"Okay ol' lady"

This morning my adoption agency sent an email reminder that my one-year post-placement home study report is coming due in the very near future. That kind of sent a shock through my system: Nora has been with me for almost a year. She bounced into that room in the Civil Affairs rented office space at the Lottery Hotel in Nanning on January 10, 2006, stripped the doll out of my hands and tore its clothes off without exhibiting a moment of curiosity about me or YuYu. In those first few minutes, Nora showed me who she is but yet, here I am, almost a year later, still struggling to accept and love her as she is. Nora can be as bold as brass and completely self-centered and I just have to remind myself, a lot, that, for the most part, those are admirable qualities that I just have to help her moderate and refocus. I know my problem stems from the big gap in my expectations of how a child of mine SHOULD act and how Nora, now a child of mine, DOES act. For example, on Halloween, we were leaving the porch of an elderly couple and Mrs. Nelson said, “Okay girls, you be careful, watch for cars.” As Nora was turning and going down the first step, she replied, in her loudest, most cooperative voice, “Okay ol’ lady.” I cracked up and I apologized, but we were all laughing. Then one of Nora’s not so admirable qualities kicked in and she yelled and sat down on the sidewalk and started crying because she can’t stand to be laughed at, she cannot see the humor in anything that she does. It took a lot of soothing to get her to take the pout off her face and continue trick or treating, but soon she was pushing on and yelling “Happy Halloween” at the next house.

And I have to say, that Nora is trying to get a grip on her impulses and that is another one of her admirable qualities. She is not a giver-upper. Once motivated to complete a task or achieve a goal, she is relentless. Not that she can’t get very, very frustrated, especially at school, and then her lack of impulse control causes trouble. She yells and strikes out and causes a lot of disruption. But I know that Miss Judy and Miss Elaine are helping her learn how to control her outbursts. And at home, I’m getting better at giving her the tools she needs and I can see her trying hard to use words to express her frustration and feelings instead of hitting or yelling. And when she does lose control and hurts a sister or destroys a possession, it appears that she feels remorse. I’m pretty sure the remorse if sincere and not just a show or connected to her anger at getting caught doing something wrong.

So, almost a year and we haven’t yet clicked. I’d love to believe that there were magical benchmarks that we talk about on the adoption boards like the magic 6-month mark that I really did feel with Mimi, but the easy numbers may not work with Nora. Our dance will be life long I think. She is a prickly little personality and I will always be pushing myself to know her and love her just the way she is like it says in the parent-child contract. You just take them as they come and do the best you can. Simple, right? So for right now, if I had to take a bullet for her, I would, certainly, but it would still be a sacrifice out of obligation rather than from love. But I do feel that time is working its magic, but it is gradual magic, no lightening bolts or piercing arrows. And if that’s the way it’s going to be, that’s the way it’s going to be even though I will still get frustrated with her and myself and still wish in my heart that I could feel the same kind of love for her like I have for my other three and that it would hit me like a bolt out of the blue. But it is just not going to work that way and I have to keep doing my best to make her feel like she is loved as deeply as she needs to be loved until the day I look at her and say, oh wow, when did that happen. Most of all, I have to keep telling myself that, given enough time, the oh wow day will come for us, and one day I won’t be pretending, I’ll be loving her, and it will feel like a bolt out of the blue.