Twelve Years

 Somebody had a birthday today! Because cake and ice cream would be food, and thus a hated activity, we decided to DO something fun instead. Less than two weeks ago a new playground opened less than 15 minutes from our house - it's huge, and designed specifically to be accessible for kids with a wide range of disabilities. Even the slides are made of a special kind of plastic so as to not generate static electricity which could interfere with hearing aids - they tried to think of everything.

 

 Krassi loves to swing, and although quite a few of the playgrounds around here have swings like the one on the right that work for Reuben (and Evania, as you can see here), they don't provide enough security for Krassi. But the one on the left does!

 Most of the play structure can be reached in a wheelchair (though as a practical note, that's only good if all you want to do is wheel around on it and then come back down - yes, there are plenty of circles/routes to take, but only one way up and down, so it feels a little pointless.) Krassi likes slides, so we wheeled up to one, but then had to call Leah up to bring his wheelchair around down to the bottom for him!

This big platform has "couches" on either side, and is accessed from the ramps on the play structure - Krassi can just be wheeled onto it, we crank his locks down, and then it can be rocked. Once, the kids had it rocking hard enough we were glad K had anti-tip braces on his chair! All eight children you can see on the platform came with me. I'm holding Gloria.

We didn't go with just our seven, but because Matt was out of town for the day, we had room to bring two friends, on the condition that they knew they weren't there just to play, but were there to help me guide/care for Reuben, Evania, and Gloria so I could make the morning a special one for Krassimir. So we filled up Big Blue (as in, it was full! we could only bring two of the kids' three friends at that house!) and away we went.

Reuben's favorite part of the place was the splash park, as you can see in the photo above. He was soaking wet - it's going to take his shoes days to be dry enough to wear! But he was absolutely delighted. The splash park, too, was designed at a variety of scales, so after observing it for a few minutes to see where things ebbed and flowed, I was able to find a place where Krassi could get close enough to play with the water without getting himself and his chair quite as fully engaged as Reuben was!

He knows that's where the water's going to come from again in a moment!

Here's another example of where this preferred posture of his just doesn't really do much for him! The water's on! And he's missing it!!

Ah ha!!! There he's found it!

And even trying it with the left hand, too. Happy boy!

But Krassi's favorite part was the zip line. There are two of these running parallel - one with a round seat where you hang on, either standing or sitting, and one with a bucket seat like the swing Krassi was using earlier. This one we tried three different times, and each time, though you couldn't really tell from his face, he went through great contortions to get his hands together to sign "more" each time it slowed down!

I think my only disappointment with the playground is that although there were easily over a hundred people there this morning, Krassi was the only one in a wheelchair. Yes, I am very well aware that there is a very wide range of disabilities that a playground like this can cater to (the static-free slides, for example!) But, still, it was kind of a lonely feeling to be the only parent of a child in a chair at a place like this. So many, so many of the families and children there seemed to be just "normal" families with "normal" kids checking out a new playground.

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There's a reason this post is titled the way it is. Although this is a happy day because it marks a milestone - twelve years old! - for our oldest son, it's also a day that's raised some rather strong emotions. Twelve years ago today is when life suddenly started going very wrong for this precious little boy. Twelve years and one day ago, he was safe and warm and held within his mother's womb. I don't know much of anything about her - I don't know if she was worried, excited, ambivalent about the tiny life growing inside of her. I know that her baby's father was not in the picture. But what I do know, and brings me to tears every time I think of it, even now I can hardly type for the tears falling down my face, is that twelve years ago that tiny baby was born, too early for his little body to be ready to be on its own, and on that day he lost something so incredibly precious - his mother. Suddenly he was not only no longer within that safe, warm, held place where he ought to have been able to grow and prepare his tiny body for weeks yet, but the one person who had been with him every moment of his tiny life since it began was no longer with him. Instead, he spent two weeks in the hospital, and was then transferred to the preemie care unit at the orphanage where he would eventually be committed for the next nine and a half years of his life.

So much life, so much potential, was robbed from my little boy in the years he spent in that place. I wish someone had told his mother the truth - that she, with all her imperfections, could have done so much for that tiny baby boy had she just been encouraged to love him, hold him, talk to him, love him, keep him. I don't ever wish that Krassimir was not my boy, but I wish for him that he would never have had to be my boy.

There is so much loss wrapped up in adoption. The only reason we have gained our eldest son, and will hopefully soon have our two oldest daughters, is that all three of them have experienced one of the most serious losses any human being can have. The one person who was everything to them for all of those days, weeks, months of growing before their birth is just simply gone. And that loss happened at such a tender age, under already strenuous circumstances for a tiny person. It doesn't matter when a child is adopted, or what circumstances it happens under, at what age, what kind of care they had in the interim, all adoption is a story born out of a profound loss. And that is something incredibly sad.

I think back to the six little ones that I birthed into this world, and realize that I can never be that for Krassi, or for B, or T. I am (or will be) still their real mother in every true sense of the word, but I can never replace that mother.

Twelve years ago, my boy. I am so sorry. I can never replace what she should have been to you, but I hope that I can continue to become something precious to you in a different way. I, too, am a very imperfect mother - so inadequate compared to what you really need, what you ought to have, but I promise you, my tiny twelve-year-old - I am going to spend the rest of my life being your mother, and we'll keep growing into that together, won't we?

Visiting on trip one, March 2013

Letting me hold him on trip one.

From our pick-up trip, October 2013