American Girl

Here I am with one of my favorite girls - her name is Cara, and she's eight (going on 18!) years old. Cara loves her cat Sweetpea, really wants to get a dog, knows all the songs and dances from High School Musical, is reading the latest Harry Potter book, takes tennis lessons, and is going to horseback riding camp next month. Her favorite foods are pizza, pancakes, and bacon. She like to paint her nails with sparkly nail polish and loves having "spa days" at home with her mom. She is an all America girl. Last week, Cara was with us in Walt Disney World for three days and nights of wonderful, park hopping fun. But about eight years ago, Cara was abandoned outside a hospital in a small town in the Hunan Province of China. She was two weeks old. She spent the next nine months in a Chinese orphanage, until her parents, our dear friends Stuart and Donna, traveled to China to bring her home. Cara is very aware of her history, and is also very proud of her heritage. She meets regularly with the other Chinese girls who were adopted from the orphange with her, goes to Chinese school once a week, and will undoubtedly travel to China quite soon, since her father goes there each summer to teach English in an exchange program affiliated with Ohio State University.

I have loved being with Cara from the minute I met her, right after she got to America. Although we don't get to see each all that often, we always pick up right we left off. I find her pretty irresistable, and she can usually convince me to do things I would never have imagined I'd do (like riding Splash Mountain three times in a row at 10:30 pm!). But whenever we're together, it's never far from my mind that she could have been growing up in that little Chinese town we saw in pictures, where the streets were paved in red clay and the largest homes were only a little bigger than my two car garage. It's also never far from my mind that living in that town is the Chinese woman who gave birth to her and couldn't keep her, and who most likely thinks about her day and night. I wish that she could somehow know how happy, safe, beautiful, and loved her daughter is. She is truly one lucky little American girl.

Back in the Real World

It's been a very short Monday, a day with not nearly enough hours. Trying to regain my equilibrium after a week away has seemed unusually difficult. I was attempting to get in a few minutes of everything I had on my summer "resolutions" list - there was a haiku to compose and a photo to take for One Deep Breath, all those great posts at Sunday Scribblings to read, a stack of library books to return (and of course who could resist perusing the new arrival shelves), a workout at the gym, the Beethoven Sonata still open on the piano, plus doggies who hadn't been walked for a week, grocery shopping for me and my mom, a weeks worth of mail...well, you get the picture. Nevertheless, I'm rather glad to be home. I actually don't like taking vacations in the summer, because being home in the summer is it's own vacation. From September to May, I have not only my office job to contend with, but also school rehearsals and concerts, church choir rehearsals and service responsibilities, plus the schedule of subscription concerts and plays I always attend - Detroit Symphony, The Hilberry Theater, Measure for Measure (my husband's men's choir), et al. Every day is filled to the max. But from June to August, there is absolutely nothing on my calendar. I flip through all those blank pages and just shake my head in wonder. I am so protective of those empty days, that I don't even want to give them up to go on vacation!

However, if today was any indication of the way this summer is going to go, I'm not too happy about it. Fact is, the day got completely out of my control. I felt like I was standing in the middle of a funnel cloud, being spun around in a frenzied circle, and when it finally stopped I was too dizzy and disoriented to accomplish anything!

So, it's 11:00 pm, and I'm once again here at my keyboard, the place I started this day, sipping Chardonnay now instead of Gevalia coffee. The puppies are sleeping contentedly under the cool breeze from the ceiling fan, resting from their late evening walk. My haiku and photo are posted. My muscles are starting to feel just a little sore from the morning's workout at FitZone. We had a lovely (healthy) grilled chicken dinner, with rice and fresh green salad. I worked out the "A" section on the Beethoven F major Sonata. The mail is sorted, and my little stack of things to take to work/bank/post office is piled neatly on the kitchen table.

Actually, I guess I accomplished more that I thought. After all, it's summer, and tomorrow is another day!

One Deep Breath-Pathways

Infinite footprints leave ghostly echoes on long forgotten pathways.

Back in the 60's, this overgrown path was once a shortcut the neighborhood children (my husband among them!) took to school. Sadly, it's now considered dangerous for children to walk through this park alone, so the path has become neglected and overgrown. But I can still imagine groups of boys and girls, chattering as they make their way along it.

Sunday Scribblings-Bed

When I was sick and lay a-bed

I had two pillows at my head

And all my toys beside me lay

To keep me happy all the day.

Robert Louis Stevenson, The Land Of Counterpane

As a child, I was often sick - not with anything really serious, but I was prone to recurring bouts of bronchitis and asthma. My mother tended to be overprotective, and would put me to bed at the first sign of a sniffle. This was one of my favorite poems, because it helped me to imagine my bed as a place of adventure, rather than confinement. I too could "send my ships in fleets all up and down among the sheets," or "bring my trees and houses out and plant cities all about." I never resented the time I spent in bed, even if my friends were outside playing, when I was able to create adventures in my very own "pleasant Land of Counterpane."

Daddy Dearest

I admit it, I was a daddy's girl. I couldn't wait until my dad got home from work each day, and would swing me up in his arms and twirl me around until I was dizzy with delight. Even when I was little bitty, I recognized that the way his face lit up when he caught sight of me racing down the sidewalk to meet him meant that I was his "most special person." And as I got older, that same face would beam with pride at my piano recitals, enjoying every minute of each one, from the three line, one fingered pieces, all the way through to Beethoven Sonatas and Debussy's Arabesque. From the earliest of ages, I was always certain of one thing, and that was my father's love and acceptance. That was why his betrayal hurt me so deeply. Technically, it was my mother he betrayed, but the ramifications of his actions affected me at my deepest core. Even though I was a grown woman with a family of my own, the things he did meant I could no longer count on him to be there for me, as guardian, protector, constant admirer. I built up a huge core of anger and resentment toward him, feelings that no amount of therapy or pharmaceuticals seemed to erase. We were completely estranged for several years.

I did a lot of reading and talking about forgiveness, from the Christian standpoint and the psychotherapeutical standpoint. I visualized my anger and hurt feelings being tossed from a cliff, submerged in the waves, burned to ashes. But I could always manage to rekindle those embers of rage, and for a long time I held on to them so tightly becuase the anger was the only power I had over the pain he had caused me.

In his wonderful novel The Grace That Keeps This World, author Tom Bailey writes:

"Forgiveness didn't arrive as a thought. You could talk about the idea of forgiveness, of course, talk it out, reason with yourself, but that wasn't the mystery of forgiveness. An emotion first, it happened in the heart, not the head. And you had to be prepared to receive it - there were no short cuts to the full knowledge of it."

That's exactly how it happened for me. One day I realized that thinking about my dad no longer made me white hot with anger, no longer made me want to scream about his unfairness and injustice. Forgiveness appeared as a surprise, unbidden, arriving in my heart like a long hoped for guest. I welcomed it with open arms.

Today, I'm having lunch with my dad and his wife. We laugh and talk fairly easily together, now. I am not the little girl that runs to meet him with such great joy, but meeting him brings me a measure of peace. In the end, forgiveness was a gift to both of us.