Sunday 30 August 2015

Two days left

I am not quite sure how it happened, since it has been looming on my horizon for months, but somehow it has slunk up on me and <boo!> it's only two days until school starts.

Hardly earth-shattering, but it is for our little world. For this is cupcake's first ever "first day of school" and we both need a very deep breath and a tight hold on each other's hand. It has been an extremely rocky build-up over the past few weeks. With my adoptive-parent-sleuth hat on, I eventually unpicked it all and realised cupcake was convinced that when she started a new school, she would have to start another new family. After all, that's what happened the last time she left a nursery - a week later, she moved from foster care to me. All of her known people, places, smells and routines were gone at a stroke. Of course I had reams of notes to try and re-create laundry smells and daily patterns, but it's just building a handrail over a huge hole, isn't it? Better than not having something to cling to, but hardly the same.

I am stunned at how much she remembers of that as a sequence, given how tiny she was. But it was definitely what she was thinking. When I did a bit of artless wondering out loud, "I'm wondering whether these big feelings inside are because you're worried when you start big school, other things will change too? And I'm wondering whether we need to remember together that this will always be your home, and I will always be your mum?" Her eyes screwed up tight and she asked me whether Miss X, her new teacher, was going to be her new mummy. So much hurt and fear inside such a small, worried head. She has been clinging onto me like those woolly monkeys you see wrapped onto their mums. If she had a tail, that would be holding on to me too.

I think she half-believes me that we're stuck with each other for good. But it's the one and only reason I am looking forward to term starting - then I will be able to prove to her that we come home again. In the meantime, she is too anxious to want to leave the house at all. Or sometimes she wants to try, so we head out for a walk, but the panic kicks in when we get to the bend in the road and she can't look back and see our house any more. No amount of rocking, stroking, soothing and singing can do more than damp down the fears for a bit.

The absolute last thing she wants for these next two days are escapades or special treats. She needs everything the same, no excitement (because that feels too close to fear), and days that are as close to completely predictable as I can manage. And I can do that, and I can soothe her and carry her fifty times a day if she needs it. But it makes me hurt for her, for yet another way that she's showing me her world inside is so different to what you'd wish for any child. I have to believe that every day is another tiny fragment of building her a new foundation, even if I can't see yet how to put them together.
 

Monday 6 July 2015

Clouds on the horizon

No, not those ones (although I am very glad that last week's temperatures have dropped far enough that I can no longer fry eggs on the kitchen floor). Emotional clouds that, if this were a cartoon, would spell out "SCHOOL" in white fluffy letters. Sigh.

Cupcake goes to nursery three mornings per week. Settling in was wobbly but moderately OK, and she's been very steady there since the autumn. But, uh-oh, here comes school. I was trying to focus on the fact that the school has been unbelievably sensitive and brilliant in their advance planning, so it feels like a good nurturing place. 

And I'm sure it is. But Cupcake has given me a little flash of how hard the change is going to be for her. Her keyworker has been on holiday for two weeks and got back today. The first week she was away, Cupcake had a series of big falls, every single session. She's not the world's most co-ordinated child, but this was unusual and I put it down to hyper-anxiety about her keyworker's absence. The second week she told me she didn't feel well a lot, and said she didn't like nursery any more. She was superficially calm but asked for me often during the sessions, which hasn't happened in a long time.

It all really came out today, I'm guessing in a rush of relief that her keyworker was back today. She didn't want me to go at drop-off (so I didn't until she was OK), and I've just rung to check on her. She has needed lots of cuddles and has been talking a lot to her keyworker about "mummy come back soon?" and "mummy got lost?" As I wrote this down, I realise some of this is quoting directly from one of her books (Bedtime Billy Bear). I know this doesn't mean these aren't real fears for her though, even if they're coming out through someone else's words. Gulp. 

It's down to me to show her I can carry these fears with her, and slowly carry them for her when she'll let me, but I just need a little time on my own now to cry a bit - life should not be this scary or hard when you are three.

Saturday 27 June 2015

Filling the Cup

In my head today, I was really judging someone for being so negative when nothing was really so bad in their life. My speech (still just inside my head) was getting pretty eloquent and self-righteous, when in a moment of clarity, I decided to apply the same critique to myself for a moment. It wasn't very comfortable.

Here are the bare facts of the past few days:

1. Cupcake had a head injury
2. I've been out without Cupcake approximately 5 times in 12 months (all "after bedtime")
3. I'm feeling tired and a bit isolated

But I could, with total honesty, put those things into this context:

Cupcake's head appears to be perfectly fine today; we had a great GP consultation that was really reassuring, and even though monitoring her overnight was physically gruelling, it is a genuinely tiny price to pay for the peace of mind that she is safe and well.

There were a lot of people who agreed to be in my semi-official support network before I adopted, but I've struggled to ask for help from them. Really, the only person who can change that is me, and I need to swallow some pride and accept that for now, I need to ask for favours from people without being able to offer much in return. These people are good people, and they will have known it would be like that when they offered. I have been a bit of an idiot.

The cup is as full as I choose to see it. Brimfull of friends, happy memories, potential joys, and hands to hold if I need them.


Tuesday 23 June 2015

Low-hanging fruit

A year ago I wouldn't have been brave enough to go picking fruit with Cupcake. (This seems like a natural and sensible point to explain that I'll be calling my little girl Cupcake in these posts. Doubtless when she's older she will find that unbearably saccharine and laughable, but remind me to tell her then that it could have been a LOT worse. Mini Tart? Well quite - I thought not.)

Anyway, fruit picking. Why would that take courage? Well, I didn't trust myself to be able to cope with Cupcake's possible ... what shall I call them? Anxiety attacks almost, if a three year old can have those. I wanted so badly to know I could comfort her, contain her fears, make her world feel safe. But I wasn't sure, and she knew it. I learned more and more of her triggers, and slowly she showed me what helped her.

We went fruit picking today. It was great. It was quiet (most people still in school or work, or perhaps not trusting the breeze pushing dark clouds across the sky). Cupcake, as predicted, was very taken with the idea of carrying her own little "basket" and marched straight off to fill it. She turned out to be an asset in spotting ripe prime berries, as the ones at her eye level would be overlooked by most adult pickers, being around their knee-height.



Here are just a few of the things that would have sent Cupcake into a spiral of genuine fear previously: wide open spaces, doing something new, touching a gooseberry, eating a strawberry, being more than a few steps away from me... I could go on.

Here's what bothered her today: a musical carousel (and she still decided to have a go on it, after watching for a few minutes to check it out). She alternated between striding and running up the grass between the fruit bushes, she ate far more strawberries than she carried home, she got a bit grumpy when I called to her to stay within sight...I loved it. Now, what am I going to do with all the gooseberries?

Monday 22 June 2015

Begin at the beginning

Many times every day, I wonder about our beginnings. How important are they, our very early days? Days we have no control over, days when we are at our most vulnerable, days we won't remember.

On the road preparing for adoption, there was time to read and read and read. Early brain development, the effect of pre-natal trauma, the impact of neglect and the possibility of healing... It's all fascinating when it's still abstract. And then suddenly, very suddenly, it's not a set of floating concepts any more. Those ideas are firmly tethered to a tiny body sleeping fitfully in the newly decorated child's bedroom, and the vulnerability takes my breath away.

 
The sheer vastness of the courage it takes for this child to put her hand in mine... that moment of touch is a privilege. She has absolutely no idea how precious she is.