Hibiscus's Five-finger Prayer

I tried a new prayer with the older children tonight, to try and help them become more involved in their prayer time.  Emerson wasn't sure of what to say, so we talked together but I said the words.  Hibiscus dived right into the prayer and said it all on her own.  I wasn't sure that she would understand the abstract concepts, but she figured them out in such a meaningful way.

We held up our hands with all five fingers.

The thumb is for the people closest to you.

Hibiscus started with our next-door neighbors, and with a suggestion of family members, went through an impressively wide list of family, given that she has yet to meet most of them

The index finger is for your teachers.

Hibiscus was upset that she couldn't remember her teachers' names.  I gave the names of her classroom teachers, but I didn't know all the others yet.  I suggested that if she thought about them, God would know who she means.

The middle finger is for the leaders and powerful people.

Hibiscus wasn't sure where to start with this.  We had talked earlier that day about the judge, whose ruling we all needed to follow about where Hibiscus was going to live now, so she prayed for the judge.  Then she added "the pilots who fly the plane, because they work very hard.  And the people who serve us food on the plane, because they work very hard too."

The ring finger is for the people who are weak.

"Like old people?" she asked.  I said weak like that, or people who don't have power.  She jumped right in: "God, please bless my Bbunga family.  And please bless all the people around there, um, I don't know their names, all the people like that.  All the poor people.  And help them know what to do, and know all the things they can do, and how to do it."

(I thought it was interesting that she already instinctually knew that poverty is related to a lack of knowledge and understanding about what to do and how to change the situation; at least the type of poverty that she had lived.)

The pinky finger is for ourselves.

"God, please bless me.  And help me not to run into the streets.  And help me to not do things that make my mama mad at me."


Goodnight.

Santa

My husband and I decided that we wouldn't make a big deal out of Santa, and apparently we have succeeded.  I am not initiating anything for Christmas, and none of the children seem to know or remember that Santa might potentially do anything tonight.  They are excited to see pictures of the jolly old elf in various decorations, and were really intrigued by a life-size Santa doll at the grocery store, but they haven't mentioned any expectations for him.  I doubt the girls have ever really properly encountered the American Santa mythology, but Emerson apparently doesn't remember or care either.  So we have gone to bed on Christmas Eve with not the slightest mention of stockings or cookies.

However, during bedtime prayers and blessings, Hibiscus and I did have a Santa discussion.  And, my friends, I will be blunt with you: I did not maintain the magic.  Or even try and create magic.

Our family decision was that we wouldn't pretend that Santa was a literal personage, and our tradition at home included "being" Santa as well as "getting" Santa, but we also haven't specifically disabused the Santa notion.  Children can enjoy the joyous fantasy if they want to, was our idea.  So when Emerson has heard about Santa at school and come home and asked me questions, I've basically done the "what do you think?" or "oh really," and he continues with his story.  I don't know if he has thought Santa was a literal person or not.  I also don't know what the African children discuss at school and what the local Santa traditions are, other than swallowing the American ones whole-sale, which seems quite likely given the pine trees and fake snow all over the place.

Tonight Hibiscus asked me point-blank if Santa was real.  I asked what she thought and she was confused, and asked me again.  And I said no, he wasn't.  He is a storybook character, like Jay Jay that we read about tonight, or Madeline.  This made sense to her and she nodded, but then her expression clouded as she remember other stories about meeting Santa.  I told her that some people like to dress up like Santa as a fun game, which confused her.  She said "if I meet Santa, I'm going to say 'hi, Santa.'" I told her that was okay, and it was fun to play the game and everyone pretends together that the person is Santa, and they say "hi Santa."

Then, to clarify, I said it was like she could dress up as Cinderella and people could call her "Cinderella" all day, and she got REALLY excited about that!  Apparently she really likes the idea of dress-up, and it had never occurred to her that she could be someone else all day.  So then we talked in great detail about the logistics of dressing up like Cinderella, and how she could be Cinderella like someone else could be Santa.


So, if your children play with mine, I'm awfully sorry if Hibiscus is pretty blunt about Santa's dress-up and story-book self, because she's pretty blunt about everything.  And if you love the beauty and generosity of the Santa myth, I'm sorry that Hibiscus never got to experience it.

First of all, I decided she's kind of too old anyways.  Learning about Santa when you are almost 7, and having your first proper Santa-Christmas when you're almost 8... that's the age when many faithful and well-convinced children are having doubts.  Secondly, she suddenly asked about Santa when I was in the part of the prayer about God protecting our house and keeping everything from getting in at night, because she's been really worried about things sneaking into our house at night.  This context made me feel like Santa might be kind of sinister in her mind, creeping into houses in the middle of the night.  Currently in her poor little mind, things getting into the house in the middle of the night is the height of evil; let's keep Santa locked up in a story book!

But most importantly, her life has already been confusion.  There is logistical confusion about basic concepts like "mother" and "home" and "love" and "obey."  There is fantastical confusion when adults tell her about monsters that will grab her for bad behavior.  There is spiritual confusion that many of the adults around her have taken things like monsters and witchcraft seriously in their own minds.  And there is religious confusion, about... well, everything religious, apparently!  In my mind, the last thing she needed was to wonder about a vague story like Santa Claus.  Let's keep it simple: Santa Claus is a character in a book or for dress-up.  I didn't even bring St Nicolas (the real one) into the picture, although in general I mean to.  He's not for today.


Meanwhile, I had thought that maybe I would wrap a gift or two for the children to wake up and see.  But it's been a long day, and I'm tired, and I won't.  I picked up some crafts and wrapping paper today, but I think I'll have them clean up the living room before I give them anything more than what we have.  And Santa can be busy sneaking into other people's houses, and just plain leave us alone!

More on the Christmas Cantata

When we considered older child adoption, we discussed many potential challenges and difficulties, including many of the things that we have faced.  But one thing we forgot to consider: musical taste.  We are a household that has earned degrees in music, both classical and jazz; there are two grand pianos in our living room, and another piano living with a friend; and other instruments include traditional drums and flutes from different cultures, classical strings (violins in several different sizes and a viola), and more guitar-like instruments than I can count.  What are we going to do with a child who has spent six years listening to this combination of hip-hop and pop music, complete with three chords and an insistent drumbeat, turned up way too loud.  How many years do we have to balance out this influence before she's old enough to buy her own music, and turn up the stereo on the back bedroom??!!

So Hibiscus thought the concert was awesome and amazing, and wants to go back today.  It was ridiculously loud and ridiculously dramatic, which seem to be the main criteria around here.  It seemed to be a lot of skits with really corny messages, that morphed into a song, and then all the secondary characters around the stage broke into some kind of crazy breakdancing.

For instance, a woman walks by talking on a cell phone and blowing her nose, and then drops the tissue on the ground.  Another woman is sitting on a bench, and reminds her to put the tissue in the bin.  Cell-phone woman rolls her eyes and walks away.  Nice Woman puts the tissue in the trash, and has a long discussion with the man sweeping the sidewalk about how important it is to put trash in the bin and take care of our beautiful city.  (Ugandans attitude towards trash seems to be a lot like that about lying, that they preach a lot about it but  honesty and picking up after oneself doesn't really enter into everyday behavior.)  Then it turns out that the sweeper-man is expecting his sister-in-law to call and announce the birth of his first child any moment, and that he and his wife have been waiting for a child for six years.  Then Nice Woman goes into a little spiel about how that reminds her of Jesus, and how the people waited for their Savior for all this time, but he finally came, and that is about God because of something-or-other, and then the Wise Men brought gifts and did you know that is where gift-giving was started?  Meanwhile, a spotlight comes on a little area on top of the high-rises, and we see Mary and Joseph struggling along, and the spotlight goes off and instantly they are on the side stage in a different spotlight, while the Wise Men appear as Nice Woman discusses them in the story.  Then suddenly they all burst out in song, and Joseph holds the Baby Jesus bundle above his head and swings around while singing this crazy exuberant pop-gospel stuff, and I am very glad that the bundle does not look like the shape that might mean an actual child is inside.  And a dozen other people come along in some kind of random costume and start dancing too.  And the song is not "We Three Kings" or anything that seems kind of related to the story, because "We Three Kings" would not be loud and excited enough, and I think it would be very difficult to add in the required bass and drum section to allow for the necessary switch into break-dancing.  Because everything has to turn into a break-dancing sequence.  Although they added speed and drums to several traditional carols in such a way to totally ruin them as "carols," let alone "traditional," which is apparently what Ugandans are used to because they all hummed and clapped along.

The program started with the (white) preacher enthusiastically welcoming everyone, and then we all sang "Silent Night" together.  The dancers had not yet appeared, so we only needed to go at about 170% of normal speed.  I don't know if Ugandans have a genetic predisposition towards alto-ness, but they certainly have a learned habit of singing in a really throaty voice.  This was funny because there is one sustained, moderately-high note in "Silent Night," and suddenly you could hear my voice singing it, because apparently I was the only person among the couple thousand who knew how to sustain a high note!

The main stage was this giant area in front, which when empty had a large waterfall surrounded by poinsettias and pine trees in the middle.  Then the couple-hundred voice choir filed in and filled most of the space in the middle in risers.  I think their purpose was mostly to look enthusiastic and sparkly, because they didn't do much more than hum in the background on a few songs.  There was a group song at the beginning and the end and they sang along with those ones, and the one at the end was some kind of enthusiastic praise-Jesus kind of thing, so some of them waved their hands around too.  There was a stage on a couple of levels in front of the choir, with a park bench and a few other props, and this is where most of the skits took place.  There was some kind of platform above the choir, which occasionally they used to dramatic effect, and a giant white screen all the way across the stage above that, which they used for different images.  Then there was another stage on either side of the main area, filled with pine trees.  The one towards our side had a manger, and Mary and Joseph appeared on it occasionally when someone sang about them.

I told a couple of the highlights of the cantata yesterday, so the story today is kind of out of order.  So I will go back to the beginning.  We were supposed to pick up our friends at 12:30, to arrive at 1 to wait for the 3:30 show.  But I knew we were on Africa time, so I didn't get everyone ready and over to their house until 1.  The children were all ready to jump in the car, but the mom wasn't, so we waited a while there.  Then we drove downtown.  Ggaba Road has been very slow lately, but it actually went smoothly, but then the traffic was just plain absolutely stopped once we got to town.  We could have walked it twice as fast, even with all seven children.  Finally, we got to the right place and found a parking spot.  Then it was time to wait.

First of all, we sat and waited under a series of giant tents set up outside, as the ushers gradually filled the tent sections in the order we would be allowed to leave them.  In another part of the parking lot there was a stand selling chapatis, popcorn, hot dogs, drinks, and other snacks, and behind the tents were a grand total of six porta-potties.  We arrived at 3 for the 3:00 performance, so we missed it, and waited the whole two hours for the next one -- but at least we were near the front of the line for that one.

About an hour after we started waiting, we were ushered out, through a church, and up to another room kind of to the side, which was also filled with plastic chairs.  It was the second room filled with people like that; I would estimate at least 300 people were in our room.  Luckily, we were up towards one corner, so the kids played with going back and forth out the edge.  I had a book in my backpack, so Emerson and I read that one together.  He was grumpy and tired and didn't really feel like reading, so he didn't want to read on his own.  We took turns reading the stories, switching at the paragraph for a while, until Emerson decided to switch every time we encountered the word "the."  That was interesting!  But inside my head, I was just amazed.  Back in September, he was still reading the Bob books and getting frustrated, and we were going very carefully over simple rules like what does "ea" say so he wouldn't be so frustrated.  Then something clicked, and he has been reading all kinds of children's books, like the paragraph-full Early Readers at school, and the Madeline books at home.  But this is a whole new level; this is totally text-dense read-aloud only, with unique vocabulary and small text.  He's gotten to the point where he wants to read something, and I say "okay, so read it," and he just starts, instead of worrying that it is too hard.  And really, most books in the world are mostly the same words over and over, so once you start in on it you can get a lot of the point, even if you have never yet encountered "vision" or "malicious."

I described sitting down to the concert, which was quite an adventure, so I will go back to some of the program.  The skits all started off corny, and ended with one of the characters delivering a little lesson about Jesus.  One of them was about difficulty, describing the basic story of the engagement, the census, and so forth, and that it was not actually simple or easy for them, and they probably kind of didn't feel happy all the time.  This was the LESSON.  There were definitely children in the audience, but it was not a children's show, and most of it seemed aimed towards the adults.  Is the assumption that adult Christians are not sure about when or why Joseph agreed to wed Mary, or that they had to travel for a census?   I have been shocked and frustrated with how confused Hibiscus is about basic Biblical characters, but I am beginning to understand why: it seems to me that most of the religion around here is totally based on homily and assumption, and very little on the actual Bible.  The children are told that if they are rude to their older brothers and sisters they will go to Hell, and given very specific definitions of Hell, and lists of other behavior that will land them there.  Which is The Divine Comedy, it is not the Bible.  Then they sing lots of songs with "praise God" and "Jesus loves me," and they turn around and tell me that they will beat all the people who are mean to them and to Jesus.  Hibiscus even described a helicopter with bombs she would drop on people who are mean to Jesus!  This is a nice sweet idea about loving Jesus, but when it is paired with no actual knowledge about anything Jesus ever did or said, it turns into a discussion about where he fits when he is inside you, under one's bellybutton or in the rib cage.

This is the child perspective, and it seems like many people do not really deepen their understanding as they get older.  The religious message that I have overheard again and again is how if you believe in God and really love him, LOVE LOVE LOVE, with lots of swinging your arms around and stamping your feet and singing really loudly... then you'll get rich.  Because God blesses the people who love him, especially when they sing really loudly.  I have actually had discussions with my friend the priest on how prevalent this view of loving God = getting rich and lucky, which he finds a big problem, so I am not naively imagining this.

And this bring us to why Hibiscus wants to have a helicopter to drop bombs on mean people, which was the part of the Cantata that made me absolutely livid.  If you are really into melodrama, I suppose Jesus' birth scores you lots of sequins, but the real drama is in the death.  So it couldn't be left out of a Christmas program.  (Unlike the entire life, ministry, and philosophy of Jesus, which was not alluded to in any way!)  I think it followed the young man's monologue about how he slowly descended into peer pressure, parties, alcohol and drugs, until he realized that his life was empty and the only thing that could fill it was Christ.  I realize that a lot of modern churches really like this "testimony," although personally, I would rather my kids don't hear so much about drugs and descending into "coolness."  But then there were some lighting changes, and another guy came out and sang some very dramatic and sad song.  At least I assume it was; I wasn't paying much attention to him.  Because behind him, they started playing a movie on the big screen of the crucifixion.  It might have been part of Mel Gibson's movie, or it might have been something else.  But it was gory, and it was detailed.  It started with Jesus carrying the cross and falling down, and we got close-ups of his arms and his back.  Later we saw nails positioned in the hands, and a hammer swinging.  It was several minutes long, and all fade-ins and fade-outs to different gruesome parts of the crucifixion.  I didn't see most of it, because I don't like to watch things like that, and then I was busy trying to convince the children not to watch.  Emerson was on one side of me, and all the children until Teacher Monica on the far side.  I started in on Emerson, because I know he has this fascination and deep terror of scary things.  He wouldn't look away, and I could cover his eyes but he yelled at me.  On the other side, Hibiscus was watching with her eyes literally bugging out.  Lately she has been especially terrified of bad things happening at night, and bad people coming into our house, and monsters nabbing her.  I know that images of someone being beaten bloody are exactly the kind of thing that pops into your mind when you are afraid of the dark and you want your mama to stay next to you, but she actually has to do your sister's bath at that moment.  So I tried to convince her not to watch, but she told me she liked it, as the tears started to fall.  Then I noticed Hosta on the other side of her, who had huddled up with her knees up to her forehead (she spent most of the program on her feet, jumping up and down), her face totally covered with tears, but she also could not tear her eyes off the video.  After that I was trying to distract Emerson again, and meanwhile thinking about how I could lean my body so Buttercup, in my wrap, wouldn't have an ideal view of the screen.  In the end, I'm not sure how much it helped, and all the children saw way more than was good for them.

So what happens today?  The children have mentioned half a dozen times how much they liked seeing Mary and Joseph, since they just did a little pageant of their own at school.  And then they've spent a significant portion of the day pretending to fall on the cross and discussion exactly where the nails were placed on the feet, and banging pretend nails into each other.  It really makes me mad.  Overall the cantata was not my cup of tea but it was a fun experience, but supposing I actually lived here, I would seriously consider not attending again next year just to avoid that disgusting video. (Or whatever they replace it with next time.)  It is NOT something that is appropriate to put into children's hearts and minds!  First of all, they have so many of their own difficulties to cope with, and this was just plain gory and unpleasant, and these images now live inside them.  Secondly, they are too young to get any actual meaning from it.  The first thing, that we have already discussed several times, is that this was a MOVIE, not the Bible.  In my own home and church life, I certainly expose my child(ren) to the story of the crucifixion, but I keep it simple and based on the actual Bible.  A young child will remember their first exposure to the story, and I want it to be the actual, literal story, not some film-maker's interpretation.  You never know if what will stay with a child will be the parts that he took from the text, or something random that was never important.  (Like Jesus being tall and blond, which he was.)  But the deeper issue is that if the children are too young to understand the meaning and the reason behind the crucifixion, they are way too young to be thinking about the details of death.  Never mind calling for bomb-dropping helicopters, Jesus actively refused even mild violence on his behalf, and refused to protest or defend himself.  Why?  THAT is what Christianity is about.  If you're not old enough to discuss that, you're not old enough to discuss what they used to whip Jesus, and how much he was bleeding.  Period.

So, that was my philosophical rant; let's get back to the cantata.  Shall we discuss breakdancing?  There was really quite a lot of it.  The theme seemed to be a city park, so we had streetcleaners breaking out in breakdancing several times.  However, there was some attempt at variety.  For one number, a ballerina (the one white woman in the entire thing, actually) was in a spotlight in the little stage that was above all the other stages, and she twirled a couple times, and then lights came on the main stage and a bunch of girls in ballerina-like outfits swooped out, twirled a couple times... and started breakdancing.  A later troupe of mostly male dancers were wearing black and white, leather jackets, and sunglasses.  It was a little hard to see how that fit in with the sequins-and-Christmas theme, but they certainly were matching costumes.  And the breakdancing was quite good, and they did a bunch of fancy tricks.  I probably would have been impressed if I weren't so amused by how everyone kept breakdancing!

Another part of the cantata for me was dealing with the children.  I decided to keep Buttercup on my back, where she could see (and incidentally not escape).  She figured out pretty fast that she had a good view and was perfectly content, although that involved lots of jumping up and down in place.  I had also gotten snacks before we went in, and gradually handed them out to the children. I started off with half a chapati each while we waited for the show to start, which went smoothly.  But I had tried to get something at the snack stand that wasn't JUST simple carbs, so I got little slurpy yogurts.  These are small plastic bags filled with sweet yogurt, and you cut off a corner and stick a straw in and drink it out.  This works pretty well if you do it properly, which half the children managed to do.  Unfortunately, half the children wanted to put their yogurt down for a while, and since they are just plastic bags, this is not very technically possible when you are sitting crammed in a pew jumping up and down.  So when Buttercup got full, I gave the rest to Hibiscus, and then I refused to get Hibiscus her own because she'd already eaten half of one and I didn't want her to put down the next one, but when Hosta got tired of drinking I gave that to Hibiscus too.  Needless to say, that made everyone mad at me.  The friends' children managed to drink their yogurts without incident, although the older girl was still carrying the bag when we were trying to walk to the car.  Her mother had to ask her to drop it, which shows how deeply the no-littering lessons sink in -- although she had to ask twice, so maybe the child noticed the discrepancy and the next generation will manage to do better.  But it was Emerson who won the yogurt award.  He asked me to hold his yogurt several times, or offered it to me to take a drink, so I took a drink and handed it back.  But at one point he got the straw stuck inside the bag, so he put it on my lap so I can fix it.  Imagine: it is dark, there are strobelights, you are trying to figure out which of the next six children wants a yogurt, and there is a bag with a hole in it somewhere plopped in your lap.  It ended up spilling yogurt all over my dress, the wrap, the camera case, the floor, and who-knows-what else.  And then Emerson took it back and sucked the rest of the yogurt directly out of the hole, which worked well, except he took forever to do it (like most things that he does), and I think yogurt bags were designed for speedy consumption.

As for the grand finale: Snow.  Snow is really spectacular here in equatorial Africa, and they had an amazing production of it.  We are not in rich Dubai, which apparently has an indoor ski mountain, so it wasn't the actual cold stuff, but it poured from the ceiling in huge quantities for several minutes.  (I think it was some kind of bubbles.)  The kids were very excited and impressed, and jumped around and squealed and tried to catch it.

And now I will conclude my story with what Hibiscus told me the next day.  First of all, she keeps repeating that she wants to go back, and I have not the slightest intention of reliving the rest of the exhausting day in order to attend the performance again!  But then she told me this morning that she was glad we went to this show, because Ugandan people don't go to shows, and no one in Uganda knows about shows like this.  This is pretty amazing information, given that probably between a thousand and two thousand people were happily watching the show, and I saw exactly one other group like ours, which had a couple Americans mixed in with the locals.  There have been two shows a day for the last ten days or so, and they will switch to four shows a day from tomorrow until Christmas -- just at this church, and I think the other churches do their own shows, and a few of the other mega-churches definitely have mega-shows.  A quick estimate gives about 40,000 Ugandans attending this particular show, along with a hundred or so muzungos, which is a slightly different number than "none."  I reminded Hibiscus about the Ugandans who had been all around her, and that our Ugandan friends had brought us, so it was pretty clear that some Ugandans knew about shows like this.  She calmly and didactically informed me that her daddy in Bbunga did not know about shows like this, and she had never been to a show like this while she lived in Bbunga, and no one else went to shows like this either.  Therefore no one in Uganda knows about big shows.  Obviously, mom.

In preparing for adoption, we talked about the significance of taking a child away from their culture, but I think this is the equally important side of the same coin: a naive six-year-old, starting a new life, comes to the assumption that she is the expert on her own culture.  In many ways she knows more about the Buganda than I do, but in other ways, her experience is so narrow and misunderstood, she really knows almost nothing about her own culture.  But since we take her away from it, she thinks she knows everything.  It makes me very glad that we are spending these months here, and hopefully we can combat a little bit of her own assumptions through the coming years, so that she does not believe that her miserable little life in the slums is the only option for Ugandans.  That some people are kind to their friends, and some children like to read, and some Ugandans go to concerts.

We can have those discussions while not engaged in our full-immersion program of symphonies, jazz quartets, and choirs with actual sopranos in them.  And Christmas performances of The Nutcracker, but only if it has been pre-screened for not switching to breakdancing part way through!

b

Christmas Cantata

It is after 10:30 at night, and I am just sitting down to my second meal of oatmeal of the day.  That might be an ambiguous sentence, but it is true either way: it is the second time I've eaten oatmeal for a meal today, and it is the second time I have sat down and eaten a meal.

We have spent the last eleven hours or so attending a "Christmas Cantata," with our friends, the family who runs the American Montessori School (including Hosta).  It was quite something, to say the least.  Also, I am coming to the conclusion that I should take my children and lock all of us in the bedroom, perhaps with some individuals under the bed, and stay there until we have all the proper paperwork to get on the plane. Disasters large and small seem to dog us wherever we go and whatever we do!  Perhaps this entire trip is cursed.  Or Satan is trying to get at us, as Teacher Monica suggested.

I should eat my oatmeal and go to bed, so I will just write a few things and tell the rest of the stories in the morning.  The Cantata was a very Ugandan extravaganza, including the part about waiting for more than two hours in order to get in.  After all, what Christmas would be complete without breakdancing angels?

As for the venue, visualize an American mega-church, with a balcony and stage and everything, and then squash it down Ugandan style.  So the grandeur remains, but take out all the pretty details like carpets and mood lighting, and make it about a half or a third of the size but maintain the same number of people.  There were three different staging areas in order to get the audience into the church!  First of all we all crammed into the space you might ordinarily expect about the average American family with its 2.2 children to sit, as long as neither adult was particularly overweight.  After a while, the ushers came by and asked us to put the children on our laps so we would take up less room.  Since we were two mothers with seven children, we both already had full laps but there were still a lot of small bums leftover.  The usher moved on and was settling people in the aisles, but they had to stand on the side so the performers could go by.  A couple of enterprising ladies came over and announced that they could carry the children on their laps, thus allowing their own bums to be on a pew and the children to spend the entire two plus hours on the lap of a stranger.  Request denied, although it was not so much a request at all.

Then: LIGHTS!!!!  FOG MACHINES!!!!  GIANT CHOIR ON HIGHRISES!!!!  SKITS!!!!  MARY AND JOSEPH!!!!  SINGING VERY DRAMATICALLY!!!!  AMPS TURNED WAY UP!!!!  And so forth.

Oh, and a revival call, or whatever they are called when sinners are invited to stand up and take Jesus into their lives at that very moment.  I personally feel strongly that one's relationship with Jesus is a lifetime of growth, almost all of which happens inside one's own heart and mind and not by standing up when you are told to by a guy with a microphone, but whatever floats your boat.  Who wouldn't want to listen to a nice Christmas music session without being invited to stand up and declare one's sinner-ness?  Well, I'm obliging enough to watch, until you get MY children involved. First of all, Emerson was so exhausted by that point, that when he kept hearing "stand up, stand up," he just kind of automatically stood up.  And since the church floor was flat, it was hard for the children to see and they had kept sitting on the top of the pew, especially Hibiscus (the other kids had been standing more), and the lady behind her had been hissing at her every few minutes "sit down, sit down."  And now she started hissing "stand up, stand up," which got Hibiscus totally confused, and thought maybe she ought to do it.  Maybe it might be a deeply moving religious experience for some people to stand up at a revival call, but I feel strongly that it is not an appropriate time to manipulate 5-ish-year-olds into confessing something that they don't understand in the least.  Actually, I deeply believe (and have witnessed) that children have a deep, intrinsic connection to the Divine, if we give them the space and trust to find it on their own.  Which this could not be more opposite!


And as for the conclusion of the day, unfortunately my bowl of oatmeal is almost finished so I cannot do the story justice.  I will just say, that we gathered up our seven very amped-up, tired, hungry, and wiggly children, navigated the sea of people, then the giant holes in the sidewalk with cars blocking either side in the gradually fading afternoon light, and walked to where we had left the car.  And we said "isn't this where the car was?"  And it had been, and it was not any more.

Home for Christmas?

The internet has been down on this entire side of town for about four days now.  Occasionally I've gotten flickers of life, but not enough to work with.  Wonder of wonders, this morning when I tried to load Facebook, it came on!  And there were emails!  And everything!

Needless to say, then I spent the entire morning dealing with a backlog of things on the internet, from important emails (from the Senator's office) to checking out reports of Cyber Monday sales.  Several people had written me long emails or messages about how they are doing in their own lives, or responding to my blog posts, which are my absolute favorite thing to read.  I even forgot about how grumpy I was!  All this while making tea and going potty and suggesting that a full-size little girl not sit on top of a toy car, and all kinds of things like that, of course.  Finally, I realized that Buttercup desperately needed a nap, and then the kids would come home, and I hadn't done anything else all day long.

But you know the worst part?  I didn't feel panicked about everything that I hadn't gotten done, or worry about rescheduling my whole week.  Do you know what jumped into my mind?  "Yay, that means I'll have something left to do tomorrow!"  I did sweep the floor with Buttercup napping on my back, though, and I made a call and now I'm writing blog posts.  That's pretty productive in Three-children-and-me-Uganda Land.



It's time to go home.  It really is.  There is Advent happening at home, which is my favorite season of the year.  I've debated what to do for Advent here, and decided to ignore it.  Because first of all, it feels too exhausting.  And I think it would just make me miss home even more.  And also, I don't have any fun activities or presents or books or anything to pass out on the different days, not to mention an Advent calendar or wreath or anything like that.  I thought about coming up with Bible verses to read on the different days, but decided that my children are too chaotic for Bible verses that don't come with illustrations and yes-or-no questions, which is pretty much all of them.  Hibiscus told me her version of Adam and Eve, which is about as straightforward as they come, and it made me want to hide my head under a pillow and turn over her entire religious instruction to someone else.  Her abstract theology is even worse.

Anyway, back to Advent.  One of the elements that I find the most powerful is the image of darkness into light, and how Advent leads us to the Solstice, and by Epiphany we are seeing more light in our days, like Christ is the Light of the World.  It kind of doesn't work when there are no seasons.  I'm sure that people in tropical countries come up with other ways to make theology real in their lives (after all, God made the tropics, too) but again, that feels like too much trouble.  I do not plan on spending Advent in the tropics, ever again.  Give me my sweaters and my dark candlelit nights, and dreary weather warmed by good company.



Will we be home by Christmas?  That is the question.  Either we will get our paperwork finished in the next couple weeks, or all the offices will close and I will plan on mid-January.   The judge might take pity on our visa problem and get the guardianship orders written up this week or early next week, in which case we could probably make it home in December.  That's possible enough that I'm not making concrete plans for staying.  If it takes her closer to her original estimate of the 19th, everything else is not going to happen in time.  I'm resigning myself to that, but not yet making plans.  Although I did just buy another 5-kilo bag of rice, which should last us to January.  People who adopted through this program last year are encouraging that officials will hurry our paperwork through so we can be home for the holidays, but most of the officials have changed in the last year, and the whole system is backed up for months' worth of cases and I have a feeling that MY family Christmas is not of very high priority with them.

We have to get guardianship papers from the judge.  Then we can apply for Ugandan passports, which apparently usually gets done within a few days... unless they decide to all go to their kids' Christmas play or something like that, which would probably take at least three days, this being Uganda and all.  Then we need a US visa, which we could get in one appointment.  But they only have appointments on Monday and Wednesday, so if we got our passports issued on Wednesday we would be delayed for a week in the best-case scenario.  And since everything has been backed up for months, all the appointments at the Embassy might be filled anyways.  Or we might need a second hearing, like we needed a second one for the Uganda side.  Then after all that, we will need plane tickets.  Ordinarily, that would be as simple as changing the date, but in late December, who knows if four tickets will be available?

Meanwhile, I'm filling my days with exciting things.  Like sweeping the floor.

Prayer with Buttercup

Usually I pray about the events of the day with Buttercup, which is not only a nice concrete prayer, but at her age it helps her learn order and aids her ability for recollection.  Sometimes she is a more active participant in the prayer; I don't know if it's because she thinks it's the Ugandan-school style "repeat after me," or because this is toddler do-it-herself-ness.

Mama: Dear God, thank you for today --
Buttercup: Deah God.  Deah God, tank you day.
Mama: Thank you for Buttercup's play time with her brother and sister.
Buttercup (nod nod): Tank you, play, play, tananana, broder, sister. (nod nod) Broder, sister, Bu-cup. (nod nod nod)
Mama: Thank you God for all the good food Buttercup got to eat today, especially the birthday cake.
Buttercup (looks excited): Tank you God, good food, good, good, happy-bir-day cake!
Mama: And thank you God for Buttercup's happy birthday.  She feels very happy and proud about her happy birthday.
Buttercup: Tank you, happy bir-day, Bu-cup! (nod nod nod)
Mama: And God, please help us get the papers very fast, so we can all go to America, and Buttercup can be with her Daddy.  She misses her Daddy very much, and she is very sad to be far away from Daddy.  Please help us get to America soon, so Buttercup can be with Daddy almost every day.  (Said with pauses, but Buttercup was looking off into the distance, and didn't want to repeat anything.)
--pause---
Buttercup: And diver, Yassim-y.
Mama, surprised: And bless our driver Yassim...
Buttercup: Daddy, sitting seat, with Yassim-y.  And 'Biscus, Daddy sit lap 'Biscus.
Mama, understanding: We drove to the airport with Yassim, and Daddy sat in the front seat, and Hibiscus sat on Daddy's lap.
Buttercup (nod nod nod): 'Biscus sitting Daddy's lap.
Mama: Please God, help us get on a plane like Daddy so we can go to America and be all together.
Buttercup (nod nod nod nod nod nod nod!!!)
Mama: Mama, Daddy, brother, sister, and Buttercup.
Buttercup: Broder.  Sister.  Broder.  Sister.
Mama: Amen.
--pause--
Buttercup: Amen!
Mama: Goodnight, sweetheart.  I love you. (kiss)
--pause--
Buttercup (very softly): I yuv you.
Mama: I love you too.
Buttercup (as Mama sits up and moves away, softer yet): I yuv you, Mama.

Trouble with Words

Buttercup and the "well, some word that sounds like that!"

Prayer and blessings time:

Mama: Is there something you want to tell God about our day?

Buttercup nods vigorously.

Mama: What do you want to tell God about our day?

Buttercup: Balla. Day.

Mama: About our day, yes?

Buttercup: Batta.  Daya. (nod nod nod)

Mama: About our day?

Buttercup, obviously meaning something more: Balla.  Aya.

Mama, on new tack of just talking about the day: We talked with Auntie Becca this morning, didn't we ---

Buttercup (nod nodnodnodnodnodnodnod): Auntie. Becca! (nod nod) Auntie. Becca!  

Mama: Oh, you were saying Auntie Becca!

Buttercup (nod nod): Auntie.  Becca!

Mama: You remember talking with Auntie Becca.

Buttercup: 'membah.  Auntie Becca. (nod nod)  T-P. (nod nod) Daddy.

Mama: We talked with Auntie Becca.  On the..... iPad?  Like Daddy?

Buttercup (nodnodnodnodnod)

Mama: Was that fun?

Buttercup: Yes! Fun!  Auntie Becca! Fun!

*********

Discussion with Emerson on the way home from school

Emerson (cautiously): So, Mama, if you talk bad, like if you're mean, if you're not nice, like to your older brother, or your older sister, that's really bad, right?

Mama (wondering where on earth this is going): Yes, that's not good.

Emerson: And then you have to go.... and then you get.... you get.... sales?

Mama: I'm not sure what you mean.  You get sold when you're mean to your older brother or sister?

Emerson: Yeah, you are.... do you get put..... sell?

Mama: Sell?  Like are you sold?

Emerson: I think there's a lake.  And it's made of fire?

Mama: Go to ...... hell?  

Emerson: Yes!  Hell, that's it!  Do you go to hell?

Mama, !!!!!!!!!!: I think it's a little more complicated than that.

**********

Words I would be very happy to never hear again:

from Hibiscus: Me NO for do DAT!!

from Buttercup: Me no likey dat one.

from Emerson: (totally random)

For instance:

Mama: Emerson, please come put your bowl in the sink.

Emerson: (long pause) So Mama, did you know, I'm gonna make the bucket really big, so it can pick up lots of dirt, so it can make a big hole, and then it will be really big, and then---

***********

And I remembered my one for Hibiscus!  On the theological and prayer-time theme....

Prayer and blessings time, and for some reason we were discussing being like Jesus, which frankly we don't do very often, because the girls don't know much about Jesus and Hibiscus's English has only recently been getting to theoretical-thinking kind of levels.  "Theoretical," as in, you can not in this instant grab it and squash it around in your hand.  They went to church before the orphanage, and Hibiscus has a few vague stories floating around in her head, and Buttercup can sing a song about Jesus.

So I said something about like Jesus, and when he died he was --

Hibiscus shot up into a sitting position, her jaw dropped open and her eyes wide with shock: "What??!!  Jesus DIED??!! OH NO!!!!"

Yes, he died a long time ago, a very very long time ago, but he didn't stay dead...  It's a little hard to grasp the miracle of the resurrection if you haven't figured out that the figure in question died in the first place!

Then Emerson started going into the little-kid version of the Easter story, complete with all kinds of random details, probably including what he wore to the Easter service.  Hibiscus remembered the bit about the nails in his hands, and she could re-tell that part.  But she had no idea that the crucifixion story involved actual death, she thought it was about a really big owie!