reunion

we picked zoe up from ELC-2 on April 6th and brought her to our temporary home in annisquam where we've found an affordable furnished winter rental to live in while we wait with the rest of the planet for the world to restart. i hadn't seen zoe in over 3 months and i couldn't wait. we'd done all the things- we'd gotten off the plane and quarantined for 2 weeks with out seeing a soul, check our temperatures and kept our hands washed. her school wasn't meeting anymore and there were only a few kids in the residence (ELC-2) so she called us all the time- she was ready too. ready to come 'home' or whatever 'home' looks like to our family which is another blog post for another day.

the traffic was light. i called when we arrived. mike had been back to the states a month before so i asked him if he could step into the back ground and i could have the first hug. i couldn't wait. i speak to zoe every other night in africa. i'm the one who dials her number, who goes out and calls her cat so she can see her, who rallies the siblings, but when she ran out that door at ELC-2 she ran to her dad.
"mom, where's dad?" then seeing him, " DADDY!!" and gave him a huge hug.

not to be overly-dramatic but it felt like dying. dying in the way that you read about when someone has a near death experience and their life passes before their eyes. because in those moments when her staff member looked at me with that bottom-lip-stuck-out look of 'i'm sorry' and i slow-mo'ed a glance to her hug with her dad, i saw all the moments flashing before me. i felt all the feelings- the pain of watching her struggle through the past 20 years, of holding that: the smirks and the non-invites from supposedly open-minded liberal san francisco parents, the giggles and purposeful bullying of her peers, the countless times she has told me her life isn't worth it, the hours i've spent writing it all out so i don't explode. and here. here was this moment. the longest i've been away from her in 20 years. and BOOM slap. it hurt! 

and i know there is all that psychology behind it and that 'punishing the one your closest with' yada-yada, but it didn't change the fact that it felt like a huge punch in the gut. so that was the intro which i guess is good in that there was room for improvement.

i thought i'd be writing a lot. i thought i'd be here, near the water, with time and with my muse (zoe) and i'd be full of words again, but it's a different season. a different season entirely. when i started writing i needed to get through my days. there was still so much to be discovered and uncovered about zoe and her future. i was trying to do that while also trying to accept it, and what it might mean for our family. as the years have unfolded, we have more clarity and a deeper understanding of zoe. we have begun to grasp what her future may look like and in that, to accept it and look at what that means for our family.

i have a house full of teenagers right now- in attitude, habits and hygiene- their age range is 11-20. it's complicated. one wrestles with issues with identity and adoption, one with identity and autism and all that comes with that, 2 that wrestle with third culture kid issues. it's a lot. and then of course there are all my issues! it's a party over here. :) but for zoe, being 'home' means staring what she is not, in the face. it's about confronting her difference 24 hours a day. it's feeling like the oldest and the least able at once. i know it's asking a lot of her- all. the. time.

but there is something about sitting around the dinner table, the 6 of us, that in it's crazy, i love. something about my 4 babies all together, being way too loud, attitudes galore and usually mocking me, but there we are- the model of the imperfect world. hard. not easy. loud, not peaceful. sitting crooked not straight. forgetting our manners, but sharing our stories. laughing even if it's over some stupid simpsons episode rerun. laughing even if everyone doesn't get the joke.  learning that we are different. learning that we are the same. 

like the past 20 years, a beautifully bent but not broken, reunion.