Running

Today Noah ran to school.  Another beautiful morning in the Pacific Northwest.  When the sun comes out,  regardless of the  temperature, we are outside seizing the moment.  This morning Noah, Sam and I ran (ok... Sam and I walked briskly...Sam doesn't run unless there's a reward at the other end of the finish line) to school.  I would tell Noah  to run ahead to a cluster of mailboxes and then run back to me.  When he caught me I'd tell him what to run to next.  To the stop sign and then back to me.  To the crossing guard and then back to me.   Noah ran twice the distance Sam and I walked.  This helps Noah settle into a day of learning at school. 

Every morning I spend between 45 minutes to an hour getting Noah settled into his routine of the day.  It frees up his teacher to be with her class and it also gives Noah a jumpstart to what is ahead for the day.  Most days 30 minutes of this time I monitor his tutors who work 1 0n 1 with him.  All of this takes place in a private room off of the main classroom.  Today his tutor couldn't make it so I had Noah ALL to myself.  

I'm not exactly sure how the topic came up but we got on the topic of his dad.  More specifically his dad's death. According to the records his dad died 2 or so years ago from TB.  I asked him if he remembered that day.  When he began to talk about it his teacher came in, for a general question, but soon was sitting down next to me while Noah spoke.  She has become his second mom, and her interest is as invested as my own. 

 

Noah was in school on the day his dad died.  He said his Aunt Genet (he calls her Gunny) came to his school and quickly pulled him out, telling him his dad was dying.  They must run.    He said they had no car so he and Gunnie had to sprint to the hospital through the streets of Desse. By the time they got to the hospital it was too late.  His dad was dead.  He was too scared to see his father's body.  For several seconds Noah sat silent with his teacher and myself.  I reached over to touch Noah's hand and said, "We will never forget your dad.  I have his full name and we will talk about him whenever you want."  Then I said, "I bet your dad was a handsome man."  He looked at me somewhat puzzled.  I asked, "Do you know what handsome means?"  He gave me a sly cock-eyed grin and answered, "Awesome face."  Absolutely 100% correct. :  >)  I told him his dad had to be handsome because he (Noah) was so handsome.  Noah grinned from ear to ear.   

I love to watch Noah run.  His perfect form, his long legs, the smile on his face. Noah was literally born to run.  So  many times he asks to be dropped off at our mailbox (which is 1/4 mile from our house).  I let him out and he starts his run.  After I get the mail I take off down the road and soon am driving right beside him, my window down cheering him on.  He glances across his shoulder at me and smiles with his entire face.  More times than not when I am Noah's 'support vehicle driver'  I flash back to my time in Ethiopia.  Driving the dirt road into Debre Lebanos and the children running....begging by the side of the car.  Driving into the weavers market and the children running...begging by the side of the car. Driving up to Mt. Entoto and the children running...begging by the side of the car.  Noah HAS run...begged by the side of a car in Ethiopia. 

 

On this beautiful Northwest morning Noah ran.    He didn't have to run a race to beg for his survival.  He didn't have to run a race to beat the last breath of his father.  Today he ran for no other reason other than because he could.  

I've come to the realization that Spring Vacation is not a vacation to rest up from what has already occurred but more so it is a rest up before life becomes almost too crazy to control.  We hit the ground running April 6 and have not stopped.   Keep in mind Noah is only one of 5 children in the house. : >)  

  

Here's the lowdown.  We decided that Noah has been doing pretty good with school and the family so we extended his life experiences and put him on a baseball team this spring.  Noah's a RiverDog (whatever that is).    He's got a great arm, he's fast, and in Ethiopia he use to bat rocks with a stick...so the hand/eye coordination is there as well.   

Three games down and he's held his own.  Ok...so he's had to be told to hush up the "goat call" when he's bored on the bench (it's an amazing sound he used to call his goats in ET, it gets quite the rise out of his bench warming buddies and soon the entire bench is trying to call goats instead of cheering on the team..this would be ok if we lived in the city but we are country folk and there are goats within earshot of the ball field...Ha ha...imagine if the real things escaped their fences and came to the ball field...a horror movie in the making...then again Noah would probably grab a bat, call the goats and get them back into their pen before dialing 911 was complete!)

  

What is more gratifying than anything to Jeff and I is how Noah has been included by everyone. When he got his first hit this past Saturday the entire crowd stood up and cheered for him. They know his story and are blown away that 1 year ago he WAS herding goats in Dessie, Ethiopia AND hitting rocks with sticks.  Now, here he is in America playing America's game.  

We also celebrated Easter this past Sunday.  Noah understood Easter from his Orthodox teachings in Ethiopia. Once again however, we Americans had to confuse his world by throwing in a giant furry bunny hoping around the country delivering eggs to children.  For one thing he informed us that bunnies do not lay eggs and it should be a giant chicken instead.  Second, why does the bunny put 'gross' stuff like candy inside and egg when the real stuff inside a real egg is so much more 'delis-shious' than candy. Spoken like a true survivor of his hungry world in Ethiopia Also a reminder to us that so much of our traditions are just routine mindless excess.   : >)  He's got a point on both topics.  I don't think he believes in the Easter Bunny...or Easter Chicken.  He believes in just the facts.  

"Hobaba's House"

It's been awhile since I last posted.  

Last week was our spring break so we flew out to our nations capital for a week.  Even before Noah came to the United States he was fascinated by Barak Obama.  He knew Obama's face and everytime he would see news of him (on Aljazzera TV while staying at the guest house) he would jump up and excitedly cheer... "Go Hobaba".  On the night Obama was elected president Noah watch with great excitement...the Ethiopian/African passion had carried over from the streets of Addis Ababa to our family room.  He did not want to go to bed and although he didn't understand a word of Obama's acceptance speech he refused to go to bed until Obama spoke his last word. 

On the evening of November 5th (day after the election) when we were settling down to watch tv as a family he asked if we could watch the "Hobaba Show" again.  He thought the pomp and pageantry of the night prior was an everyday occasion in America. : >)  It was then we thought we should think about a trip to DC.  All of our kids are at the age where this would be an exciting and educational trip.  I have to say...it truly was a fun, tiring , educational, unforgettable week. 

The weeks prior to our leaving we prepped Noah with what was ahead.  We said we were going to see "Hobaba's House" far far away.  We said we would stay in a place where he could swim in a swimming pool.  Somewhere along the way he fused those two together so he was telling everyone that he was going to swim at "Hobaba's House".  We figured we'd just cross his disappointment of that not being a reality when we got to DC.  Fortunately our president was on his way out the door to Europe so we just had to tell Noah "Hobaba" wasn't home.  He accepted it with a shrug and said, "Next time."  

So we did DC last week.  We walked many miles every day.  Saw amazing museums, rode bikes around the tidal basin to the Jefferson Memorial while cherry tree pedals rained down on us, looked Abraham Lincoln in the eyes at his memorial, honored my dad at the Korean War Memorial, became experts on the Metro system, watched a Panda eat bamboo, had a snack on the Capitol steps, climbed a tree by the Washington Monument, road tripped to Gettysburg, had dinner at the Hard Rock cafe, saw Hobaba's House.   

This was Noah's first family vacation and what a vacation it was!  Not sure how we can top this.

A New Phase of our lives...

When our son Zak was learning the English language he kept us giggling with what we have come to affectionately term as Zakisms.  Now that Noah's language is coming on full force we are now entering a whole new generations of 'isms.'  I'm so excited to announce that we are now welcoming Noahisms into our lives.  For example, today Noah was reading to his 5th grade buddy Haley.  He was looking at the pictures to help him connect with the words.  He got to a picture of a pig and her piglets.  When he got to the word piglet he was able to figure out the first half of the word. "P-I-G".    Slowly, to himself, he sounded out the letters.  Proudly he looked up to us and was ready to say the entire word.  Haley and I were ready for it...ready to cheer on his success.  He looked at us with his big brown eyes and smiled ready for us to cheer on his sentence in full.  "Big pigs have little pigs.  Little pigs are called...P-IGGLOOS."   Usually Haley and I can hold in our "that is so cute" surprised smiles or we can correct him with a sly endearing smile but we just couldn't today.  We just busted up laughing...it was just so darn cute.  He so believed himself that he was right and that baby pigs were called pigloos. : >)   

One

I am a huge U2 fan...have been one forever.  U2 was introduced to me by my brother Tim , a musician, back in my high school years.  Tim had a wanderlust spirit and in his late teens and early 20's chose to live a lifestyle as such.  He traveled to the east coast on a few occasions with his band and would come back with fantastic stories of life on the road.  One such story from the early '80s is the time he came back from Chicago and told me, "Do not forget this group or this name...these guys are going to be BIG."  He  told me about how he and his band hung out with this band from Ireland after one of their gigs. The lead singer's name...Bono.  The band...U2. 

 

So how does this tie in with Noah  you ask...just wait.

Fast forward to the year 2000.  New neighbors moved in.  Wonderful kind people originally from Ireland. As time went on the mom of the family, Melissa, and I became fantastic friends. She too was a fan of U2...but for a different reason.  Melissa grew up outside of Dublin.  She was very much into the arts and theatre of her school.   Going to that very same secondary school was a young man named Paul Hewson...Bono.  Melissa was in a play with Paul and even had the original playbill and a photograph of the cast.  Oh, and she would ride the bus with U2 bassist Adam Clayton.

So...how does this tie in with Noah you ask...just wait.

While we were preparing for our adoption through Ethiopia we were introduced to the beautiful words of Bono through the book On the Move.  His words, based upon his 2006 speech to the National Prayer Breakfast where he spoke to leaders of all the faiths, are inspiring and powerful.  The images are photos he took himself while visiting Ethiopia in the mid '90s.  The boy on the cover errily looks like our son Noah.   It is one book we should all possess and read in our lifetime.  In Bono's own words:

"The one thing, on which we can all agree, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor. God is in the slums and in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. 6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality." --Bono

His words and his images kept us sane during the long wait for Noah.

And now I bring you to the connection with Noah.  The ringtone on my cell phone plays U2's  Pride when a call comes through.  It is a song that Noah has become accustom to and he hums it regularly.  When we started getting our bedtime routines down after Noah's arrival,  Noah would pay attention to what Sam would do to settle in for the night.  The one thing that stood out to Noah is that every night Sam would listen to music when he fell asleep.  Sam's choice of music...The Beatles.   Noah wanted music as well and when I asked him what type he would want the only song he could come up with... because it was so familiar was...Pride (In the name of Love).  Every night Noah's sweet sweet voice sings from down the hall...

 

One man come in the name of love 

One man come and go 
One come he to justify 
One man to overthrow 

In the name of love 
What more in the name of love 
In the name of love 

What more in the name of love 

Full circle...I was told 25 years ago to remember a band's name.  Could I  have guessed then how much that band would intertwine in  my life to the point of having our house serenaded every night to the melodies of U2 by my beautiful Ethiopian son.    

Since I've been so busy raising kids the past 15 years I put my journalism and education background on hold.   Just recently I have begun to delve back into my past careers.   My dear friend Jessica has helped encourage me to start writing again and I am preparing  to enter back into the schools...not sure at what capacity but am excited to get back to two things I dearly love to do. My first nationally published piece is featured in this months Adoptive Families Magazine. For me it is a dream come true.  I can't post the actual article from the magazine because of copyright so you'll just have to go out and purchase it.  : >)

Letters to home...from home.

Noah has been working on a letter to send to Ato Teklu, a wonderful man who works for WACAP in Ethiopia.  It is being hand delivered within the week.  After Noah was relinquished by his aunt he was placed in an orphanage.  Mr. Teklu, knowing we were requesting to adopt a child around Noah's age,  is the man who traveled to that orphanage and found Noah.  His relationship with Noah did not end there.  Once Noah was moved to the WACAP transition home Teklu became a central figure in his life for the three months leading up to my travel to bring him home.  When I was in Addis I got to know Teklu very well.  He is a wonderful man who loved my son when we physically could not.  One of the most dynamic moments of our time in Addis happened during our final few hours on Ethiopian soil.  Teklu and his driver took us to the airport around 7:30 pm.  It was a very bitter sweet goodbye and I don’t think Noah really understood that this was really goodbye until we were at the ticket counter and tears just began to stream down his face as he cried for Teklu.  He realized that the wonderful kind Ato Teklu would no longer be on this adoption journey with him.  It was a sad realization for all of us.

This weekend Noah dictated a letter to Hannah who typed it on the computer.  She printed it off and gave it back to Noah to write in his own handwriting.   He signed it...Musse. "Because Noah is my American name and Musse is my Ethiopian name."  

We are so very grateful to Ato Teklu.  He is our Ethiopian angel.