A Baker's Dozen
I have a new favourite blog. The last couple of weeks I've been searching high and low for blogs by older women that I enjoyed that I could also look up to as mentors. My Mum is at the top of this list--but, alas, my mum doesn't have a blog--and seeing as I enjoy the blog world I thought it might be a good idea to find some blogs that I don't read just because I know the person, but because I truly enjoy what they write about. I found such a blog.
I spent hours last night dancing my way through Kim C.'s blog, Life in a Shoe. It was delightful. She didn't pull her punches; she does write about the hard things like having to wake up seven little girls at two in the morning to pick up a husband who's been stranded in a parking lot two hours away. She wrote about those things, but in such a humble, loving way that I left her blog with a real sense of peace and joy. I have never gotten those feelings from someone's blog before. Books, maybe, but never a blog.
Over six months worth of posts a person can't pretend that kind of an attitude. I've noticed that in other's blogs. Some people might talk about being humble and joyful, but read their blog long enough and their true heart will come through. I can't remember any posts Kim wrote specifically on heart attitudes, but something still came through her writing that reached out and touched mine. It's really inspired me to look at my own attitude when I write. Just what legacy of feeling do I want to leave behind in my blog?
I was wondering about it absentminedly the other day. I wondered how it would feel to one day have my own daughter read my blog. Would I want her to? Is there things I've written she might enjoy? Is there things she might learn? Will I even one day have a daughter? There is always the possibility I could have all sons--or the possibility I won't have any children at all.
~~~~
My sister, Hannah wants a baker's dozen. I love how she says this. She tilts her head to one side and lets her hair fall half across her face. Her turquoise eyes sparkle and one corner of her mouth curls up playfully, "I want a baker's dozen," she says mischieviously.
I hope she gets her wish one day. When she first told me she wanted a baker's dozen I thought she was being fastecious. I thought instantly of her disorganized tendencies, of her emotional vulnerability, but then I thought further and saw how silly my thinking was. Despite her weaknesses she has strengths I don't come anywhere near matching. She's the most loving, dottering dear person I know. She cooks up the yummiest storm in the kitchen and she'd gladly give up school if she could to just sew all day. If any girl was to have thirteen kids and enjoy every minute of loving them it is going to be Hannah.
I'm not sure how I'd feel about myself having thirteen kids. What's right for each family differs so drastically sometimes. Rachel and Matt are still debating numbers. Matt likes the number five, Rachel the number eight (she wants to beat mum and dad's total).
I love the idea of being pregnant one day, but then again I almost think there's going to be something different for me. I love the thought of adopting. I don't think this in a romantic, or even an obligatory sort of way. There honestly is something about dirty brown feet and little black smiles that has wriggled it's way deep into my heart.
Right from when I was little I've had a soft spot for orphaned animals. My Dad got me my first baby lamb when I was six. My Mum would make up the bottles for me and I'd get them out of the fridge to feed my baby every four hours. I turned into the orphanage mother after that. I had baby goats, baby kangaroos, and even once a baby swan. After I hit fifty, I lost count of how many baby lambs I'd raised.
Loving another woman's baby doesn't bother me. I know there are some ladies who just aren't made to do it, and I don't think anyone has a right to hold that agains them, but for me it comes naturally. I'm not a gushy, emotional kind of person, my family will testify to this, but when I read stories and when I see pictures, a swelling of longing rises in me. I want to hold that baby and I want to take that little boy home.
~~~~
Physically I could probably never bear thirteen children. Though I am getting better, my body will never be as robust as my sisters. I'm going to have to face the possibility one day that a stress like childbirth could trigger off a major relapse I might never recover from. I know a woman this happened to.
I'm not angry anymore at having gotten sick, though. I've learnt a lot of things about health and emotions that in the close loving family I come from I never would have leant about normally. Many, if not all, children to be adopted from overseas suffer from major health issues, the least of these being malnutrition. I know what it is like to be dizzy and weak from malnutrition. I lived two years with a digestive system that wouldn't digest the food I needed, losing weight I didn't have in the first place.
Strangely enough, I even know how it feels to be unable to receive love. The disease inside me not only affected my physical body, it messed with my emotions as well. There were times I physically could not stop crying. I know this it hard to understand; before I became sick this is one thing I never would have ever considered possible, but it is possible--I lived it. Things can get that chemically messed up in your body.
I once cried for three days straight. I'd be able to stop for a few hours here and there, then in the middle of a movie scene or a flicking of a switch, it would start up again. The last of my resilience was breaking. If I was the suicide kind this was where I would have pulled out the razor and ran it across my wrists. But I didn't have to--deep down I was convinced I was dying already.
I've read of the terror people go through when they can't breath in that moment between their lungs stopping and the lung machine taking over. The three days I couldn't stop crying were like that. I was frozen stiff, unable to breath, wishing for a breathe but almost hoping the dark would just swallow me whole.
I longed for love so desperately. I knew people loved me, but as hard as I tried I couldn’t feel it. The disease controlled my emotions and I was starving in the wasteland. It was at this point that the rage hit. I hated the disease, I hated myself, and in the end I almost hated God.
The circumstances that produce the same emotions in orphans is totally different I know, but in the end I almost don't think it matters. I know about the despair and the rage. I could hold a lonely child and understand how they felt.
I'm willing to understand, too, that this might never happen. I don't know yet who I'll marry and I can't pretend God would tell me everything before first laying things on my husbands heart. I'm going to admit, though, that I don't think God has made me sick for nothing.
I'm curious to see just what He will do with my desire to adopt. He sees so much further into the future than I. He has healed me when the statistics said I should have been sick for life, and He has loved me when I've had no love of my own. In that light I guess anything could happen. I could end up with ten kids, I could end up with five. But then again just imagine--I could end up with a baker's dozen, too.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home