And Zen What

After the shopping trip--Five spent most of it racing up and down the aisles yelling "I want to buy something" and trying to grab utterly random items, including, at one point, a breast pump (oh the irony)--we returned to the hotel. The minute we got into the room, he started wailing, yelling, crying, screaming. This went on, literally (and I mean that literally) for hours. One had her headphones on, her volume way up, and took to hanging out in the bathroom with the door closed.

He'd let up occasionally, for minutes at a time, get interested in something (the controls for the nightstand radio for instance), and then suddenly start again. As an experienced adoptive mom, I knew this was normal and to be expected, but knowing did not make it easier. I was filled with guilt, sorrow, and something very like anger. It's almost impossible not to try to find someone to blame for agony of that kind (and my own agony, though it was, of course, nothing compared to his, was off the charts too). So there for a while, I was mad at the Director of Five's SWI. Why didn't she prepare him better? Why didn't she explain it better? Did she explain at all?

Of course I knew even then that I was being completely irrational in those moments. I knew that the intensity of his grief was a testament to the Director and the nannies who had cared for him, and who had taught him to care for them. I knew that the Director had done her best to prepare this heartbroken little boy for the tsunami of irrevocable change and loss that was about to crash into his extremely regulated little life. It's just hard to think when your eardrums hurt so much, let alone your newly-maternal heart. But I did know that there is in fact no way to explain to a five year old child who has never in his memory known any other life than the one he's just been ripped from that it's all for his own good. There would certainly be no way to explain it to me, and I've read a lot more about adoption than he had......

So every 5 seconds, Five tried to call "mama" (the Director) on the phone (which I disconnected so he wouldn't accidentally call Zimbabwe instead). He'd alternate that with yelling louder and louder from various places in the room--like a college kid trolling for a free wireless connection--to see if she could hear him if he just found the right place to stand, the right volume to hit.

He put all his new clothes, his toothbrush, the little photo book the Director had given him, the baggie of cheerios I'd brought to Civil Affairs to bribe him with, and his water bottle in a plastic bag. He kept the bag by the door. Which he tried to open. Repeatedly. He tried to unlock it, resorting to various makeshift tools (a pencil, a flashlight, a bobby pin). He tried kicking it and hitting it with the wastebasket. He tried banging on it and yelling what I can only assume was "Help! I'm being held prisoner by a madwoman and her accomplice" (that is, I hoped it was that and not "Please, please, come back, I'll be good" though I feared it was the latter) in between the regular-as-a-heartbeat howls of "MAAAAAMAAAAAA, MAAAAAAAAMAAAAAAAAAA."

I offered him a pat or a stroke or a kleenex every few minutes, feeling helpless, useless, criminal.

He spat at me. A lot. After a while he ran out of spit, pretty much.

I kept the door locked.