the alternative

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” 1 John 18

            I looked through the window, up from the sink full of soapy dishes, and saw the two of them walking together down the dirt path toward the house.  She was a few inches taller than he, and her hair was neatly gathered together in a checkerboard pattern on her scalp with multi-colored plastic bands. He was barefoot and stared at the ground as he walked carefully, choosing every step.  She held his hand tightly even as he tried to wriggle it out of her grasp.  He looked up from the ground, which he was diligently examining, and his mouth opened and made sounds I couldn’t discern.  I saw her turn her head toward him and meet his eyes with disapproval and confusion as he tried to shake her off.  Her hand still held his tightly and they walked along together on the hot ground.  I was lost watching that barefoot boy and the girl who held his hand.  Suddenly I heard the water running in front of me and realized I was still holding a plate and a soapy sponge in my hand.

            I had to look back the date to check when I had last written to you – I can’t believe it was only three weeks ago.  I feel like so much has happened in that time.  It was a busy, productive, very meaningful three weeks.

            In the beginning of February we welcomed a team of eight from across the world – one woman from Canada, a couple from New York, and five from the state of Washington.  Seasoned travelers that they are, five of the eight had spent time here at the children’s home before, and we were happy to have them back.  I had actually only met the two New Yorkers before – Adam’s parents – and was very pleased to get to know the rest of the team.  Our stateside directors came over for their regular visit and it was nice to finally be able to speak to them in person instead of over Voxer.  We all ate well (they cooked a lot) and played cards and read the Bible and shared stories until well-past the time we normally congregate in the common room.  It was so nice to have them here.  The time flew by and now they are all on the other side of the world.  It’s hard to believe how small this planet has become, and how tremendous it still really is.

            Last weekend we celebrated the first-ever In Step Wedding – our oldest girl, Grace, now a lovely young woman, married a wonderful young man who has been a literal Godsend to us here at the home.  All of the children sat for the entire ceremony with little more than a “peep”, even the babies.  It was beautiful and I’m so grateful to have been in attendance.

            Otherwise, my daily routine is “per usual” and nothing has changed much.  Meds, meds, meds, meds.  Headaches, stomach aches, boils, rashes.  Finger sticks, blood smears, venipunctures. 

            She’s just a few months old.  Her tiny hands are so perfect.  Her little eyes are perfect.  She stares up at me, and one corner of her mouth twists up into a crooked smile.  I know, it’s probably just gas, but it’s adorable.  Her tongue sticks out at me and I hear a little baby noise come out of her tiny mouth.  I tickle her belly and she smiles wide.  I do too.  Looking at a new baby is like staring right at God, I feel.  For an instant I wondered if I needed a cardiologist – it was like I could feel the ventricles of my heart swelling past their limit with affection for the tiny lady with the crooked smile in my arms.

            I heard a knock on the door.  One of the Aunties had one of the toddlers by the hand and I saw the child’s bloodied and dirty knee.  Dirt on the little girl’s face was streaked dark brown by the tears that had run down her cheeks.  One of the visitors cleaned up the little tyke’s knee, which looked worse than it really was, of course, and she was sent on her way smiling after having been tickled relentlessly.

            I looked down at the baby I was still holding.  She was already smiling and cooing at me.  Images flashed through my mind about her someday falling and scraping her knee.  Then about going to school.  Someone’s going to break that girl’s heart one day.  She’ll have to take tests and do chores and get disciplined for the mistakes she’s going to make.  She’ll be subjected to all sorts of African illnesses and she’ll ride in the back of Kenyan taxis speeding recklessly down the tarmac and she’ll probably get caned in secondary for something not even very serious.  She’ll grow up and be a Kenyan and I’ll be an American and there will always be a world between us.  Will I get to see her grow up here?  I heard voices in the background and looked up at the woman sitting across from me, through mildly blurry eyes, who had apparently been talking to me for the past minute without me realizing.

            I was joking with Carla a few days ago about the monotony of life here.  Actually, she was the first to use the word “monotony”, I think.  She said something like, “life here is monotonous, and yet it is unpredictable.  I guess it’s unpredictably monotonous.”  I get that.  Really, I’m not sure if it’s unpredictably monotonous or monotonously unpredictable.  Regardless, it’s true.  She and I were discussing how it’s important to make time for activities that are “fun” or “different” in this environment because part of the stress grows from the monotonous activities that are rooted in our quasi-isolation here.  In many ways I don’t mind it – having a stable routine works for me – it’s the unpredictability that isn’t quite as exciting as it seems. 

I think what Carla was really expressing to me was how monotonous the “surprises” become after a while.  “This child has misbehaved and done something really bad this time,” or “that child is sick with what?” or “I have malaria again?” or “we have to produce what paperwork for which critically needed immigration document we virtually can’t live without?”  Then once in a while we say or hear “who hit you with a rock?” and “I think so-and-so is sick because they had diarrhea in the middle of the dormitory floor at four-o-clock in the morning,” and “why are your eyes and lips and tongue so swollen? A bee stung you on the face?”

It’s almost as if after a while the surprises aren’t so surprising, and you just learn to roll with the punches.  We also get to roll with the pleasantries too, I guess.  Really, every day is the same, and every day is different.  That’s how it feels most of the time.  I have to say, though: there was one surprise that came in the past few weeks that hasn’t quite rolled off of me yet.

I should be happy, I think.  One of our kids who grew up here was “fostered out” as we say.  An arrangement was made through the children’s department that officially placed him with a family looking to care for him.  He used to eat and play and learn and sleep here.  Then one day he didn’t anymore.

Once in a while our kids will get “fostered out” to other families.  I guess it’s the ideal, right?  Kids get to go have a life outside of what is literally an “orphanage”, however infrequently we choose to use the term, and get more attention than we could probably ever give them here.  I’ve heard stories about kids who were fostered out and then they were “returned” to us because “She did not stop crying for two days,” or “They just kept screaming, “Mama Carla! I want my Mama Carla!”   When I heard that one of our kids was being sent to a family, I didn’t think much of it, really.  I actually thought, “He’ll never make it – he’ll be screaming and crying for auntie, or for Carla, in no time, I bet.  Ten bucks says Jeff picks him up on Monday.”

I walked into the large open room, full of triple-decker bunks.  I could just barely see shadows and colorful pajamas through the blue mosquito netting that hung over each of them.  I heard loud breathing, a few snores, a giggle from the corner, a baby crying loudly, and some high-pitched babbling in a grammatically objectionable blend of Swahili and English.  I set down the small place of half-full medicine cups on a high shelf next to the television.  I carefully placed the few medicine bottles contained within a gallon-size zip-shut plastic bag, which was nearing the end of its life after having been washed at least ten times, just next to the plate and leaned it against the wall.  I looked out at the tiny sea of cribs and found the little crier.  I picked him up and sat with him on the couch even though the cushions were out-of-place.  I leaned back and felt the wooden slats of the sofa frame dig into my back.  The tiny little man cried loudly in my ear so I leaned forward and rocked him and spoke to him quietly.  He stopped crying within a minute or two.

I heard a child’s voice from across the room.  “Julia,” she said.  “Goodnight,” I said.

“Julia, goodnight,” she said. 

“I love you,” I said.

“Julia, I love you.” Another child spoke out from the other side of the room.

All around me tiny voices, in Swahili accents, started calling out across the room.

“Julia goodnight.”

“Julia I love you.”

“Julia.”

I saw heads popping up through their nets to see me.  Fifteen or twenty individual children carried on with their “Julia”s and “I love you”s and “goodnights” to me.  The sleeping baby in my arms snored gently and I felt my heart pound in my chest.  I simultaneously experienced tremendous joy and inexplicable terror.

It was weeks ago that the boy who was most recently fostered out left the home for his new one.  He hasn’t come back.  Jeff never picked him up on Monday like I thought he would.  He’s somewhere else I-don’t-know-where with I-don’t-know-who eating who-knows-what for dinner.  I wonder what his new house is like.  I wonder what school is like for him.  I wonder if he misses the other kids.  I wonder if before he eats he thinks, “THANK YOU JE-SUS FOR THA FOOD!” and imagines the other kids shouting back at the top of their lungs, “AMEN!” as is standard mealtime protocol here.

Okay, so I care about the kids, and it’s only natural that when one of them gets a new family that, regardless of how close or not close I was to that individual child, I would feel some kind of loss.  Yes, I’ve read enough psych textbooks and perused the self-help aisle at Barnes and Noble enough know that “it’s only natural” and that “it’s a grieving process” and that “it has to heal” and blah, blah, blah.  Yeah, I know.  But this is not just about loss, and it’s not just about this kid.  This is about love, and this is about every kid.

I was having an exchange just the other day with a friend of mine in a lighthearted and casual back-and-forth. They jokingly admitted in a few words that they realize they are “emotionally unavailable.”  It was a casual and benign statement regarding communication and behavior patterns and was stated humorously and in a general way to imply being “emotionally hardened” or “closed-off”.  I replied something like, “hey, whatever works for you,” and their response was something like, “well, it sure beats the alternative.”

I thought, “What’s the alternative to not being emotionally closed-off?”  In other words, what are the potential negative consequences of being emotionally “available”?  I almost can’t believe I asked myself the question, considering the deluge of thoughts and associations that followed:

Suffering loss. 

Having to deal with uncertainty. 

Winding up with a broken heart. 

Watching someone you love in pain.

Feeling disconnected from someone you care about.

Being hurt.

Having to be personally exposed.

Getting rejected.

Fear of accidentally hurting a loved one.

Experiencing vulnerability.

Maybe never seeing a child you care about ever again even though you know they’re cared for.

Longing.  Sadness.  Pain.

That one sentence hurled me into a state of subtle self-reflection.

“It sure beats the alternative.”

My response to that sentence, in my mind, was “well, I’m not like that.  I’m an emotionally vulnerable person and I’m not afraid of hurting anymore.  I’ve been hurt a lot in my life and I’ve lived through it.  I’m not emotionally closed off.”  I think I even responded to them with along those lines.  I was confident in doing so.

They put their arms out, gesturing to me that a hug was being requested.  I moved toward them, leaned over and put my arms around their slender shoulders.  I bent my neck down turned my head to the side and put my cheek on the top of their head.  “I love you,” I said.  They didn’t respond.  I felt my stomach turn upside-down.

I suddenly regretted what I said.  “Should I be saying that so much?  How will me saying that affect this child?”  The hug was still in progress.  I kissed the top of their head and let go.

My brain rattled on, “You just gave that kid medicine for HIV.  They could die before you do.  Or what if something happens and you have to leave Kenya again and they never see you again?  Maybe you should be careful about saying that you love them so much.”  I watched them walk away and wondered if I had done the right thing.

I heard a rumor a little while ago.  It sounded something like, “Work permits will be granted for two years and will not be renewed under any circumstance.”  I don’t know if it’s true, and I have no idea if it will ever materialize.  Paradoxically, while some changes happen very slowly in Africa, other changes can happen startlingly fast.  I’m not actively concerned about it today because I’m confident that if God wants me here then I will be.  Really, it’s nothing I think any of us should worry about quiet yet.  If it becomes an issue I’ll obviously let you all know  At the same time, the thought got filed in the back of my mind in the folder of “things I’ll worry about some other time” which is unfortunately also accessible to my subconscious. 

Apparently. 

Dropping off night-time meds to the sitting room again.  “Plate down, bag down.  Everyone’s okay?  Great. Turn around, walk out, go to your room, Julia,” I think to myself.  Kids are crying here and there, it’s early yet.  My eyes involuntarily dart to a face I see pressed up against a mosquito net in one of the lowest bunks just a few inches off the ground.  He’s hysterical and his mouth is open and his little front teeth are showing and he’s completely adorable.  I recognize his face and I felt my heart tighten and I stopped walking.  I realize my face is contorting into one of those “sad puppy-dog faces” like I’m looking at something that makes me sad.  I walk over to the bunk and, as I’m getting down on my knees next to the bed, I see the little crying boy scooting out of his bunk as he recognizes that I’m coming to him.  He stands up and puts his arms up and walks toward me and throws himself on me, gripping his tiny arms around as much of me as he can hold.  He stops crying immediately and I feel the warmth of his head on my chest.  I put my arms around him and squeeze him as tight as I can without hurting him.  I want to hold him forever.  I start rocking him back and forth and do so for thirty seconds or so.  When I let go of him I put my hands on both sides of his face, look him in the eyes, and kiss him on the forehead.  I tell him to go back into his bed and he does.  He lies down and I pull his blanket over him and tuck him in.  I talk to him for a minute, and tell him that it’s okay and that he can go to sleep.  I thought myself silly, considering he barely talks yet, and only ever says to me something that sounds like, “doo-ya”.  I looked at his precious face through the net and see a few half-dried tears still stuck on his chin.  I lean back on my heels and stand up.  I walk away.

Here’s the thing.  I might think I’ve grown-up emotionally, that I’ve had enough therapy and read enough Hazelden “Thoughts For The Day” to have my heart and my mind balanced masterfully between “appropriate boundaries” and “present in the day” but when I was repulsed by the realization that I’m not as “emotionally available” over here as I could be, it really got to me.  I thought I had graduated from emotional availability issues.  Done with that, checked it off my list.  It sounds nice to think such a thing until you realize you’re censoring the number of times you say “I love you” to the children in a day because you don’t want to cause them to “become excessively attached” and help them wind up with a disorder or something.  So, what do I do?  I make sure they all have their multivitamins and their shots and that every kid with even the whisper of a stomach ache gets a blood smear sent to the clinic for a malaria test.  (It might sound diligent of me but really it’s excessive.)  Sometimes kids come to me with the smallest cut or scrape and they say they want a bandage, but I know they just want a hug.  They still say they want shindani but I know they want a little extra dose of individualized attention and a sticker.

As I’m writing this, it’s my day off.  Mama Carla does the medicine and I just give the injections so that they don’t have to make an extra trip to the clinic.  Just after I wrote the “Julia, I love you” part earlier I stopped writing because I “had to go give the shots” even though I knew it was a little early, and that one of the kids I needed to inject was probably busy.  I just wanted to stop writing.  Even right now as I’m typing I’m pretty sure I’m never going to post this because it’s too uncomfortable and exposing to admit that sometimes I feel like I love these kids so much that it scares me, that I’ve still got a lot of growing-up to do, and that I’m realizing that there are some obvious self-protective mechanisms and fear-based decisions that are playing out while I’m carefully filling plastic cups with cotrimoxazole, diphenhydramine or amoxicillin.

There’s a certain amount of risk that’s involved when we care about someone.  In my experience it doesn’t matter if it’s a parent, or a child, or a guy I’m dreaming about, or Mama Carla, or one of the visitors who pop in and out of our lives for a few weeks: there’s a certain amount of “the alternative” that has to be purchased in every meaningful relationship because I simply have never been able to experience the joy of having someone in my life without at least a little bit of pain.  If the very substance of life is constituted by the relationships we nurture, and those relationships require that we be present, honest, and vulnerable enough to be ourselves, then there is a certain wall of fear that has to come down in order for that to take place.  For me, that wall is real, palpable, tangible, visceral, and at times very obvious.  I see it when I think, “I don’t even want to call my best friend from over here in Africa.  I’ll miss her and cry about it afterward.  I’d rather just not think about it.  Besides, I have work to do anyway.”  Sometimes it’s subtle and sneaky, though, and it masquerades around as, “I’m too busy,” or “they’re on a different time-zone, it’s not convenient for me to call them that much”, or “this just isn’t worth my energy,” or “No, that tiny scratch (really, a tiny scratch that didn’t even really break the skin) doesn’t need a bandage; go back and play”.

This is probably the most heartfelt and most uncomfortable entry I’ve written and I’m questioning if it’s reasonable to post something like this on the Internet.  At the same time, I’m absolutely positive that many of you will relate to what I’m writing, so I probably will.  I know that I’m definitely not alone in this.  You who are parents have stories about watching your children sleep and about staying up all hours of the night waiting for them to get home even though you knew they were just breaking curfew.  It’ll make sense to those of you with kids that I actually cried after giving Joy Julia her first injection the other day – she’s the baby I mentioned earlier with the crooked smile – I bet some of you moms choked down tears when your kid had to get their shots when they were a baby.  I know some of you who aren’t married yet – who have had your hearts pulverized by the girl or guy you were sure was “the one” – are more comfortable flirting and having half-hearted flings because you “aren’t ready to settle down” and you “haven’t met the right person yet” when, also, the thought of giving a real relationship a shot makes your heart feel like it’s in a vice again.  (That’s not judgment – that’s me speaking from my own life and my own experience – I, for one, am perfectly happy to stay in the “not ready to settle down yet” until God essentially does nothing short of plopping the man down on my doorstep with a sign around his neck saying “This is the One. It’s okay, he won’t make your heart feel like it’s been put through a Cuisinart, I promise. Love, God”)

I thought this blog was about some nurse in Africa taking care of orphans?  Yeah, it is, and I’m a human being and sometimes I struggle to cope with the amount of love and affection I actually feel for these kids.  It can be overwhelming.  I do my job the best I can and what needs to get done gets done.  But when I look down at the baby mattress and see a row of teeny people all sleeping half on top of each other and I know that the amount of love I feel for just one of them feels like enough to tear my aorta off of my left ventricle, it’s a little intense.  They’re adorable orphan babies who have been placed with us literally by the Grace of God and it’s so humbling to even be around these kids sometimes!  They’re so precious!  They have so much potential!  They have so many gifts and talents!  How could someone ever give them away?  I just want to stop time and love each of them individually, forever and ever, Amen.

But… what if one of them gets fostered out?  What if one of them gets to go away to a new family and we never see them again?  Well, I could spit out a hundred what-ifs that never got me anywhere than stuck in a black hole of fear.  I remember sitting on my friend Lauren’s porch, when I was engaged a few years ago, saying about my would-have-been-future-husband, “But what if he get sick or dies in a car accident or something?  How can I let myself care about someone so much when something could go wrong?”  She and her husband Anthony replied, “Julia, you just can’t think like that.  You can’t live like that.  You’ll drive yourself crazy.”

That’s the truth.

There really is an alternative to being emotionally closed-off, but it’s not what I’ve been going on and on about here.  Since we “can’t selectively numb emotion” (as Brene` Brown, one of my favorite researchers, says) and we “can’t have the dark without the light” I’d have to raise the argument that the alternative to being emotionally-closed off, living in fear, and afraid to love, is to actually just let go and love.  Pain and all. 

The uncertain experience of living in the mystery of sharing yourself with another person is a beautiful and challenging practice that requires courage and faith.  It is the most rewarding, most fulfilling, and yes, at times, the most painful.  I’m twenty-six years old, and I’ve had my heart broken too – by guys, by friends, by family members.  Badly.  I’ve broken other people’s hearts too.  Really badly.  This is life.  We make mistakes and mistakes are made on us.  We learn from them and grow, or isolate ourselves emotionally and then wonder why we feel alone. 

I’ll never forget when I was eight and realized that people die, and that my mom and dad would die someday too, and just about lost my mind inside realizing that someday I might have to deal with life without being able to show my love for them.  Now that I have a set of children with whom I have literally fallen in love I am starting to understand an almost infinitesimally small piece of what it must be like to love your own kid.  Of course we fear loss.  It comes in so many forms and, despite our efforts to make life as neat and as certain as possible we will all experience tragic loss.  But what really is the alternative?

The alternative to being emotionally detached is to love with everything you’ve got, with your eyes open, with a generous helping of common sense and a healthy set of boundaries.  The alternative is experiencing joy and sadness in kind.  It is letting yourself get lost in the laughter.  It is releasing yourself from the burden of trying to love someone perfectly, and embracing your ability to do your best to honor and cultivate the connection you have.  It is saying “I do” (or whatever it was that Grace and Alfred said in Swahili) and making the decision to commit to one person for the rest of your life like we saw last weekend.  It is doing with courage what is sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes scary in order to nurture and build something with someone who is unique and beautiful and special.  It is tucking them in, saying I love you as many times as you feel like, hugging them tighter, holding them longer, treasuring every moment, telling them how you really feel, slapping on a bandage even if they don’t need it, and letting yourself cry if you need to after you inject quinine into their teeny-tiny little leg.

I’m grateful for that casual conversation I had this week about emotional availability – it came at a perfect time for me to examine a few things I didn’t want to admit were affecting me and my relationships with the kids.  Today I have an awareness of the challenge I didn’t have previously, and I know that I have a choice to make.  Actually, I have about a hundred-and-fifty-one choices to make.  Every day.  I have no idea what’s going to happen in the future, but just because not every single person who ever told our kids that they love them still demonstrates that they do so doesn’t mean that it’s acceptable for me to hold my heart back because I’m scared of hurting them or of getting hurt myself.  That’s not how love works.  Love works when it is exchanged, cherished, nurtured, and demonstrated.  Love works when we have enough courage to allow ourselves to feel it and to live in all of its uncertainty.

            The soapy sponge and half-clean plate were still in my hand.  I looked back up out the kitchen window and saw the little girl walking hand-in-hand with the barefoot toddler toward the house.  She was bigger than he was, but she was the one sucking her thumb with her free hand.  He finally did pull his hand away from hers to walk on his own.  He fell down on his hands and knees and cried.  She pulled him up and he stood on his two little feet again, still crying.  She tried to hold his hand but he swatted hers away.  He fell down again.  He cried more.  She helped him stand up again and before holding his hand she stopped, turned toward him, patted his head and rubbed his shoulder.  She comforted him.  Then she grabbed his hand and they kept walking.  He started crying again and she comforted him again.  He stopped and they kept walking.  I just stood staring at this little two-and-a-half year old girl holding the hand of her little “brother,” sixteen-months-old.  This time I didn’t look away.  I ran outside to take a picture.

            I guess if another one of our kids gets fostered out and sent to a new family, I’ll just let them take a piece of my heart with them.  I think it’s better for them to hold on to it than for me to keep it from them.

 

In Step Courtyard

Baby Fredrick

This is what I meant about babies napping half on-top of each other - they seem to like it.  Ray's demonstrating to Ayub, "Hey man, I got your back." :)

  

Baby Laura

Grace's Wedding

The Happy Couple

Laying out the future for In Step: Ron Panzero, Jeff Picicci, Adam Pollock, Carla Picicci, Ron Pollock, Joyce Panzero.  With a cameo by Gaven Krieder.

Chris is still smiling! I caught him before he started to "feed" himself.  And by "feed" I obviously mean wipe food all over his face.  Ha!

Falling very much in love with Baby Max here.

Baby Jeremiah loves to smile :)

We were blessed to welcome Baby Rael, 2 months old, this month.

Here's the barefoot little boy and helpful "big sis".  Ayub and Dorcas.  As soon as he saw me he let her hand go (you can still tell in the photo) and latched on.  I missed the cute moment but at least you have a better image.