always supposed to happen according to the trite psychology applied by trite social workers to the children they displaced. It was believed - wrongly - that babies would automatically respond to affection from a stranger. It was also believed - wrongly - that the adopters would feel an automatic attachment to their new acquisitions.

Sadly, the two way attachment process happened far less often than was publicized by social workers covering their tracks, or covering up what they believed to be their own mistakes but were actually just a side product of adoption itself. The inevitability of failed adoption is inherent in the process of attempting to 'attach' people never meant by nature to belong together in the first place, a process destined to fail.

It is well known that when records open the adoption brokers panic. In the mid 1980's, when it became apparent that the New Zealand government would vote legislation to open birth records for adult adopted people, there were rumors of dire action being taken by social workers around the country. For instance, I was told at the time by a reliable source that social workers at a public hospital were keeping busy shredding adoption records.

Social workers were covering their tracks, including their illegal acts. Destroying official records meant breaking the law as well as professional ethics to obliterate records that would reflect badly on themselves. That these were the same people entrusted to place new born infants into sound homes with substitute parents showed us just how flimsy and how dangerous adoption law and practice actually is. It is unsound, unsafe, and totally unjustified.

The mothers of the children kidnapped for adoption during the 'baby scoop' era of thirty to forty years ago, were so damaged by the experience they are only now starting to speak out publicly about the crimes committed against them by the adoption industry and that happened with the full collusion of the state. Adoption has been proven to be a failed social experiment that has left a trail of destruction in its wake.

Stranger adoption should be considered a crime against humanity. It is experienced as an emotional death by the mother who does not recover;"(For) the saddest and most horrifying aspect of adoption is the amount of emotional damage inflicted upon the natural mother. To call her the 'birth mother' instead of the 'natural mother' allows her only the physical birth and denies her those feelings she wasn't supposed to have. By implication this makes the adoptive parents unnatural, but secret adoption cannot be considered natural when the real mother, the victim of this hit and run, is left battered shocked and damaged. Nothing could be more unnatural".

Like everywhere else, stranger adoption North American style can best be described as a 'hit and run', a non-accidental crash site with two primary victims, mother and child. But unlike everywhere else, it is apparent that what drives North American adoption is the money made by the baby brokers, those heinous people and their supporting organisations that traffic in human beings. They buy and sell infants and children. They import and export, just as the original slave traders did. Misery and mental illness are their environmental side products that are polluting the lives of their victims across generations..." - Copyright Joss Shawyer

Holy Smokes, Batman!

One thousand Americans stop smoking every day - by dying. ~Author Unknown

My daughter picked up a rather unsavory habit while in Europe.

She started smoking.

This amused me at first because a few years back she made a big ta-doo to me about not being a smoker, disliking it, etc. I figured it was the environment, maybe it was cool to do, she was trying to fit in with the Europeans, trying to keep thin,  whatever.

However, it appears as though she has continued.

This makes me feel, well, ucky.

I don’t smoke. I don’t like smokers. I don’t mean I don’t like them as people, I don’t like the habit of smoking. I don’t have any friends who smoke. I prefer not to be around people who smoke. I am very sensitive to the smell. I detest having my clothing smell like smoke, my hair, my things.  I did a happy dance when they prohibited smoking in public places in my state.

My mother was a smoker my entire childhood. She quit about 5 years ago after smoking for over 50 years. I am proud of her. I am not so proud of my daughter for picking up the habit.

I don’t like seeing pictures of her with cigarettes in her hand or mouth. I think it looks trashy and low class. Let’s just put aside the obvious health concerns, I just don’t like it. I mean I REALLY don’t like her smoking.

As always, I was intrigued with why I get so riled up at seeing smoking pictures of her. I mean, I don’t get like this around smokers. I just make a mental note of their smoking status and make adjustments when I am in their company. I don’t get all riled and vile and angry.  I am not one of those rude people who lecture smokers. I just stand a distance away, upwind from them, or go out of the room until they have finished. No one smokes in my house and if you visit and you are a smoker, you are asked to smoke outside.

As I told a friend about this today, he started laughing at me. I mean hysterically, belly laughing. 

He says:

“You seriously don’t know why this bothers you so much?”.

I am like, no asshole, I don’t. If I did, would I be discussing it with you? Would I be all bent about it if I knew?

“You are her MOTHER, for god sakes. Mothers never want to their children to do something that is bad for them, unhealthy or socially unacceptable. Like, um, DUH.”

“Oh, yeah, huh?” I thought.

I realized he was right. That is exactly the issue. If she was with me, raised by me, smoking would be a big no no. I would be upset if I found out she was, I would discuss it with her and express my concern. But I cannot do that. If I tell her I don't like her smoking, she would likely tell me to piss off.  Perhaps she would say "Well, I don't like that you left me with strangers at 3 days old. So there"

That’s exactly it. It’s the mama bear in me wanting to protect and counsel my child but since the laws of man took that away from me I am left feeling all twisted and confused and left with the laws of nature.

How do I manage the mothering protective feelings for a child you were not deemed worthy enough to mother and protect?

Brothers and their Sisters

"Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply... ~Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814

The back pack was rather light. I had expected oodles of paperwork and end of year artwork and supplies to be sent home. There were no such items.

I queried my son on this and he indicated that he had been bringing things home gradually over the past few weeks.

One item that I did find was a “heart map”. It was a large piece of white contruction paper cut into the shape of heart. Drawn on the heart were a number of lines that dissected the heart into what appeared to be small pie shaped slices.  Inside each slice was a small picture and a description. I asked my son what it was. He told me about the heart map concept and that every item noted in the heart was something that was really important to him and deep inside his heart.

I scanned the drawings and labels.

• New York Rangers
• the trip to Boston
• Having a brother
• Philadelphia
• and more

The slices went around in a circle until I got to the last one

• hearing I had a sister.

My throat constricted. I said that was very sweet. He shrugged his tween shrug and ignored me. I sat on the couch and continue to ponder how deeply my son has been touched by his absent sister.

We retired around 9:30 to our beds. He was excited it was the first night of school vacation and that he was able to stay up late. I tucked him into his bed and returned to my room to read. I recently picked up Letters to Life by Rainier Maria Rilke and I was anxious to get to it.

A few minutes into Rilke my son knocks on my door and says he cannot sleep. He asks if he can come and talk to me.  I welcome him in. He notes the books on my night stand and asks what they are.

I share with him the plot of Wuthering Heights. We discuss Crime and Punishment and the Rilke book I am reading. He picks up my copy of Billy Collins The Trouble with Poetry. He tells me that he thought it was a book he read in school, also a book of poetry only it was about a Bear.  (The Collins book has a bear on the cover).  I tell him that I recently purchased that book because Billy Collins is his sisters favorite poet and I was curious what she liked and why. I inform him that Billy Collins is a two term Poet Laureate. I explain to him what Poet Laureate is.

He tells me he hates poetry.  Well, he doesn’t hate it but it was boring to do in school this year. He rambles on about his teacher and her approach to teaching poetry.

He picks up the book, flips it open and reads to me, in its entirety, one of the poems. I am moved to tears. I am a literary nut. I love writing, books and poetry. My nine year old has been struggling with reading and writing since kindergarten. Here he is, in front of me, reciting Billy Collins.

To have my nine year old son, read Billy Collins to me, his absent sisters favorite poet, is beyond my wildest dreams on so many levels.

I have the most amazing children.