We knew it was coming. Katie and Annie Rose held it together when Cleo got sick in Jamaica. They held it together when Andrew and I took Cleo back to the U.S. and left them in the loving care of their grandparents. They held it together when our vacation got blown to hell.
And then on New Year’s Eve, Cleo was discharged from Miami Children’s; we flew home, and on New Year’s Day, Andrew’s parents flew back with the rest of the family, including Katie and Annie Rose.
It was a joyful reunion late in the night on January 1st, a wonderful way to start the year. Katie and Annie Rose went to bed easily, exhausted from their travel.
There was the requisite honeymoon period the next morning. The big girls doted on their baby sister, showering her with hugs and kisses and affection. Breakfast was a festive affair, all of us reunited.
In the late morning, Katie and Annie Rose started to fight. And fight. And fight. Then Katie became furious with Andrew and me, but she wouldn’t say why.
I knew why. Andrew knew why. And we both knew that of our two older girls, Katie would be the one to have this reaction.
Abandonment, in any form, is a four-letter-word to an adopted child. Katie was deeply unnerved by the fact that we had left Jamaica without her. And with Katie, you can’t just go straight to the issue and talk about it. You have to wait for her to move through a very predictable cycle before she is ready to talk.
Katie is as regular as a textbook. When something is bothering her, she acts out and behaves horribly. Then she reaches a tipping point, and she becomes remorseful. After that, she is able to talk about the real issue, and then she becomes euphorically happy once her burden has been lifted.
And so it went.
She slammed doors, raged, yelled, refused to comply with even the most innocuous requests (Do you want lunch? NO! SLAM! Will you please get dressed? NO! SLAM!)
Then she began bringing drawings to Andrew and me. In the first drawing, a dolphin is chasing us toward a shark.
Thank you, we told her, for the picture. We can see you feel angry.
In the second picture, Katie is the shark, and she wrote out carefully “I ate you.” She handed it to us with a hostile expression on her face, and as I examined the picture, it was very difficult not to smile. I knew she was working through things on her terms.
Thank you, we told her again, for the picture. We can see you feel angry at us. We are here when you want to talk about it.
In the third picture, an evil eel is attacking Andrew and me.
Thank you, we told her, struggling to keep straight faces. Is this a poisonous eel? I asked her. YES!
So, I asked, is the poisonous eel attacking us after we were eaten by the shark? YES!
And then I smiled at her. It was the opening Katie needed. She smiled back, starting to see the humor in the drawings. She disappeared.
The fourth piece of paper simply said “You leaft Jamaka.”
Yes, we agreed. We left. We had to leave. And it sucked so much, and we were so sad, and we were so sorry. We told her how we wanted to swim with her and play with her in Jamaica, how disappointed we felt at the way the vacation played out.
She cried. You promised to take me canoeing, she sobbed, and then you left and no one would go canoeing with me. And I was scared that Cleo was going to die.
I held her. Andrew held her. We rocked her and apologized for the situation and told her that we wouldn’t have left her if we didn’t have to, and that we knew she was in good hands with Owo and Papa.
We would have flown to Miami with you if you had been sick, we explained. We would have left with Annie Rose if she had been the one who was sick. It just happened. Sometimes things just happen.
She left the room, crayons in hand, to find a piece of paper.
The fifth piece of paper said, “I’m sorry.”
We know, we told her. We love you.
Even when you are mad, we promised, even when you act out, even when we are scared about your sister, even when we have to leave you temporarily, we love you. And we will always come back.
Filed under: adoption, domestic adoption, separation anxiety
There's always fallout. But it sounds like you and Andrew handled it well. Give those great kids a hug for me. :)
Beautifully written!